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The affs piecemeal criticism of surveillance is a kind of enjoyment,
precisely what maintains the larger structure of state control
repealing surveillance laws cant change the underlying structure of
enjoyment so we should instead overconform to reveal the obscene
underside of the surveillance fantasy
KRIPS 2010 (Henry, Professor of Cultural Studies and Andrew W. Mellon all Claremont Chair of Humanities at
Claremont Graduate University; The Politics of the Gaze: Foucault, Lacan and iek, Culture Unbound, Volume
2, 2010)
It is clear that the film theoretic account of Foucault that Copjec uses, misrepresents Foucaults concept of the panoptic gaze, and that this
misrepresentation, in turn, is responsible for her insistence upon a gap between the Foucauldian and Lacanian concepts of the gaze. By correctly
representing Foucault, I have closed this gap. A fortiori I have changed the exclusively conservative political valence that, in virtue of its function
as a disciplinary tool that supports the status quo, has come to be associated with the panopticon. In particular, I allow that, like the Lacanian
gaze, and depending on context, the Foucauldian gaze may have either disruptive, Dionysian effects or conservative, Apollonian effects.5
Foucaults practices of freedom are one way of thinking the possibility of disruptive effects . Rather than
overconformity,
reconceiving the panoptic gaze along the lines that I have suggested, new political possibilities
arise for opposing modern regimes of surveillance.
Central to ieks account of the modern state is the concept of an obscene underside of the law , namely widespread
practices petty tax evasion, speeding, walking on the grass, etc which, although strictly speaking illicit, are unofficially
tolerated. This network of practices is sustained thanks to what iek calls an ideological phantasy that keeps them an open secret
everyone knows about and participates in them in private, but no one mentions them, let alone publicly flaunts participating
in them. Such practices constitute points of failure of the law in so far as they fall in an indeterminate zone in relation to legal categories: on the one hand, in so far
pursuing this line of thought at an abstract level, however, I turn finally to Slavoj ieks work, in particular his concept of
in order to show that, by
as they are tolerated they are not straightforwardly illegal, but, on the other hand, neither are they legal; and as such, constitute a fundamental illegality at the heart of
the legal system. ieks point is that, rather
than undermining the law, the obscene underside of the law sustains it
the law is tol-erated because of the little secret pleasures that people derive from its obscene underside . In
Lacanian terms, we may say that the obscene underside of the law is the set of necessary but repressed points of failure of
the legal system in short, it is the symptom of the legal system. In particular, in the context of a legal state apparatus that is
held in place by a panoptic system of surveillance, the obscene underside of the law is a liminal zone of
high anxiety that, like the Emperors body under his new clothes, is obscenely visible to each of his
subjects in the privacy of their own visual field, yet must be shrouded in a cloak of invisibility in the
public realm. This is the site of the gaze. How are we to oppose such a system, which seemingly coexists with, indeed
depends upon its own systematic transgression? According to iek, not by acts of resistance, since the system is
readily able to accommodate, indeed depends upon such acts .6
Instead, iek suggests opposition through acts of overconformity, which, rather than protesting let alone breaking
the law, insist upon it to the letter, even when ideological common sense suggests otherwise . In particular,
this means a refusal to turn a blind eye from manifestations of laws obscene underside . As iek puts it:
Sometimes, at least the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on behalf of the
underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy which sustains it .Is not an exemplary case of such
subversion-through-identification provided by Jaroslav Hseks The Good Soldier Schweik, the novel whose hero wreaks total havoc by simply
executing the orders of his superiors in an overzealous and all-too-literal way (iek 1997: 30, 22, 31).
What constitutes such strategies of overconformity in the context of a modern panoptic regime of
surveillance? Answer: openly/publicly sticking to the letter of the law by refusing the cloak of invisibility
that shrouds the laws points of failure; in other words, by refusing to indulge what iek calls the ideological
fantasy , orchestrating a direct encounter with the objet a qua gaze. To put it in ieks terms, it is a matter of
actively endorsing the passive confrontation with the objet a , bypassing the intermediate role of the screen of fantasy
(iek 1997: 31). To be specific, it is matter of not merely saying but also acting out publicly what everyone
knows in private but dares not say: not merely announcing in public that the Emperor is naked, but
arresting him for indecent exposure. By Lacanianizing Foucault, as I have done here, we are able to understand the logic behind
such heterodox strategies for opposing modern regimes of surveillance.
we can sketch
what a society founded on a recognition of the death drive might look like . Such a recognition would not
involve a radical transformation of society: in one sense, it would leave everything as it is. In contemporary social
arrangements, the death drive subverts progress with repetition and leads to the widespread
sacrifice of self-interest for the enjoyment of the sacrifice itself. This structure is impervious to change and to
all attempts at amelioration. But in another sense, the recognition of the death drive would change everything.
Recognizing the centrality of the death drive would not eliminate the proclivity to sacrifice for
the sake of enjoyment, but it would change our relationship to this sacrifice. Rather than being
done for the sake of an ultimate enjoyment to be achieved in the future, it would be done for
its own sake. The fundamental problem with the effort to escape the death drive and pursue the good is that it leaves us
unable to locate where our enjoyment lies. By positing a future where we will attain the ultimate enjoyment (either through the
purchase of the perfect commodity or through a transcendent romantic union or through the attainment of some heavenly paradise),
we replace the partial enjoyment of the death drive with the image of a complete enjoyment to come. There is no question of fully
enjoying our submission to the death drive. We will always remain alienated from our mode of enjoying. As Adrian Johnston rightly
points out, Transgressively overcoming the impediments of the drives doesnt enable one to simply enjoy enjoyment.1 But we
can transform our relationship to the impediments that block the full realization of our drive. We
can see the impediments as the internal product of the death drive rather than as an external limit. The enjoyment that the
death drive provides, in contrast to the form of enjoyment proffered by capitalism, religion, and utopian
politics, is at once infinite and limited. This oxymoronic form of enjoyment operates in the way that the concept does
in Hegels Logic. The concept attains its infinitude not through endless progress toward a point that
always remains beyond and out of reach but through including the beyond as a beyond
within itself. As Hegel puts it, The universality of the concept is the achieved beyond, whereas that bad infinity remains
afflicted with a beyond which is unattainable but remains a mere progression to infinity.2 That is to say, the concept
transforms an external limit into an internal one and thereby becomes both infinite and limited .
The infinitude of the concept is nothing but the concepts own self-limitation. The enjoyment
that the death drive produces also achieves its infinitude through self-limitation. It revolves around a
lost object that exists only insofar as it is lost, and it relates to this object as the vehicle for the infinite unfurling of its movement.
The lost object operates as the self-limitation of the death drive through which the drive
produces an infinite enjoyment. Rather than acting as a mark of the drives finitude, the limitation that the lost object
introduces provides access to infinity. A society founded on a recognition of the death drive would be one that
view ed its limitations as the source of its infinite enjoyment rather than an obstacle to
that enjoyment. To take the clearest and most traumatic example in recent history, the recognition of the death
drive in 1930s Germany would have conceived the figure of the Jew not as the barrier to the
ultimate enjoyment that must therefore be eliminated but as the internal limi t through
which German society attained its enjoyment. As numerous theorists have said, the appeal of Nazism lay
in its ability to mobilize the enjoyment of the average German through pointing out a threat
to that enjoyment. The average German under Nazism could enjoy the figure of the Jew as it
appeared in the form of an obstacle, but it is possible to recognize the obstacle not as an external
limit but as an internal one. In this way, the figure of the Jew would become merely a figure for
the average German rather than a position embodied by actual Jews. Closer to home, one
would recognize the terrorist as a figure representing the internal limit of global capitalist
society. Far from serving as an obstacle to the ultimate enjoyment in that society, the terrorist provides a barrier
where none otherwise exists and thereby serves as the vehicle through which capitalist society
attains its enjoyment . The absence of explicit limitations within contemporary global capitalism necessitates such a
figure: if terrorists did not exist, global capitalist society would have to invent them. But
recognizing the terrorist as the internal limit of global capitalist society would mean the end
of terrorism. This recognition would transform the global landscape and deprive would-be
terrorists of the libidinal space within which to act. Though some people may continue to blow up buildings,
they would cease to be terrorists in the way that we now understand the term. A self-limiting society would still have real
batt les to fight. There would remain a need for this society to defend itself against external threats and against the cruelty of the
natural universe. Perhaps it would require nuclear weapons in space to defend against comets or meteors that would threaten to
wipe out human life on the planet. But it would
enjoyment rather than the good , this does not mean that we can simply construct a society
that privileges enjoyment in an overt way. An open society with no restrictions on sexual activity, drug use, food
consumption, or play in general would not be a more enjoyable one than our own. That is the sure path to impoverishing our ability
to enjoy, as the aftermath of the 1960s has made painfully clear. One
of love, namely, the state might extend its love by recognizing the dangerousness of the one who makes the
demand. At the level the demands rhetorical function, dangerousness is metonymically connected with the
idea that average citizens can effect change in the prevailing order, or that they
might be recognized as agents who, in the instance of the list of globalophobic leaders, can
command the Mexican state to reaffirm their agency by recognizing their dangerousness . The
rhetorical structure of danger implies the continuing existence of the state or governing
apparatuss interests, and these interests become a nodal point at which the hysterical demand is
discharged. This structure generates enjoyment of the existence of oppressive state policies as a
point for the articulation of identity. The addiction to the state and the demands for the states
love is also bound up with a fundamental dependency on the oppression of the state:
otherwise the identity would collapse. Such demands constitute a reaffirmation of a hysterical
subject position: they reaffirm not only the subjects marginality in the global system but the
danger that protestors present to the global system. There are three practical implications for
this formation. First, for the hysteric the simple discharge of the demand is both the beginning
and satisfaction of the political project. Although there is always a nascent political potential in performance, in this
case the performance of demand comes to fully eclipse the desires that animate content of the demand. Second, demand
allows institutions that stand in for the global order to dictate the direction of politics . This is
not to say that engaging such institutions is a bad thing; rather, it is to say that when antagonistic engagement with certain
institutions is read as the end point of politics, the field of political options is relatively constrained. Demands to be
Links
a kind of
narrative numbness both during the actual event and in its wake. 90 Feldman speaks directly to the issue of
narrative interruption, writing, Narratological numbness is not the inability to tell the story, but rather
the recourse to axiomatic story forms and emplotments that primarily restore our belief in our
ability to narrate.91 He identifies the repetition of the images of the World Trade Centers destruction as the first moment of
narrative numbness, in which this repetition cinematically and incrementally trained the viewers
gaze by reinserting narratological time into the scene of temporal and spatial anarchy and
stasis.92 At this point, the 9/11 terror attack had more or less disrupted and discontinued its audiences ability to imagine a
narrative reality both of a film and of a globe and had to be re-trained to do so, even if briefly. Thus, 9/11 constituted a terroristic
interruption of the thing-like functioning of society, that had to be fixed through the reinscription of narrative fundamentals. 93
some otherworldly thing that exists outside of language and representation that comes into the subjects reality, but rather to say
that the traumatic Real is generated by the subjects inability to inscribe an event into systems of
representation and language (or, perhaps, to understand it as an event).97 This interruption of the Symbolic
Order through the experience of something that defies inscription into it , then, interrupts the
subjects ability to imagine a cohesive reality; it is through the Symbolic, after all, that the subject imagines cohesive
realities. Film, or televisual media, functions in much the same way: the audience imagines a cohesive diegetic narrative, or reality,
through a set of structured, consistent, and predictable conventions. The sudden presentation of new conventions (like the
aforementioned cut to Human Centipede) acts like trauma the viewers ability to imagine a cohesive diegetic reality. On 9/11,
the traumatic nature of the image that is, its resistance to inscription into a pre-existing Symbolic Order, and thus
reality wreaked havoc on the ability of Americans to imagine cohesive reality, starting with the
temporary suspension of the ability to imagine a narrative from televisual media. This reestablishment of the function
of narrative is the most crucial process through which Ground Zero tourism mitigates the
trauma of 9/11 : by fitting the terroristic event into the conventions of narrative , the
timeline establishes that 9/11 can be narrated , or can be symbolically assimilated into a
cohesive reality. In psychoanalytic terms, the idea is to reinscribe the traumatic event into the
Symbolic Order. The omniscient narrator in the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site timeline is particularly instructive in this regard:
to narrate 9/11 as though it could have been fully understood as it was happening is, in effect, a means of placing the event under the
gaze of the big Other, which guarantees the ability of symbolic structures to represent reality. Thus, the timeline denies 9/11 its
traumatic aspect, which was that it defied narrative, interrupted the process of imagination, and did not properly fit into the
symbolic structures through which reality is constituted. This is not to say that, prior to visiting Ground Zero, the tourist experiences
9/11 as a lurking, repressed trauma, but rather to say that the explicit narration of the event makes sure to represent the event as
thoroughly integrated into a symbolic system through which reality is constituted; put another way, Ground Zero tourism
works to de-traumatize the event of 9/11 by presenting its images as part of a narrative
system. It may seem as though replay is actually the antithesis of freezing, that it actually unfreezes the event after all, the
timelines explicitly give a temporal progression to the events of 9/11 but in fact the opposite is true. In bounding the events of 9/11,
the timelines actually replay the event in a way that supplements the preservation of the moment. The timeline in the Tribute WTC
Visitor Center provides a good example: the timeline gallery in the museum is a hallway, and moments in the timeline are presented
on separate vertically-hanging banners that go down the center of the hall.168 The wall on the left of the visitor walking through has
missing posters on it there are just a couple at the beginning of the hallway, but they multiply so that by the end of the hallway the
wall is covered with them while on the right wall are various artifacts, including a piece of one of the planes and a dust-covered
teddy bear. This space, especially when jammed full of people, immerses the tourist in a 9/11 narrative-world the banners have
quotes from people who both lived through and died in 9/11, as opposed to the omniscient narration of the other museum. The
timeline, though, covers only a couple of hours, beginning with 8:19 a.m. and ending at 10:35 a.m. on September 11. Thus, the
timeline does not un-freeze the frozen moment, but rather positions the tourist within the frozen moment, constantly replaying the
same moment as hundreds of tourists walk through each day. In this way, the immersive replay of the museum experience works in
tandem with the frozen moment, allowing 9/11 to be simultaneously preserved and narrated. A deeper historical analysis of Ground
Zero is also needed, not only to intervene in the ahistorical representation of 9/11, but also to build a greater understanding of how
Ground Zero has come to exist as it has and why. A historical study of Ground Zero would chart the way the site has developed since
9/11, keeping track of how the urban landscape has changed, what tourist sites or infrastructure have come and gone (with particular
attention to museums, exhibits, and street-merchants), and the contentious debate about what to do with the space. Sturkens
chapter on the development of the memorial plans is an invaluable piece of a more complete historical understanding of Ground
Zero as a meaningful site.196 Ground Zero will continue to change, though, so work that continues to chart this change would be
valuable. A study is also needed of the production culture of Ground Zero; that is, what groups are behind the production of the
Ground Zero tourist sites, who are the people who make up these groups, and what stake do they have in the politics of representing
9/11? A detailed comparison of the sites produced by the Port Authority and the sites produced by the families of 9/11 victims, for
example, would be important to the understanding of why and how Ground Zero tourist sites appear the way they do. There is also
much room for comparative analysis of the tourism of trauma. There is likely much to be gleaned from the differences and
similarities between Ground Zero and the Holocaust Museum, or between Ground Zero and an Apartheid museum. This kind of
work could be interesting for what it reveals about the different ways in which trauma is dealt with and mitigated in different
cultures, and also potentially for what it might reveal about how different cultures deal with trauma in the same way. A comparative
analysis would also allow for a more definitive, generalized statement about the dynamics of creating a tourist site out of mass
violence and trauma. There is also room for a consideration of the colonial and postcolonial aspects of
tourism and, specifically, the tourism of violence and disaster. In comparing the representational strategies
between Ground Zero and an Apartheid museum in South Africa, for example, it would be worthwhile to consider whether the
Apartheid museum caters more to foreign tourists. This line of inquiry also could lead into a productive examination of the
conventions of comfort culture, and the extent to which these conventions travel and hybridize. So finally, why should we care about
the relationship between tourism, terrorism, and global imagination at Ground Zero? In addressing how kitsch objects prevent
certain types of engagement with 9/11, Sturken writes, A teddy bear is not an innocent object.197 The same goes for
Ground Zero tourism: far from being innocent, it ultimately helps to facilitate the acquiescence
of imperialism . When we are discussing global imagination, we are discussing nothing less than the production of reality
and its social, cultural and political-economic possibilities.Zizshould state clearly that terrorist attacks on 9/11 were the most horrific
violenceZizhave ever seen in my life, andZizhope to keep it that way. At the same time , 9/11 should also serve as a point
from which to investigate and evaluate the place that America occupies in the world, as both subject
to and constitutive of global conditions. Terrorism is disgusting and it is inhuman, but it is also by nature fraught with immense
possibility, even the possibility of peace. Zizek wonders whether, in the wake of 9/11, America will finally
risk stepping through the fantasmatic screen that separates it from the Outside World, accepting
its arrival in the Real world, making the long-overdue move from A thing like this
shouldnt happen here! to A think like this shouldnt happen anywhere! 198 At
Ground Zero, such a globe is nearly impossible to imagine.
to bring the subject to a point where they might recognize and name their own desire and, as a
result, become a political subject in the sense of being able to truly argue for something without being dependent on the
other as a support for or organizing principle for political identity. Thus, desire has both a general status and a specific status for
each subject. It is not just the mirror that produces the subject and its investments but the desire and sets of proxy objects that cover
over this original gap. As Easthope puts it: Lacan is sure that everyones desire is somehow different and their ownlack is
nevertheless my lack. How can this be if each of us is just lost in language . . . passing through demand into desire, something from
the Real, from the individuals being before language, is retained as a trace enough to determine thatZizdesire here and there, not
anywhere and everywhere. Lacan terms this objet petit a . . . petit a is different for everyone; and it can never be in substitutes for it
in whichZiztry to refind it.40 Though individuated, this naming is not about discovering a latently held
but hidden interiority, rather it is about naming a practice of thinking the uniqueness of
individual subjects as a product of discourses that produce them. Thus, this is an account
of political subjectivization that is not solely oriented toward or determined by the locus of the
demand but that is also determined by the contingent sets of coping strategies that orient
a subject toward others and a political order and serve as the condition of possibility for
demands. As Lacan argues, this is the point where a subject becomes a kind of new presence or a new
political possibility: That the subject should come to recognize and to name his desire; that is the efficacious action of
analysis. But it isnt a question of recognizing something which would be entirely given. . . . In naming it, the subject creates, brings
forth, a new presence in the world.41 Alternatively, subjects can stay fixated on the demand, but in doing so they forfeit their desire,
or as Fink argues, an analysis . . . that . . . does not go far enough in constituting the subject as desire leaves him or her stranded at
the level of demand . . . unable to truly desire.42
means (Downes & McMillan, 2000, p. 165). Somewhere in the mix, the positive associations of interactivity
as a form of two-way, symmetrical, and relatively transparent communication have been
assimilated to forms of interaction that amount to little more than strategies for asymmetrical,
nontransparent forms of monitoring and surveillance. Commercial and state-sponsored forms of monitoring
facilitated by new information and communication technologies, such as database programs, networked
devices, and search algorithms, are characterized by asymmetries that are rapidly becoming hallmarks of
the type of interactivity citizens and consumers encounter on a regular basis . That is to say, information
is gathered about citizens and consumers often without any information regarding what information is being gathered, when, and
for what purposes. Meyrowitz (1985) describes this process as a nonreciprocal loss of privacy in which we lose the ability to
monitor those who monitor us (p. 322). [Page 395] Such an approach envisions the potential of networked
interactivity to foster not democratic participation but the consolidation of centralized command
and control predicated on asymmetrical forms of observation and information gathering . Tellingly,
Wiener highlighted the possibility that a cybernetic model might be deployed not just as a technique of mechanical control, but as
one of information based social control. The use of cybernetic systems, he warned, might result in a society in which entrenched
economic and political powers managed the populace by tailoring messages in response to audience feedback. Rather than
speaking of interactivity in a sense that blurs the distinction between asymmetrical information
gathering and two-way, transparent information exchange, it might be more useful to speak of a
range of interactivities with varying consequences for power relations and issues of democratization
and centralized control. Meyrowitz (1985) observed that if the new technologies have any inherent bias, it may be
against ...a sharply hierarchical system (p. 321). Pearce (1997) claimed, No matter which way you look at it, interactivity is
inherently subversive (p. 244). And Wriston (quoted in Barney, 2000, p. 19) predicts that the force of microelectronics will blow
apart all monopolies, hierarchies, pyramids, and power grids of established industrial society. All three invoke a version of
interactivity that implies reciprocity of information gathering and exchange. In practice, however, the deployment of
interactive technologies by both the commercial sector and the state remains, in many contexts, largely
asymmetrical or nonreciprocal, patterned more on a panoptic version of interactivity than on
mutual transparency and accountability. News media, for example, have highlighted the asymmetry of state
monitoring in the post 9/11 era; during this time, the government has sought to expand technologically facilitated monitoring
programs while at the same time shielding its actions from public scrutiny. The news coverage can hardly be
considered a form of reciprocal monitoring insofar as one of its recurring themes is just how little
we know about the governments use of new media technology to accumulate, store, and sort
information about citizens. Against this background of asymmetric, nontransparent forms of information gathering, the
revolutionary promise of interactivity to shatter hierarchy and centralized control enacts the return of
Foucaults repressive hypothesis. Its 21stcentury, high-tech version portrays technologically facilitated forms of interactivity
as providing the promise of revolutionary liberation from forms of centralized, topdown control characteristic of industrial
capitalism. The incessant and multiplying forms of talking back incited by the interactive revolution
and to provide detailed information about their backgrounds, their consumption patterns, and their tastes and preferences, echo
Foucaults (1994) formulation of the 19th-century incitement to self-disclosure: Tell me your desires, [and] Ill tell you who you are
Panopticon does not create the power relations that define the ability of authorities to exercise
control over the bodies arrayed within it. Rather it amplifies, extends, and automates this power :
The panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense: it assures its economy (in material, in personnel, in time); it
assures its efficacy by its preventative character, its continuous functioning and its automatic mechanisms (Foucault, 1995, p. 206).
The point is important in that it highlights the fact that a simple rearrangement of the panoptic mechanism does not necessarily
reconfigure the structured relations of power within which it functions (although it may render the exercise of power less efficient).
Link Drones
The videogame-like fantasy of drone use captivates the state and the public only
critical analysis disrupts this illusion and mass violence against people feared as
terrorists
Zulaika, 13 Professor and Director, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno (Joseba,
Drones and fantasy in US counterterrorism, Journal for Cultural Research, 5-6)//SY
They count the copses and theyre not really sure who they are (Quoted in Becker & Shane, p.
A11), an intelligence officer admitted to the New York Times reporters. Yet the president is quite
comfortable with the use of force. How does he know they are actual or potential terrorists? He knows
it essentially by an act of fantasy. Since you dont really know for certain that they are terrorists, but
you know that there are out there people who commit acts of terrorism, you are free to assume that
their pattern of life may betray their terrorist intentions. Fantasy surrounding the figure of the
terrorist becomes a major component of any explanation why the president and the American
public can have such a cavalier attitude toward targeted killings of people about whom we even do
not know their names. A critical perspective on terrorism discourse confronts us at the outset with the
ontological ambivalence of what is the real of the thing itself. The figure of the Terrorist gives ground
to a reality the menace of which is felt to be greater than the one posed by the superpower Soviet Union
during the Cold War. The task of a critical approach is to problematize that real as necessarily
imbued in fantasy . This requires we deploy a valid theory by which fantasy is not equal to the notreal but rather constitutes a dimension of the real (Butler, 1990, p. 108). This is a theory of fantasy
removed from the representational realism of the media whose reports on terrorism tend to be
oblivious of the state of the exception in which they are gathered and produced (censorship, onesided sources, information obtained under torture, and so on). In such realism representation becomes a
moment of the reproduction and consolidation of the real (Butler, p. 106). A positivist view of the
real stabilizes itself by the phantasmatic exclusion of all absence as unreal. Terrorism is that disavowed
phantasmatic exclusion, included in the system as exception, that solidifies and gives ground to the
politically real. Since this real is shaped by the phantom of terrorism constrained by the State of
Exception, the exceptional phantasmatic draws the boundaries of the real and assumes the status of the
real, that is, when the two become compellingly conflated (Butler, p. 107). Thus fantasy emerges with
the mask of the real. As Nader remarks, counterterrorism in many of its forms appears as fantasy
requiring terror in the name of ending terror, when in reality the elimination of terror is the
apotheosis of terror (2012, p. 113). Not surprisingly, the current drone war has been described as
sheer fantasy, if not literally science fiction (Sluka, 2011, p. 72). Indeed, as admitted by everyone
working in the industry, science fiction is the major inspiration behind the drone technology. If you
do not read science fiction, youre not qualified to talk about the future (Quoted in Singer, 2009, p. 160),
said Arlan Andrews, a writer close to the White House and Department of Homeland Security. Politicians
easily become fascinated with technological novelties and spatial operations. The fantasy plays into
the seductive illusion of virtual war as a surgical scalpel and not a bloodstained sword, wrote
Ignatief, adding: We need to stay away from such fables of self-righteous invulnerability (2000, pp.
214215). Such fables are now the dominant culture, believed not only by the general public but
also the political class and the media elite. You will not read or hear in the mainstream media reports
indignant about the drone killings. What science fiction presents as pure fiction, robotics makes it an
aspect of reality. When the fiction turns out to be reality, a frenzy of excitement and the oft-repeated
sense of magic obtains. A frequent comparison of the remote controlled unmanned drones is video
game. In fact, military researchers are modeling the robot controllers after the PlayStation because thats
what these 18-, 19-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives (Heines quoted
in Singer, p. 68). Making war a continuation of the kids video games creates an experiential link
between play and war, confusing the virtual and the real .
Legal curtailment of drones fails --- their ban turns drones into the
newest desireable transgression, making circumvention structurally
inevitable
Rothstein 11/23/12 (Adam, Freelance writer, The Drone and the Gaze, http://www.poszu.com/poszu/index.php/blogarchive/drone-and-gaze/)//trepka
Like stepping out of our homes into a sky filled with satellites, an atmosphere seething with flying drones, a
city with buildings dripping with closed-circuit cameras. We could elude the lenses, shine an impeding glare into the
sensors, dazzle the algorithms. But for how long could we escape the constantly inscribed regime of
sight-recording that exists in our contemporary surveillance state? A map of CCTV cameras cannot be the
full surveilled territory. The cones of observation we avoid are limited to those we know of, and even our
tools of observation and avoidance now observe us back. We live in an age of Drone Ethnography, in which any
attempt at recording what is happening to us is overshadowed by another lens, watching a lens, watching a lens, watch us. The
opportunity for opting out of a visual culture elapsed long ago, when our eyes were evolving in the
membranes of a long lost taxonomic ancestor. We cannot ban drones anymore than we can dispel the gaze. If
the technological gaze is banned by legal means, it will only occur extra-legally. If human sight is
judged as immoral, it will only become a fetish. We are always already being recorded, and there is nothing we can
do about this. What matters is whether someone will persecute, rape, or kill us on the basis of that recording.
The military will continue to pursue drone development to make the fantasy of
perfection in robot warfare a reality
Zulaika, 13 Professor and Director, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno (Joseba,
Drones and fantasy in US counterterrorism, Journal for Cultural Research, 10-11)//SY
What happens to the axis of time in the expectations of robotic technology? Robots will have to react in
such speed, we are told by an army colonel, that in the decision cycle, reduced from minutes to
microseconds, As the loop gets shorter and shorter, there wont be any time in it for humans (Quoted in
Singer, p. 64). It is no longer the perversion of temporality in the waiting for terror, but the very
elimination of human time the perfect fantasy by which humans are left aside in a war in which,
not only they will not die, but, by reducing time to the category of fiction, they will not have to make
the tough decisions and carry the burden of their consequences. Thus in robotic reality not only is the
decision cycle no longer going to be minutes but microseconds, but also it dabbles in futuristic
expectations that tend to reduce time to the category of fiction. What science fiction presents as pure
fiction, robotics makes it an aspect of reality. When the fiction turns out to be reality, a frenzy of
excitement and the oft-repeated sense of magic obtains. Drones provide the latest instance of Arthur
Clarkes notion that Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
(Quoted in Singer, p. 165). Not surprisingly, the drone machines are treated as real soldiers and given
battlefield promotions and Purple Hearts medals (Singer, p. 338). Far from perceiving the
militarization of technology as leading to an impending catastrophe, the possibilities offered by new
fields such as lasers produce immense excitement among soldiers, scientists, and sci-fi geeks alike
to the point that one study called it the Holy Grail of weapons (Singer, p. 85). This is no longer a
Hollywood fantasy; it is something that is happening in the real world. The Predator is no longer an
animal metaphor but a real predator up in the sky. Not only will human time be eliminated from the loop
of increasingly rapid robotic responses, and the human baggage sidelined as to avoid faulty senses such
as human eyes, but there can be no place for human error in hitting the targets. One of the magical
words for robots firing missiles from drones piloted from via satellite communication from 70 to 500
miles away is pinpointed. The implication of such accuracy is that the missiles fired by the drones kill
only the bad guys. The precondition of targeted precision becomes imperative in a fight whose very
nature is best imagined as the hitting the needle in a haystack. Amazing as it may appear to common
sense, counterterrorists have come to actually believe that the best and cleanest way to take away
the needle in the haystack is by shooting a missile from 10,000 in the sky and guided from 70 to 500
miles away in Las Vegas. One of the clairvoyant prospectors of the bright robotic future and a major
consultant for the US military, the Ultimate Thinking Machine according to Forbes, is Ray Kurzweil.
His main prediction is that, In just 20 years the boundary between fantasy and reality will be rent
asunder (Quoted in Singer, p. 96). One of his predictions is that, given the exponential nature of
progress, we are on track to experience about 20,000 years of progress in the twenty-first century,
1000 times more than we did in the twentieth century (Quoted in Singer, p. 102). In a couple of decades
we are about to hit Singularity a kind of black hole in which things become so radically different that
the rules break down and we know nothing. Some people have mocked the notion of Singularity as
The Rapture for Nerds. When Kurzweil first shared his visionary prospect of a robotisized army of
the future, the military saw him as amusing and entertaining, but by 2008 his predictions were very
much at the mainstream of military thinking.
Drones / Cyberterrorism
Fear of cyberterrorism and terrorist drone use drives a self-fulfilling prophecy that
actualize these threats
Zulaika, 13 Professor and Director, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno (Joseba,
Drones and fantasy in US counterterrorism, Journal for Cultural Research, 8-9)//SY
It was false that there was Al Qaeda in Iraq before the invasion but then it became true after the
invasion. Anti-American radical Islamists could never afford to have antiaircraft missiles, until the
CIA provided Stinger missiles to Afghan rebels battling the Soviets in the middle 1980s. Similarly,
over forty countries are currently developing drone technology to be used as military robots, with the
likelihood that in a not far away future they might fall in the hands of terrorists. Such self-fulfilling
prophecy of counterterrorist drones being used by terrorists, we are told, is not far away (Caryl,
2011, p. 58). The same can be said of cyberterrorism, as the case of the cyber worm Stuxnet,
the malicious software developed by Americans and Israelis against Iran but spread to the Internet,
made it abundantly clear: while raising alarms against attacks from cyberterrorists, the entire world was
put on notice that Obamas administration was doing just that; as a result, Now that Stuxnets in the
wild, you dont need to be a rocket scientist. Youve got a blueprint of how to do it (Ralph Langner
quoted in Sanger, 2012, p. 209). Obama is concerned that any American acknowledgment that is is
making use of cyberweapons would create a pretext for others countries, terrorists, or teenage
hackers to justify their own attacks, therefore Obama has not even acknowledged in public that the
capability exists (Sanger, 2012, p. 265). As with the nuclear weapons, it is legitimate for us to possess
and even use them, but their desire to have them is terroristic.
Link Generic
If we really wanted to decrease surveillance, it would have happened
already periodic revelations about the NSA have occurred
throughout its history, and to what effect? We sweep it back under the
rug or create short-lived legal changes because our collective
unconscious remains unchanged and sets the norm for surveillance
--- analyzing it is possible, but it has to come before effective legal
action
Aristodemou 2014 --- Senior Lecturer in Law (Maria, Law, Psychoanalysis, Society: Taking the Unconscious
Seriously https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5M3pAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=%22nsa%22+AND+
%22psychoanalysis%22+AND+%22desire
%22+&ots=lDnuDxQFMZ&sig=7H0c6GELtGQ6U53BZ8NtxhN7oh8#v=onepage&q=nsa&f=false)//trepka
Psychoanalysis throws into doubt the assumption of a division between the public realm of law and
state on the one hand and
the private realm of the individual on the other because for psychoanalysis, it is the
distinction between self and other, subject and neighbour, inside and outside, that is precisely blurred: the
most intimate part of ourselves is actually taken from the outside , from the other. Indeed, to
pursue Freud's own description of the uncanny as the horror of the all-too-familiar, we could say there is nothing more uncanny
than the experience of analysis itself. In analysis, what is most intimate to oneself appears as if for the first time to an unwilling and
hostile audience: the subject herself encounters the self she didn't know she harboured. No wonder psy- choanalysis is the ultimate
horror story, confronting the subject with her own limits, in effect, with her own relation to death. As we will see in pages to come,
Lacan coined a beautiful neologism for this intimate yet disavowed place, denoting the fact that it is excluded in the interior; it is a
term thatZizwill be returning to time and again, the 'extimate'. For psychoanalysis, attempts to understand and legislate for the
individual cannot take place without understanding how the individual and the social interrelate: unless we understand the
nature of the individual and her relation- ship to the social, our ability to reform the social,
including the legal, realm, will be sadly limited. It is in the human psyche and its
relationship to the Big Other, that we must look for the potential for change if
meaningful and lasting social and legal reforms are to be achieved. Conversely, our difficulty, or
inability to affect social structures even when we appear to try to, is due to the fact that those
structures are entrenched not only in the symbolic realm but in our own unconscious .
Politicians know this only too well and are quick to stoke and incite our fantasies , some more successfully than others. Whether the fantasy is of a nation, a religion, a common friend or a common
enemy, nothing will command more lasting support than the ability to reach the parts laws and
policies on their own cannot reach: our unconscious. As we will see in the course of this book, there is nothing
harder or more painful than letting go of our fantasies, the stories we weave and come to believe about ourselves and others. It is our
fantasies, after all, that constitute us as subjects so if any meaningful change is to take place it requires the
shat- tering dissolution not only of our laws and policies but of the unconscious beliefs
and fantasies that support them. How do we access those beliefs and fantasies? How do we put law on the couch,
listen to its monotonous ramblings and excavate its unconscious desires? To attempt to examine law and legal
discourse through the psychoanalytic lens is, of course, no easy task. How can one uncover the
unconscious workings of the rules and principles that make up the symbolic order in general
and of the legal system in particular? As we know, it can take years of painstaking and expensive analysis before an
individual, kicking and screaming no doubt, can be said to come face to face with their idiosyncratic and invariably embarrass- ing
and shameful desires. How do we get law to lie on the couch, start talking to the analyst (and who, if anyone, could Law develop a
transference with), and then gradually move from empty to full speech, let alone pay the debt for its analysis? My wager is that these
questions are not only rhetorical but also meta- phorical. AsZizhave started describing, those
not need 'Law' to lie on the couch because the unconscious laws that influence and determine
our behaviour do not reside in some unexplored recesses of the mind but are displayed in all
their (dirty) glory in the practices and products of our culture. Cultural, no less than legal, texts proclaim
knowingly and unknowingly, consciously and unconsciously, the ineluctable rules and mores that make up the social order, whether
we are aware of them or not, like them or not, suffer them, tolerate them, or enjoy them. In the same way our myths and
cultural texts, to follow my own Law & Literature thesis from over a decade ago, are just as influential and
norm- making , if not more so, than so-called 'real' laws." Rather than hidden away beyond our reach,
the unconscious rules and principles that order our individual and collective lives, are
established and displayed by our cultural practices under the full lights of our social order.
Most of the time, of course, as in the Jimmy Savile example above, we prefer to stay blissfully unaware of
them; they are the 'known unknowns' , to use Slavoj Zizeks poignant corrective to Donald Rumsfeld's
epistemological categories, that is, things our unconscious knows, but our conscious selves prefer to
ignore . They are the disavowed practices and beliefs that co-exist and underline the
official practices while remaining firmly swept under the carpet . Needless to say, Donald
Rumsfeld is not the only person suffering from a blindspot in their field of vision, and not only
when it comes to illegal wars; the 'known unknowns' are a blindspot for us all , hence the need for what
Holderlin called a 'third eye' to remind us of what we know but daren't openly acknowledge let alone pay the price for." This
'third eye' can be provided not only by the occasional Julian Assange or Edward Snowden , not even
only by an analyst, but as we will see, by our cultural products and practices. The focus of the book will be the
unconscious law inscribed in cultural no less than in legal texts and manifested in our society's cultural products and practices, in
our aesthetic as well as political choices and preferences. Poets, as both Freud and Lacan acknowledged, understood
societal norms and the unconscious processes supporting them long before psychoanalysts and
have always been adept at taking seemingly marginal phenomena to epitomize what is central
and inherent to society. Whether we are referring to well-known and best-selling cultural texts or less celebrated products ,
it is through the interstices of culture, through its loud as well as its less noisy manifestations, that the core of
the unconscious can be gauged : in the same way that, as Freud insisted, it is in our mistakes, our jokes,
our slips of the tongue or of the pen, that the truth of our desire may be gauged.
lights, feeding the very source of their lamentation. The German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel coined
a term for such individuals - "Beautiful Soul": that specific "I-told-you-so!" individual who, by
incessantly complaining about this whole debacle, is actually contributing, in a way, to the
preservation of this despicable situation - for, first of all, the Big Culprit against which the
Beautiful Soul takes issue is none other than the external point of reference by which this
dissenting character acquires his or her "dissident" personality; and second of all, if you're using
Facebook to express your contempt for being spied on, at least try to be a little more consistent.
If you signed up for Facebook, you are, in some form or another, being watched. That's the point
of the damn thing: to be seen. Don't pretend like you don't enjoy it, even if your enjoyment appears
in the form of angst. In other words, people may be angry over being spied on, but not so much
with Verizon, not with Facebook, nor with Sprint. Not with any of the private companies
involved. Everybody seems upset primarily with The Government. Thus in the wake of being spied
on, Americans show resolute loyalty to the very companies that collude with the federal programs
doing the spying. It's as if the idea of boycotting these companies and their products and services,
is, for the vast majority of the US, more deranging than the fact that hundreds of millions of lives,
perhaps yours and mine even, are being tracked day in day out. The point I'm alluding to here is
this: a classic example of abuse of power is to present its victims with a series of false choices
whereby no matter which choice the victim makes, those in power win: do you want security or do
you want privacy? Do you really want to trust the government, or do you want to trust the private
sector that provides you with a false sense of security through things like smartphones, Internet
access, social media, and so on? One has to wonder then, if pooled distrust is being directed
toward Big Government, does this sentiment of suspicion merely act as a catalyst for
consolidating more power in the sphere of Big Business? If so, we end up with the following logical
absurdity: the more surveillance, the more "privacy." More correctly, that is to say: the more
security we want, the less privacy we'll have, and the stronger the private sector will become. And
that's why the more I think about this situation and its seemingly irrational, stupid-as-shit
absurdity (that, by dint of purchasing things like smartphones and dicking around on Facebook in the face of being spied on through these very things - people are thereby giving their
(unwitting) consent to being spied on by some sort of "Big Brother" agency), the more I realize
that there is something rather philosophical in nature going on here. Perhaps this situation has less
to do with some secretive "Big Brother" entity tracking peoples' everyday behavior. Rather, what if
this situation is exactly how it appears to be? What if this situation is essentially an ideological
problem - having everything to do with us, the body politic, and, our immensely complex relation to
the very "locus of power" that gives substance to the body politic? What if, and I don't intend to
sound cynical but rather skeptical here, this surveillance scandal is the logical, though odious,
result of America's desire for security ?
they left the traditional conception of the conscious subject largely intact, albeit complemented by
a dark, unknown portion which they considered it the job of psychoanalysis to uncover. On the
contrary, Lacan argued that the unconscious is something that resides outside of us, in language, in
our relationships with others, beyond our reach and beyond our ken. The NSA documents leaked
by Snowden highlight the dizzying experiential gulf between on the one hand the seamless, multicoloured user interfaces with which we are so familiar, worlds of windows and folders, apps and
icons, loved ones and deadlines and distractions; and on the other hand the monumental physical
infrastructures of thousands of miles of intercontinental fibre optic cable, immense server farms,
satellites and tunnels that enable us to connect to each other, the corporate giants that own and
run them, and the geopolitical forces at play around them. Decades of mythology, marketing and
rhetoric around cyberspace and personal computing have led us to imagine and talk of our online
lives as autonomous, deterritorialised public and private spaces in which we can conduct our
business or leisure, unimpeded and free from watchful eyes. We know this not to be true: we
know, at least in the abstract, that our personal information is very often coveted by tech
corporations, sold to advertisers, and used to train the algorithms and improve the offerings of
commercial services. Our every click, pause and keystroke is grist in Silicon Valleys lucrative mill.
Snowdens PowerPoints, training slides, management reports, [and] diagrams of data-mining
programs give us a glimpse of a yet bigger picture: of how these transactions are bundled up, sold,
stolen and secretly haggled over by governments and corporations at an enormous scale. In a
project called UPSTREAM, the NSA intercepts an estimated 80 per cent of digital communications
going in, out and around the US using an extensive network of oceanic cable taps in the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. It pays hundreds of millions a year for access to 81 per cent of international
phone calls coming in and out of the US. It cajoles, compels and partners with major tech
companies and infrastructure operators for access, front or back door, given or taken. GCHQ
allegedly reports a 7,000 per cent increase in the amount of information they have access to in
the past few years. This is not just a simple case of state overreach. This is the surveillance
industrial complex: the deep entanglement of entrenched public and private interests, woven
together by contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, secret deals, legal immunities, power
games and revolving doors. Despite the loud protestations from Silicon Valley that the balance
has tipped too far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individual, this is just
as much about the nefarious secret activities of unaccountable corporations as it is about the
nefarious secret activities of unaccountable governments. As many have pointed out, the debate
which Snowden started should not just be about curbing the excessive and unaccountable
enthusiasms of the surveillance state but also access capitalism, corporate influence, undermining
global institutions and trust and new forms of information consumerism. While some have
recently condemned the way in which the debate has been framed as a cyberlibertarian
distraction, surely what is needed is a broadening and deepening of the debate, rather than
ignoring it or moving on. Perhaps we should take it as an opportunity to discuss not only how to
strike the right balance between security, privacy and liberty, but also about the composition,
functioning and regulation of the invisible world that gives life to the light from our screens, and the
effect that this world has on us and how we collectively think and operate .
I am not arguing that one should ignore the practices of state and corporate surveillance, although I
find Franco Bifo Berardis contention that privacy is a nineteenth century bourgeois liberal
fantasy compelling.10 But certainly, as revelation follows revelation of the data mining of ones
personal information (the ideology of a subject owning or having rights to ones information
must be questioned and historicized), one feels that there is a certain structural relentlessness on
the part of such apparatuses. Perhaps what we need is a psychoanalysis of those
apparatuses, of their perverse need to compile all of ones data . Let us now turn to
Freuds famous remark that the unconscious knows no contradiction. This is so because the
unconscious is the site of our desire, of our wishful impulses, which exist side by side without
being influenced by one another, and are exempt from mutual contradiction (186). I would
argue that this lack of contradiction is also what is so prevalent and annoying about social media
and online email web browsers. Consider how, when Facebook or Gmail is up on our computer
screen, we see our intimate thoughts surrounded by ads for belly fat or ESL or gay photography.
Facebook now asks me: How are you doing, whats happening, hows it going, whats going on,
how are you feeling, Clint? Here the unconscious of the internet, via the shared characteristic of
a lack of contradiction, relates to how the algorithms work. On Facebook, ads are triggered by
your profile information (if you like cookery, you will get cookbook ads) and your likes (you are
what you like, as one online posting explains), whereas Google ads are triggered by your search
terms. In both cases, we find precisely what Freud discusses in terms of the contents of the
unconscious: wishful impulses, with the exception or caveat that we may not, in fact, like
cookbooks, even if we clicked on that link, or want cookbooks. Indeed we may have used that
search term because we wanted to buy one for our cousin for his or her birthday. Thus, when I
go to Amazon I am continually offered books I bought not for myself, but for my son or my
brother. This is my point: our subjectivity as worked out in the unconscious does not conform to
how we want others to see us (the imaginary: cookbooks versus cultural theory; YA novels versus
police procedurals). Instead it discloses the real of our desire, in my example actually to please my
brother or my son. In this sense, its a matter of desire (Lacan), and not taste (Bourdieu).
Policies decreasing surveillance are worthless transgressions --limiting the NSA because they restrict our freedom is a token action
that puts the locus of value in the Other
Andrejevic 2013 --- Associate Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies (Mark, Infoglut: How Too Much
Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know, https://books.google.com/books?
id=b1MXhS71t40C&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=Mark+Andrejevic+psychoanalysis&source=bl&ots=u7EOqDowuO&sig=Yjh5iuA-vWmFoMWS7eWyBOBxAw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VcmOVYHaMYarsAHgzY6IBg&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false)//trepka
The psychoanalytic relationship between desire and drive, as described by Jodi Dean (following the work of
Zizek and Lacan) is invoked by this infinite recession. Desire, according to her account, is about constant
pursuit and disillusion - the endless attempt to catch an ever elusive object. With each gesture of capture, the
obtained object is revealed not to be it - the true object of desire - and the chase begins anew. By
contrast, the logic of drive reflexivizes the process, conceding the impossibility of ever catching up with the infinitely
deferred object, although "conceding" isn't the right term - enjoying or "getting off on" this impossibility might be a better
way to put it: "Drive cir- culates, round and round, producing satisfaction even as it misses its aim ,
even as it emerges in the plastic network of the decline of symbolic efficiency. There is a self-satisfied gesture of the
"non-duped" in this reflexive recognition - a certain glee in "getting" what the dupes do not . But
there is also something altogether too facile about this recognition insofar as it imagines
in its reflexive wisdom that it has captured a bit of truth about truth - in this regard,
it is not quite reflexive enough. As Alenlta Zupancic puts it, "If we simply keep repeating that all our knowledge is
subjectively mediated and necessarily partial, we have said nothing of importance. Echoes of the perverse
enjoyment of the drive resonate in the right-wing embrace of what the comedian Stephen Colbert famously dubbed "truthiness" (a
"zeitgeisty" term, according to the New York Times): a cynical and ultimately conservative realism that concedes the demise of
symbolic efficiency while continuing to rely upon it. Consider the example of a vexed exchange about the details of Obama's health
care plan between CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien and Republican mouthpiece john Sununu during the 2012 US Presidential
campaign: O'Brien: I'm telling you what factcheck.com [sic] tells you, I'm telling you what the CBO says, I'm telling you what CNNs
independent analysis says There is independent analysis that details what this is about Sununu: No there isn't! O'Brien: Yes there
is! Sununu: [shouting] No, there's Democratic analysis there's Democratic analysis! The very attempt to appeal to a notion of
independent analysis or objective fact is aggressively (and somewhat gleefully) debunked. On its face, this dynamic might seem an
instance of the logic of desire: the ongoing attempt to capture an infinitely receding piece of the real - as if a more accurate, better
constructed analysis might reveal the true impact of policy in question. However, such a formulation doesn't capture Sununu's
position, which is not "you need better analysis," but the post-reality-based community assertion that "your analysis can never catch
up with my (affective) facts." The assertion is a self-undermining gesture for pundits and commentators
insofar as it highlights the futility of analysis altogether (at least insofar as its purported goal of clarification and
explication is concerned), and yet the endless loops of analysis proliferate on 24-hour cable
news, blogs, and Websites. To point out, as one systematic study Did, that a coin flip is more accurate than
the predictions of expert commen- tators and analysts is to miss the point: in a post-deferential
era, analysis is simply more "word clouds": "elements that reinforce the collapse of meaning and
argument and thus hinder argument and opposition. The fact-checking cottage industry is a legacy of the
journalism of the 1980s and 1990s, which replaced an ostensibly outdated commitment to "objectivity" with the convention of
balance - a convention that was so badly abused by skilled public relations strategies and spokespeople that some news outlets felt
compelled to revive the notion of objectivity as a separate division, like the Tampa Bay Timess, to which reporters could have
recourse as one more "source." This kind of sock puppetry along, with the occasional willingness of a mainstream media outlet to
identify a politician's blatant lie has been greeted in some circles as a welcome exercise in "shucking the old he- said-she-said
formulation and directly declaring that some claims are False. But the
occasional invocation of a truth claim to heal. As the Atlantic put it in a hand-wringing piece on the fate of
what if it tums out that when
the press calls a lie a lie, nobody cares ? The bottom line, of course, is that the ad is
continuing to run . It is continuing to run because the Romney campaign's polling shows it to
be effective.
political campaigning triggered by a misleading ad run by the Romney cam- paign: " But
individual has the ability to commit an offense, thousands of citizens in the average urban setting now have the
capacity to commit acts of terror, the goal is to establish if they are thinking about committing an
offense. Some recent Hollywood movies, especially those released after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the attacks on the
World Trade Center have tried to engage with some of the issues associated with these events. Films such as The Pelican Brief,
directed by Alan J. Paluka, 1993, Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott, 1998, Minority Bourne Identity, directed by Doug
Liman, 2002. These films have had something to say about life after the political certainties of the Cold War and the World Trade
Center attacks, the growth of surveillance power, and especially the manipulation and control of human biology. In all of these films
the most consistently applied theme suggests that surveillance technology allows a state to clandestinely
operate within a state, and that rogue elements who control this surveillance technology will inevitably attempt to expand
their own power at the expense of concerned politicians and the American public alike. Thus the assassination of ecologically
friendly Supreme Court judges, inquisitive Senators, and foreign policy embarrassments of one kind or another, as well as the
unwarranted harassment of innocent members of the public are all de rigueur in most of these movies. Often it is the
sanctity of key American values which are under threat, values such as property or privacy; thats
my blender says the captured, outraged lawyer character played by will Smith to a rogue NSA operative who stole it from his
kitchen during the course of a sneak and peak raid in Enemy of the State. Writing off habeas corpus is one thing, but stealing a mans
blender is an affront to every decent American. The surveillance movie genre is inherently paradoxical. As well as
being good entertainment these movies are clearly intended to be a running commentary on the dangers posed by the state to
individual civil liberties, they are meant to be a wake up call to decent liberty-loving folks every where. Yet the entertainment
these films are sentimental or sanguine and seldom dwell on the destructive details of spying or the ultimate ends of such human
behavior analysis and control. The rush of the action is seldom allowed to run into unknown cultural and political
terrain or to rebellion or transgression. Transgression, where it does occur, is often neutered. This
Hollywood strategy of ambiguous protest is nothing new, in his Fantasy as a Political Category, Slavoj Zizeks Lacanian analysis of
fantasy demonstrated with regard to the 1970 Robert Altman film, M*A*S*H that acts of transgression need not
The social relations governing society and the way our personality is
constructed means we want to be watched, we desire surveillance --that affirmative reforming one program cant change that
Humphreys 6 (Ashlee, Northwestern University, The Consumer as Foucauldian Object of Knowledge, Social Science
Computer Review, Volume 24 Number 3, page 296-309, Sage)//trepka
The Cookie Surveillance on the Internet works in much the same way for tracking desire, but one should not overhastily assume that it controls
consumer desire in the same way as the gaze of the tower (individuation from the surveillance is much more productive for creating desire).
Surveillance does, however, play an important role in making the consumer an object of knowledge, in enabling individuation. Through cookies, files
placed on each computer that serve to track and document Internet activity (e.g., purchases, name, address, and other information),
surveillance is ever-present . The cookie used by Amazon.com, for example, is used to identify and greet the customer when she
or he visits the site, then to literally bombard she or he with products that she or he might be interested in: sidebars of book reviews, lists (made by
other, similar members) of CDs along a certain theme or genre, new releases from movie genres of the consumers previous choices. This is not,
however, a covert practiceit is one that is encouraged by visitors and advertised by Amazon: Get instant personalized recommendations based on
your prior purchases the moment you log on (Amazon.com, 2002a). Although consumers may not be aware of the extent or the machinations of this
technology, they are continually made aware of Amazons presence as a watcher by the personalized feedback that Amazon provides. The log-on serves
to instantly identify but also to instantly and continually track. Only, in this case, the
culture
inspires in consumers not only the desire to watch but also to be watched (Kozinets et al., 2004). Some
compelling examples of this phenomenon include reality TV shows and the proliferation of personal,
voyeuristic, 24-hour web cameras. In the specific case of Amazon.com, consumers exercise their desire to be watched through
Listmania! a service offered by Amazon that allows consumers to display their preferences in a themed list to be looked at by other consumers and
(implicitly) by Amazon.com. Of this practice, Amazon says, Go ahead and create a favorite item list now to help other customers discover products that
you enjoy. Its free, democratic, and fun (Amazon.com, 2004). Because consumers derive pleasure from being watched by other consumers, the gaze in
general is welcomed, whereas the gaze from marketers in particular is seldom noticed or differentiated. Surveillance is so pervasive that it may not
occur to consumers to care if they are being watched by marketers. They may assume, in many cases, that they always are being watched anyway.
However, paranoia,Zizwould argue, is unwarranted as a metaphor because consumers in this paradigm, as evidenced by the shoppers at Amazon.com,
want to be watched. We
have not a culture of paranoids, as in the Panopticon, but a culture of narcissists . This
narcissism, also noted by Kozinets et al. (2004), is one reasonZizargue that a refracted or prismatic
Panopticon is a more apt metaphor than the obverse Panopticon . The obverse of the Panopticon, for Foucault,
would be consumers looking back at marketers rather than the marketers looking at the consumers. The spectacleconsumers all fixing their gaze on
some image or anotheris not the obverse of the Panopticon; consumers do not look back at the marketer, they look to the image or other consumers.
In the present case of the spectacle, the consumer not only is watched but is watched watching .
in this space is always already an image (Baudrillard, 1983; Derrida, 1978b). It is like two
mirrors held up to one another. The image moves back and forth regressively, an infinite dialectic. As Jameson notes, image
society created around consumptionand in fact almost indistinguishable from it (Firat & Venkatesh, 1995)instills in
the consumer a desire to be watched, but also to be watched watching. The image has become so revered in
contemporary culture that some consumers not only feel compelled to gaze, they feel compelled to be gazed at. Here
we can see how being watched has amplified and altered consumer agency. Consumers not only
have the scopophilic desire to look at images but also the desire to be an image themselves . Thus,
the spectacle as theorized by Debord (1967/1983) and Baudrillard (1983) is intricately linked with surveillance by way of scopophilia. The
embracement of both surveillance and spectacle issue from the same source: image cultur e. To
theorize further as to the cause of image culture itself would necessarily, as Jameson argues, be linked with the historical condition and the dynamics of
global capital, a discussion that is beyond the scope of the present essay. In
gaze that there is no resistance to it, that there is a continual performance of preferences, and that they never truly originate from the consumer. This
view has the downside of neglecting human agency. If we subscribe to a more liberatory view, it could be argued that consumer preferences are coconstituted by both consumers and marketers through dialectic interchange that meets the needs of both groups. Unlike the case of the prisoner in the
Panopticon, the
gaze is welcomed because it serves a different, more indirect, even playful function of
power than it did in the penal system. Here, surveillance is used, on the surface of it, to improve
consumer satisfaction . Cookies are used to remember consumer preferences and information to make the process shopping faster and more
pleasant. And what consumer (uncritically) would resist that? The practice of using cookies fulfills, to some degree, both the consumer and the
marketer goals. These goals are for both constituencies local or instrumental goals; they do not call into question the orientation of more global goals.
This kind of institutional rationality may thus benefit neither consumers nor companies on a larger, more global level (Weber, 1922/1968).
Surveillance is everywhere , and its social ubiquity has led to it being a common element or mode of representation
in contemporary moving image culture. As Thomas Levin has argued, By the 1990scinematic narration could be said, in many
cases, to have effectively become synonymous with surveillant enunciation as such.[1][open endnotes in new window]
Surveillance has become a mode of visual production, as in reality television shows like Big Brother (US, 2001)
or films like Timecode (2000); it
theme, as in The Conversation (1974), Sliver (1993), The Truman Show (1998), or the British sitcom Peep Show. When
surveillance functions as both mode of production and major script element, as Levin puts it, It is this ambiguitybetween
surveillance as narrative subject, i.e. as thematic concern, and surveillance as the very condition or structure of narration itselfthat
will become increasingly characteristic of the cinema of the 1990s.[2] The prevalence of surveillance in contemporary media is now
so vast that, for the purpose of this paper,Zizwould like to focus on a small group of films that exemplify contemporary discourses on
surveillance in a specific way. This group of films is collectively known as torture porn. The label torture porn refers to a loose
association of feature fiction films featuring scenes of extreme violence and torture. David Edelstein coined the phrase in his 2006
New York Magazine article as he quickly surveyed a common trend of violent representations in popular cinema. The catchy term
became a trendy buzzword and now torture porn is considered a horror sub-genre in its own right.[3] AlthoughZizwill in part
investigate torture porn as a cinematic sub-genre, my goal is to demonstrate the centrality of surveillance in
these films as
shaping narrative elements, modes of presentation, and iconographic motifs in ways that
convey deep anxieties about the alteration of the gaze. Surveillance in torture porn allegorizes
larger cultural and political trends in panoptic (the few watching the many) and synoptic (the many
watching the few) subjectivities. Surveillance metonymically encompasses looking and the complex
and ambivalent nature of looking and being looked at, and these elements of human social life are currently
undergoing radical transformation due to technological advancements spurring on a culture of surveillance, or surveillance
culture. As Nicholas Mirzoeff has noted, Since the 1970s, one of the striking phenomena that have come to make visual culture
seem a vital topic has been the convergence of spectacle and surveillance.[4] Surveillance and the larger category, image, are
merging together into surveillant images. If these two methods of representation have united, then this union requires us to
investigate how the act of looking follows this social and technological change and what the ramifications of this merged, or altered,
cultural gaze are. Looking is biological; gazing is cultural. As culture evolves, so too does the gaze.
Torture porn is a sub-genre invested not just in looking or visibility but in panoptic and synoptic watching and hyper-visibility,
which are rendering privacy and invisibility a thing of the past. The label torture porn combines reference to two of the most
intense bodily acts and visible bodily representations; porn (sex) and torture (violence). The label itself is symptomatic of the
extreme forms of visibility that torture porn engages with, bringing the body, but most importantly, visibility to the foreground.
These films are partially concerned with torture and porn, but their consistent underlying structure rests on the sub-textual
desires of looking embedded within torture and porn. Indeed torture and porn are actions and/or representations designed
for maximum visibility. Torture and porn come to represent two increasingly intertwined discourses: first, the
the videocam, not only because we perceive that it brings us security but also because we are
fascinated by the visual representation of ourselves .[5] The ever-looming presence of
potential surveillance, either via our own videocams or CCTV, makes us comfortable with,
and even drawn to, the idea of being preserved on tape .[6] The converging of these
forms of surveillance suggests that a contemporary psychoanalytic approach to understanding
gazing (voyeurism, scopophilia, exhibitionism) requires a nuanced expansion and reconceptualization . Toronto writer Hal Niedzviecki investigates the effect of surveillance within pop culture phenomena
in his 2009 book The Peep Diaries. For Niedzviecki, Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr,
MySpace and Facebook. Its blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn sites, virally spread digital
moviescell phone photosposted onlineof your drunk friend making out with her exboyfriend, and citizen surveillance .[7] Peep culture then, is a cultural movement steeped in
and made possible by technological change. It implants the belief, You need to know. You need to be known.[8]
Why do onlookers jump around behind news reporters filming on location? Because they know they will be seen on TV. People
used to avoid walking into strangers pictures, now they often jump into the frame because
they know they will be uploaded onto Facebook or Myspace, or Flickr, increasing their visibility.
Niedzvickis book casts a wide net, weaving personal observation, experience and interviews into an exploration of contemporary
surveillance culture. Topics he investigates include the following: reality television, celebrity news, amateur porn, serial
YouTubers, camboys/camgirls, social networking, GPS obsession, government surveillance, spying technology, the urge to confess
ourselves, and the dissolution of community and identity. His thesis is that we have entered an age where
you to see me, but surveillances I want you to see me seeing you , and surveillance performers
I want you to see me seeing you see me. Rather than seeking the human gaze of the other for mirrored
identification, we now seek the recorded gaze of the mechanical: we increasingly know
ourselves (and others) as images rather than people mediated by images. For Ursula Frohne, This
desire to attain telepresence, to verify and validate ones own existenceunder the gaze of
the media society and thereby to anchor ones cultural self-realization is characteristic of
contemporary media narcissism .[79] Zizek echoes the same theme: Today, anxiety seems to arise
from the prospect of not being exposed to the Others gaze all the time, so that the subject
needs the cameras gaze as a kind of ontological guarantee of his/her being.[80] Whether
looking or being looked at, the gaze invariably turns back to the self , something Paul Virilio now sees as a
merging of the human gaze and the technological surveillance gaze. For Virilio, we live with Vision Machines, within a system
where machines watch us, and where we watch them as they watch us, ad infinitum, mimicking the endless gaze of two mirrors side
by side reflecting each others reflectionreflection: an undecipherable world of mise-en-abyme. Surveillance culture
torturing others, attacking the homeless, or committing crimes; and perhaps this is why the publics eyes are simultaneously
attracted to these very same images. As the world becomes more virtual and fragmented, yet integrated, it seems people need to
intensify the shock in order to feel something. Yet these grasps for attention only add to the seemingly
limitless fragments available for consumption. As the protagonists of a film like Menace II Society indicate (they
robbed a convenience store and stole the surveillance tape not to remove evidence of a crime but to play it repeatedly for friends as
entertainment),[83] it seems that a condition of modern subjectivity is peoples need of the others gaze to validate themselves,
regardless of what the gaze sees, whether it be mundane activities like washing the dishes or a crime. As the title of Sandra
Bernhards one woman act/film puts it, Without You Im Nothing (1990), or as Ursula Frohne has argued, our internalized
camera gaze[,] the all-seeing, seemingly omnipresent eye of God is reincarnated in the presence
of the observer in todays media culture.[84]
Andrejevic 6 The Discipline of Watching: Detection, Risk, and Lateral Surveillance. Mark, Mark Andrejevic
is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Iowa. 14 Dec 2006. Pgs. 392
395. PWoods.
The peer-to-peer
control: There is less need for a central command centre, a single focused Eye, when the same
effect can be achieved by multiple, dispersed, even competitive eyes that in their totality add up to a
system of surveillance more pervasive than that imagined by Orwell (p. 140). Similar concerns regarding the
invasion of privacy or the inappropriate use of personal information, as well as forms of discrimination, exclusion, and discipline,
are raised by a persistent focus on the targets of Panoptic monitoring (e.g., Foucault, 1995; Gandy, 1993; Rosen, 2000). However,
in
an era of distributed surveillance, the amplification of panoptic monitoring relies on the
internalized discipline not just of the watched, but also of the watchers . Absent the internalization of norms
of conduct and governing imperatives by the watchers, distributed surveillance would amount to little more than the pluralization of
control rather than a strategy for its centralization and amplification. The exposure of the watchers as objects of the
gaze is the participatory twist highlighted by Room Raiders portrayal of peer-to-peer monitoring
as spectacle. It is the moment, anticipated in Freuds (1938, 1950) discussion of the scopic drive, wherein the role of the
voyeur is redoubled by that of the exhibitionist. The savvy spy, engaged in an ongoing process of
verification, is exposed as the object of what Lacan (1981) described as the imagined gaze in the field of the
Other*a gaze literalized by the omniscient reality TV cameras. Room Raiders offers a reflexive distillation of the role of
the savvy subject who, always on guard against the risks of deception, internalizes the norms and
imperatives of surveillance, screening, and sorting. The contrived scene of surveillance on the show
simultaneously exposes practices of investigatory voyeurism as forms of self-display. The drive to
make oneself seen as someone not fooled by facades aligns itself with the performance of the savvy
subject, who takes pride in the ability to discern the real (purely strategic and self-interested)
agendas and personalities underlying public discourses and symbolic mandates. The room raid is thus
both examination and exhibition. By going through the rooms with investigative tools, searching dresser drawers and hard drives,
the raider guards against potentially unpleasant surprises and performs for an imagined audience the
skills of detection and risk monitoring necessary for negotiating a world in which people are not
always who they say they are. Practices of mutual monitoring , seen in this light, rely not just on a climate of
generalized skepticism and wariness, but upon conceptions of risk that instantiate social imperatives of
productivity, hygiene, and security associated with the maximization of productive forces . The
discussion of Room Raiders is meant not as a comprehensive catalogue of the pathologies of lateral surveillance, but as a
suggestive example*a pattern to think with, as it were, when considering other security or self-help
campaigns that invoke the injunction to watch out for one another*whether for reasons of economy, efficiency,
or security. As a diagram of power, mutual monitoring supplements the model of the (swarming of the)
Panoptic with the added discipline of watching one another in order to redouble the monitoring
gaze of the authorities.
determined precisely by the fact that it is perceived as being valued by an-Other, and that it is
therefore seen as an inherent part of individual identity, an object potentially capable of being
desired. The desire of individuals for privacy is therefore not a desire for the protection of specific
information instead, it is a (vain) attempt to invest in that information, to be able to explain the
profound feeling of loss of autonomy that is entailed by entering the social order by reference to
having lost control of something. This creates contradictory behaviour: on the one hand, a desire to achieve
control over ones self by claiming a right to privacy; and on the other, a desire for publicity
because a person cannot fully achieve a withdrawal into privacy without confronting selfsurveillance and the reality that autonomy can never be achieved. For Lacan, the gaze must
function as an object around which the exhibitionistic and voyeuristic impulses that constitute the
scopic drive turn producing not merely anxiety but also pleasure.94 Data protection laws
therefore function as a necessary safety net to enable individuals to disclose their personal
information (if not to deliberately create a market for disclosure an approach that perhaps explains the purely economic
rationale for earlier Australian reforms).95 Westin has acknowledged this phenomenon, noting that each individual is continually
engaged in a personal adjustment process in which he balances the desire for privacy with the desire for disclosure and
communication of himself to others.96 Psychoanalysts emphasis on competing drives also explains the social
phenomenon that many privacy scholars have noted: the fact that, at the same time as concerns
about privacy are escalating (particularly due to the rise of new technologies), individuals have never been more
willing to both provide and disseminate personal data and engage in exhibitionist activities .97 That is,
despite psychoanalysiss skepticism about the concept of autonomy, psychoanalysis does accept that the fantasy of
autonomy remains important to human dignity. Importantly, it does so without disregarding the evident importance
most people have for the protection of their personal information, and the apparently contradictory willingness most people have to
disclose that information. As I have suggested in the sections above, privacy law creates a sense of control over ones
privacy (and so enables a person to avoid confronting the reality of their lack of autonomy), even as it continually
reminds and creates anxiety about the enforced loss of privacy and the lack of autonomy that is
being avoided. In terms of fulfilling drives, personal information becomes useful for individuals
exactly because it can be traded, exchanged, disseminated and recollected (in other words, treated like the
reel in the fort-da game). To the extent that data protection laws reflect privacy concerns, it is because
they facilitate a marketplace and an economy for personal information. Psychoanalysis rejects the view that
the increasing trend of individuals voluntarily allowing the public access to their personal information (for example, on social media)
reflects a disregard for privacy; on the contrary, it suggests an increasing desire to engage in the practice of exercising control over
ones personal information.98 Psychoanalysis therefore explains why many prominent privacy theorists such as Prosser and Godkin
have expressly referred to a persons right to their personal information as being proprietary.
Link Heg
Descriptions of the US as inherently superior serves to create a global
imagination that perpetuates cultural whitewashing and oppression
Loos 5/3/11 (Maxwell E., Honors Thesis, International Studies Department at Macalester College, Ground Zero: Tourism,
has to do with the perception of coherence and wholeness out of fragmentation . This is outlined most
clearly in the mirror stage of development, in which (roughly) a child encounters an image of itself in a mirror, and takes that image
reflected in the mirror as a whole self, an ideal ego. This is the first time that the child recognizes itself as a whole and bounded self,
as prior to the mirror stage, the child has experienced only a fragmented reality.10 Friedrich Kittler argues that film is the
penultimate medium of the imaginary, as it takes fragmented remnants of optical reality (film frames) and projects them to create a
whole, continuous, moving image.11 The mirror stage has also been used in film studies, most notably by Laura Mulvey, who argues
that pleasure in narrative cinema derives from a mirror stage identification with the (male) figures on the screen as ideal egos.12
Importantly, Lacan argues that the formation of the ideal ego as demonstrated in the mirror stage
provides the image of cohesive reality that allows for the infant to experience subjectivity and
enter into the symbolic order of reality and its representation through language.13 The idea of global
imagination resembles the Lacanian imaginary in several important ways: first , Lacans
contention that imagining a whole, ideal ego is required for the subject to enter the symbolic
order is not dissimilar to Stegers formulation of how social articulations like political ideologies
require social imaginaries. The most important aspect of the Lacanian imaginary for understanding the process of global
imagination, though, is the idea of creating cohesion out of fragmentation. The globe, as a unit of social imaginary which
undergirds and allows certain social articulations, must be imagined as a cohesive thing. Lacan , in explicating the
mirror stage, remarks that the process of subject formation outlined in the mirror stage parallels the
way in which knowledge resembles paranoia; that is, knowledge (and mirror stage subject-formation)
creates connections and cohesiveness where none actually exist .14 This is, more or less,
what global imagination does: it makes the globe from a reality that is fragmented, lacking the
structures of physical experience or community, into a cohesive whole, logical and bounded in its thingness, observable and representable. It is also a means of producing knowledge about the globe. The iconic image of the globe, the
1968 Earthrise photograph taken from Apollo 8, appears to capture this wholeness, presenting the earth in two dimensions as a
spectral, closed sphere against the background of black, empty space. It indicates that the entirety of the globe can be seen, and that
it looks like a certain way. Certainly, this image of the earth parallels the reflected image of the child in the mirror in that it is
imagined as a whole, when prior to its representation it would have been a collection of unintelligible, fragmented reality.Zizhave
thus far ignored the issue of subject-formation in the mirror stage, but there is an important element of subjectivity and positioning
involved in the process of global imagination. The global imaginary is not, after all, the only social imaginary in existence; it is not
even the dominant one of our moment. Thus, in a situation where multiple social imaginaries undergird various social articulations
some of them imagined communities, some of them imagined units the process of imagining a globe, a unit uniquely able to
subsume all of these in its imagined form, must involve an element of organizing and positioning. This is most easily demonstrated
in relation to nations, still the dominant social imaginary: global imagination not only creates the world as a
cohesive globe, it also makes nations fit together as a part of that globe . More than that, though, it
positions nations in relation to one another and in relation to the globe , so that the
United States can articulate a sense of global responsibility in bombing Libya,15 while Qatar flies
jets over Libya as a regional actor, and Djibouti is not part of the conversation. 16 In other words,
nations are imagined as parts of the globe with specific attributes and roles to play in the logical functioning of that globe. Global
imagination, then, in addition to creating a cohesive globe, also does this job of positioning nations and other entities within the
globe. The primacy of the nation as a unit of social imaginary, though, complicates this process of positioning entities within the
imagined globe; for one, the process of imagining the globe does not actually take place from above the globe, as the photograph
from space might imply, but from within a social situation, particularly from within a nation. This means that there is a
here/there element to the process of global imagination; at least in the American context, the globe, despite
being imagined as a closed and inclusive system-thing, is not here, it is part of there, not unlike the distinction
between Self and Other that undergirds the Lacanian subjects integration into the Symbolic
Order.17 For evidence of this distinction, one need look no further than the structure of news
media: almost every major newspaper has separate sections or subsections for world news, indicating that all
of the other news, likely organized around local and national categories, is not world news. If it werent for some sort of here/there
distinction in global imagination, all news would be world news. This means, then, that the process of making whole in global
imagination does not erase difference and otherness; rather, global imagination takes experiences and images of difference and
otherness and arranges them symbolically to fit into a unit called the globe. It subsumes them into the globe, so that global
imagination is a process by which the subject can imagine that he/she does understand difference and otherness (there) as part of
a system-thing; a retail chain with a name like Global Market can sell the consumer commodities specifically engineered to dwell
on cultural difference and otherness, because they are part of a system called the globe. In this instance, the term global
can be seen as a means of managing cultural difference. Global imagination, at this point,
starts to resemble Edward Saids Orientalism, insofar as global imagination is a process by which
cultural difference is appropriated into a system of knowledge, wherein something is made and
constructed. Said argued that Orientalism, both as an academic discipline and a Foucauldian discourse, produced knowledge of
the Orient that allowed it to serve as an Other to the Occident.18 There is a definite discursive element to global
imagination, particularly as knowledge is generated about specific parts of the imagined globe (i.e. Tahiti is tropical,
France is European, Iran is oppressive all typically global unquestioned facts, circulated and
mediated to the American subject). Indeed, it is important to understand global imagination not just as the process of
imagining the globe as a unit, but as the process of imagining the globe as a unit with specific characteristics. This is in line with
Stegers argument, in which differences in the specific characteristics of the imagined globe (and thus global imaginary) between
groups allow for the articulation of different globalisms.19 It does make sense, then, that while Justice Globalism and Jihadist
Globalism might be articulations of a global imaginary, they stem from different fundamental understandings of the shape, or
characteristics, of the globe. Put another way, they all stem from a global imaginary, but different specific knowledges of the globe.
Link Hysteria
The hysteria of their demand is politically counterproductive --- it creates distancing which both
sustains hegemonic logic and creates impossible demands for hysterical enjoyment
Lundberg 12 --- Professor and Communication Strategies Consultant (Christian, Lacan in Public,
Published by The University of Alabama Press, Project Muse)//trepka
Hysteria is a politically effective subject position in some ways, but it is politically constraining from the
perspective of organized political dissent. If not a unidirectional practice of resistance, hysteria is at best a politics of
interruption. Imagine a world where the state was the perfect and complete embodiment of a hegemonic order, without interruption
or remainder, and the discursive system was hermetically closed. Politics would be an impossibility: with no site for contest or
reappropriation, politics would simply be the automatic extension of structure. Hysteria is a site of interruption, in that hysteria
represents a challenge to our hypothetical system, refusing straightforward incorporation by its symbolic logic. But, stepping outside
this hypothetical non-polity, on balance, hysteria
being put under pressure to answer a question.44 Thus, a difficulty for a relatively formal/ structural account of
hegemony as a substitute for jouissance without reduction: where is the place for a practice of enjoyment that by its nature eludes
naming in the order of knowledge? This account of hysteria provides a significant test case for the
equation between jouissance and hegemony, for the political promise and peril of demands and
ultimately for the efficacy of a hysterical politics . But the results of such a test can only be born out in the
realm of everyday politics.
Link I-Law
International cooperation is an impossibility haunted by the return of
the real only an authentic encounter with the extimate can solve
Aristodemou 14 Maria, Senior Lecturer in Law and Assistant Dean for International Links
and Enterprise at Birkbeck College, University of London. A Constant Craving for Fresh Brains
and a Taste for Decaffeinated Neighbours. Eur J Int Law (2014) 25 (1): 35-5. PWoods.
As if such an attack on Kants dignity of the free will was not severe enough, Freuds blow to Kantian ethics continues by suggesting
that what Kant calls the moral law, the inner voice of conscience which utters the categorical imperative, is nothing other than the
superego. Rather than issuing guidance and benign rebukes to the subject, Freuds superego is a
sadistic agency whose origins hark back to the perverse God who commands Abraham to kill his
own son. This superego not only enjoins the subject to obey the moral law but also enjoys the subjects failures to come up to its
exacting standards. Lacan takes this cue from Freud and pushes the point further: the core of Kantian
ethics, he suggests, as a demand for the impossible (You can because you must) has a perverse
undercurrent, just as Sades perverse discourse can be construed to have an ethical undercurrent:
using the other as an instrument for my enjoyment implies, indeed demands, a correlative right in
the other to use me as an instrument for her enjoyment . So for Lacan the Marquis de Sades will-to-jouissance
conformed perfectly to Kants imperative of the universalization of the will: Sades will to use others as instruments for his
enjoyment recognized at the same time the right of others to use him as an instrument for their enjoyment. In short, a subject
can derive enjoyment from enunciating and imposing categorical imperatives, commands which
may well be universalizable, as Kant insisted, but are not necessarily for good ends . The emptiness of
the moral law, the fact that it does not enunciate any notion of the Good other than doing ones duty, can lead the subject to do
something not only for the sake of duty but only for the sake of duty. That is, one can conform to the formal structure of the
categorical imperative irrespective of the substantive content of that imperative, in other words, while pursuing diabolically evil
ends. A famous abuse of Kantian ethics was of course Eichmanns appeal to Kant during his trial in
Jerusalem: Eichmanns perversion, as Hannah Arendt and others have described, involved putting
himself in the position of an instrument of the Big Others here the Fhrers will. By making
himself the instrument of the Big Others will, a subject like Eichmann can use the notion of duty as an excuse to absolve himself
from exercising free will and for refusing to acknowledge that he did, in fact, have a choice. As Alenka upancic puts it,
What is most dangerous is not an insignificant bureaucrat who thinks he is God but, rather, the
God who pretends to be an insignificant bureaucrat. One could even say that, for the subject, the most difficult
thing is to accept that, in a certain sense, she is God, that she has a choice.58 The horror Eichmanns case revealed, as iek notes,
is that in modernity evil is not just pure egotistical evil, that is, for simple selfish reasons, but radical evil: [e]vil masked (appearing)
as universality.59 Public international laws retreat, therefore, behind rules, procedure, diplomacy, and
bureaucracy will not save us from having to make an ethical choice . The reason rules and selflegislation are not adequate to protect us from radical evil is the same in the case of individuals as it
is for a group of individuals called states: public international law, no more than any law, cannot
escape the pathological . The symbolic, to put it in Lacanese, is not an impermeable barrier
against the Real . Kant was aware of this, showing not only the limits of pure reason and supplementing it with practical or
moral reason, but also revealing the excess in humanity; he appreciated, in his words, the scandal of reason, that reason
contradicts itself .60 The capacity for the infinite of practical reason is also a capacity for the inhuman,
for radical evil . As we see later, this inhuman element, the undead as iek calls it, is the excessive
dimension of the human. While with the creation of the modern state this irrational excess is
supposed to have been left out, like a state within a state, to return to Freuds metaphor, like the
repressed, it is always bound to return and shatter the patients equanimity . Humanity or a Race of Devils?
If formal law cannot be guaranteed to protect us from the pathological, what about the cult of
humanity, otherwise known as human rights? If divine law prompted and promoted faith in a
tradition of natural law, following the death of God the cult of humanity provided a tradition of
natural rights as human rights. Kant frequently cites Leviticus injunction to love ones neighbour
as oneself as an instance of the categorical imperative, and continues the logic of universalization
and marriage between religion and reason. Psychoanalysts, however, are not convinced . For Freud in his
pessimistic late work, Civilization and Its Discontents, the injunction to love ones neighbour is Christianitys
ultimate delusion: not merely is this stranger not worthy of my love, he protests. I must honestly
confess that he has more claim to my hostility and even my hatred. 61 Freud appreciated that solidarity within
the community is only ever achieved at the expense of those outside the group; in that sense, Jews, he presciently claimed, rendered
most useful services by being the target of hatred and thus promoting community spirit among Christians.62 The rise of
nationalism and fundamentalism in the last two decades suggests that tolerance and
multiculturalism have not worked . And that closer co-existence can breed, not more respect and
cooperation, but more intolerance and hostility . The message of the second half of the 20th
century, a time when human rights were enacted and sought to be enforced, is, unfortunately, not as
salient as we would like: the neighbour, it appears, is tolerated, respected, and celebrated only when
she is kept at a proper distance.63 When she comes too close, as the plight of refugees and illegal
immigrants betrays only too well, the rhetoric of toleration shows its limits . Freud and Lacan shared
this pessimistic analysis of the limits of human generosity and neighbourly love: altruism, as Lacan pointed out, does not cost much,
and indeed it protects, rather than detracts from, our egoism, since we only help those who are in our own image. It seems that the
other whom we do not recognize as being in our image is left to the wiles not of our humanity, but of a God that we profess to have
killed. For psychoanalysis the function of law is not to bring us close to the neighbour, but to keep her
at a proper distance: that is, the underlying focus of the law is not to enjoin us to care for our
neighbour but to regulate the relationship between us so that the neighbour does not get too close to
us. For Freud in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego distributive justice works only because we deny ourselves things so
that others may be deprived of them as well.64 We could go further and say, like iek, that the charade of
political correctness and celebration of multi-culturalism arise not from love of ones neighbour but
from fear of encountering real others; the fear of the inevitable violence such encounters entail .
Which leads to my conclusion. 9 The Extimate is the Neighbour If the extimate is the bit in ourselves that we do not
dare approach, the unassimilable core, or, as Lacan often described it, the Thing, the undecaffeinated neighbour exemplifies this radical core. Freud, Lacan understands, recoils in horror at the
commandment to love ones neighbor because of the evil that dwells in the neighbor and therefore also in oneself. And what is it that
we dont dare go near to? Our jouissance that which prevents us from crossing a frontier at the limit of
the Thing.65 The alien, traumatic kernel, the unbearable Thing we do not dare approach except
from the safe distance of decaffeinated tolerance and multiculturalism, is the neighbour . The neighbour
who has not had the caffeine subtracted from her is the neighbour we do not dare approach and find it harder to love. As Jacques
Alain Miller discusses, the concept of the neighbour in Christianity seeks to abolish extimacy: as if such a project were ever possible.
The Christian injunction Jacques Alain Miller says, is nullify extimacy. 66 Lawyers, and human rights lawyers in
particular, are used to addressing the symbolic register, the register where one subject can
superficially look like another. However, what law and the symbolic order generally cannot get rid
of is the extimate . Human rights discourse may try to reduce the disturbing and unassimilable core of the other to what is
common, to the universal, to what conforms to the norm. As Miller puts it, On the level of the signifier, on the level of
form, there is equality, substitutability, peace. But what makes the other other, her alterity, her
difference, her particularity, is not on the level of the signifier, of the symbolic, but on the level of
the Real , of the extimate. At that level, the other is irreducibly different: at that level, as Miller says, there is war.67 Miller
suggests why none of the generous and universal discourses on the theme of we are all fellow-beings have been effective.
Because racism, he continues, calls into play a hatred which goes precisely toward what grounds
the Others alterity, in other words its jouissance . If no decision, no will, no amount of reasoning is sufficient to
wipe out racism, it is because racism is founded on the point of extimacy of the Other. Racism is founded on what one
imagines about the Others jouissance; it is hatred of the particular way, of the Others own way of
experiencing jouissance. We may well think that racism exists because our Islamic neighbor is too
noisy when he has parties; nevertheless it is a fact that what is really at stake is that he takes his
jouissance in a way different from ours. The Others proximity exacerbates racism: as soon as
there is closeness, there is a confrontation of incompatible modes of jouissance . For it is simple to love
ones neighbor when he is distant, but it is a different matter in proximity. Racist stories are always about the way in which the Other
obtains a plus-de-jouir: either he does not work enough or he works too much, or he is useless or a little too useful, but whatever the
case may be, he is always endowed with a part of jouissance that he does not deserve. Intolerance, in short, is intolerance of the
others enjoyment. We can now make sense of Kierkegaards dramatic claim, often repeated by iek, that the only good neighbour is
a dead neighbour.68 If the extimate is the neighbours disturbing jouissance then Kierkegaard is right that the only good neighbour
is a dead neighbour because a dead body can no longer enjoy. 10 Towards an Atheist Public International Law To sum up,
public international law, I have suggested, is an inadequate or porous limit because, like all law, it
does not take account of the extimate: it can neither guard against the extimate in the other nor
acknowledge the extimate in ourselves. Can we learn anything from Kriss failure in the fresh brains case to address this
deadlock? As we recall, Kris wanted to show his patient that he was plagued by a desire to consume fresh brains because he believed
in the existence of someone who already possessed fresh brains: that is, someone who is Great, someone who knows everything. As I
discussed, this belief in someone who knows it all harks back not only to the grandfather of the patient but to the grandfather par
excellence, the omniscient divinity. Public international law suffers from a similar symptom; that there is
someone out there greater than it, that it compares itself to and finds itself wanting . As I have discussed,
the entity which the subject directs her demands to, imagining that it has the capacity to answer and fulfil them is not a subject but a
place: the place where full knowledge and full enjoyment is not only possible but attainable. In other words, the place once occupied
by God. Learning from Kriss mistake, the task for the analyst I suggest is not to tell the patient, listen, dont worry, you are also
great, but instead to lead them to come to terms with the fact that the person they have been trying to please, impress, and imitate is
also not great; that the place she has been addressing her demands and beliefs to is an empty place. I call this realization, the
traversing of the fundamental fantasy of someone great, the atheist position: for the subject fully to assume the non-existence of a
Big Other who knows it all means that the subject must learn to know how not to know and to live without guarantees. Like the man
in search of fresh brains, like international law, like all of us, we must acknowledge not only that we do not know but that the Other
does not know either. That the answers are not to be found in other disciplines or in other peoples brains, but in our own disavowed,
repressed, and hidden extimate recesses. This, of course, is no easy task: it means facing up to our own
ugliness without the help of consoling fantasies, including the fantasy of a God, or a Big Other, or
ideologies including human rights or democracy. It means confronting our own excess jouissance, an enjoyment that
we find so threatening when we encounter it in the neighbour precisely because it is the unacknowledged evil that also resides in
ourselves. Moreover, we must confront this radical evil, to borrow Kants expression, without the
placebos and palliative softeners provided by fantasies of a benign humanity or a benevolent Big
Other. Like Kriss patient, we need to recognize there is no grand pre who knows it all, that when we come face to face with the
extimate we are alone; and that no law, international or domestic, can protect us. This is the foremost ethical demand
facing international law today and the challenge we must rise to: until we are ready to confront our
own extimate core, no individual or social transformation can take place Freuds response to Kants
Perpetual Peace can be found, I suggest, in his Civilization and Its Discontents . Anticipating
Lacan, who was, after all, Freudian first and foremost, Freud suggests here that what eros and
civilization can ultimately never eradicate, however hard they try, is the death drive or, in our
terms, the extimate: The inclination to aggression is an original, self-instinctual disposition in man,
and it constitutes the greatest impediment to civilization mans natural aggressive instinct, the
hostility of each against all and of all against each, opposes this program of civilization. The
aggressive instinct is the derivative and the main representative of the death instinct which we have
found alongside of Eros and which shares world-dominion with it. 69 For Freud the death drive,
whether it exists or not, nevertheless persists and insists. Like the undead, it is defiant, intransigent,
obstinate, unassimilable, unriddable, and above all, unlegislatable. Following ieks term, we can
call it the indivisible remainder that persists beyond and is oblivious to symbolic and imaginary
appeals, rules, and interventions.70 Public international law, like all of us, continues to refuse to
acknowledge the extimate: that there are things we cannot represent, not by law and not by
literature either. The extimate, nevertheless, which is closer to us than ourselves, continues to persist and insist . It is no
wonder therefore that Schopenhauers verdict on Kant was that, despite protesting to be exploring
and critiquing the nature of reason, he was, all along, courting religion: as he memorably suggested,
Kant was like the man at a masked ball trying to seduce a woman only to find when she removed
her mask that the masked lady was his wife all along. Kant, in other words, was at pains to seduce
reason but behind the mask of reason was always religion.71 To return to my beginning: to get to the extimate we
must experience anxiety. Unlike other affects that we can fool ourselves into thinking we feel, anxiety does not lie: it is the alarm bell
that announces to us that we are approaching the extimate. When we experience anxiety we know we are touching the untouchable,
unassimilable core. When and how does this happen? In the terms I have been using in this article, and which Lacan insisted on
when demolishing Kriss attempt at treatment, this happens when the extimate is not safely hidden by law (the symbolic), or by
politics (the imaginary), or by affects or passions (that can be faked), but erupts in all its obscene and violent underside. I will
close with two examples of such recent explosions of the extimate, both causing anxiety and forcing
us to confront the extimate, the first in the neighbour, the second in ourselves. First, Frances recent
legislation banning the burka or niqab in public; when the others difference, her extimacy, is all
too apparent , the rhetoric of toleration, allowance, and acceptance comes abruptly to an end . As
Slavoj iek elaborates on this example, when the face which subjectivizes the neighbour and makes her look a little like us is hidden
from view, we are confronted with the horror of the neighbour as unbearable thing and the tolerant west from France and beyond
can no longer pretend to tolerate her.72 French legislators, we could say, prefer their neighbour decaffeinated. My second
example is an instance when the extimate is shown not in the other, in the neighbour, but in
ourselves: the abuses at Abu Ghraib which, as we know, are not isolated instances of lone rangers
or bad apples but all too endemic in the conduct of wars and indeed in the exercise of power
generally . As iek elaborates again, Abu Ghraib illustrates the disavowed beliefs, suppositions, and
obscene practices that we pretend not to know about even though they form the background of our
public values.73 In international just as in domestic law and institutions, the abuse of power forms
the obscene and hidden underside of all exercise of power. I have called this hidden and obscene core the
extimate, the gap in the subject as well as in the Other that God was so good at concealing. In the morning after the death of God,
fully assuming this gap at the centre of our subjectivity as well as of our neighbour, in all its ugliness, and without decaffeinating it, is
the highest and hardest ethical demand international law, and all of us, face. Until we do that, no amount of fresh brains will be
sufficient to satiate our patient.
take them with us on leaving the house. And then, of course, theres that smartphone dangling in
your pocket and soon Google Glasses adoring your face.
Link Iran
Denying Iran the right to nuclear weapons is a racist, unnecessary
proposal founded in the construction of Iran as the hostile Other
who could launch a nuclear attack at any corner --- this framing risks
pre-emptive strikes which are actually bad
Nath 12 --- Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India (Sanghamitra, WHAT MILITARY DETERRENCE
CANNOT DO, CYBER DETERRENCE CAN DO TO IRAN: EXPLORING THE IMPLICATIONS OF MANIPULATIVE INCESSANT
USAGE OF THE TERM PREEMPTIVE, http://sosbilko.net/journal_IJSS/arhieves/2012_1/sanghamitra_nath.pdf)//trepka
do not need an atomic bomb (BBC, 6 March 2012) and declared its present uranium enrichment program was meant
purely for peaceful purposes, the West (especially the US), Israel and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) refused
to accept the same. Their underlying rationale for this opposition is that the mere possession of
nuclear weapons by Iran will threaten international peace and security. If possession of
nuclear weapons itself threatened international peace and security, Israel and the US
should be the hostile states. It is an open secret that Israel possesses nuclear weapons at the Negev Nuclear Research
Centre near the desert town of Dimona. (The Guardian, 23 May 2010) (Cohen 1998) As for US, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(1968) permits the US to retain nuclear arsenals as well as recognizes it as a legitimate NWS. In contrast, Iran still does
not have the N-bomb. In the IAEA report (November 2011), it mentioned that Under its Safeguards Agreement, Iran has
declared to the Agency fifteen nuclear facilities and nine locations outside facilities where nuclear material is customarily used
(LOFs) and these facilities and sites were nevertheless under Agency safeguards. (IAEA, 24 February 2012:3) If Iran actually
pursued nuclear weaponisation program, it would have been detected by the watchful eyes of
IAEA. In the exceptional case of Parchin, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said
that the IAEA and Tehran were near to signing an agreement wherein greater cooperation will be achieved for inspection of the
nuclear sites and that inspection of the Parchin military site had been included in this agreement. (BBC, 18 May 2012)
the death drive reveals a path out of this seemingly intractable opposition. The insistence on
the death drive marks a rejection of both the celebration of life and the apotheosis of death . The
death drive represents the bringing together of life and death in a way that confounds the
adherents of both sides. As early as 1996, Osama bin Laden himself put the struggle between modernity
and fundamentalism in the terms of life against death. In his fatwa of that year entitled "Declaration of War against
the Americans Occu- pying the Land of the Two Holy Places," he tells his American enemy, "These LMuslimJ
youths love death as you love life."l In his statement after the September 11 attacks, bin Laden again framed the conflict
psychoanalysis
in the same way, and commentators drew considerable attention to this formulation. Though Western leaders rejected almost the
entirety of bin Laden's politi- cal philosophy, they almost universally accepted the way of framing the opposition between global
capitalism and Islamic fundamentalism. In doing so, they follow a tradition that prevails within much contemporary thought and
even within psychoanalytic political philosophy. Erich Fromm, who tried to bring psychoanalysis and Marxism together in order to
form a new political program, saw within psychoanalysis an embrace of the love of life and a struggle against the love of death. He
called these phenomena "biophilia" and "necrophilia." As Fromm notes in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, " Love of life
or love of the dead is the fundamental alternative that confronts every human being. Necrophilia grows
as the development of biophilia is stunted. Man is biologically endowed with the capacity for biophilia, but
psychologically he has the potential for necrophilia as an alternative solution. "2 While we naturally
love life, the interruption of this love leads to a devotion to death and a consequent aggressive bent .
Later in Ille Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Fromm identifies Hitler as a particularly obstinate case of necrophilia, and he
would undoubtedly have done the same with bin Laden and the Islamic fundamentalists, had he lived to see them. The problem with
this opposition is the way that it constrains our thinking. On one level, recognizing an opposition
between those who love death and those who love life represents an accurate appraisal of the
contemporary political landscape, but it does not exhaust the political possibilities. If we look at
things like this as George W. Bush would have us do, either we are with the capitalist West or we are with
the terrorists. But psychoanalysis helps us to see the falsity of this opposition, to see that hidden
between the contrast of life and death is a third possibility death in life, or the death drive. An
insistence on the death drive marks an option beyond what seems possible on the contemporary
political landscape. The implications of this other path will emerge through the following examination ofthe widespread
opposition of life and death. On the level of common sense, this opposition is not symmetrical. What thinking person
would not want to side with those who love life rather than death. 3 Everyone can readily understand
how one might love life, but the love of death is a counterintuitive phenomenon. It seems as if it
must be code language for some other desire, which is how Western leftists often view it.
Interpreting terrorist attacks as an ultimately life-affirming response to imperialism and
impoverishment, they implicitly reject the possibility of being in love with death. But this type of
interpretation can't explain why so many suicide bombers are middle-class , educated subjects and not the
most downtrodden victims of imperialist power.4 We must imagine that for subjects such as these there is an appeal in
death itself. Those who emphasize the importance of death at the expense of life do so because death is the source
of value . S lhe fact that life has an end, that we do not have an infinite amount of time to experience every
possibility, means that we must value some things above others. Death creates hierarchies of value,
and these hierarchies are not only vehicles for oppression but the pathways through which what we
do matters at all. Without the value that death provides, neither love nor ice cream nor friendship
nor anything that we enjoy would have any special worth whatsoever. Having an infinite amount of
time, we would have no incentive to opt for these experiences rather than other ones. We would be left unable to enjoy
what seems to make life most worth living. Even though enjoyment itself is an experience of the infinite, an
experi- ence of transcending the limits that regulate everyday activity, it nonetheless depends on the limits of finitude.
When one enjoys, one accesses the infinite as a finite subject, and it is this contrast that renders enjoyment enjoyable. Without
the limits of finitude, our experience of the infinite would become as tedious as our everyday lives (and in
fact would become our everyday experience). Finitude provides the punctuation through which the infinite emerges as such. The
struggle to assert the importance of death the act of being in love with death, as bin Laden claims that the Muslim
a mode of avowing one's allegiance to the infinite enjoyment that death doesn't
extinguish but instead spawns. This is exactly why Martin Heidegger attacks what he sees as our modern
youths are is
mauthentic relationship to death. In Being and Time Heidegger sees our individual death as an absolute limit that has the effect of
creating value for us. As he puts it, "With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-being. This is a possibility
in which the issue is nothing less than Dasein's Being-in-the-world "7 Without the anticipation of our own death, we flit through the
world and fail to take up fully an attitude of care, the attitude most appropriate for our mode of being, according to Heidegger.
Nothing really matters to those who have not recognized the approach of their own death. By depriving us of an authentic
relationship to death, an ideology that proclaims life as the only value creates a valueless world
where nothing matters to us. But of course the partisans of life are not actually eliminating death itself. They simply privilege life
over death and see the world in terms of life rather than death, which would seem to leave the value-creating power of death intact.
But this is not what happens. By privileging life and seeing death only in terms of life, we change the way
we experience the world. Without the mediation that death provides, the system of pure life
becomes a system utterly bereft of value. S We can see this in the two great systems of modernity science and
capitalism. Both modern science and capitalism are systems structured around pure life. 9 Neither
recognizes any ontological limit but instead continually embarks on a project of constant change
and expansion. The scientific quest for knowledge about the world moves forward without regard for humanitarian or ethical
concerns, which is why ethicists incessantly try to reconcile scientific discoveries with morality after the fact. After sci- entists
develop the ability to clone, for instance, we realize what cloning portends for our sense of identity and attempt to police the
practice. After Oppenheimer helps to develop the atomic bomb, he addresses the world with pronouncements of its evil. But this
rearguard action has nothing to do with science as such. Oppenheimer the humanist is not Oppenheimer the scientist. I same
dynamic is visible with capitalism. As an economic system, it promotes constant evolution and change just as life itself does. Nothing
can remain the same within the capitalist world because the production ofvalue depends on the creation of the new commodity, and
as obsoles- cence is built into the very fabric of our cars and computers. Like capital- ism, scientific inquiry cannot find a final
answer: beneath atomic theory we find string theory, and beneath string theory we find something else. In both cases, the system
prevents us from recognizing where our satisfac- tion lies; it diverts our focus away from our
activity and onto the goal that we pursue. In this way, modernity produces the dissatisfaction that
keeps it going. But it also produces another form of dissatisfaction that wants to arrest its forward movement. The further
the project of modernity moves in the direction of life, the more forcefully the specter of
fundamentalism will make its presence felt. The exclusive focus on life has the effect of producing eruptions of
death. As the life-affirming logic of science and capitalism structures all societ- ies to an increasing
extent, the space for the creation of value disappears. Modernity attempts to construct a symbolic
space where there is no place for death and the limit that death represents . As opposed to the closed world of
traditional society, modernity opens up an infinite universe. 14 But this infinite universe is established
through the repression of finitude. Explo- sions of fundamentalist violence represent the return of what modernity's
symbolic structure cannot accommodate. As Lacan puts it in his seminar on psychosis, "Mihatever is refused in the symbolic order,
in the sense of Verwerfung, reappears in the real." IS Fundamentalist violence is blowback not simply in response
to imperialist aggression, as the leftist common sense would have it. 'This violence marks the return of what
modernity necessarily forecloses.
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
As Slavoj iek points out in Tarrying with the Negative, We
the deception of language as such. Hearing what someone says allows us to grasp all that there is to grasp. As
Wittgenstein puts it, To say He alone can know what he intends is nonsense.33 In fact, he goes so far as to claim that the subject
can know the others intention even better than its own. He notes, I can know what someone else is thinking, not whatZizam
thinking.34 By recognizing the transparency of the signifier, we might fight against the paranoia that seems to accompany
subjectivity itself, and all of Wittgensteins thought participates in this combat. Even though Wittgensteins argument has
undoubtedly found adherents among many philosophers and laypersons, paranoia about the others hidden
enjoyment has not disappeared in the years since this argument first appeared. One could even safely
say that paranoia has grown more rampant. Is this simply the result of a failure to disseminate Wittgensteins
thought widely enough or of popular resistance to it? Or is it that paranoia is written into the structure of the
signifier itself? The hidden meaning that the subject perceives beneath the signifier is the result
of the signifiers apparent opaqueness, and no amount of inveighing against hidden meaning
will stop subjects from believing in it. The belief that the other holds a secret enjoyment that the subject has sacrificed
renders the smooth functioning of collective life impossible. The force that allows human beings to come
together to form a society in common language is at once the force that prevents any society
from working out. The structure of the signifier itself militates against utopia . It produces
societies replete with subjects paranoid about, and full of envy for, the enjoying other. Though one might imagine a
society in which subjects enjoyed without bothering themselves about the others enjoyment,
such a vision fails to comprehend the nature of our enjoyment . We find our enjoyment
through that of the other rather than intrinsically within ourselves . Our envy of the
others enjoyment persists because this is the mode through which we ourselves enjoy. It is thus far
easier to give up the idea of ones own private enjoyment for the sake of the social order than it is to give up the idea of the enjoying
other.
The effect of the look is described by Sartre in terms of alienation. To experience "the look" is to experience
oneself as no longer belonging to oneself but as belonging, as an object, in the project of the other.
This involves a change in our very structure. We are not normally objects of our own awareness , in
Sartre's view. We "do" and live our life and actions, rather than having them as objects of our thought. The look of the other tears us
away from this however. Through it we come to experience ourselves as objects of our own contemplation
and awareness. We are divided and estranged. Moreover, we are aware that our actions and
experiences have a meaning and a significance, in the project of the other, which we can neither
control (at least not completely) nor necessarily have access to. We experience our being as not belonging to
us therefore. We belong, in part, in the project of the other, as an object of his/her thought and
designs. We are possessed by the other. And we are thereby (again) estranged. Sartre finds a literary illustration and
elaboration of this effect in the novels of Kafka (1953, 1957). Kafka's novels describe and utilise this very notion of alienation. The
actions and experiences of Joseph K. in The Trial, and of the Land Surveyor in The Castle, Sartre notes, have meaning for those
protagonists, but the protagonists are also aware that they are objects in the eyes of others, and that their
actions have a different meaning and different significance for these anonymous surveyors, which
they themselves do not and cannot know. They experience their life and actions, therefore, as not
completely belonging to them. They feel estranged in relationship to their actions and experiences
because they do not understand or know the meaning of those actions and experiences as they exist
for the anonymous other. The effect of "the look" is achieved, for Merleau-Ponty, when this mutual
recognition is not realised; when we feel that we are individuated and objectified in the gaze of the
other, when we feel that our actions and expressions are "not taken up and understood, but
observed as if they were an insect's" (1962: 361). The look "takes the place of a possible
communication" (ibid.). One party to the encounter constitutes him or herself as "inaccessible" or
as an "inhuman gaze" (ibid.). They refuse to communicate, although, of course, "The refusal to communicate is still a form of
communication" (ibid.). Such refusal is a "style of conduct", it belongs to the world of the carnal-intersubjective, the intercorporeal,
not to a mythical inner world, and it is only in this way that it can communicate to the surveyed subject that
they are not being recognised as a subject but are being constituted as an object. It is only in this
way, in other words, that the surveyed subject can experience objectification, estrangement and
capture. Furthermore, the refusal to communicate, and the objectification of an other , according to
Merleau-Ponty involves the (surveying) subject retreating into their "thinking being " (ibid.): i.e., it involves
their involvement in the linguistic and more specifically reflective practices of their culture qua intersubjective interworld. The
necessary caveat to this point is that for Merleau-Ponty, as for Sartre and Foucault, there is no reason why "the look"
cannot be secured through an indices of human presence rather than through an actual other. For
Merleau-Ponty then, the look, despite the fact that it involves the experience of objectification, is intersubjectively situated. It is a
cultural practice, effected in the action of a surveyor and communicated (by virtue of its
visible/cultural form) to a surveyed. It is not an absence of intersubjectivity but a tension or knot
within the intersubjective fabric. Furthermore, in contrast to Sartre, Merleau-Ponty maintains that "the look" is
constituted within the particularity of a given situation. It is not an inevitable consequence of a given state of the human condition.
Foucault describes the Panopticon as a machine. He marvels (1979, 1981) at the manner in which it secures its effects independently
of human intention or will. In this paper, whilst not denying Foucault's claim, I have argued that there is a human
infrastructure to the Panopticon which Foucault does not and cannot account for. I have suggested
that we examine the human relations which make the Panopticon a Panopticon and not a pile of
bricks. And in particular I have called attention to the perceptual and intersubjective-intercorporeal character of these relations
and this infrastructure. Such notions are, to some extent at least, inconsistent with Foucault's philosophy .
Certainly his philosophy does not and cannot provide for an understanding of them. Furthermore, I have argued that Foucault's
philosophy cannot actually account for the "anxious awareness" which it refers to and depends upon.
In respect of these problems, I have suggested that the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty provides for a rethinking and recasting of our
understanding of Panopticism. I would also add to this that in facilitating a deepening and extension of our understanding of
Panopticism, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy provides for a deepening and extension f our understanding of the politics of the gaze
more generally.
DJ
the right-wing intellectual is a knave, a conformist who refers to the mere existence of the
given order as an argument for it, and mocks the Left on account of its `utopian' plans , which
necessarily lead to catastrophe; while the left-wing intellectual is a fool, a court jester who publicly displays
the lie of the existing order, but in a way which suspends the performative efficiency of his speech.
In short,
Today, after the fall of Socialism, the knave is a neoconservative advocate of the free market who cruelly rejects all forms of social solidarity as
counterproductive sentimentalism, while the
the satisfaction of the progressive fool, a `social critic', is of the same kind as that of the poor Russian peasant, the
typical hysterical satisfaction of snatching a little piece of jouissance away from the Master. If the
victim in the first joke were a fool, he would allow the monkey to wash his balls in the whisky yet another time, but would add some dirt or sticky stuff
to his glass beforehand, so that after the monkey's departure he would be able to claim triumphantly: 'I duped him! His balls are now even dirtier than
before!' It is easy to imagine a much more sublime version of the reversal performed by the gypsy musician - is not this same reversal at work in the
subjective position of castrati singers, for example? They are made to `cry :o Heaven': after suffering a horrible mutilation, they are not supposed .o
bemoan their worldly misfortune and pain, and to look for the culprits responsible for it, but instead to address their complaint to Heaven itself. In a
way, they must accomplish a kind of magic reversal and exchange all their worldly complaints for a complaint addressed to Divine Fate itself - this
reversal allows them to enjoy their terrestrial life to the fullest. This is (the singing) voice at its most elementary: the embodiment of 'surplus enjoyment' in the precise sense of the paradoxical `pleasure in pain'. That is to say: when Lacan uses the term plus-de jouir, one has to ask a naive but
crucial question: in what does this surplus consist? Is it merely a qualitative increase of ordinary pleasure? The ambiguity of the French term is decisive
here: it can mean `surplus of enjoyment' as well as `no more enjoyment' - the surplus of enjoyment over mere pleasure is generated by the presence of
the very opposite of pleasure, that is, pain. Pain generates surplus-enjoyment via the magic reversal-into-itself by means of which the very material
texture of our expression of pain (the crying voice) gives rise to enjoyment - and is not this what takes place towards the end of the joke about the
monkey washing his balls in my whisky, when the gypsy transforms my furious complaint into a selfsatisfying melody? What we find here is a neat
exemplification of the Lacanian formula of the fetishistic object (minus phi under small a): like the castrato's voice, the objet petit a - the surplusenjoyment - arises at the very place of castration. And does not the same go for love poetry and its ultimate topic: the lamentation of. the poet who has
lost his beloved (because she doesn't return his love, because she has died, because her parents do not approve of their union, and block his access to
her ...)? Poetry, the specific poetic jouissance, emerges when the very symbolic articulation of this Loss gives rise to a pleasure of its own.' Do we not
find the same elementary ideological gesture inscribed into Jewish identity? Jews `evacuate the Law of jouissance', they are `the people of the Book'
who stick to the rules and allow for no ecstatic experience of the Sacred; yet, at the same time, they do find an excessive enjoyment precisely in their
dealings with the Text of the Book: the `Talmudic' enjoyment of how to read it properly, how to interpret it so that we can none the less have it our own
way. Is not the tradition of lively debates and disputes which strike foreigners (Gentiles) as meaningless hairsplitting a neat example of how the very
renunciation of the Thing jouissance produces its own jouissance (in interpreting the text)? Maybe Kafka himself, as the Western `Protestant' Jew, was
shocked to discover this obscene aspect of the Jewish Law' - is not this jouis-sense in the Letter clearly discernible in the discussion between the priest
and K at the end of The Trial, after the parable on the door of the Law? What strikes one here is the `senseless' detailed hairsplitting which, in precise
contrast to the Western tradition of metaphorical-gnostic reading, undermines the obvious meaning not by endeavouring to discern beneath it layers of
`deeper' analogical meanings, but by insisting on a too-close, too-literal reading ('the man from the country was never ordered to come there in the first
place', etc.). Each
of the two positions, that of fool and that of knave, is thus sustained by its own kind of
the enjoyment of snatching back from the Master part of the jouissance he stole from us (in the case of the
fool); the enjoyment which directly pertains to the subject's pain (in the case of the knave). What psychoanalysis can do to help
the critique of ideology is precisely to clarify the status of this paradoxical jouissance as the
payment that the exploited, the servant, receives for serving the Master. This jouissance, of course, always
emerges within a certain phantasmic field; the crucial precondition for breaking the chains of servitude is thus
to `traverse the fantasy' which structures our jouissance in a way which keeps us attached to the
Master - makes us accept the framework of the social relationship of domination.
jouissance:
https://samkriss.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/prism-the-psychopathology-of-internet-surveillance/)//trepka
Neurosis. Top-secret documents released recently by the Guardian and the Washington
Post reveal
the existence of a far-reaching surveillance programme operated by the National Security
Agency (a part of the US military), codenamed PRISM. Under the programme, personal
communications from nine Internet services including Facebook, Skype, and Google, but with
the notable exception of Twitter can be accessed at any time by government security agents.
Not just public postings but also private emails and video calls; in a separate scandal it was
revealed that the NSA has been collecting the phone records of US citizens . Whats more shocking is that
these companies voluntarily signed up to the programme; they abused the trust of their users in handing over private data to
government spies. What were seeing is the development of a surveillance society far more insidious than any historical totalitarian
regime. You can still think and say whatever you want, but youre always being watched; your right to privacy has disappeared
without you even noticing it. In some sinister concrete server complex theres a digital file on you, containing everything youve said
and done. Government agencies listen in on your telephone calls, software built in to your iPhone records your exact location, web
cookies track your browsing habits. This is what radical openness means; its a laceration. The government-corporation complex is
with you at every moment, and should it decide that it doesnt like what youre thinking and saying, it has the power to murder you
on a whim. Psychosis. Theres something grimly humorous about the whole situation. One of the nine services that forms part of the
Prism system is YouTube; the unbidden image arises of a young, driven NSA staffer going in to work his tie fastidiously knotted,
his shoes gleaming like an oil slick to watch hundreds of videos of cats falling over in the defence of American security interests.
With every new maladroit kitten the aquiline focus of his eyes sharpens; the furrows on his forehead grow glacial in their cragginess.
Ashleys going for cocktails with the girls, Matts watching the football, Tariqs eaten too much Ardennes pt, and the government
has to take note of it all in a desperate and doomed attempt to regulate our world. Except what if thats the entire point? The
programme isnt political, its sexual. Its not surveillance, its scopophilia. You think the NSA is trudging through millions of hours
of Skype conversations just so they can catch out a couple of would-be terrorists? What do those initials really stand for, anyway?
Nudes Seekin Agency? Nasty Sex Appraisers? Our agent isnt watching out for coded communications, hes got something entirely
different in mind. A couple are talking into their webcams. Shes gone off to university, he stayed at home; theyre still together but
in her absence hes been feeling kinda down. He wants to touch her, he wants to hold her, he wants to feel flesh against flesh, but he
cant. As he talks a smile slithers across her face. Oh, dont, she says. Not now. Come on, he says. Please. Im going crazy out
here. They think theyre alone. OK, she says. She takes off her shirt. As her tits flop out our agent bellows in exultation. There are
hundreds of workstations in the big tile-carpeted room in Fort Meade, Maryland, and they all spout arcing parabolas of cum
Schizophrenia. Internet surveillance is different from ordinary surveillance. The NSA isnt putting bugs in your home
or following you down the street; youre giving them everything they want . Youre putting
all this information out there of your own free will, and you can stop any time you want .
We all know that everything we post online is monitored, that every like on Facebook is worth
114 to advertisers and retailers, that Google knows far more about our shameful desires than
our sexual partners or our psychotherapists, that intelligence agencies routinely prowl through
our communications. And yet we still do it . Some people cant eat their lunch without slapping an Instagram
filter on it, others feel the need to tweet the precise consistency of their morning shit. Planet Earth produces 25 petabytes of data
every day, a quantity of information several orders of magnitude larger than that contained in every book ever published and most
of it is banality or gibberish. A web developer named Mike DiGiovanni commented of Google Glass: Ive taken more pictures today
thanZizhave the past 5 days thanks to this. Sure, they are mostly silly, but my timeline has now truly become a timeline of where Ive
been. As if this perverse behaviour is somehow to be encouraged. Why do we do this? Why can we no longer
grotesque, but at the same time they tickle our narcissism a narcissism which is, after all,
founded on the gaze. In a strange way its nice to think that youre being watched , its nice to
think that whatever drivel you produce somehow merits the attention of big important
government agencies. Its far more horrifying to think that nobody is watching you, because
nobody cares. The problem is that thats the truth that, as Lacan insisted, the Big Other
doesnt exist. Youre being watched, but only by machines . Your data is thoroughly chewed up in the inhuman
mandibles of some great complex algorithm, and by the time its regurgitated for advertisers or spies youre pretty much
unrecognisable. Youre not a person, youre input and output; a blip with a few pathetic delusions
of
sentience. And the narcissism of the surveilled is the most telling of those delusions . This is the
complaint of the privacy campaigners: the flying robots of death were bad, but this is really the last straw. As if someone snooping on
your emails was the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. We dont live in a society of surveillance; thats
ultimately ephemeral.
dreamed up by someone (human) and, definitely watched by a whole bunch of (human) people.
Hence the perspective in which "I am present at the very scene of my own absence" - the human
viewer reduced to the "impossible" gaze - as if I'm not a part of the very "reality" I'm observing.
This is, in a nutshell, the definition of gaze. The big Other, on the other hand, is a bit more
involved. Its definition is inherently nuanced. To start off, what we'll call the Symbolic big Other
is something that is shared by everyone. It is none other than that which embodies the very
ideological essence of the socio-symbolic order of our lives; rules and etiquette - especially juridical
Law itself - customs and beliefs, everything you should or should not do, what you aspire
toward, and who or what you aspire to be, all of this and more, individually or in combination,
constitutes the Symbolic big Other. The subject's big Other (hereafter, the Imaginary big Other),
however, is a sort of private investment in the Symbolic big Other, a personal allegiance to the
ruling ideology which sustains the narratives, beliefs, and lived fantasies of the very culture in
which the subject is immersed. Each Imaginary big Other is distinct in its own unique way: my
Imaginary big Other may be, say, a patriotic bricolage (not really, but you get the point) - a
composite of things like, e.g., Uncle Sam, the American soldier trope, "God" and Tim Tebow. And
your Imaginary big Other may embody, say, just Emily Post, or maybe some vague ideological
package of some other normative principles. In any case, the Imaginary big Other, the subject's
big Other as such, designates a private virtualization of the socio-symbolic field in which he or
she is inscribed. Whether it exists in one's private notion of God, or one's notion of government,
or family, or "what's cool," or a combination of these things or whatever, the Imaginary big
Other refers directly to that distinctly personalized social standard by which each of us
respectively measures ourselves - 24/7/365 (yes, the big Other can make itself known even in
our dreams). Virtually everybody shares in the Symbolic big Other, for it's that very point from
which the general "will-of-the-people" is reflected back to the people, so that we can see ourselves
as we appear in this reflection - as a consistent social "whole." In other words, the big Other is
that which gives substance to the body politic. We are its subjects. And despite not really existing
- that, at the imaginative level of the individual, it's really none other than one's own internalization
of society's dos-and-don'ts - the big Other is nonetheless experienced as a sort of independent
phantasm which situates itself smack dab in the middle of any social interaction like some kind of
incorporeal incarnation of a necessary third-wheel that both instructs and scrutinizes our every
thought, utterance, and move. As such, the big Other ensures that the rules of society are being
followed, that we are conducting ourselves properly in society. Without the big Other the social
fabric begins to fray, presenting the veritable threat of losing the constitutive substance of
society itself, its governing laws, and its subjects. I suppose I should've been a little clearer
earlier on: when we combine the Symbolic big Other and gaze, the result is the Imaginary big
Other, the subject's big Other - that remote sense of being watched and evaluated by something
that's not really there. It's sort of like a cross between a Jiminy Cricket figure of conscience and
an iconic role-model of sorts, who, as such, seems to loom over your shoulder, telling you what
and what not to do simply by "looking" at you, normatively shaping and informing your every
thought and behavior. We all have a big Other. It is, to repeat an emphasis from earlier, that
standard by which we measure ourselves: our own private piece of the larger, public social space
we inhabit. To paraphrase iek, the gaze of the Symbolic big Other is my own view of myself,
which I see through eyes that are not authentically my own. Here, one should not fail to notice the
Symbolic big Other's striking resemblance to Bentham's "Panopticon," that omnipresent,
omniscient "God's-eye-view" intended to watch over us wherever we go. The likeness is
unmistakable, simply because Bentham's little wet dream embodies the big Other as such. The
essential point to take away from this is that one's sense of (political) "self" is inevitably bound
up with the localization of the panoptic gaze - that centralized point of omnipresent, omniscient
surveillance. Wherever we go, our image of self, as seen by the gaze of the big Other, always
functions for another. And further, in these times, do we not receive constant arousal, enjoyment,
from the act of watching our own image of self, controlling our own image of self, tracking our
own image of self? Though it's not: as if we were the Panopticon itself, but rather: because we
are the Panopticon itself. We bring the Panopticon, the gaze of the Symbolic big Other as such, with
us wherever we go. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., instantiate
this. But what, precisely, does this even mean? Well, this is where things get both revelatory and
a bit complicated. The trouble with all this is that, to return to Copjec's analysis, the Symbolic
big Other is "a point of convergence of the general will-of-the-people." What this means - and
bear with me here, because this may turn confusing - is that the Symbolic big Other, as such,
signifies the very mode of appearance in which we appear to ourselves, for ourselves, as we desire to
appear as such. So it would follow that, if we appear to ourselves, for ourselves, as images to be
controlled, manipulated, tracked, watched, and so on, as we certainly do in today's digital medium
of social networking - which, by the way, we collectively, willfully and, pleasurably
participate in - then this zeitgeist of the modern majority will inevitably converge at a
centralized point: which is to say, the big Other, both its Symbolic and Imaginary incarnations,
will appear in the guise of "Big Brother." At the individual level, each of us embodies "Big
Brother": we are intrigued with the act of watching, tracking, manipulating, images of ourselves. At
the Symbolic level, the truth of this enjoyment expresses itself today in all of its
unsettling perversity: PRISM .
obtain
targeted communications without having to request them from the service providers and without
having to obtain individual court orders. 2 On the morning of 5th of June 2013, the world woke up to
the news that the US Federal Government had been collecting metadata from Verizon customers as part
of their on-going war against...someone and everyone. The resulting outcry sent the by now predictive
shockwaves around the world. How could the government of a democracy championing, freedom obsessed nation do
such a wicked thing? Within days, the name of the deep throat was released and from that moment Edward Snowden became a
poster child of government interference in our everyday lives. Obamas response was to point to the needs of America to protect its
national security interests and in so doing conjure up the ghost of 9/11. This specter has haunted the American political landscape
with such force that it has perhaps changed the American mindset for generations to come an almost forced jump in evolutionary
terms. The problem in this case, is that the ghost of 9/11 appears to be more akin to the ambivalent vision of Hamlets father ; Be
thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,/Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, 3Zizsuggest this in the sense that the
original event has now become split in perceptions and of the subsequent events since 9/11 led to The Patriot Act and this is turn has
perhaps inevitably led to the NSAs actions; Perhaps the most interesting remarks about the NSA controversy thus far came from
Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of the USA PATRIOT [...] Sensenbrenner stated that particular
provision of the Act requires government lawyers to prove to the FISC that a request for specific business records is linked to an
authorized investigation and further stated that targeting US citizens is prohibited as part of the request. Sensenbrenner argued
that the NSA telephone metadata collection is a bridge too far and falls well outside the original intended scope of the Act: [t]he
administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it
can.Zizdisagree.Zizauthored the Patriot Act, and this [NSA surveillance] is an abuse of that law. 4 If the author has control over the
intention of his work then by his words US government agencies were acting outside the scope of the law. Being so, what are we to
make of this? Are we seeing a new approach to governance or in effect business as normal, but with a new strategy adapted to meet
new demands? Worryingly so, if we remind ourselves of the words of Michel Foucault; Then it gets really scary. Foucault describes
the observation of our private lives, as aided by new technology. Felluga notes the French philosophers emphasis on surveillance
within an emerging information society and a developing bureaucracy that turns individuals into statistics and paperwork,... Lest
we forget Michel Foucault (1926 1984) In seeing Foucault, alongside his compatriots of Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and
Jacques Derrida as
one of the pioneers of post structuralism, it helps the reader to locate Foucaultian
ideas firmly and squarely at the heartbeat of this contemporary world we share . Although at times his
work on madness and punishment could be said to be more historical than political in nature, thatZizfeel would be to misread both
his methodological approach and closely philosophical conclusions that emanate from his work. His work on surveillance
and power (highly influenced by both Nietzsches genealogical approach and Bastilles ideas on otherness) help us to see
tried and tested mechanisms of power at play. His work on power and its analysis on political regimes can be
said to have an even greater relevancy today than in the years he was alive. In todays age we seem at times to be stumbling toward a
dystopian reality; A
Link Privacy
Privacy is based on an assumption of the autonomous, free self --- but
this free self is formed only in relation to surveillance and desires the
gaze --- makes surveillance inevitable
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
The Rationale for Privacy Privacy and Autonomy Since at least the early twentieth century, and particularly in
the United States, a major justification for the development of privacy law has been the value of
autonomy over how ones personal information is disclosed and disseminated . Certainly, Warren and
Brandeiss seminal 1890 article on the right to privacy purportedly found privacy rights in the inviolate personality and the
spiritual nature of humanity10 (leading many scholars to focus on dignity, rather than autonomy, as the foundation for privacy
law). In my view, though, the conception of privacy they reached better reflects the value of autonomy than any inherent, inalienable
aspect of human dignity.11 Warren and Brandeis were concerned only with unauthorised dissemination of information. By this,
they clearly meant that consent was central to the concept of privacy indeed, their explicit intention was to ensure that the law
allows each person to decide the extent to which their thoughts and emotions are communicated.12 Importantly, although Warren
and Brandeis agreed that some matters were of such sufficient public interest that they could not be legitimately kept private, this
proposition was put forward only in respect of those who had assumed a position which makes their doings legitimate matters of
public investigation. Conceptually, their article proceeded on the basis that a right to privacy merely followed the principle of
dominion over private property as a right against the world (albeit in an extended and unusual sense) over which the individual
has control rather than a means of regulating individual behaviour to preserve dignity. 13 Concepts of privacy that relate it to a
proprietary right, and that therefore focus on autonomy and control, have remained influential hence William Prossers
description of privacy as the composite of the interests in reputation, emotional tranquility and intangible property14 and Frieds
view of privacy as the control we have over information about ourselves.15 Reiman, too, has identified that privacy is necessary to
the creation of selves out of human beings, since a self is at least in part a human being who regards his existence his thoughts, his
body, his actions as his own.16 Reimans use of the language of property law to explain identity ownership over self, and an
individuals moral title to his existence17 is particularly evocative. Some scholars have complicated this picture by recognising
that autonomy is not necessarily pre-existing.18 These articulations of privacy suggest that individuals have an inherent core,
which stands in contrast to their social existence19 that is, there is a distinction between intimate information over which a
person has a right to privacy (a sphere of autonomy from external influences)20 and public aspects of identity over which there is no
such right.21 While scholars acknowledge the role of social discourses and ideologies on individual identity, such scholars see these
as an interference with the pre-existing individuality of each individual.22 Alan Westin, for example, has accordingly noted that the
most serious threat to the individuals autonomy is the possibility that someone may penetrate the inner zone and learn his ultimate
secrets, either by physical or psychological means. 23 For Westin, as for most privacy scholars, privacy is therefore about the claim
of individuals, groups or institutions to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about them is
communicated to others.24 Critiques of Autonomy Recent scholarship has challenged the concept of the
autonomous individual. 25 This scholarship has come to acknowledge that no concept of privacy can achieve
autonomy, and that the concept of autonomy itself is a fantasy . The first wave of this scholarship
suggested that there is no core self immune to dominant ideologies and social discourses ,26 and
that privacy may not only be desired but imposed as a means of exercising social dominance.27 The more fundamental challenge to
the connection between autonomy and privacy came from post-structuralist theorists such as Michel Foucault, who argued that
surveillance is permanent in its effects, so that individuals are caught up in a power situation of
which they are themselves the bearers .28 As this body of work developed, Foucault came to understand
identity as not only governed, but actually constituted, by dominant social ideologies. 29 A large body of work
following Foucault created a radical critique of autonomy a critique that questioned not only whether autonomy could be
retrieved, but whether there was anything to retrieve at all whether ones identity (the very ability to seek to exclude others) was
always already colonised by the public sphere. This poses a fundamental challenge to the idea of a core self
and its relevance to privacy by suggesting that a persons ability to identify as autonomous , as
capable of excluding others, is already a result of social relations . But if a persons desires and identity
are not just influenced, but created, by social norms, then what is left of autonomy for privacy laws to protect other than a fantasy?
And how can the desire for privacy laws be explained if their success brings us closer to acknowledging this fantasy for what it is?
Reconciling Privacy with the Decentred Self This is a fundamental question that should have caused a
significant rethink of the underlying purposes and justifications for privacy laws . But as Julie Cohen
notes, privacy scholars have seemed both unable and unwilling to generate a different theory
of the self that privacy protects,30 and most contemporary privacy theorists have not
responded fully to these critiques. A small number of contemporary privacy theorists have attempted to reconceptualise
privacy in a way that better reflects doubts over the ideal of autonomy. However, few have conducted the type of deconstruction of
privacy laws that post-structuralist critiques suggest is needed.
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
Psychoanalytic Approaches to Privacy It is at this point that, in my view, psychoanalytic theory and
particularly the work of Jacques Lacan can contribute. This is not to deny the role of social relations in developing privacy
norms, but it does recognise that, ultimately, the desire for privacy may be neither rational nor entirely
explained by social relations external to the individual. Instead,Zizsuggest that an appropriate
response to critiques of autonomy can be found by attempting to bridge the individual/social
divide. As Butler notes, the psyche is precisely what exceeds the imprisoning effects of the discursive
demand to inhabit a coherent identity, to become a coherent subject.39 By examining the
psyche, psychoanalytic theory can explain the desire for autonomy and the relevance of
privacy law to this desire in a way that is not necessarily wholly predetermined by social conditions.40 From Omnipotence to
Autonomy Psychoanalysts adopt a similar scepticism to the idea of autonomy to that expressed by many post-structuralists.
Freud41 paid significant attention to the lack of autonomy experienced during infancy and the
trauma realised by an infant when the childs mother is temporarily absent .42 The infants
realisation that it is separate from the mother is understood by many psychoanalysts as being
traumatic.43 For Lacan, this trauma is one connected with omnipotence: in the first months of life, Lacan notes that the
infant incorporates feelings, needs and pleasures narcissistically, without recognising any clear
boundaries between them without being able to articulate them as desires or demands, experiencing raw,
unstructured desire. In this state of primary narcissism, the infants mother provides it with what it needs and the infant
identifies as the only object of the mothers desire. But at a certain point the infant realises both that the mother is not always there
and that the mother is not there only for the infant: she has her own desires, and cannot fulfil all of the infants desires. Bruce Fink
describes the impact of this separation as there being: something about [the mothers] desire which escapes the child, which is
beyond its control. A strict identity between the childs desire and [the mothers] cannot be maintained; her desires independence
from her childs creates a rift between them, a gap unfathomable to the child 44 The separation from its mother is
therefore a traumatic experience for the infant, because it shatters its narcissistic selfunderstanding and forces it to recognise its lack of omnipotence . Although many dominant psychoanalytic
theorists never addressed privacy expressly, the attention so many psychoanalysts have given to the development of individual
identity by way of a traumatic separation from ones mother has obvious implications for any theory of
privacy. It suggests that each individuals first experience of privacy (at least in its traditional formulation of
being left alone) is something radically different to what most privacy scholars have assumed. As
infants, we neither start life alone nor seek to reserve any right to be let alone . In the first instance,
being let alone and experiencing privacy are imposed. It is this state of privation and the need to come to terms with the loss of
omnipotence that drives individuals towards a desire for autonomy, to be able to control this privation by being able to express
desires for and as ones self. Privacy, then, creates the desire for autonomy, rather than autonomy creating the need
for privacy. The Myth of the Core Self The disconnect between autonomy and privacy is reflected in Lacans work by the fact that
an infants autonomy is never developed or achieved in privacy, or by the infant withdrawing from society, in the way
contemplated by most privacy scholars who rely on the concept of a core self. While psychoanalysts differ in their views of how
infants come to terms with the realisation of their loss of omnipotence, 45 for Lacan an infant begins working through this trauma at
the mirror stage of development the time when the infant recognises an image of him or herself (that is, as a mental association
with how the child sees others).46 In the mirror stage, the infant, despite being beset by disobedient limbs and unrelated urges47
a terrible recognition of the loss of their omnipotence acquires an imaged and imagined, impression of unity and oneness, 48
an ideal-ego. The infant creates an imaginary sense of mastery and autonomy associated with its separate identity that is, the
infant begins to imagine that they are an I capable of autonomy. 49 As Lacan notes, the development of the ego can be understood
as an identification, in the full sense analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he
assumes an image. 50 In other words, it
self as capable of autonomy. This suggests an ambivalence towards the concerns of privacy theorists who have described
the sense of being objectified and under surveillance as deeply harmful. Floridi, for example, understands a breach of ones
informational privacy as a form of aggression against ones personal identity,51 and mainstream psychology has long perceived a
sense of privacy to be essential to a persons mental health.52 Further, Lacans
mirror stage but there remains a remainder that is left over, never fully represented in
discourse, and can only be felt as a feeling of loss to be regained .58 Judith Butler, for example, notes that this
sense of loss rifts the subject, marking a limit to what it can accommodate. Because the subject does not, cannot, reflect on that loss,
that loss marks the limit of reflexivity , that which exceeds (and conditions) its circuitry.
Understood as foreclosure, that loss inaugurates the subject and threatens it with dissolution. 59 It is here,Zizsuggest, that an
explanation of the desire for privacy can be found.
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
Applying Psychoanalysis to Data protection laws If privacy is always-already lost, the reason why
it remains such a compelling legal issue is precisely the way it creates this threat of identity dissolution. For Freud (as for Lacan),
individuals have competing drives both to repress and to repeat trauma in a vain attempt to master and
overcome it.60 Similarly, for Lacan, the experience of losing omnipotence is both traumatic (because it is the infants first structured
experience of loss) and compelling (because the loss must be repeated to be mastered). The trauma of the infants separation from its
mother and the trauma of loss associated with the castration of entering into social discourse therefore results in attempts to
constantly repeat loss and to overcome it by achieving autonomy. But the loss of omnipotence is no longer
recoverable because of the mothers separation , and autonomy is always elusive because the infants identity is
dependent on being able to express its desires and demands in ways that are recognised by others. Accordingly, individuals not only
repeat the act of being let alone, but desire to reclaim and reimagine the experience of loss as enabling of autonomy. Privacy
comes to be desired and repeated. This understanding of the role of trauma and repetition to privacy is illustrated by
Freuds interpretation of a game he observed his grandson play during infancy as a way of dealing with the absence and return of his
mother. As Freud describes it: what he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skilfully throw it over the edge of his curtained
cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive o-o-o-o [a sound Freud interprets as meaning fort, or
there]. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful da [here]. This, then was
the complete game disappearance and return.61 Lacan and Freud both interpret the game as a compulsive repetition of loss, and
reflecting a drive to master the realisation that the individual is separate(d) from others. 62 But two particular aspects of
Lacans reinterpretation of the fort-da game have important consequences for information
privacy. First, for Lacan, the game demonstrates how the mirror stage results in the infants entry
into the structured social world (what Lacan terms the symbolic order) and the castration this entails. In doing so,
the individuals self-identity becomes bounded, transformed and mediated through social
relations. For Lacan, the reel in the fort-da game therefore comes to stand in not for control over the mother (a desire for which
could be expressed quite simply in a cry),63 but for the infants more profound sense of disconnection from its own body.64 The
reel, then, is not the mother reduced to a little ball by some magical game it is a small part of the subject that detaches itself from
him while still remaining his, still retained. 65 Accordingly, by throwing the reel over the side of the cot, the child is attempting to
establish autonomy, seeking to relate to and assert his influence beyond the cot, seeking an answer to what the mothers absence has
created on the frontier of his domain the edge of his cradle namely, a ditch, around which one can only play at jumping.66 There
is necessarily a feeling of transgression associated with this game, with the infant pushing the boundaries of identity imposed upon
it.67 Second, Lacan considers the fort-da game to exemplify the childs acquisition of language as
the key part of the castration needed to develop an ego, a sense of bounded self-identity :
This object [the reel], being immediately embodied in the symbolic pair of two elementary
exclamations [ie, fort and da], announced the subjects diachronic integration of the dichotomy of
phonemes, whose synchronic structure the existing language offers up for him to assimilate; the child thus begins to become
engaged in the system of the concrete discourse of those around him by reproducing the terms he receives from them.68 Lacan
describes the castration as being an accession to law (represented by the father): a law that
recognises the individual as bounded , as separate from the mother, and that requires the child to see
its own self as a bounded individual before it can articulate its own desires. Like the child shunning its disobedient limbs in
imagining they are an ego-ideal before the mirror, entry
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
Indeed, this explains the value of collecting personal information. The very value of personal
information to marketers (and the very justification of marketers for doing so) disturbs our confidence in our
own autonomy. It suggests that, rather than being autonomous, our future behaviour is fully
predetermined by our entry into the social world. In this way, the information itself along
with its disclosure becomes anxiety-inducing . Rather than confront the information itself
directly, the preference is to suspend it between the fort and da, to perpetuate the dissemination
and recovery of the information without ever addressing its real content or import .
Indeed, iek would suggest that the forced confrontation with the content and importance of ones own
personal information is particularly violent: perhaps the forced actualization in social reality itself of the
phantasmatic kernel of my being is the worst, most humiliating kind of violence, a violence that undermines the very basis of my
identity (of my self-image).87
AT: Nissenbaum
Nissenbaum cant explain why people desire privacy --- her
informational norms are vague nonsense
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
The most comprehensive work in this area is by Helen Nissenbaum, who has constructed a theory of privacy
(largely focused on information flows, and so particularly relevant to the data protection strand of privacy) that does not rely on a
private/public dichotomy, and therefore acknowledges that there is no sphere in which an individual is fully autonomous. Instead,
Nissenbaum suggests that different public spheres carry their own norms about how information is used and disclosed the
public/private dichotomy is not useful because there are no arenas of life not governed by norms of information flow.31 A breach of
privacy is therefore a breach of contextual integrity, a treatment of information that is seen as unacceptable in that particular
context. 32 Nissenbaums theory seems sympathetic to post-structuralist critiques, and seems to acknowledge that autonomy
therefore cannot be an appropriate conceptual foundation for privacy law. But the
AT: Austin
Austins theory of privacy fails --- cant explain the yearning for
privacy
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
Lisa Austins work also engages with critiques of autonomy, but raises similar questions. Austin seeks to reconceptualise
privacy without autonomy at its core: suppose instead of the idea of an individual with an inner core transparent to
itself upon solitary introspection, we posited a self that is in fact formed through social interaction. The point of privacy would not be
to protect the conditions of social withdrawal in order to maintain the integrity of such a self it would be to protect the conditions
of social interaction in order to provide the basis for identity formation in the first place. 34 Like Nissenbaum, Austin is
therefore critical of the dominance of consent in data protection laws ,35 and her work has a welldeveloped theoretical foundation. 36 Austin takes seriously both the pervasiveness of power relationships
and their consequences for the ideal of autonomy including that the very practising of autonomy is a social act,
meaningless in isolation. 37 Like Nissenbaum, however, Austins work does not address the desire
individuals have to protect their privacy. For example, Austin does not explain what it is about a
particular set of social conditions , a particular set of privacy principles, that enables
identity-formation. The suggestion seems to be that individuals have an inherent need for their privacy to be protected a
single set of acceptable social conditions as a prerequisite to identity formation. Again, one is left with an individual
who desires a certain set of privacy rights prior to identity formation even though the
identity that desires these rights is already formed by them .
Link Race
Racism operates through a paradox of double logic operationalized by
the economy of pleasure those subjected to racism are too similar
and successful, like the Jews, or too different, like blackness
psychoanalysis provides a unique breaking point because it provides
both accurate diagnosis of the problem and a potentials for rethinking
the relations between ourselves, the other, and the other other
Young 2007 --- Silver Professor; Dean of Arts and Humanities (Robert J.C., Torn Halves: Political
travelers with reference to the religious icons of Africa-the Africa that Freud also identifies as
the dark continent of female sexuality." The structure of fetishism, of simultaneous fixity and mobility,
operating together at once in a dialectic of attraction and repulsion , seems at least to get
at the constitutive ambivalence of racism , derived from what is in effect a surplus of
signification in the other- which explains why its other constant feature is paranoia , the
disease of overinterpretation. This recalls Freud's idea of the narcissism of minor differences. If the constitutive
factor of racism is that it finds a constant surplus of signification in the other, it can,
interestingly, work both by there being a difference, too much of a difference (in relation to
black people) but equally well through there being a danger of their being no difference (as
in anti- semitism, anti-Irish racism). There's no pleasing the racist: the bastards are either too
different or too similar. Such a logic is a kind of perverted mirroring of the liberal position
on cultural difference, that is, ethnic minorities are the same but different . This reversibility may suggest
that either liberalism is simply the other side of racism, or that the structure of racism doesn't have to be
dismantled but can rather be turned round. Either way, only psychoanalysis is placed to deal
with this perverse kind of paradoxical double logic -because this is the logic of
psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is uniquely placed to understand the operation of such structures: psychoanalysis itself
operates as a kind of illegitimate, unlegitimated form of thought that infiltrates the home territory of different disciplines, the other
that has been brought in to the same but which far from being assimilated remains inalienable and other to it: here psychoanalysis
itself reproduces the Very structure that is the object of racism-so that it appears as the apparently foreign body within that disturbs,
producing the uncanny effect of disquiet which characteristically purists within the discipline seek to expel outside. Compare the
insistent desire of psychologists and analytical philosophers to prove psychoanalysis wrong, to delegitimate yet again something that
after all already has no legitimacy, with the insistently repeated attempts to refute racism and racialism on logical or scientific
grounds. Psychoanalysis
can locate, and even dislocate , the logics of racism precisely because,
like racism, it is a discourse whose object is its own raveled fantasy. If racism involves a
structure of sameness and difference, it also suggests a realignment of any simple model of 'the
Other'. There is an immediate problem about using the term 'the Other' dualistically in relation
to racism in a psychoanalytic context in so far as for psychoanalysis the Other is already a part of
the psyche , the unconscious that remains unacceptable and uncanny because it is other to the
ego and is not centred in a determinate self, amounting rather to the disturbing effect of the self
dislocated, as it Were, into the third person. Now if the symbolic structure of the social is that of the other, then
the social is already the other-whereas those who are the objects of racist antipathy are precisely
those who remain other to the social , in psychoanalytic terms, therefore, other to the other. At
this point the trauma becomes the inkling that the other's other could in fact be the same, the double of yourself. Forcing an uncanny
recognition of what should have remained hidden, racism
beseeches, worries, and fas cinates desir e, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced.
Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects. A certainty protects it from the shameful - a certainty of which it is
proud holds on to it. But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as
tempting as it is condemned. 31 These two incompatible but inescapable poles of attraction and repulsion
enforce a blockage that produces its own narrative logic of repetition : the point about the
racial stereotype is indeed that it is always a stereotype, the other is thus paradoxically
always the same. The threatening heterogeneity is always reduced, while the desire that the other conjures up is
displaced into the (dis)pleasure of repetition , a repetition that energizes and ensures the
perpetuation and continuity of the cultural and ideological forms of racism through the ages -a
parasite that lives on the exercise of power.
Hook 2007 (Derek, Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London, Foucault, Psychology and the Analytics of Power,
http://sociology.sunimc.net/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20100915/20100915203936818.pdf)//trepka
The model of racism thatZizam speculatively advancing that is, racism as affective technology
of subjectivity and
self would thus need to assume that there are kinds of routings, channellings of affect that take on
regularized forms, and which are amenable to the exploitation of various political and discursive
systems, which are themselves thus reinforced in the process . It seems to me that Foucauldian
approaches to governmentality, and the associated scrutiny of human technologies have for too long neglected the question of
affect.Zizam sympathetic, for reasons outlined in Chapter 4, with the argument that the ostensibly psychological notion of affect
appears incompatible with a Foucauldian frame;3 this certainly is the case if one takes this concept to bring with it the presumption
of an essential interior that exists beyond the jurisdiction of power. Then again,Zizdo not subscribe to the view that affect should be
located exclusively within the bounded parameters of individual interiority, nor doZizbelieve that this concept necessarily entails the
trappings of the epistemology of humanism.Zizshare thus Roses (1996b) suspiciousness towards any theory that commits us to a
reliance on the belief of a human nature.Zizappreciate also the pertinence of the Deleuzian concept of the fold as Rose employs it
inasmuch as it suggests a way in which we might think of human being without postulating [an] interiority (p. 142). The theme
of fold, the idea that what is inside is merely an infolding of an exterio r, is a useful illustrative figure, one
of considerable importance to the overall argument thatZizam advancing, certainly inasmuch as it helps us avoid binding
ourselves to a particular version of the law of this interiority whose history we are seeking to
disturb (p. 142). Nevertheless, those utilizable elements of the human subject, those instrumentalities
of the human subject that might guardedly be referred to as psychological or psychic , the very
elements that Roses analysis would eschew Is it possible that one might write a genealogy of the subjectification without a
metapsychology?Zizthink it is (p. 142) remain, it seems to me,
accept this, then we must accept that affect can be utilized, resourced by types of power
which generate and produce it, even as they conduct and extend and its forces. Perhaps in this respect
we should follow the model set by Foucault in his genealogical prioritization of the body. The objective here, asZizhave
already noted, is not to substantialize a transhistorical entity, but rather to examine the forces of the body as
anchoring points of powers corporeal implementation. The same may be true of affect affect approached thus
as a set of forces that act as anchoring points for powers psychological implementation an idea which brings with it two
interesting suggestions. The first of which is that we need to treat psychoanalysis as an ally of
Foucauldian analytics albeit an uncomfortable or unexpected ally one which provides a sophisticated
vocabulary with which we may grasp the micro-functioning of a political
instrumentation of affect. The second suggestion is that such an initiative is critically
sustainable only on condition that, simultaneously, we concern ourselves with writing the genealogy
of affect, a genealogy within which the conceptual language of psychoanalysis will presumably
play a large although by no means singular role.
Link Terrorism
Paranoid threat construction of terrorism acts as a self-fulfilling
prophecy, exacerbating the actual impacts of terrorism and driving
the United States to the extent of nuclear war
Zulaika, 12 Professor and Director, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada, Reno
(Joseba, Mythologies of Terror: Fantasy and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy in U.S. Counterterrorism,
Kroeber Anthropological Society, Vol. 102, No. 1, 10-13,
http://kas.berkeley.edu/documents/Issue_102-103/2_Zulaika.pdf)//SY
A central dimension of terrorism, and one that is crucial to show its self-fulfilling quality, has to
do with threats and their perception and the reactions they provoke. A threat plays with the sign as
representing a future event, while we never know whether the issuer actually means it or not, or
whether he might change his opinion in the future. The Unabomber brought the traffic in
California airports to a halt by simply sending a letter to a newspaper with the threat of bringing
down an airliner, while he sent another letter to another newspaper admitting that the threat
was a prank. The actual reality of the threat might be nothing but play -- a zero that can yet have
deadly serious consequences. Counterterrorism is a prime example of what Merton labeled the
Thomas theorem: If men define situations as they are real in their consequences (Merton
1968:475). Once the situation is defined as one of inevitable terrorism and endless waiting, what
could happen weighs as much as what is actually the case; once a threat, whose intention or
possibility is unknown to us, is taken seriously, its reality requires that we must act on it.
Terrorism is the catalyst for confusing various semantic levels of linguistic, ritual and military
actions. Anthropologists have examined phenomena such as divination, which manipulates the
axis of time in a cultural context of magic and witchcraft. They have compared pre-modern
mystical notions of causation and temporality to our own modern standards of rationality. The
central premise of counterterrorism thinking is the oft-repeated formula that it is not if, but
when. Hypotheticals are premised with the conditional if if A, then B. What characterizes
basic counterterrorist knowledge about the next impending attack is that it will happen. In a mindset that parallels Azande witchcraft, the counterterrorist axiom of not if rules out mere
hypotheses.2 The revelations are thus unfulfilled hypotheticals that will become real with time.
Counterterrorist projections are the equivalent to oracular certaintiesthe horror will happen
no matter what. This leads in pragmatic terms to the fatalistic attitude of disregarding actual
knowledge and not taking responsibility for actual decisionswhat does it really matter what we
decide since it is going to happen anyway and whatever happens is out of our hands? What
matters, therefore, is that we sort of divine what the course of action will be. The practical aspect
of this temporality of waiting, in which the certainty of the impending evil is beyond any
hypothetical (not if), is that we need to act preemptively now against events that are to happen
in the future. The rationale behind nuclear deterrence was that developing armaments now, ready
to strike at the push of a button, guaranteed that they would not be used in the future. Many
commentators saw in such logic the quintessence of technological madness. But that was not
enough. Since future nuclear attacks by terrorists are only a matter of time, we must wage war
now preemptively even in a nuclear context , thus breaking the historic assumption that
nuclear arsenals were for deterrence, not for actual usage. Thus the formula of not if, but
when becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . The counterterrorist thinking makes it an
imperative that the war must start now against Saddam Hussein, against al-Qaeda, against
Iran, against all potential terrorists. This is how the American public, including the liberal media,
accepted the rationale to go to war against Iraq. What happens to the axis of time in the
expectations of robotic technology? Robots will have to react in such speed, we are told, that in
the decision cycle, reduced from minutes to microseconds, As the loop gets shorter and shorter,
there wont be any time in it for humans, according to an army colonel (Singer 2009:64). It is
no longer the perversion of temporality in the waiting for terror, but the very elimination of
human timethe perfect fantasy by which humans are left aside in a war in which, not only will
they not die, but, by reducing time to the category of fiction, they will not have to make the tough
decisions and carry the burden of their consequences. The fact that robotic technologies created to
combat terrorism reinforce such self-generating quality to a frightening degree can be illustrated
with the best-known case of terrorism before 9/11: the Pan Am flight 103 downed over
Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988, killing the 270 passengers aboard. What the public
ignores is that this was preceded in July of 1988 by the downing of an Iranian airliner in the
Persian Gulf by the U.S.S. Vincennes with 290 people on board, and this was the result of the
cruiser being equipped with an Aegis radar system that registered the civilian plain as Assumed
Enemy. The Iranian jet was on a consistent course and broadcasting a civilian radar and radio
signal, but the automated Aegis had been designed for dealing with Soviet bombers and thus it
appeared on its computer screen to be an Iranian F-14 fighter. The hard data were telling the
crew that the plane wasnt a fighter, but the computer was telling them it was. And who could
challenge the robotic knowledge of Aegis? And because the Vincennes was a Robo-cruiser, the
crew had the authority to fire without seeking further permission from the authorities. In short,
the computer was trusted even more than any human captains independent judgment on whether
to shoot or not (Singer 2009:125). Five months after the tragedy provoked by the Vincennes
came the terrorist attack on the Pan Am 103, and prominent experts saw a case of revenge or
blood feuding (TT 11). A classic case of counterterrorisms self-generating logic. What are the
practical results of the drone campaign? The number of terrorist attacks in Pakistan has gone up
sharply in a wave of anti-Americanism, for Pakistanis overwhelmingly believe that most of those
who die in the attacks are civilians (Caryl 2007:56). One concrete instance of such a link was
provided by Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani-American known for the failed bomb in Times Square
in May 2010, who declared in his trial that Im avenging the attack of drones [that] kill
women, children... everybody... I am part of the answer (Hari 2010). Add to this the stark fact
that the CIA drone strikes set a precedent for the nearly 50 other nations, including Pakistan
and Iran, that already possess the same unmanned technology. Counterterrorists know all of
this. Yet why is it that these very drones, that help increase terrorist insurgency exponentially,
are still the only game in town? In short, counterterrorism knows that its tactics operate clearly
along the path of a self-fulfilling feedback, and yet there is nothing else better to do. Such an
impasse if we do nothing, terrorism will flourish; if we do something it will flourish even more
shows dramatically the current crisis in counterterrorist knowledge. There is at the domestic level
another dimension of how counterterrorism needs terrorists, much like a hunter
needs the beastly prey , and which can be gathered from Trevor Aaronson, working here in
Berkeley, in his article The Informants (2011): Informants report to their handlers on people
who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names are then crossreferenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records. FBI agents
may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical.
Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even lead the target in a fake
oath to al-Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, theres an arrest
and a press conference announcing another foiled plot. The Washington Metro bombing plot,
the New York subway plot, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower, the one to bomb a Portland
Christmas tree lighting, and dozens more across the nation were organized and led by the FBI.
Mother Jones, having examined the prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases,
found that all the high-profile terrorism plots of the last decade, with the exception of three,3
were FBI stings (Aaronson 2011:30-43). The FBI consumes now most of its budget (3.3 billion) on
counterterrorism, not on organized crime (2.2 billion). It has 15,000 spies, many of them with the
task of infiltrating Muslim communities, paid as much as $100,000 in some cases. As one
defense lawyer put it, Theyre creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the
war on terror (Aaronson 2011:33). Attorney Eric Holder argued in a speech that sting operations
have proven to be an essential law enforcement tool in uncovering and preventing potential terror
attacks (Aaronson 2011:33). But what this view doesnt take into account is the extent to which
the sting operation is actually creating terrorism. There is no better case to prove this than the
case of the blind Sheikh, which several writers consider to be a crucial event leading to 9/11.
What cannot be answered is of course how many of the FBIs targeted terrorists would have
never become one were it not for an informant. In the case of the blind Sheik, the evidence
points to the fact that, if not for the sting operation based on a paid informant notorious for
lying to everyone, according to the New York Times, his fatwa would not have taken place, a key
event in the making of 9/11. The final result of such counterterrorist culture is that regular crimes
are now frequently viewed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies with the suspicion that
they are possibly linked to terrorism.4 What greater success could al-Qaeda have in the end than it
be considered by the U.S. security as a bigger threat than the Soviet superpower during the Cold
War, deserving in counterreaction so far several trillion dollars?
intelligence at U.S. Central Command, John M. Custer III grew so angry at the lack of useful
information coming from the gigantic National Counterterrorism Center that in 2007 he visited
its director and told him that after four and a half years, this organization had never provided
one shred of information that helped me prosecute three wars! (Priest and Arkin 2011:84-85).
Priest and Arkins conclusion is that nobody is in charge of Counterterrorism in Top Secret
America. Which explains, for example, that in the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the
Nigerian known as the underwear bomber, who tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253
over Detroit in Christmas of 2009, not only was information from the British intelligence
connecting him to Anwar al-Awlaki, but his own father had contacted the CIA officers at the U.S.
Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, alerting them of the danger posed by his sons extremely religious
views. And yet his name was not added to the No Fly List nor was his U.S. visa revoked. This was
dj vu of the knowledge had by fifty to sixty officers for a period of over a year that two of the
future 9/11 plotters were in this country and nothing was being done about it. Which brings us to
the relevant issue of the extent to which counterterrorism has become terrorisms best ally. It is a
fact recognized by the 9/11 Commission Report that the plotters could have been found and the
attacks prevented. What are the premises and blind spots in counterterrorism that not only
allowed 9/11, but might have contributed to making the problem much worse? And isnt the drone
war just another flight into counterterrorist fantasy and one more chapter in self-fulfilling
prophecy? What is the meaning of information in such terrorist scenarios of states of exception
and in the presence of a community of believers whose basic structure separates those who
know the secret information and the rest of us who are to be kept in the dark? Secrecy means
that no critical judgment can be exercised, much like in mystical societies where knowledge
belongs only to the sacred specialist. Intelligence becomes ancillary information when belief
drives knowledge . Once the decision has been made that the enemy is a Hitler-like monster, the
ordinary standards of factual evidence are supplemented with untested premises grounded on
moral and political principles. The main role of information is no longer procuring factual
evidence but helping uncover the secret intentions of the evildoer.
puzzled President Bush put it, But why do they hate us? We are so good. This stance represents
what Christopher Bollas (I992) posits as violent or radical innocence, a psychic defense by
which the denial of one's own aggression is projected onto the other , who is then
experienced as the source of one's innocent victimhood. This defense simplies
consciousness and inhibits the capacity for symbolization, promoting paranoid
schizoid splitting and projective mechanisms that characterized the states of mind
of both leaders and citizens in this country . Shortly after 9/11, Hedda had an experience that illustrates
this phenomenon. She called together a group of her colleagues to discuss their responses to the attacks on the Twin Towers and the
Pentagon. Of course, early on, the question of why do they hate us came up, she told me, with more than a little irritation, and I
thought, okay, I know a little about this, so I tried to explain something about this country's role in the world. I got resistance to this
line of thinking, so l tried suggesting that we think together about how people are looking to Bush as a father figure who in fantasy
we need to rely on to keep us safe. But that kind of minimal psychoanalytic thinking was not what they were interested in. They
wanted to talk about revenge, how we could get even with the terrorists. They were afraid it might happen again, and no one but me
was afraid of what we might do, what Bush might carry out in a kind of self-righteous vindication that would wind up being even
more destructive. I felt isolated in my concerns, which were much more about our government than about the terrorists. As Hedda
feared, this
best kind of enemy if one is seeking to keep the idea of national security alive and malleable in the
psyche of the American public. The idea of national security and attending metaphors have served
to motivate leaders and citizens alike to support massive military and intelligence spending, as well
as an aggressive foreign policy that has had very concrete and frequently devastating consequences,
along with accidental beneficial results. Following WWII the result of the employment of the
phrase national security led to an incredible expansion of government entities, ushering in the
age of the National Security State (Bacevich 2010, p.35). 34 Pastoral Psychol (2012) 61:3146
Concern for national security, in other words, led to a number of government agencies and
military branches that focused primarily on combating the prevalence of external and internal
threats and, in particular, Communist threats. Allen Dulles of the new spy organization, CIA, Air
Force general Curtis Lemay at the Strategic Air Command (SAC), J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI,
Robert McNamara the Secretary of Defense, General Westmoreland and many other leaders all
played various roles in heightening anxiety about the threat of Communism to the survival not
only of the U.S. but Western democracies as well. Clearly, the Soviet Union was involved in
making nuclear warheads and delivery systems, but, as Bacevich (2010, 2011) noted, many of
the claims made by U.S. political, military, and intelligence leaders were greatly exaggerated,
often deliberately, to pursue personal, national (e.g., economic and political expansion and
control), agency (e.g., more funding), and military goals. A consequence of the emergence of the
National Security State was the rise of what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial
complex. In his Farewell Address, Eisenhower said, Our military organization today bears little
relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of
World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no
armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make
swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we
have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to
this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.
We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.2 Certainly, Eisenhower did not
use the term complex as a double entendre. The military-industrial complex is complex because
of the deep and entangling ties between the military, corporations, and the state. It is also a
complex in the sense of the social psyche supporting these entanglements. That is, the psychological
complex was the growing obsession with national security. Despite Eisenhowers warning, the
military-industrial complex has mushroomed, with an impressive surge after 9/11. The growth of
the military-industrial complex was broader than simply arming the U.S. U.S. companies played
and play a leading role in the manufacture and sale of weapons throughout the world that are
sometimes used by U.S. supported dictators (e.g., Somoza in Nicaragua; Rhee in South Korea;
Armas and Fuentes in Guatemala) or used by allies to suppress or remove native groups (e.g.,
Israel occupation of Palestinian lands; Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war). What is important to
grasp here is that the rise of the national security state and the military-industrial complex, which
signified a marriage of the state to private, non-democratic economic institutions, occurred
largely by consistently employing the idea and the seemingly ineluctable logic of national security to
heighten anxiety and fear among U.S citizens. Heightened fear and anxiety motivated (and
continues to motivate) citizens to support massive military spending and aggressive foreign policy
goals and actions.
Weber, 2 Paul de Man Chair, European Graduate School and Avalon Professor of Humanities,
Northwestern University (Samuel, War, Terrorism, and Spectacle, or: On Towers and Caves,
Grey Room, No. 7, Spring, 19-22, http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/pdf/1262582.pdf?
acceptTC=true)//SY
Baudrillard's assertion makes sense, I would argue, only insofar as it is understood to articulate
the position of spectators, a position that is not the same in Paris as it is in New York but that
nevertheless shares certain general characteristics which Debord was one of the first to discern.
Debord emphasized that spectacle perpetrated the separation and isolation of individuals in a
commodity society while at the same time concealing that isolation. The televisual view of the
world propagated by the nightly news in every country with which I am familiar (a very limited
number, to be sure: mainly North America and Western Europe) heightens what Debord
described but never explicitly named: ambivalence, which results when anxieties related to the
limitations of physical (and social) existence, involving frailty, vulnerability, and-ultimatelymortality, are provisionally suppressed through images that position the spectator as an
invulnerable and all-seeing survivor-surviving all the catastrophes that constitute the bulk of the
nightly news (at least in the United States; the situation of European television strikes me as
different but, unfortunately, moving in the same direction at varying speeds). The situation of
this spectator is akin to that of the child, described by Lacan as the Mirror Stage, characterized by
an Imaginary identification with an image of wholeness. The internal contradiction of such
identification is that it institutes an image of unity only by occupying two places at once: the
desired place of wholeness and the feared place of disunity. In the images of catastrophe that
dominate broadcast media "news," the disunity is projected into the image itself, while the desired
unity is reserved for the spectator off-scene (and for the media itself as global network).9 To
support such identification and the binary opposition upon which its success depends, images
must appear to be clearly localizable, self-contained, and meaningful at the same time that they
englobe destruction, mutilation, and implosion. They must comprehend and contain the
catastrophes that thereby appear to be intelligible in and of themselves, without requiring the
spectator to look elsewhere. The spectator thus can sustain the illusion of occupying a position that
allows one to "endure" indefinitely. This is the moral of the story, whether it is called "Enduring
Freedom" or "Infinite Justice." The War against Terrorism is thus conducted in the
name of "enduring freedom," as the freedom to remain the same, to keep one's place
indefinitely. This is also the message of "infinite justice": to remain in[de]finitely the same is to
pursue the enemy relentlessly, without end, until he is cornered in his innermost redoubts and
destroyed. The trajectory that leads from the Twin Towers to the caves of Tora Bora and beyond,
marks the will to power as a will to endure. This is the not-so-hidden religious subtext of the
ostensibly secular War against Terrorism, a war that is above all a defense and an affirmation of
"globalization" as the right to determine the earth as being both all-encompassing and selfcontained. To rule the planet, one must survive. But to survive, one must rule. Western television
(and often print) media appeal to their viewers by promising them the continued rule of such
survival. "Stay with us: we'll be right back after the break." Stay with us-and survive the break;
leave us and perish. The spectacle of the Twin Towers imploding-a phallic fate if ever there was
one-and of a portion of the Pentagon in ruins, broadcast in real time, has had two effects. On the
one hand, it heightened the anxiety of the "break" to which consumption appeals. Consumer
confidence was shattered, at least temporarily, and after a period of mourning the official
discourse had to urge all citizens not, as one might have expected, to "get back to work," but to
start spending again. The promise of immortality through consumption had lost much of its
appeal, for the time being at least. But since just such traumatic breaks are at the origin of the
compulsion to consume, the basic structure and process was not fundamentally altered. That is, as
long as the putative cause of anxiety can be located in an image, confined to a site, a stage-or,
rather, to multiple sites and stages, but in sequence, one following the other. This is the goal of the
military response to "terrorism": it must be named (Al Qaeda), given a face (Osama bin Laden),
and then, above all, located (Afghanistan, Tora Bora, Sudan, Somalia, and so on) in order then to
be depicted, if possible, and destroyed. The names and faces may change. But presumably not the
need that "terror" be named and given a face. On the other hand, when terrorism is defined as
"international," it becomes more difficult to locate, situate, personify, and identify; or, rather, it
can only be situated sequentially, one site after the other, not all at once. From this point on the
War against Terrorism becomes a scenario that unfolds, step by step and intrinsically without end,
in its effort to bring the global enemy to "infinite justice." Almost from the beginning of this war,
the Bush administration asserted that the enemy was "international" in character, limited
neither to one person, however important, nor to one state, however nefarious. Thus, the War
against Terrorism, unlike the cold war, cannot be defined primarily as a war against a single state,
the Soviet Union, or against that state's international emanation, "The Communist Conspiracy."
It is not even a war against a single terrorist organization, however decentralized, such as Al
Qaeda. "International Terrorism" englobes all the "rogue" states that for years have been
designated by the U.S. State Department as aiding and abetting terrorism: Iraq, North Korea,
Iran, Sudan, Syria, and so on. What characterizes this policy is its continuing effort to tie
terrorist networks to nation-states. It locates cause, condition, and ramifications in the
pathological behavior of individual "rogue" states, whose roguishness consists in their refusal to
follow the norms of international behavior as laid down by the United States government.10 To
conclude: the spectacle, at least as staged by the mainstream broadcast media, seeks
simultaneously to assuage and exacerbate anxieties of all sorts by providing images to which they
can be attached, ostensibly comprehended, and, above all, removed. Schematically, the fear of
death is encouraged to focus upon the vulnerability of the other, which, as enemy, is the other to
be liquidated or subjugated. The viewer is encouraged to "move forward" and simultaneously to
forget the past; encouraged to identify with the ostensibly invulnerable perspective of the
pilotless airborne camera that registers as blips the earthbound destruction tens of thousand of
feet below. Such a position seems to assure the triumph of the spectator over the mortality of
earthbound life. The trails of the B-52s in the stratosphere high above the earth announce the
demise of the Caves and the Ressurrection of the Towers.
that transcends imaging" (2002, 18). In Welcome to the Desert of the Real, Zizek once again sets
into motion the logic of "going through the fantasy"?"not its symbolic interpretation but the
experience of the fact that the fantasy-object [or symptom], by its fascinating presence, is merely
filling out a lack, a void in the Other" (1989,133)?in order to pronounce not only a sweeping
diagnosis of Americans', indeed the West's, cathected relation to the terrorist attacks on the Twin
Towers and Pentagon but also of the ever more bloody Israeli-Palestinian ideological deadlock.
Here, I quote him twice, at some length: Who is really alive today? What if we are "really alive"
only if we commit ourselves with an excessive intensity which puts us beyond "mere life"? What if,
when we focus on mere survival, even if it is qualified as "having a good time", what we ultimately
lose is life itself? What if the ... suicide bomber on the point of blow ing him- or herself (and others)
up is, in an emphatic sense, "more alive" than the American soldier engaged in a war in front of a
computer screen against an enemy hundreds of miles away, or a New York yuppie jogging along
the Hudson river in order to keep his body in shape? Or, in psychoanalytic terms, what if a
hysteric is truly alive in his or her permanent excessive questioning of his or her existence, while an
obsessional is the very model of choosing a "life in death"? That is to say, is not the ultimate aim
of his or her compulsive rituals to prevent the "thing" from happening?this "thing" being the
excess of life itself? (2002, 88-89) And: The problem with Ariel Sharon is not that he is
overreacting, but that he is not do ing enough, that he is not addressing the real problem?far
from being a ruthless military executioner, Sharon is the model of a leader pursuing a confused
politics of disoriented oscillation. The excessive Israeli military is ultimately an expression of
impotence. (2002, 128) To allow the "thing" to happen and to recognize that Sharon, his hench
men, and their military machine, like the emperor, have no clothes: In these and numerous
other instances, Zizek points out the way in which the Real as the limit point of all subjectformation and eluding all ideological fabrication "returns as the same through diverse
historicizations/symbolizations" (1989, 50). I cautiously accept Zizek's theorization of
subjectivation, indeed of hegemony, as an always already failed compensatory and ideological effect
and, hence, as "melancholic" through and through. Doing so, however, raises a host of difficult
questions for me, not the least of which is the following: If the contingent and interminable
process of collective subjectivation is set into motion and kept on the move by the irreducible
gap between symbolization and the Real (for Zizek, the "fixed" coordinates of all historicization),
to what are we to attribute the modulation or particularization of its forms? On my view, the short
answer to that question is rhetoric?herein understood as a technology of (re)subjectivation whose
constitutive but conjunctural effects contribute to the consolidation and stabilization of particular
epistemological and political regimes.5 The much longer version of the answer comes in the pages
to follow, pages that?as I hinted nearly at the start?tender a reading of post-9/11 patriotism as the
material upshot of a carefully crafted and meticulously managed melancholic rhetoric whose
distinct features are: one, the discursive transfiguration of a historical and political catastrophe into
the harbinger of an epochal Act "to come" and, hence, the ubiquitous deployment of the future
anterior; two, the "perfecting"?in the Burkean sense?of the aesthetics of disappear ance that
structured Americans' perception of Gulf War One into the aesthetics of dematerialization that
continues to structure our relationship to the ongoing "war on terror"; and, three, a visual ecology
of repetition. The specific aim and accomplishment of this melancholic rhetoric, I suggest, is the
formation of a public "political will" that, with considerable irony, cedes the power of the
citizenry to the remilitarized state for the sake of protecting what will have been lost:
namely, the democratic way of life.
Link Transgression
Transgression requires lawwe should recognize that it can only
occur in the presence of law establishing the possibility of sacred
moments that push subjects beyond the limit of utility. We only break
the law because its therethe affs push for decreasing legal
surveillance undercuts their strategy by blunting the desire for
privcacy and rendering it tame
HEGARTY 2000 (Paul, Dept of French, University College, Cork, Bataille: Core Cultural
Theorist)
Transgression is ordinarily seen as the breaking of (a) law, or, the breaking of taboo. It is usually
some form of extreme situation or behaviour. To transgress is to step outside the norm, and
such stepping out requires punishment in order that the law holds. Transgression cannot, then,
be separated from law, or notions of law - it is not in the act, but the illegality of an act that
transgression lies. As Bataille writes, evil is not transgression, it is transgression condemned
(Eroticism, 127; OCX, 127), and this condemnation is the process whereby evil comes into
existence. Similarly, if there were no transgressions, we would not need law - so law/taboo and
transgression are bound up from the start, such that the origin of the distinction becomes
unclear. But transgres- sion is not simply doomed to fall within the boundaries of law, as it does
not negate the taboo, but surpasses and completes it (63; 63, trans. mod.). Transgression is
both more and less than the break- ing of a taboo or law - more because it goes beyond simple
crime, less because it does not conclusively break or break with law/taboo.
In earlier societies the realm of taboo was clear - what was sacred was known and organized, and
the transgression, in the form of the festival and/or sacrifice constituted the site of sanc- tioned
transgression, but according to Foucault, modern society lives near to transgression; as it lives
in the death of God. We now have profanation without an object, and, he asks, profanation in a
world which no longer recognizes any positive meaning in the sacred - is this not more or less
what we may call transgression? (Foucault, Preface to Transgression, 30). In fact, we are close
to an originary state, with the possibility of transgression (as with Batailles view of sacrifice)
opening on to something ultimate: the death of God does not restore us to a limited and
positivistic world, but to a world exposed by the experience of its limits, made and unmade by
that excess which transgresses it (32). At one level, the world seems to have transgressed - we
are all transgressors now. At another level, we are being shown that our existence is made up of,
and by, transgression. As Bataille has it, organized transgression, together with prohibition,
forms a unity which defines social life (Eroticism, 65; OC X, 68, trans. mod.). At this stage it
becomes less than clear whether transgression is really outside of any- thing. Foucault writes
that the line (law, taboo) that transgression crosses is always already crossed - i.e. the law is
broken before it exists, and through its existence, whilst transgression is caught within law:
Transgression, then, is not, finally, as black is to white, the prohibited to the permitted, the
outside to the inside, the outcast to the sheltered space of the domicile. (...) Transgression does
not oppose anything to anything, does not make anything slide in the play of derision, does not
seek to disturb the solidity of foundations I... ] it is the measure beyond measure of the distance
that opens at the heart of the limit, and traces the flashing line that brings it into being. (Preface
to Transgression, 35 trans. mod.)
Foucault completes the thought of Bataille on this point, through a reading I would agree with,
but that Bataille does not necessarily completely intend. There is plenty of evidence which
suggests that transgression is a good thing and, above all, that it is a choice. Bataille writes that
eroticism, like cruelty, is premeditated. Cruelty and eroticism are conscious intentions in a
mind taken with the resolution to trespass into a forbidden field of behaviour (Eroticism, 7980; OC X, 82 trans. mod.). Perhaps the way to unite the more voluntaristic version with the
more ontological one is to say that they feed into each other so that the will to transgress is only
a will inspired by the existence of law, but once under way, transgression will be recalled as
individuals lose themselves in sovereign moments.
A politics defined by and exhausted in demands is by definition a hysterical politics . The hysteric
is defined by incessant demands on the other at the expense of ever articulating a desire
that is theirs . In the Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan argues that the hysterics demand that the Other
produce an object is the support of an aversion toward ones desire: the behavior of the
hysteric, for example, has as its aim to recreate a state centered on the object , insofar as this
object . . . is . . . the support of an aversion. 43 This economy of aversion explains the ambivalent relationship
between hysterics and their de mands. On one hand, the hysteric asserts their agency, even authority, over the Other. Yet, what
appears as unfettered agency from the perspective of a discourse of authority is also
simultaneously a surrender of desire by enjoying the act of figuring the other as the
one with the exclusive capability to satisfy the demand. Thus, as hysterics you demand a new
master: you will get it! At the register of manifest content, demands are claims for action and seemingly
powerful, but at the level of the rhetorical form of the demand or in the register of
enjoyment, demand is a kind of surrender. As a relation of address the hysterical demand is more a demand for
recognition and love from an ostensibly repressive order than a claim for change. The limitation of the students call on Lacan does
not lie in the end they sought but in the fact that the hysterical address never quite breaks free from its
framing of the master. The fundamental problem of democracy is not articulating resistance over and
against hegemony but rather the practices of enjoyment that sustain an addiction to mastery and a
deferral of desire.
Impact
Impact Conservatism
Their knowledge production makes them what they critique without
enjoyment, people quit the movement the alt is a prereq to the aff
McGowan 13 Todd McGowan, Assoc. Prof. of Film and Television Studies at U. of Vermont. Enjoying What
We Dont Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis. Pgs. 172 - 175. PWoods.
The rule of the expert has such a degree of hegemony today that it is difficult to think of any films,
novels, and other artworks that attempt to contest it or expose the experts enjoyment without ultimately
partaking of it. On the other hand, the works that allow audiences to enjoy along with the expert multiply throughout the
culture. Television shows such as c s i: Crime Scene Investigations and House M.D. display this dynamic in its most open form: the
shows present a problem that appears utterly unsolvable to the viewer, and then they reveal the experts genius at finding a solution.
Expert knowledge a knowledge not accessible to the ordinary subjecthas all the answers and
thus becomes the undisputable locus of authority. The popularity of these shows derives from their
ability to allow audiences to share in the experts enjoyment, an enjoyment that typically is the site
of trauma for the subject. Contact with expert authority has a traumatic effect on the subject
because of the proximity of the expert. While the old master remained at a distance, the expert is
always in the subjects face, like Dr. Buddy Rydell in Anger Management, never allowing the subject room to
breathe. As Anger Management shows, this proximity has the effect of stimulating the subject. Under the
rule of the expert, subjects experience what Eric Santner calls a sustained traumatization induced by
exposure to, as it were, fathers who [know] too much about living human beings. 10 Exposure to this type
of authority, to this excess of knowledge, produces an intensification of the body [that] is first and foremost a sexualization11
Instead of emancipating the subject, knowledge traumatizes and plays the central role in the
subjection of the subject to the order of social regulation. For emancipatory politics, the
transformation of knowledge from a vehicle of liberation to an instrument of power has had
devastating effects. Emancipatory politics has traditionally relied on knowledge in order to
facilitate political change, and even today one of the primary operations of emancipatory politics is
getting information out to citizens. In the minds of most people engaged in the project of
emancipation, the fundamental task has been establishing class consciousness among the members
of the working class. Class consciousness, according to this way of thinking, is the basis for
substantive political change. As Georg Lukcs puts it in History and Class Consciousness, The fate of a class depends on its
ability to elucidate and solve the problems with which history confronts it.12 Political change depends, for someone like Lukcs, on
the knowledge that makes decisive action possible. As long as authority remains in the position of the traditional master, knowledge
can have a revolutionary function. Historically, the primary problem for emancipatory politics involved access to education, which is
why a key component of the communist program that Marx and Engels outline in The Communist Manifesto is universal access to
public education. There are those on the side of emancipation who continue to insist that knowledge will
be the source for political change. According to this position, people side with conservative policies
against their own self-interest because they lack the proper information. They are the victims of
propaganda, and emancipatory politics must respond by providing the missing knowledge. If not
for big medias control over knowledge, the thinking goes, subjects would cease to act against their
self-interest and would begin to oppose contemporary capitalism in an active way. For those who adopt this position,
political activity consists in acts of informing, raising consciousness, and bringing issues to light.
But today the failures of consciousness-raising are evident everywhere. Such failures are the subject of
Thomas Franks acclaimed analysis, What's the Matter with Kansas? Frank highlights the
proclivity of people in areas of the United States like Kansas to act politically in ways that sabotage
their economic interests. He notes: People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all
about.13 The Rights current success in the United States and around the world is not the sign that more people have become
convinced that right-wing policies will benefit them. Instead, conservatism permits people a way of organizing their enjoyment in a
way that today s emancipatory politics does not. Emancipatory politics may offer a truer vision of the world,
but the Right offers a superior way of enjoying. Traditionally, the primary advantage that
emancipatory politics had in political struggle was its challenge to authority. When one took up the
cause of emancipation, one took a stand against an entrenched regime of power and experienced
enjoyment in this defiance. One can still see this form of enjoyment evinced in the revolutions of the Arab Spring in 2011.
Though emancipatory activity always entailed a certain risk (even of death, to which the fate of innumerable
revolutionaries attests), it nonetheless brought with it an enjoyment not found in everyday obedience and
symbolic identity. In short, there was historically a strong libidinal component to emancipatory
militancy that the risk it carried amplified rather than diminished. The liberating power of emancipatory
activity is present in almost every political film. We see activists falling in love as they jointly embark on an emancipatory project or
romance burgeoning as a fight for justice intensifies. Conservatism has not traditionally provided much
enjoyment of this type, but it has had its own appeal. It took the side of authority and stability.
Whereas emancipatory politics could offer the enjoyment that comes from defiance of authority,
conservatism could offer the enjoyment that comes from identification with it. This is the enjoyment
that one feels when hearing ones national anthem or saluting the flag. It resides in the fabric of the nations
military uniform that makes the fingers touching it tingle. This eroticism is not that of emancipatory politics and it is perhaps not
as powerful but it is nonetheless a form of eroticism . It produces a libidinal charge. The struggle between
conservatism and emancipatory politics has historically been a struggle between two competing
modes of organizing enjoyment with neither side having a monopoly. Despite the traditional
emphasis that the forces of emancipation placed on knowledge, even in the past the struggle
between emancipatory politics and conservatism centered on enjoyment rather than knowledge. In
the political arena, knowledge is important only insofar as it relates to the way that subjects mobilize their enjoyment. If subjects
see through ideological manipulation and have the proper knowledge, this does not necessarily
inaugurate a political change. The knowledge that something is bad for us a president or a
Twinkie does not lessen the enjoyment that we receive from it. It is not that we have the ability to
enjoy while disavowing our knowledge but more that the knowledge works to serve our enjoyment.
The enjoyment of a Twinkie does not derive from the physiological effect of sugar on the human
metabolism but from the knowledge of the damage this substance does to the body. Knowing the harm
that accompanies something actually facilitates our enjoyment of it, especially when we are capable of disavowing this knowledge.
Enjoyment is distinct from bodily pleasures (which the Twinkie undoubtedly also provides); it depends on some degree of sacrifice
that allows the subject to suffer its enjoyment. Sacrifice is essential to our capacity for enjoying ourselves.
but when a subject desires, she or he perpetually lacks her objet a and hence remains perpetually
dissatisfied.12 Desire lays down a path that has no exit and leaves the subject, despite her/his
constant longing for something more, a prisoner of the social order that desire itself is a reaction
against. The only end of desire is more desire. We desire because we dont find the sacrifice of our
enjoyment entirely satisfying, but desire, unfortunately, does nothing to overcome that
dissatisfaction. In fact, desire is sustained dissatisfaction.13 This state of sustained dissatisfaction is the normal state for
subjects within a society of prohibition. Prohibition produces dissatisfied, desiring subjects, subjects who remain securely within the
confines of the social order. Desire is consonant with the social order because of its reliance on absence rather than presence.
When I desire an object, its absence is often helpful in building up my desire: the longer the desired
object remains away, the stronger the hold of desire over me . All of our clichs about desirelike absence makes
the heart grow fonderaffirm this fundamental truth of desire. By the same token, when the object becomes a constant
presence, my desire tends to wane. And if I gain too much proximity to the object of desire, the
object suddenly disappears or loses its desirability. This aspect of desire is correlative to the
functioning of the social order, which is itself a symbolic entity. It allows subjects to relate to each
other through the mediation of a symbolic order, which means through absence rather than
presence. The symbolic order is, as Lacan puts it, the absence of things, and this absence is crucial for the possibility of mediation,
because it serves to eliminate rivalry. If one subject doesnt have a thing, at least another doesnt have it
either, which provides some degree of consolation for lost enjoyment.14 This is why prohibition is so
important for holding society together: if I see that no one else is able to enjoy, I feel as if we are
partners in loss rather than rivals in enjoyment. The symbolic order is the basis for any social order because it
provides a layer of mediation connecting subjects together. Within it, no one has direct access to enjoyment. As Lacan puts it,
jouissance is prohibited to whomever speaks, as suchor, to put it differently, it can only be said between the lines by whomever is
a subject of the Law, since the Law is founded on that very prohibition.15 This shared sacrifice of enjoyment
embodied in the incest prohibitionestablishes the basis of the social bond. Because subjects
experience themselves as lacking, as not fully enjoying themselves, they look to the Other for what
they are missing, for the piece that would allow for complete enjoyment. It is subjects inability to enjoy
completelyto have an experience of total enjoymentthat directs them to the Other, that creates a desire for what the social order
seems to have hidden within its recesses. In contrast, the enjoying subject does not look to the Other for what it
lacks, but rather sustains an attitude of indifference toward the Other. As a result, enjoyment as
such is not conducive to social relations and the functioning of the symbolic order. The symbolic
order thrives on the deprivation of the subjects belonging to it: it creates a bond of lack. In this way,
prohibition works to create coherence within society. The prohibition of enjoyment holds the social order together through the
shared dissatisfaction it produces. This sense of shared dissatisfaction is the salient feature of the society of prohibition, and it
represents a direct point of contrast with the society of commanded enjoyment. Because prohibition denies the subject the ultimate
enjoyment, it inevitably produces dissatisfaction and potential rebellion. The imaginary is the repository for that
potential rebellion insofar as it provides an illusory enjoyment in the midst of its prohibition by the
social order. One can imagine an enjoyment that the social order prohibits, and as a result, societys confines do not seem
absolute, even for those committed to remaining within those confines.16 For example, the spouse devoted to the ideal of
marital fidelity can imagine the steamy affair that she/he would never accede to in reality. This
imagined affairthis event enacted on the imaginary level allows the subject to enjoy
transgressing a prohibition without actually doing so. The imaginary thus plays a crucial supplementary role in the
society of prohibition, offering an imaginary enjoyment for those who suffer from the prohibition of enjoyment in the Real. Because
of our ability to imagine an enjoyment that the symbolic order prohibits, the imaginary offers us a separate register of
experience, distinct from the symbolic order. In Lacans triadic division of experience, the symbolic order
constitutes our social reality, the imaginary provides an avenue for the illusory transgression of that
reality, and the Real marks the point at which the symbolic order failsthe gap that always haunts
it. Though the imaginary assists prohibition by providing a safe outlet for enjoyment, it also
represents a danger to the society of prohibition. The imaginary thus has an ambiguous status within the society of
prohibition, and we must examine both its role in supplementing the power of prohibition and the threat that it poses. But within
the society of prohibition the imaginary is also a site of potential disruption. Subjects immersed in the imaginary
remain within the confines of the symbolic order, but they do not recognize these confines. As a
result, despite this inscription of the imaginary within the symbolic, our experience within the
imaginary seems as if it occurs before or outside of the intervention of the symbol. This is why our first
experiences, though the symbolic order provides the context for them, are imaginary ones.20 Prior to the act of grasping
their integration into the world of the symbol and thus their humanization, subjects constitute
themselves on the level of the imaginary, and on this level, they are able to enjoywhich is to say,
they are able to see themselves as whole, not as lacking. In the mirror stage, the prototypical
imaginary experience, the child looks in the mirror and sees her/his body as a coherent whole over
which she/he has mastery. Though this sense of wholeness and mastery is illusory or imaginary, it
nonetheless obscures the childs lack and hence disguises subjection to the symbolic order. In the
imaginary, the subject seems isolated and independent of the symbolic orderself-sufficient. It is
for this reason that imaginary experience represents a danger to the social order even though it is
integral to it and remains firmly within it: subjects lodged in the imaginary believe themselves to be
independent and fail to see their symbolic bond with other subjects. Thus, they see other subjects
purely as rivals, rather than as partners in sacrifice. The lack of distance in the imaginary further exacerbates this sense of
rivalry. Images, unlike symbolic structures, seem directly present to us. As Richard Boothby notes, The difference between the
imaginary and symbolic functions aligns itself with a distinction between the perceptual and nonperceptual. Unlike the imaginary,
which distinguishes figure and ground within a perceptual field, the symbolic is always conditioned by its relation to a network of
signifiers that is not and in fact cannot be made an object of perception.We perceive speech and writing but not the symbol system
that makes them possible.21 We can readily grasp the image in a way that we are constitutively unable to grasp the symbolic
function. As a result, enjoyment permeates the imaginary realm because here there is no distance between the subject and the
image. This lack of distanceor lack of mediation that the symbol would provide means that from
the perspective of the imaginary, every relationship is necessarily a violent relationship, a life and
death struggle for enjoyment: in the imaginary, there is no possibility for compromise or sharing
because of the nature of imaginary enjoyment itself. Here, enjoyment has an either/or quality to it:
either I am enjoying or you arenot both of us and not first Ill enjoy a little and then you can. It
is in such either/or terms that Lacan always describes life in the imaginary order. Here, without language, one cannot come to any
agreement or compromise. On the level of the imaginary, in other words, there is no such thing as peaceful
coexistence, no possibility for a pact governing the rationing of enjoyment. In Seminar I, Lacan argues that
Each time the subject apprehends himself as form and as ego [i.e., on an imaginary level . . .], his desire is projected outside. From
whence arises the impossibility of all human co-existence.22 This dimension of the imaginarythe hostility that it produces toward
the Otherproves a barrier to the functioning of the society of prohibition.
of enjoyment, this in no way allows subjects within the social order to enjoy themselves, anymore
than they were ever able to. The transformation at work here, in one sense, does not exist. It is merely a transformation in
the way subjects experience the social order, a phenomenological transformation; it occasions no substantive change in the
relationship between society and enjoyment. Society remains, despite the fears of Bloom and Quayle, free of the enjoyment that
would precipitate its dissolution. Contemporary American society has become a society of enjoyment only
in the sense that enjoyment, rather than prohibition, is its governing commandment. Despite this
transformation from demand for renunciation to the demand for enjoymenta change impelled by
the increasing predominance of the superego over the Lawenjoyment has not burgeoned. In fact,
enjoyment is now just as elusive as ever. The existence of the superegoic command Enjoy! merely
produces a sense of obligation to enjoy oneself; it does not produce enjoyment . And insofar as it creates this
sense of obligation, the imperative to enjoy makes enjoyment that much more difficult. As Zizek points out in
For They Know Not What They Do, superego marks a point at which permitted enjoyment, freedom-to-enjoy, is reversed into
obligation to enjoywhich, one must add, is the most effective way to block access to enjoyment.52 When subjects feel
enjoined to have a certain experience, even the experience of enjoyment, this inevitably creates a
psychic barrier to achieving that experience. Just as telling oneself I must fall asleep right away is
the surest way not to be able to sleep, feeling that one must enjoy makes enjoyment next to
impossible. Consequently, the unavoidable effect of the command to enjoy is the barring of enjoyment in a heretofore unequalled
way. The imperative to enjoy produces the same problem for the subject that imperatives in general produce: they have the effect of
creating an impossible situation for the subject. The more that the subject complies with an imperative even
the imperative to enjoythe more poignantly she/he feels her/his failure to comply fully. This is
why the most moral subjects often proclaim their great immorality. Their attempt to heed the moral
imperative leads to an endless cycle of moral failure. As Lacan points out, whoever attempts to submit to the moral
law sees the demands of his superego grow increasingly meticulous and increasingly cruel.53 With the imperative to enjoy, this
dynamic becomes even stronger. The subject who attempts to obey the command to enjoy cannot help but
notice all the ways that she/he is not fully enjoying because contemporary society so highlights the
endless possibilities for enjoyment. This sense of not fully enjoying themselves leads contemporary
subjects to move so quicklyfrom commodity to commodity, from internet site to internet site,
from channel to channel. Each new thing seems to hold the elusive enjoyment that would fulfill the
imperative, and yet each new thing disappoints the subject in its turn, perpetually revealing the
impossibility of complying with the command to enjoy. The example of Kant is instructive because Kantian
morality doesnt foreclose the possibility of enjoyment, even though it indicates that enjoyment cannot be legislated. What Kant
shows is that subjects can only obtain enjoyment or happiness indirectly. In aiming for morality, according to
Kant, we can gain enjoyment as a side benefit of our moral activity. This is the indirect path through which we can access enjoyment.
The very nature of enjoyment demands that we approach it in this waythrough aiming elsewhere.
It is precisely this indirection that the society of commanded enjoyment does not allow us. The
imperative to enjoy establishes a direct route to enjoyment and thereby, paradoxically, renders it
inaccessible. Despite the explicit absence of the Law of the Father demanding sacrifice and obedience to its dictates, we are
not witnessing an explosion of radical behavior, a mass breaking free from the confines of the social
order. The Law of the Father continues to predominate even as the authority of patriarchal fathers
evanesces. This complacency with the social order, however, is not experienced as complacency, but
as defiance. Our complacencyour conformismfeels as if it is radical activity: today, we think we
are challenging authority at precisely the moment we are most wholly following its dictates. This is
why political conservatives increasingly see themselvesand paint their conservatismas
rebellious. For them, conservatism represents a willingness to defy the ruling structure of
contemporary society. FOX News represents its conservativism as an alternative to the dominant
ideology. And even someone like Rush Limbaugh can imagine himself (like the Leftist of old) telling truth to power. Most of its
practitioners today define conservatism as a radical programthus the Republican Revolution of 1994 despite how this
contradicts the very definition of the term conservative. Whereas within the society of prohibition it is relatively
easy to distinguish between conformity and defiance, this becomes increasingly difficult within a
society structured around the command to enjoy. This is because, in a society of enjoyment, we no
longer experience the explicit prohibition from the social order, which lets us know that the
symbolic order is structuring and determining our behavior. We dont experience the symbolic law in its
prohibitory form, and so we imagine that, when we act, we are acting without reference to the symbolic law, that it does not shape
our actions. Our failure to experience the impinging of the symbolic law, however, doesnt mean that it does not exist.
Impact Injustice
Their impossible demand to lift surveillance leaves our relationship
to the symbolic order unchallenged --- that structurally ensures
injustice
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
Perhaps the most important political problem of the last century concerns lifting repression . Even
more than the obstacle of religious belief, repression represents a rigid barrier that has often been the focus of emancipatory politics.
But as the history especially of the last half of the twentieth century has shown, lifting repression
doesnt necessarily lead to political liberation. It can even, as the main thesis of the Frankfurt School has it,
become the vehicle for further decreasing the freedom of the subject in the face of
ideological control. As societies eliminate varieties of repression, some fundamental deadlock remains recalcitrant and stands
as a political stumbling block.1 If the political project of lifting repression inevitably goes awry, then this confronts the project of
emancipation with the question of what it can do. This is where the intervention of psychoanalytic thought makes itself felt.
Psychoanalysis has historically functioned as a tool for the struggle against repression, but if the attempt to fight
repression inevitably fails or even backfires, the engagement of psychoanalytic thought with politics
today requires a new attitude . The key to the political project of psychoanalysis lies in the
unexpected twist that it gives to the fight against repression. According to this project, one must reenvision
the deadlock that limits the political project of lifting repression. Rather than seeing the deadlock that projects for
emancipation encounter as purely a stumbling block to be negotiated, one might embrace the deadlock
as itself a political position . A properly psychoanalytic politics would transform it from an obstacle into a point of
identification. By identifying with the symbolic deadlock that impedes liberation, one can transform the cause of past political
failures into a source of success. But the cost of this transformation is a redefinition of success as clarifying and embracing a limit
rather than transcending it. The ultimate contribution of psychoanalytic thought to politics is its ability to provide a basis for an
emancipatory politics of the limit.2 The fundamental symbolic deadlock the root of the disorder that plagues every
signifying system involves the binary signifier, or the signifier of the feminine. The absence of this signifier prevents the
operations of the social order from running smoothly (and, as the previous chapter showed, prompts the belief in God). Nothing
necessitates, of course, that the missing signifier had to be the signifier of femininity, as it is in patriarchal society: one can envisage
a different structure with a different binary signifier, but we cannot conceive of a successfully completed signifying structure or a
structure without a missing binary signifier.3 There will always be a missing signifier, though it wont always be the signifier of the
feminine.4 The subtraction of this signifier marks the founding moment of the social order as such and thus is impossible for us to
experience. It is, instead, a condition for the possibility of experience. One cant restore this missing signifier
through analysis or political activity. It marks a point of impossibility within the social structure,
and thus it poses a political question for psychoanalysis. Most psychoanalytic thinkers envision a politics that merely respects and
sustains the gap marked by the missing signifier. As one prominent Lacanian theorist notes, The aim of psychoanalysis is best
described as negative: it ought not to deteriorate into a system which presents itself as an answer to the lack of a signifier.5 The
problem with this purely negative psychoanalytic politics lies in its failure to appreciate the ontological status of the gap and to come
to terms with the pervasive desire to fill it. The appeal of codes, cryptograms, crossword puzzles, and so on derives from the absence
of the binary signifier. Even though most people tend to think of them as merely private amusements, these are fundamentally
political activities because they concern the gap within the signifying order. In working these word puzzles, one seeks the missing
signifier that would complete the system of signification itself, but finishing the puzzle provides only a momentary completion,
opening up to another puzzle and another and another. The infinite nature of the word puzzle attests to the
impossibility of overcoming the problem of the missing signifier once and for all. There will always
be another puzzle because whatever signifier one uncovers, whatever binary signifier one finds, will always be a piece of knowledge
rather than the binary signifier. For us, knowledge replaces the missing signifier and functions in its
stead, but it remains by definition incomplet e.6 There will always be more to know, whereas the recovery of
the binary signifier would provide a definitive ending. More sophisticated codes, such as the genetic code or the Bible code, attract
lifetimes of devotion because they promise the definitive ending that no mere cryptogram or crossword puzzle can provide.
Obviously, there is a world of difference between those committed to cracking the genetic code and those trying to solve the Bible
code. The former are seeking a definitive scientific discovery, while the latter are searching for an explanation that transcends
scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, there is an essential symmetry to these quests, which is why the idea of cracking the Bible code
manages to attract genuine mathematicians and scientists. Both projects aim at a conclusion that would put to rest the trouble that
the missing signifier stirs up, and this animates them with a political charge. On the one hand, the absence of the binary
signifier has a structural relationship to all injustice : it produces the imbalance that
manifests itself in class society, racial difference, and male domination. But on the other hand, the
absence of this signifier allows us to enter into the regime of language and escape relations of pure force. It results in an
insurmountable injustice at the same time as it introduces the very possibility of conceiving justice. In Specters of Marx, Jacques
Derrida articulates this dual character of the absent binary signifier when he says: To be out of joint, whether it be
present being or present time, can do harm and do evil, it is no doubt the very possibility of evil.
But without the opening of this possibility, there remains, perhaps, beyond good and evil, only
the necessity of the worst.7 The missing binary signifier leaves the subject and the social order out of joint, as Derrida puts
it (following Shakespeare), but without this disjointedness there exists only simple domination by force the necessity of the
worst and no possibility for just interventions against pure force. In other words, without an absent signifier,
there would be no politics, but the political act cannot simply involve the attempt to sustain its
absence, since this absence produces injustice and evil. The fundamental political question concerns what
relationship we should try to take up relative to the missing binary signifier, a signifier whose inaccessibility constitutes us as
subjects. There are four possible attitudes toward the binary signifier: the first three (the fundamentalist, the positivist, and the
hermeneutic) function ideologically to deliver us from the trauma attached to this signifiers absence, while the fourth (the
psychoanalytic) is founded on an encounter with the trauma. Most often, one encounters these attitudes in amalgamated forms that
obscure how each functions. The great merit of The Da Vinci Code lies in its ability to lay out clearly the three ideological attitudes
and thus to suggest negatively the contours of the fourth.
The gaze of a surveillance camera is calculated to exclude (c.f. Munt, 1995). A camera
represents total one-way-ness of the gaze by making it impossible to look back. One may see the cameras
but an eye-contact with it is impossible. There is no mutual gaze. It would feel ridiculous to try to flirt with a surveillance
camera. Its objects are constantly seen but with no possibility to respond or oppose
the gaze. It has been pointed out that the all-seeing power has roots in mythology and religion: [t]he
overpowering and ubiquitous eye of God can be considered as prototype of this hegemonic vision
(Schmidt-Burkhardt, 2002: 18). The nature of the potential overseer is God-like, someone who is there,
and simultaneously, is not: [h]is presence, which is also an absence, is in his gaze alone (Whitaker,
1999: 34). One can only be the observed, but not the observer.
Impact Neolib
Protection of corporate data from the state assumes that the desire
for privacy from the state is legitimate in all forms --- that reinforces
neoliberalism
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
The Lacanian Other is therefore not identifiable as such, but represents the symbolic order itself: the
inscrutable regulatory structures through which we communicate, recognise others, and that
allow us to identify ourselves as individuals. The concept of the Other appears a useful concept to help explain the
mechanical, systematic collection and use of personal information in ways that form our identity and our way of interacting with
others and the law that regulates this behaviour. We are not capable of identifying desire in this Other: the
collection and regulation of data is bureaucratic, divorced from normal social interactions and
desires.73 The Other is the system that imbues personal information with value, that sees it as capable of being disclosed,
disseminated and traded. From the perspective of the subject, the concept of the Other seems to have a
dual role in data protection law reflecting both the over-arching regulatory structure for data
protection and the regulated entities that seek personal information . In terms of the regulatory structure,
the Other reflects the nature of law itself as a system that does not itself have desire, but
purports to support the desires of individuals. Indeed, Lacan suggests if there is a single question offered by the
Other to the individual, it is what do you want? 74 so that apparently desires that arise autonomously, such as the desire for
privacy, invariably strengthen the symbolic systems they appear to resist. iek, for example, describes how capitalist systems speak
to individuals by encouraging and driving their desire for privacy, drawing on Lacan to describe how: when we try to preserve the
authentic intimate sphere of privacy against the onslaught of alienated public exchange, it is privacy itself that gets lost.
is implied that the activities and functions pursuant to which agencies and organisations collect
personal information must be lawful. It also is implied that collection pursuant to those
functions must be lawful.78 Of course, in few cases is the lawfulness of collection of personal
information by commercial organisations regulated outside the Act (which is precisely where one would
expect its lawfulness to be regulated). Further, the principle actually facilitates the inscrutable
nature of data collection , by enabling the collector to claim that it has no desire for
information; it may argue that personal information is only collected because it is necessary
to do so. The reason why the collection is necessary is deferred, to be addressed (if at all) in some other law. The fact that,
for a private organisation, the necessity is precisely the result of the organisations own
commercial decisions and voluntary activities somehow eludes the scope of the Act. If
desire is at all relevant to data collection, then, it is only the desire of the data subject to its own
personal information. Like in the fort-da game, the Other merely sets up a framework for the subject to
negotiate and reflect its own desires . The Act sets up a regime that centres (with few exceptions) on the
volunteering of personal information by individuals themselves, providing that, where reasonable and practicable, an organisation
must collect personal information about an individual only from that individual.79 The assumption in this principle appears to be
that collection should (where reasonable and practicable) be with the consent of the data subject that is, the data subject
must want to allow the information to be collected. The focus on the desire of the data subject
then creates an economy of personal information . The Act creates a regime whereby the release of an
individuals personal information to an organisation is described implicitly as being (except in limited circumstances) the result
of their own desire . The Act then provides avenues for the individual to seek to recover control
of that personal information through rules restricting the use or disclosure of the information ,80
and being entitled to demand access to the information.81 Although the Act does not provide for the full recovery of the
information it only provides for the destruction of personal information by the data collector if it is no longer needed for any
purpose for which the information may be used or disclosed82 the economy of personal information the Act creates nevertheless
has strong resemblance to the fort-da game. The Act purports to and does regulate the inscrutable Other, setting out conditions
for the disclosure and recovery of personal information. However, the economy of desire the Act creates (because the Act and the
regulated data collectors are after all part of the bureaucratic institutional structure that is, part of the Other) is predominantly a
desire of the subject of that personal information.
Impact Scapegoating
The impact is endless war --- the refusal to use psychoanalysis means
we ignore the collective unconscious of the public and the leaders
which allows manipulation of values to justify irrational invasions --our internal anxieties about failing to solve <advantage> are projected
onto the other, creating them as an enemy to be exterminated and
legitimating nuclear conflict
Jacobsen 2013 --- University of Chicago (Kurt, Why Freud matters: Psychoanalysis and international relations
revisited, International Relations, SagePub)//trepka
Psyche, self-interest, and warfare Updating Thucydides, what made war inevitable was the presence of WMD in Iraq and the fear this caused in the
United States. There is ample room here for interpretive work.91 What is at stake is not only a possible shift in relative capabilities but also what a
Psychoanalysis has inferred from dreams and parapraxes of healthy people as well as from the symptoms of neurotics, that the
primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished in any of its individual
members, but persists, although in a repressed state, in the unconscious [and] It has further taught us that
our intellect is ... a plaything and tool of our instincts and affects . If you will observe what is
happening in this war the cruelties and injustices for which the most civilized nations are
responsible, the different way in which they judge their own lies and wrong-doings and those of their enemies and the general lack of insight
which prevails you will have to admit that psycho-analysis has been right in both these theses .92 World
powerful actor was inclined to see in the others actions as portending. Freud, after the outbreak of war, remarked in a proto-realist way:
WarZizspurred Freuds death instinct hypothesis, of an aggressive, destructive drive independent of sexuality.93 Waltz likely approves Freuds point
that war
cannot be abolished so long as the conditions of existence among nations are so different
and their mutual repulsion so violent, there are bound to be wars but, more utopianly, Freud noted, war
will only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all conflicts of
interest shall be handed over. Freud declined to attribute war to instincts running amok; he espied room for improvement in realizing ones
enlightened self-interest. How did war tally with self-interest whether from the vantage point of individual or state anyway? Historians and social
scientists rarely examine the psychological status of self-interest or to trace its actual incidence in human life, Gay charges:94 The cold calculations
that shape actions are less interesting (and often in the long run less important) than the passions that produced the calculations in the first place. So,
psychoanalytic researchers study how individuals
symptom, self-interest is a compromise formation: and much like the ego, an interest must cope with three generally hostile forces: the outside world
(the depository of competing interests) the superego (which pours out distressing reminders that others too have valid claims and that ones own claims
are at best suspect) and the id (which incessantly generates wishes.) That
psychoanalysis
fosters an attitude of suspicion toward human behaviour and ostensible motives , a semiotic postulate
whatever is expedient, and in this ruse, intra-psychic mechanisms and external motives mingle. As Brooks and Woloch put it,
that in all actors [there are] messages to be read, a genealogical undermining of claims to unalloyed virtue, disinterestedness and civilization.100
What would such beholders make of the Vietnam War, or the war on terror? Two, three, many Vietnam
syndromes The Vietnam War is not usually regarded as ripe stuff for couch analysis.101 Psychoanalysts shied away, instead taking on related issues
such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).102 However, at
The question why these leaders, and L.B.J.s best and the brightest advisers, went awry in Southeast Asia remains intriguing and inadequately
understood. Free world leadership, institutional inertia, anti-communist ideology, bureaucratic politics, leaders personal reputations, the military
industrial complex, and misplaced optimism in counterinsurgency techniques are all among the factors driving the United States into the big muddy.
Cognitive psychology has scoured this subject. From a cognitivist point of view, all causal inferences and policy lessons are the product of mental
constructions of what would, could, or might have happened had a different set of antecedent conditions held or policies been tried, explain Goldgeier
and Tetlock.104 There is, in principle, an infinite number of possible background factors that one could enter as antecedents in ones counterfactual
constructions of alternative worlds. So observers must rely on draconian simplifying rules that reduce the number of scenarios to be entertained to a
humanly manageable number. The price exacted by reliance on draconian simplifying assumptions can be very high. Parsimony has a lot to answer
for. Policymakers, according to this tack, became mesmerized by analogies in the form of falling dominoes or Munich-like appeasement. These
analogies matter because policy makers routinely turn to the past for guidance.105 Such schematic processing made it difficult for policymakers to
appreciate the local forces at work in Vietnam. So, policy inertia chugged on. In this regard too, Elster, who scolds psychoanalysis for concocting
meaning where none exists, cannot account for why people adopt cold mechanisms, these cognitive logics so rigid and nave that they systemically
lead people into error errors that can be individually farcical and collectively tragic.106 Perhaps, contrary to Elster, one is entitled to probe inside
in order to understand underlying reasons? The supreme problem for Khong is a breakdown of consensus because a consensus is deemed a good
thing even though it ushered the United States into Vietnam. Perhaps policymakers were ensnared in an axiomatic tangle of their own making, but it is
clear from the Pentagon Papers that this was a system for which they had a strong elective affinity inasmuch as particular analogies were chosen as the
most likely ones that the public would swallow.107 The Pentagon Papers show that McGeorge Bundy invoked domino theory, but only after he rejected
even the subtle argument, offered by some long-time Asian experts, that the uniqueness of the Vietnamese case, particularly its extraordinary lack of
political structure, invalidated any generalization of our experience there to the rest of Asia.108 If domino theorists did not know that the theory was
disputed, it was not because they were unaware. Hans Morgenthau in debates with Bundy poured scorn on domino theory.109 Cabinet naysayer George
Ball, citing Japan, ridiculed domino theory at high-level meetings.110 There was no shortage of Southeast Asian specialists in the foreign affairs and
intelligence wars of the US government, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst states, but the consumers did not want what they were
producing.111 This
ample latitude of choice undermines the cognitivist case that policymakers had
become hapless prisoners of analogical reasoning. Morton Halperin noted that Defense Secretary Clark Clifford on a trip to
South Asia discovered to his amazement that none of the countries in the region shared our view about the
dominos.112 A cognitive psychology account, if anything, is likely to furnish convenient if inadvertent cover for policies pursued for other
reasons. (And irrational reasons are reasons too.) Khongs argument seems true in the same manner as is Viennese satirist Karl Krauss acid sally that
diplomats lie to journalists and then believe those lies when they see them in print. Another stellar example is the Military Assistance Command
Vietnams (MACV) underestimate (by several hundred thousand) of insurgents available to the National Liberation Front in the run-up to the Tet
Offensive when US officials were boasting of progress in pacification.113 This underestimation was doubtless deliberate; the only question was the
motive. A motive far stronger than simplifying and filtering operations of human cognitive processing was at work when deciding who counts as an
enemy guerrilla at a time when authorities were under severe pressure to deliver good news.114 An abiding flaw in the cognitive psychologists trustbuilding approach is that when policymakers ignored or misinterpreted evidence of the others desire for an accord (regarding arms control, an
economic treaty, or a peace agreement), the motive need not be guiding beliefs at all but rather the decision makers calculations that they could
succeed on their own terms anyway. Only if that familiar possibility is found wanting can unconscious processes credibly come into consideration as
significant factors.115 Puzzling over L.B.J.s escalation in Vietnam over 19641965, Kaiser sees the inadvisable series of decisions as a matter of
personality and choice, goaded by a GI generation of advisors who experienced nothing but success in all earlier endeavors.116 Yet, the Rural Affairs
Office in Vietnam reported in 1963 that the pacification campaign was a will-o-the wisp a failure.117 Senator Mike Mansfield and others counseled
L.B.J. to avoid a catastrophic commitment to shore up a flimsy South Vietnam regime.118 L.B.J.
and close aides had many welldocumented reasons to be wary about the sinuous course of events . Former defense secretary, Robert McNamara
later stirred a furor with a mea culpa book on Vietnam, but his claim that he didnt know until long afterward that the Vietnamese liberation movement
was nationalist is, to say the least, extremely dubious.119 McNamara now says we didnt know anything about Vietnam and what was really happening
was not understood, complained a State Department analyst, Thats a lot of garbage. We would come out with papers showing that things were going
very badly indeed.120 Dissent
Unable to live up
to their own idealized standards , L.B.J. and Nixon externalize the punitive unconscious selfcriticism, which then comes back to them magnified , and malevolently so.135 In laymans terms, both
presidents responded to perceived challenges to their brittle masculinity by acting rashly when
the actual situation, and the institutional dynamics in play, did not remotely warrant it. What opens
Ben Phu. (Eisenhower, out of office, nonetheless advised L.B.J. and Nixon to go all out once bogged down in Vietnam.)134
up here are opportunities for prying open not only the black box of the state but of political agents too in those important instances where neither the
domestic political environment nor structural exigencies dictate reactions. 9/11 and the mismanagement of fear Realpolitik proponents blanch at the
post-9/11 neo-conservative project for a New American Century agenda, an agenda featuring a grandiosity worthy of a distinct Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; DSM-IV) category. Whether the Bush administration strategy for Iraq, and all the wishful thinking
attribute to the role of emotions, a vengeful US public did not drive a reluctant Bush administration into war in Iraq. Granting the post-9/11 sense of
national peril, the next step is to look at the tactics used by US and UK leaders to persuade citizenries to disarm Iraq. Bush and Tony Blair deployed
propaganda blitzes. To rephrase Thucydides again, What made war inevitable was the presence of WMD in Iraq and the fear this caused in the United
States. Even champions of the invasion of Iraq at the time now admit there is a great deal wrong with that sentence. We are no longer concerned with
shifts in relative capabilities (between Iraq and the West anyway) but with whatever one set of players (state A) was inclined, indeed determined, to see
by stirring fear a
central authority can win acquiescence to radical schemes purporting to protect the citizenry.
Lasswell discussed how elites manage the direction of discharge of insecurities and about how a
group can go about capturing attention and guiding mass insecurities. 136 Politicians who have little else
credibly to offer ordinary citizens readily resort to this maneuver. Security is a bewitchment word, in Wittgensteins sense, which
the actions by a counterpart player (state B) as portending, and why. One doesnt need a Freudian to show that
induces beholders to mistake the word for the thing it promises to provide, when the authorities actions produce the opposite of the announced effect.
It may be impeccably rational, from the authorities nested vantage point, to behave aggressively abroad because blowback redounds to their benefit
insofar as it is interpreted as evidence of need for more of the same coercive medicine, which augments their power. Psychoanalysts have contributions
to make in parsing out these complex motivations. A psychoanalytic approach is warranted in circumstances where one has reason to believe that,
because of asymmetric power, oppression gets psychologically inverted: the oppressor is the
victim who is defending himself.137 It is a truism in IR that the attacker never deems itself the
aggressor, but rather a wounded party. Why should the weak not suffer what they must, with Thucydidean fatalism, and national
leaders leave it at that, with Thucydidean realism? Clearly, no one ever leaves it at that. Psychoanalysis aids efforts to explain why. A strong case can be
made for applying psychoanalytic method even in instances where interest-oriented models seem to do the job. One may have good cause to suspect
that realpolitik functions as an excuse for doing what one wants for less rational reasons. Morgenthau reproved McGeorge Bundy, and other, on this
score regarding Vietnam.138 These disastrous policies consistently pursued served the self-protection of by those who have initiated or inherited
them, Morgenthau wrote, We are here in the presence of an issue not of foreign policy or military strategy, but of psychopathology.139 Indeed,
political figures believe they rarely can go too far in pleading for security and its accompanying dilemma. Getting tough plays well at home and even
politicians who know better played along, as in the 2003 vote authorizing action against Iraq. Yet, as Page and Bouton, among others, attest, surveys
disclose a public that is less belligerent, and more conciliatory, than their leaders (which overturns hoary Lasswellian caricatures).140 Did George W.
Bush invade Iraq due to unresolved Oedipal conflict?141 The problem for psychoanalytical explanations is twofold: first, nearly every move Bush made
can be explained in rationalist terms and second, Bushs advisers encouraged his foreign policy venture: In trying to understand the frequently
unconscious aims of individuals it often helps to ignore what they say, to themselves as well as to us, and to look as ingenuously as possible at what they
seem to be trying to do. a veteran psychotherapist advises, in which case the aims may become surprisingly obvious.142 Few IR specialists will contest
the view that the weight assigned to psychological (or structural) factors needs to be tempered by attention to deeds, to what actors are trying to do.
Conclusion Psychoanalysis
modeling.143 Even those who are historical in approach usually do well enough without depth psychology. What then is to be gained? The force of the
circumstances and institutions (operational codes) in which leaders find themselves override personal considerations but not always. Structural
forces, and institutional constraints, need not press the decision-maker to take one particular course of action. The sufficient decision based on
material factors may seem adequate from one angle, and question-begging from another. One doesnt need a sadistic personality structure to launch a
war, but it seems to help. It may be instructive to wonder what would have happened if, instead of Kennedy, Nixon or a grown-up George W. Bush had
been President during the Cuban missile crisis? In any case, the task of parsing the interaction of agency and structure, of their mutual constitution,
too rarely is approached from the agency end, perhaps because few in IR circles are disposed to try.144 Finally, the sunk cost fallacy, encountered in
Vietnam, is a descriptive term, and requires an explication of the personal psychodynamics underlying the decision rules invoked to account for it.145
Why does one person, or group, stay the course in a hazardous situation but another counsel against it? Emotional
states, character
structure, and defenses help us to understand how leaders process what they behold . Even in cases
of utopian
politics. Simply put, my argument will be that every utopian fantasy construction needs a scapegoat in
order to constitute itself the Nazi utopian fantasy and the production of the Jew is a good
example, especially as pointed out in Zizeks analysis. Every utopian fantasy produces its reverse and calls
for its elimination. Put another way, the beatific side of fantasy is coupled in utopian constructions
with a horrific side, a paranoid need for a stigmatized scapegoat. The naivety and also the dangerof
utopian structures is revealed when the realization of this fantasy is attempted. It is then that
we are brought close to the frightening kernel of the real: stigmatization is followed by
extermination. This is not an accident. It is inscribed in the structure of utopian constructions; it
seems to be the way all fantasy constructions work. If in almost all utopian visions, violence and antagonism
are eliminated, if utopia is based on the expulsion and repression of violence (this is its beatific side)
this is only because it owes its own creation to violence; it is sustained and fed by violence
(this is its horrific side). This represed moment of violence resurfaces, as Marin points out, in the difference inscribed in the name
utopia itself (Marin, 1984:110). What we shall argue is that it also resurfaces in the production of the figure of an enemy. To use a
phrase enunciated by the utopianist Fourier, what is driven out through the door comes back through the window (is not this a
precursor of Lacans dictum that what is foreclosed in the symbolic reappears in the real?VII:131). The work of
Norman Cohn and other historians permits the articulation of a genealogy of this Manichean,
equivalential way of understanding the world, from the great witch-hunt up to modern antiSemitism, and Lacanian theory can provide valuable insights into any attempt to understand the logic behind this utopian
operationhere the approach to fantasy developed in Chapter 2 will further demonstrate its potential in analyzing our political
experience. In fact, from the time of his unpublished seminar on The Formations of the Unconscious, Lacan identified the utopian
dream of a perfectly functioning society as a highly problematic area (seminar of 18 June 1958).
trends generally characterize psychoanalytic thinking, the rst that sides with Freud's
conviction of an innate destructive drive or instinct that is inevitably mobilized
against the self or outward against others ; and the second that conceptualizes
aggression as a response to deprivations and frustrations in the environment ,
impingements that originate in the catastrophes of childhood trauma and are reproduced
throughout the life span. My view as it is elaborated in my analysis of the violence of terror in the Americas
parallels Stephen Mitchell's perspective in which aggression, like sexuality, does not represent a "a push from
within." but a response to others, biologically mediated and prewired, within a relational context
(Mitchell, 1998, p. 25). Hegemonic institutions and ideologies either exacerbate primitive anxieties and
their manifestation in envy, greed, and hate or promote the capacities that form the basis of reparative guilt and love,
concern, and responsibility for others (see Rustin, I991; Peltz, 2005). Psychoanalytic theories have also elaborated how
interpersonal experience is realized through the medium and psychological use of social symbols. D. W. Winnicott, for example,
Stavrakakis 2002 --- Professor of Political Discourse Analysis (Yannis, Lacan and the Political,
https://books.google.com/books?
id=_jjJAwAAQBAJ&dq=stavrakakis+lacan+and+the+political+scapegoat&source=gbs_navlinks_s)//trepka
WhatZizwill try to do in this chapter is, first of all, to demonstrate the deeply problematic nature
of utopian
politics. Simply put, my argument What constantly emerges from this exposition is that when harmony is not present
it has to be somehow introduced in order for our reality to be coherent. It has to be introduced
through a fantasmatic social construction. One should not get the impression though that this is a mere philosophical
discussion. In so far as our constructions of reality influence our behavior and this is what they
basically doour fixation on harmony has direct social and political consequences. Reality construction
does not take place on a superstructural level. Reality is forced to conform to our constructions of it not
only at the spiritual or the intellectual, but also at the material level . But why does it have to be forced to
conform? This is due, for instance, to the gap between our harmonious fantasmatic constructions of nature and nature itself,
between reality and the real. Our construction of reality are so strong that nature has to conform to
them and not they to nature; reality is conceived as mastering the real. But there is always a
certain leftover, a disturbing element destabilizing our constructions of nature. This has to be
stigmatized , made into a scapegoat and exterminated . The more beatific and harmonious is a social
fantasy the more this repressed destabilizing element will be excluded from its symbolization
without, however, ever disappearing. In this regard, a vignette from the history of nature conservation can be
revealing. As is well known nature conservation was developed first in the United States; what is not so
well known is that 'a major feature of the crusade for resource conservation was a deliberate
campaign to destroy wild animals -- one of the most efficient, well-organized, and well-financed such efforts in all of
man's history' (Worster, 1994:261). All this, although not solely attributable to it, was part of a 'progressive' moralistic ideology
which conceived of nature together with society as harboring ruthless exploiters and criminals who should be banished from the
land (Worster. 1994:265). The driving force behind this enterprise was clearly a particular ethically distinctive construction of nature
articulated within the framework of a conservation ideology. According to this construction what 'was' had to: conform to what
'should be' and what 'should be', that is to say nature without vermin (coyotes and other wild predators), was accepted as more
natural-more harmonious-than what 'was': 'These conservationists were dedicated to reorganizing the natural economy in a way that
would fulfil their own ideal vision of what nature should be like' (Worster, 1994:266). This construction was accepted by the
Roosevelt administration in the USA (1901-9) and led to the formation of an official programme to exterminate
vermin. The job was given to a government agency, the Bureau of the Biological Survey (BBS) in the
Department of Agriculture, and a ruthless war started (in 1907 alone, 1,700 wolves and 23,000
Coyotes were killed in the National Parks and this policy continued and expanded for years )
(Worster, 1994:263). What is this dialectic between the beatific fantasy of nature and the demonised vermin doing if not illustrating
the Lacanian dialectic between the two sides of fantasy or between fantasy and symptom? Since we will explore the first of these two
Lacanian approaches to fantasy in Chapter 4, we will concentrate here on the fantasy/symptom axis?" As far as the promises of
filling the lack in the Other is concerned, fantasy can be better understood in its relation to the Lacanian conception of the symptom;
according to one possible reading, fantasy and symptom are two inter-implicated terms. It is the symptom that interrupts the
consistency of the field of our constructions: of reality, of the object of identification, by embodying the repressed jouissance, the
destabilising part of nature excluded from its harmonious symbolisation. The symptom here is a real kernel of
enjoyment; it is the repressed jouissance that returns and does not ever 'stop in imposing itself
[on us]' (Soler. 1991:214). If fantasy is 'the support that gives consistency to what we call reality' (Zizek,
1989:49) on the other hand reality is always a symptom (Zizek, 1992). Here we are insisting on the late
Lacanian conception of the symptom as sinthome. In this conception, a signifier is married to jouissance, a signifier is instituted in
the real, outside the signifying chain but at the same time internal to it. This paradoxical role of the symptom can help us understand
the paradoxical role of fantasy. Fantasy gives discourse its consistency because it opposes the symptom (Ragland-Sullivan, 1991:16).
Hence, if the symptom is an encounter with the real, with a traumatic point that resists symbolisation, and if the discursive has to
arrest the real and repress jouissance in order to produce reality, then the negation of the real within fantasy can only be thought in
terms of opposing, of stigmatising the symptom. This is then the relation between symptom and fantasy. The self-consistency of a
symbolic construction of reality depends on the harmony instituted by fantasy. This fantasmatic harmony can only be sustained by
the neutralisation of the symptom and of the real, by a negation of the generalised lack that crosses the field of the social. But how is
this done'? If social fantasy produces the self-consistency of a certain construction it can do so only
by presenting the symptom as 'an alien, disturbing intrusion , and not as the point of
eruption of the otherwise hidden truth of the existing social orde r' (Zizek 1991a:40). The social
fantasy of a harmonious social or natural order can only be sustained if all the persisting
disorders can be attributed to an alien intruder . To return to our example, the illusory character
of our harmonious construction of nature is shown in the fact that there is a part of the real
which escapes its schema and assumes a symptomatic form (vermin , etc.); in order for this fantasy
to remain coherent, this real symptom has to be stigmatised and eliminated . It cannot be
accepted as the excluded truth of nature ; such a recognition would lead to a
dislocation' of the fantasy in question. When, however, the dependence of fantasy on the
symptom is revealed, then the playthe relationbetween the symptom and fantasy reveals itself as
another mode of the play between the real and the symbolic/imaginary nexus producing reality.
The affirmative can never fulfill the desire for decreased surveillance
--- the resulting scapegoating causes widespread violence
Cooper 11 Prof @ The University of Sydney (Andrew, Conceiving Society: religion, politics and violence,
http://www.polsis.uq.edu.au/docs/Challenging-Politics-Papers/Andrew-Cooper-Conceiving-Society.pdf)//trepka
Hobbes saw this tendency of humans to be in rivalry with one another as an unavoidable
condition that requires some form of regulation which he described as the social contract . The
social contract tradition focuses on the idea of mutual advantage, where parties depart from the state of nature to gain a mutual
benefit. It implies that the people in a particular community give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to
receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. As opposed to societies found on religion or tradition, Hobbes envisioned a
society based on a rational agreement between its subjects, making way for an unprecedented equality and mutual benefit. However,
with the perspective of hindsight we can see today that even the wealthiest communities founded on a contractarian basis continue
to create inequalities and divisions amongst themselves, despite being egalitarian in theory. As many political thinkers
have recognised (such as Marx 1975, Tocqueville 1968, Lacan 1980, iek 2003), the more freedom and equality
we receive, the more we expect. The social contract does not deal with the problem of rivalry, but prevents the
spread of conflict through the use of force. Mimetic desire Similarly to other psychoanalysts, Girard understands the motivating
energy behind human action as desire. However, he derives his conception of desire through the novelistic
understanding of humanity in writers such as Proust and Dostoyevsky. He argues that in writers who are sensitive to
the human condition (a class of his own determining), desire is not spontaneous, but imitative. Desire is 'triangular' in
the sense that a model mediates the desire of the subject for the object (Girards 1965: 2). In opposition to
Freud's presumption that desire as an innate function associated with basic drives,2 Girards theory avoids the
structuralist implications of such a view by simply suggesting that humans copy the desires of those
around them. Humans fear their lack of being their feeling of nothingness and attempt to signify
themselves in relation to the being of others. Contemporary advertising offers an obvious example of
using mimetic desire in the service of capital, relying not on showing valuable qualities of the product being marketed, but in
presenting a model the perfect mother or the perfect lover who is overflowing with being. All one
requires in order to be like the model is to possess the product, say Ajax or a Coke. Such desire is 'irrational'
Coke does not quench thirst and having the right cleaning products does not result in good
parenting. Girard reduces desire from functionalism or metaphysics to the anthropological plane,
explaining the tendency of our desires to conglomerate around the same objects. According to
mimetic theory, violence arises when one person imitates the desire of another for a particular
object one that is unique. In such a case only one can posses it. Because the agents ignore the mechanism that guides their
desires to the same object, the mimetic mechanism, they become protagonists in a conflict whose origin they do not understand
(Palaver 2000). This is the crisis that Hobbes foresaw where both agents become enemies, fighting for the one object. This
process, if not stopped, must lead to physical violence and from violence to death . As one blocks, the other
hits, and vice versa. This mirroring of violence operates without reason, as each party can have good reasons for attacking each
other. A violent exchange is a repetition of the same gestures, and in the end violence reduces both
enemies to mirror images of each other. In this way it is not difference but the lack of difference
which gives rise to violence (Girard 1988: 54). The implications of mimetic theory in regards to reciprocal violence are
great, suggesting that even the most rationally justified forms of violence, such as state punishment, imprisonment or military
defence, are merely mirror images of their opponents, failing to address the 'logic' behind the battleZizhave come across many
examples of this in my own experience as a youth worker alongside some of Sydneys homeless youth. One such example involved a
girl from the inner city called Martha.3 When a gang of her partners friends attacked and raped her, Martha responded by verbally
abusing the girlfriend of one of her attackers. This girlfriend began threatening to attack Martha, claiming that she would get the
gang of boys to come back and sexually assault her again. When this girl aggressively turned up at Marthas door to threaten her
further, Martha stabbed her in retaliation. Martha was then taken to court, and charged with assault. The others went free. As one
punched the other blocked, mirroring the attack of their opponent. Both had reasons for attacking and both were caught up in
mimetic rivalry, but only one was charged. Exploring lived experiences such as Martha's story highlights that acts of violence are not
isolated, and that responsibility cannot be traced back to a single action of cause and effect.4 Girards mimetic theory helps us to see
that violence is mimetic. It is contagious, as once erupted it has the strange ability to spread. Those who seek to prevent it are usually
brought to perform the very actions of violence that they sought to stop. The problem is not only that it seems that nothing can stop
the mimetic process, but that the struggle will spread to infect the whole community. Girard wants to call into question the
presumptions of political theory in the traditions of Hobbes' social contract and Kant's (2006) essay 'Toward Perpetual Peace,'
calling our attention to the escalating occurrence of violence in the contemporary world despite unprecedented attempts to curtail it.
He questions the rationality behind the western tradition of political science, and suggests that this very rationality exists in
continuation with the religious institutions that held society together before the rational systems of the enlightenment. The
Scapegoat Mechanism The second aspect of mimetic theory is the hypothesis that culture
Mller 12 --- Prof @ Universitt St Gallen, Switzerland (Martin, Lack and jouissance in hegemonic discourse
of identification with the state, Sagepub)//Trepka
Hegemony, lack and jouissance in the identification with a strong Russia Hegemony: strength At
Russian strength are complemented with articulations of Russian autonomy . A strong Russia is also an
autonomous Russia which does not look to others for orientation or support. For Andrej, a fourth-year student of political science,
the status of a great power is associated with political, technological and military leadership:Zizthink that Russia is not only
great power because of its nuclear weapons, not only because it is the biggest country in the
world, but because it has resources, it has potential. And if we cannot definitely call it a great power now, if
we cannot compare with America now, then we can at least say that in the very near future
Russia will recoup this status. (Andrej, Year 4, Political Science, 24/7476) This vision, of course, is
utopian in the short to medium term, but it is expounded with all the more vigor. This daydreaming also allows to articulate
visions of Russia that break with the image of a great power that flexes it muscles and are far removed from the current state of
affairs and policy conduct. Consider, for example, Boriss rendition of a strong Russia: For me a great power is primarily a state
which can serve as an epitome of virtue for other states, an example of highly moral, highly cultured political relations with that
country. A highly developed society which has a high self-awareness, which has its role in the world. (Boris, Year 4, International
Journalism, 27/49) Boris still subscribes to the discourse of a strong Russia, although for him it is not military, political or economic
strength but ethical considerations that distinguish a strong Russia. We can see here that a wide range of diverse demands, ranging
from economic leadership to re-establishing control over the post-Soviet space, is united within the discourse of a strong Russia.
With Laclau (1996b), a strong Russia presents an empty signifier that unifies the social field (compare Figure 1): almost everyone at
MGIMO can identify with it, because it offers to fulfill almost every identificatory demand. What makes the identification
with a strong Russia all the stronger is the fact that it also grips students desires . As with most
political projects (Stavrakakis, 2008: 1054), the realization of a strong Russia is linked up with promises of enjoying a good life:
consumption, a successful career and, for male students at least, the fulfillment of sexual desire. In general terms, this is the elite life
that students and graduates of an elite university such as MGIMO expect and, indeed, are taught and presented with in everyday life.
Stories about the weekend trip to Europe or a summer holiday in Goa and the purchase of the latest car model are omnipresent
among students at MGIMO. Recruiting events for high potentials advertise the stellar career opportunities that await MGIMO
students with a degree from their institution. Such a career does not only constitute a guarantee to indulge in consumption, but, for
male students, also helps to find and afford an attractive partner. Students therefore at least in part submit to the
at the same
time , there is a paradoxical sense that becoming as a great power might be impossible , that
there is a lack at the centre of the discourse of a strong Russia that prevents the realization of a strong Russia and bars the discourse
from what Laclau calls a complete suture of the symbolic. This impossibility of symbolization fashions lack with a traumatic quality
of something that cannot be mastered (Hurst, 2008: 208220). In the circling of lack, the symbolic order breaks
down and established conventions of speech and reasoning are unable to express what subjects
want to say (Driver, 2009b: 355; Hoedemaekers, 2010: 384). But what prevents this realization of a strong Russia? For one
thing, it is the perceived presence of the West as an antagonist to a strong Russia that vitiates the full constitution of the discourse.
The West is constructed as an agent that tries to curtail Russias influence and prevents its emergence as a strong state, for example
through supporting the centrifugal tendencies in the post-Soviet states: [L]ook at those botanic revolutions, or at the horticultural
revolutions or at the flower revolutions as they call them. Lemon revolution, saffron revolution. All those revolutions cannot do
without Western NGOs. The West, in fact, is at work. It is just that in the closed Soviet society we did not know how the West worked
against us. (Lecture 62/4) For this lecturer, the color revolutions mark the advance of the West in Eastern Europe and he interprets
them as a threat to a strong Russia. The ridiculing in this statement (horticultural revolution, lemon
revolution, saffron revolution) presents, once again, a radical deviation from the standard style
of reasoning that relies on facts and figures and is espoused at MGIMO. Unsettling established
organizational practices of teaching and knowledge acquisition, this deviation transcends the symbolic dimension. In circling
the lack through the use of cynicism it hints at a traumatic event that defies symbolization and
exposes a lack in subjects identification (Driver, 2009a). If Russias strength is challenged in its own backyard, who
can rightfully speak of a strong Russia? Interviews and lectures thus reveal a sense of blaming an
external culprit , an outside force for the permanent failure of a strong Russia. This
process of scapegoating, of constructing an external antagonist, attributes the impossibility of
a strong Russia to an external antagonist (see, for example, iek, 1989 on Jews as
scapegoats in Germany under national socialism). In a similar vein, in the lectures and interviews a feeling of
exclusion repeatedly surfaces that reinforces the blockage of Russias re-emergence. Rather than being taken seriously as an equal
partner, Russia is perceived to be looked down on as backward and underdeveloped. What shines through in those instances in both
lectures and interviews is a feeling of personal offence. We can do what we want: we stay unreliable partners. Here, again, [the
West] tries to create such a negative image of Russia (Aleksandr, Year 3, International Relations, 14/57). Just as Western states are
perceived to display a condescending attitude towards Russia, reluctant to grant the country equal footing in world diplomacy, so are
Westerners thought to display a condescending attitude towards Russians. Reaching, once again, beyond the realm of the symbolic,
the failure of a strong Russia also extends to students enjoyment. Consider the following anecdote by a student which she recounts
with palpable indignation and outrage: In [the imagination of] the majority of European countries we remain a country in which
people drink vodka all the time.Ziztravel a lot in Europe and it hurts me deeply whenZizhear that we drink the whole day, that we
dont know anything, that we are a very backward and poor country.Zizhave been told a story that a [Russian] girl once visited
Germany and they gave her a shampoo as a present. That is, they think that she doesnt have money to buy herself shampoo. Really
horrible stereotypes!Zizam confronted with them all the time. (Marina, Year 4, Other Department, 34/62) With iek (1993),
social groups attribute their lack of enjoyment to an external force who is thought to be enjoying
more or better . The anecdote of the shampoo gift seems to refer to exactly this: the West seems to enjoy more and better
than Russia, which, in the view of the West, needs basic lessons in consumerism. The encounter with the West suggests a lack of
wealth and consumerist distinction in Russia. The discourse of a strong Russia reneges on its promise of enjoyment: even in the field
of consumption, the West still seems to be outdoing Russia.
Elliot and Frosh 95 --- Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Melbourne AND Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Birkbeck College, University of
London,
and is Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic (Anthony and Stephen, Psychoanalysis in
Contexts, http://samples.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/9781134862306_sample_516195.pdf)//trepka
Hanna Segals essay, From Hiroshima to the Gulf War and after (Chapter 10) opens the discussion on the contribution of psychopolitics to the study of contemporary culture in this volume. After locating her analysis of the socio-political field
in the context of Freuds cultural writings, from Totem and Taboo to Civilization and its Discontents, Segal
elaborates Freuds psychoanalytic conception of the complex, contradictory relations between
self and society. She then links this to a broader discussion of post-Freudian psychoanalysis, especially as concerns the
phenomena of psychosis, splitting, and destructiveness in group functioning. In the second section of the essay, Segal uses
psychoanalytic theory to interpret and question the potential risks of nuclear conflict or
disaster in the late modern age. She contends that modern societies, with their technological and
industrial forms, generate intense anxieties as regards the wishes and terrors of peoples selfdestructive drives. Following Klein and Bion, she suggests that splitting and projection have become
institutionalized in modern nation-states and the industrialization of war. This, in turn, has led
to a global spread of psychic dehumanization (the other as enemy ) and denial (the failure
to treat the danger of nuclear war seriously ). Against this psychoanalytic backdrop, Segal
develops a series of interesting and innovative interpretations about the role of anxiety and guilt
in the reproduction of massively destructive warfare this century, and concludes by
considering the possibilities for collective disinvestment from these life threatening
institutional dangers.
Impact Terror
The myth of effective security fosters a violent project that
necessitates the creation of terrorists to be sacrificed on the altar of
society
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
The fundamental barrier to the establishment of an authentic social bond is the resistance to avowing the traumatic nature of that
bond. We use the pleasure that accompanies the bombing of Afghanistan to disguise the shared
enjoyment we experience through the traumatic experience of loss. But this pleasure
inevitably disappoints us and triggers the belief that someone has stolen the complete
pleasure that we expected to experience. This is why there can properly be no end to the War
on Terror, no end to the list of countries that the United States plans to invade to attain
complete security , no end to the number of terrorist leaders executed .31 Complete
security, like complete pleasure, is mythical . It attempts to bypass the one experience that
cannot be bypassed the foundational experience of loss and it is this experience that holds
the key to an authentic social bond. The structure of society (which is the result of the structure of
signification) is such that it blinds the subject to the possibility of shared sacrifice and the social
bond that results from it. No matter how often children hear the ideology of sharing or how many times we repeat to them
the gospel of fairness, they will inevitably believe that their sacrifice has enabled others to enjoy more than their proper share or
unfairly.
Impact Identity/Being
Surveillance devastates the gap between the Self and our
informaticized bodies the total knowledge it provides deprives one
of the ability to function as a subject, eradicating ones identity this
results in complete annihilation
Friesen et al. 12 Dr. Norm Friesen is Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices at Thompson Rivers
University. His academic credentials include a PhD in Education from the University of Alberta. Andrew Feenberg, School of
Communication, Simon Fraser University. Grace Smith, Arapiki Solutions, Inc. (Norm Friesen, Andrew Feenberg, Grace Smith, and
Shannon Lowe, 2012, Experiencing Surveillance, pp. 82-83, (Re)Inventing The Internet,
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-6091-734-9_4 // SM)
Students of surveillance have been so impressed by the ever-growing completeness of this data image that they animate it as though
it were an actual person. Identity is seen as coeval with an assemblage of traces rather than with actual presence. Thus, van der Ploeg
writes of the inability to distinguish between the body itself and body information (van der Ploeg, 2003, p. 69). Haggerty and
Ericson similarly write, the surveillance assemblage standardizes the capture of flesh/information flows of
the human body. It is not so much immediately concerned with the direct physical relocation of the human body (although
this may be an ultimate consequence), but with transforming the body into pure information, such that it can
be rendered more mobile and comparable. (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000, p. 613) There is something right about this turn
in surveillance theory, and yet it is obvious that we are still able to distinguish the real person from the traces that person leaves
behind. The trace is bound to us by its origin and often by internal signs of various sorts, so we do not quite leave it behind after all.
And yet we do not want to drag along every trace of our passage through life. We count on the erasure of most traces. It is this
erasure that enables us to face the world afresh each day and to face it with a self-image we construct at least partially anew for each
new situation in which we find ourselves. In existentialphenomenological terms, privacy and secrecy are centrally
constitutive of self and selfhood. Holding something private or secret emphasizes the difference
between self and other, and confirms the autonomy of ones interiority and individuality. Secrecy
secures, so to speak, the possibility of a second world alongside of the obvious world, as Simmel (1906, p. 462) puts it. In
contemporary conditions of surveillance and dataveillance, subjectivity itself is dependent on
maintaining the gap between our embodied selves and our informaticized bodies. It would be
intolerable for everyone to have full access to our salary, the details of our relations to our family,
our medical histories, sexual proclivities, and so on. Such knowledge would completely objectify us
and force us to live up to (or down to) the image of ourselves implied in this knowledge. Like
Sartres spy at the keyhole, himself espied, we would be evacuated of those aspects of
identity and interiority concealed within us, frozen in the objectifying gaze of the
other, and essentially deprived of our ability to function as a subject. We could no
longer choose to project an identity appropriate to our inclination and situation as everything
having to do with our identity would have been pre-empted. Truly, to be completely outed
is to be annihilated.
which is not my freedom []. I am a slave to the degree that my being is dependent at my center of
a freedom which is not mine and which is the very condition of my being (Being, p. 358). In this sense, the
gaze does not just create and invade physical spaces; there is a sense in which the gaze invades and
traps me psychologically. As a temporal-spatial object in the world, being locked at forces me to
Impact VTL
The affirmatives claims of world peace and a perfect
environment are an unattainable goal --- trying to achieve this only
increases suffering
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
While Freud expresses sympathy with the Russian Revolution and contends that it seemed like the message of a better future,
he
continually emphasizes the intractable barriers that any project of emancipatory politics would
encounter.2 About the Soviet Union in particular, he speculatively grasps the incipient horrors of Stalinism at a time when no
one in the West had any direct knowledge of them (and the worst had yet to occur). In Civilization and Its Discontents he notes,
One only wonders, with concern, what the Soviets will do after theyve wiped out their
bourgeois.3 This is a psychoanalytic insight into the nature of the emancipatory political
project that pursues the good society. For Freud, the Soviet attempt to create a better future not
only chases an impossible goal, but it also exacerbates existing human suffering. It is not
simply Freuds personal judgment or prejudice that renders this verdict and installs an incompatibility between psychoanalytic
thought and progressive political programs; this incompatibility inheres within the very psychoanalytic approach to the world. On
the face of it, this claim appears counterintuitive: one can imagine, for instance, a psychoanalytic understanding of the nature of
desire aiding political theorists in their attempts to free desire from ideology, which is the recurring difficulty of leftist politics. Th re
are even historical examples of this theoretical assistance at work. Louis Althusser develops his theory of ideological interpellation
through his acquaintance with Jacques Lacans conception of the subjects entrance into language, and Juliet Mitchell elaborates her
critique of the structural eff ects of patriarchy through her experience with Freudian conceptions of masculinity and femininity. In
each case, psychoanalysis allows the theorist to understand how a prevailing social structure operates, and this provides a
foundation for imagining a way to challenge this structure. As Mitchell claims, Psychoanalysis is not a recommendation for a
patriarchal society, but an analysis of one. If we are interested in understanding and challenging the oppression of women, we
cannot afford to neglect it.4 Precisely because she sees psychoanalysis as a useful tool for political struggle, Mitchell here dismisses
feminisms longstanding quarrel with psychoanalysis for its complicity with patriarchy.5 Underlying a position like Mitchells (which
almost all political theorists who turn to psychoanalysis embrace) is the idea that the political usefulness of psychoanalysis stems,
ironically, from its lack of a political commitment. That is to say, psychoanalysis aims to discover the unconscious truth of the
subject and the society in which the subject exists, not to change this truth. It is thus at the most basic level a descriptive rather than
a prescriptive art. Even the psychoanalytic cure itself does not portend radical change for the subject who accomplishes it. This
subject simply recognizes, in Jacques Lacans words, I am that. The cure is more a recognition of who one is rather than a
transformation of ones subjectivity. Though psychoanalysis does view this recognition as the most radical kind of revolution, the
revolution changes how the subject relates to its activity, not the activity itself. In this sense, psychoanalysis has no political axe to
grind, which allows it to devote its energies to the project of interpretation and understanding. The understanding it produces can
then form the basis for the different sorts of leftist political contestation that may appropriate it. The problem with this
appropriation is the point at which it arrests the descriptive process of psychoanalytic interpretation. Psychoanalysis does
not merely describe the structure of one culture or socioeconomic formation (such as patriarchy or capitalism); it
instead insists on a fundamental validity across cultural and socioeconomic boundaries. It also
insists on this validity across different historical epochs. It is, in short, a universal theory
concerning the relationship between the individual subject and society. 6 Of course, Freud discovered
psychoanalysis in a particular historical situation that shaped how he presented his insights and even the ideas he could formulate.
But one can separate the particular elements (like the Oedipus complex or the labeling of homosexuality as a perversion) from the
universal ones (like the antagonistic nature of society or the fact of castration as the requirement for entrance into society). The
challenge for the psychoanalytic theorist is discovering the universality in Freuds discoveries, but it is this universality that
presents an obstacle for any political project. If the antagonism between the subject and the social order is
irreducible, then the stumbling block is not just capitalism or patriarchy but human society itself. The insights of
psychoanalysis, if valid at all, apply not simply to the past and the present but also to whatever
future society we might envision or even realize. Though Freud developed the insights of psychoanalysis in a
particular historical situation, this situation enabled him to discover universal structures of subjectivity and of the social order, even
if his way of conceptualizing these structures initially reflected the constraints of his historical situation. The insights apply not only
to contemporary patriarchal society but also, pace Juliet Mitchell, to the future society that frees itself from patriarchy. This is not to
say that we will always have the same forms of neurosis and psychosis that we have now but that we will not surmount the
fundamental antagonism between the social order and the individual subject that produces these specific disorders. As a result, for
loss enacted reproduces the subjects lost object and enables the subject to enjoy this object.
Once it is obtained, the object ceases to be the object. As a result, the subject must continually
repeat the sacrificial acts that produce the object, despite the damage that such acts do to the subjects selfinterest. From the perspective of the death drive, we turn to violence not in order to gain power but in order to
produce loss, which is our only source of enjoyment. Without the lost object, life becomes bereft of any
satisfaction. The repetition of sacrifice, however, creates a life worth living, a life in which one can enjoy oneself through the lost
object. The repetition involved with the death drive is not simply repetition of any particular experience. The repetition compulsion
leads the subject to repeat specifically the experiences that have traumatized it and disturbed its stable functioning. The better
things are going for the subject, the more likely that the death drive will derail the subjects
activity. According to the theory implied by the death drive, any movement toward the good any progress will tend
to produce a reaction that will undermine it . This occurs both on the level of the individual
and on the level of society. In psychoanalytic treatment, it takes the form of a negative therapeutic reaction, an effort to
sustain ones disorder in the face of the imminence of the cure. We can also think of individuals who continue to choose romantic
relationships that fail according to a precise pattern. Politically,
Impact Warming
Psychoanalysis is the only way to end our addiction to carbon --otherwise, oil-funded climate deniers and banking claims of free
markets doom solvency
Healy 10 --- Professor, Worcester State College (Stephen, "Psychoanalysis and the Geography of the
Anthropocene: Fantasy, Oil Addiction and the Politics of Global Warming,
http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/stephenhealy/PAGhealy.pdf)//trepka
Introduction Addiction
relationship to substance or habit is mediated through language and fantasy and is thus open to
analytic intervention (Loose 2011). This chapter is an intervention into oil addiction that attempts
to understand the fantasies animating the politics of global warming : fantasies of carbon
markets solving the problem, fantasies of adapting to climate change through sustainable cities,
and fantasies that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by people with a nefarious agenda. Psychoanalytic
theory allows us to understand the underlying architecture of these disparate familiar
fantasies and their connection to addiction. Certainly they are palliative fantasies that promise an
easy fix , but more centrally, each fantasy is connected to addiction in so far the promised solution allows
the subject to avoid entering the social-bond of language, confronting and assuming responsibility for their own desires in relation to
others. Entering
into relation with others is precisely what is required to shift our relationship
with oil and to address the challenge of global warming.
Psychic distancing from global warming ensures its inevitability --the aff externalizes responsibility onto institutions motivated by
profit-seeking behavior
Healy 10 --- Professor, Worcester State College (Stephen, "Psychoanalysis and the Geography of the
Anthropocene: Fantasy, Oil Addiction and the Politics of Global Warming,
http://www.communityeconomies.org/site/assets/media/stephenhealy/PAGhealy.pdf)//trepka
Fantasies and Global Warming Case One: An Easy Way Out Recent
governance which gives license to a class of experts to solve the problem Nurturing of the promise of a more benign retrofitted
climate exhausts the horizon of our aspirations and imaginations In other words, we have to change radically but within the
contours of the existing state of the situation. (Swyngedouw 2010: 219) Swyngedouw goes onto argue that this
apocryphal populism fixates on expert lead control of carbon dioxide. CO2 becomes the fetish,
or in Lacanian parlance the objet petit a that simultaneously 9 expresses our deepest fears and
desires for change (220). Most national and international attempts to control CO2 emissions focus on
turning the emission of CO2 into a commodity that has transaction costs associated with
it, either through a carbon tax or through the creation of carbon markets (Swyngedouw 2010: 222). These markets are post-political
in the sense that they are a product of expert administration and not political debate. They obscure other solutions ,
legitimate the existing economic and political order , all while allowing manufacturers to
pass the final costs of carbon dioxide onto consumers . Writing in a similar vein Davidson (2012) notes that
this sense of emergency legitimates new sustainable approaches to urban planning. Sustainable cities are a topic of discussion
amongst planning experts legitimated and impelled forward by a sense of crisis. Visions of the sustainable city are responsible for
mediating the relationship between climate change science and public policy (Davidson 2012: 15). In developing his argument
throughout the paper Davidson points out it is easy to see these plans, particularly in an age of municipal austerity, taking the form
of a gentrified response to climate change: some places will get nice landscaping while others will be
subjected to the next Katrina. In his view they are a kind of acting out an adaptive response for
some communities to climate change while preserving, intact the larger set of practices that give
rise to ecological challenges in the first place. These would include the continued pursuit of
economic growth without necessary reductions in carbon emissions, carbon neutral scheme
standing alongside coal-fired power stations, extensive suburban expansion with policies
advocating reduced auto-transit. (Davidson 2012: 14-15) As with Swyngedouws analysis of carbon
market fetishism the sustainable city has now become the ideal of expert-led urban planning and yet idealizing one thing and
doing another requires another twist in the fantasy of the sustainable citycynical investment .
According to Davidson, it is really the psychic distance cynicism creates that allows fantasy
to function effectively. On the one hand fantasy creates a space for acting out a utopian,
gentrified sustainable city while 10 on the other hand leaving intact the usual processes that
contribute to urban and economic development, and fossil fuel consumption, as usual. All that is
required, Davidson argues, is that someone believes in sustainability sincerely for the planner to act-out sustainably, keeping at bay
the traumatizing recognition of the impotence of these half measures.
What then does psychoanalysis offer in the way of an intervention in relation to addiction? For
Loose (2011) the process is complicated by how addicts tend to relate to enjoyment and the ego ideal
they want to enjoy life too much and they expect to be able to do it perfectly. In this sense addicts are
the perfect subjects of the society of enjoyment. Freud famously observed that the point of analysis was to allow for the patient to
experience ordinary unhappiness in love and work. For the addict this is always a step down. According to Loose, Lacans attempt at
a general understanding of how patients can assume responsibility for their own desire in the context of a society of enjoyment has
particular implications for the treatment of addicts. We cannot return to a society of prohibition: just saying no doesnt work. It is
equally unacceptable to abandon the addict to the tyrannical rule of enjoyment. According to Loose, Lacans answer
lay in recognizing that the nomination of desire can represent the subject symbolically, it can
consolidate their imaginary identity, or it can position them in relation to the realto the limits
of symbolization. It was his conclusion that exposing the addict to the void of the real, real
nomination would help the addict to attenuate their belief in an idealized enjoyment,
traversing the fantasy that structures addiction and, in so doing, enter into relation with others and
the social bond that implies. What might real nomination look like for the oil addict , in a
practical and political sense ? The Transition Town movement, inspired by the popular writings of Robert Hopkins
(2008), seeks to create locally resilient post-carbon eco-municipalities that can continue to function socially and 15 economically.
Accepting both anthropogenic climate change and peak oil as reality the more than 300 transition towns seek to enroll citizens in a
democratic and participatory approach to surviving the end of the oil-age. Fittingly, Hopkins offers a guide for composing citizen
groups capable of researching and implementing an Energy Action Descent Plan in twelve steps. Similarly, solidarity economy
movements have sprung upon around the world seeking to build economies based on principles of mutual aid rather than
competition, democratic social inclusion, and non-capitalist economic development. These movements seek to build ecologically
resilient communities while injecting social-justice into collective considerations of ecological challenges. In the United States both
these social movements are in their incipient stages and yet their response to climate change seems quite a bit different than the
fetishism described by Swyngedouw or the acting out critiqued by Davidson. Solidarity NYCs recent policy statement pointed out
how super-storm Sandy underscored the need to considered economic justice in responses to ecological challenges. Their position is
that NYC needs to minister to the social and economic vulnerabilities that attend climate change now, and in making this point
many solidarity economy practitioners mobilized a cooperative civil response to the effects of Sandy well-ahead of any municipal
initiatives (Solidarity NYC: 2013). Both of these movements reject easy solutions in favor of the ordinary unhappiness that attends
a political process of building more ecologically and economically resilient communities. Rather than avoid social bond through
fantasies of quick fixes, geographic cures or denial, they have entered into the social bond by figuring out what to do when the
answers are not obvious. What the formation of this social bond seems to imply is a collective reworking of our relationship with the
society of enjoyment, one in which subjects may be in a position to be accepting of social, ecological and personal limits on
individual enjoyment. Indeed, following Roelvink and Zolkos (forthcoming) we might see these movements as
engaged in the 16 embrace of climate change, a kind of hitting bottom in our relation to oil
addiction as a precondition for moving beyond it.
Alternative
Alt - Overconformity
The alternative is a strategy of overconformity to the surveillance
state rather than trying to change or transgress the law, we must
enthusiastically open ourselves to the gaze of the state to disrupt the
panoptic regime of surveillance
Krips, 10 Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair of Humanities and Professor, Cultural
Studies, Claremont Graduate University (Henry, The Politics of the Gaze: Foucault, Lacan and
iek, Culture Unbound, Vol. 2, 98-99,
http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v2/a06/cu10v2a6.pdf)//SY
It is clear that the film theoretic account of Foucault that Copjec uses, misrepresents Foucaults
concept of the panoptic gaze, and that this misrepresentation, in turn, is responsible for her
insistence upon a gap between the Foucauldian and Lacanian concepts of the gaze. By correctly
representing Foucault, I have closed this gap. A fortiori I have changed the exclusively
conservative political valence that, in virtue of its function as a disciplinary tool that supports
the status quo, has come to be associated with the panopticon. In particular, I allow that, like the
Lacanian gaze, and depending on context, the Foucauldian gaze may have either disruptive,
Dionysian effects or conservative, Apollonian effects.5 Foucaults practices of freedom are one
way of thinking the possibility of disruptive effects. Rather than pursuing this line of thought at
an abstract level, however, I turn finally to Slavoj ieks work, in particular his concept of
overconformity, in order to show that, by reconceiving the panoptic gaze along the lines that I have
suggested, new political possibilities arise for opposing modern regimes of surveillance. Central to
ieks account of the modern state is the concept of an obscene underside of the law , namely
widespread practices petty tax evasion, speeding, walking on the grass, etc which, although
strictly speaking illicit, are unofficially tolerated. This network of practices is sustained thanks to
what iek calls an ideological phantasy that keeps them an open secret everyone knows
about and participates in them in private, but no one mentions them, let alone publicly flaunts
participating in them. Such practices constitute points of failure of the law in so far as they fall in
an indeterminate zone in relation to legal categories: on the one hand, in so far as they are
tolerated they are not straightforwardly illegal, but, on the other hand, neither are they legal; and
as such, constitute a fundamental illegality at the heart of the legal system. ieks point is that,
rather than undermining the law, the obscene underside of the law sustains it the law is tol-erated
because of the little secret pleasures that people derive from its obscene underside. In Lacanian
terms, we may say that the obscene underside of the law is the set of necessary but repressed points
of failure of the legal system in short, it is the symptom of the legal system. In particular, in the
context of a legal state apparatus that is held in place by a panoptic system of surveillance, the
obscene underside of the law is a liminal zone of high anxiety that, like the Emperors body under
his new clothes, is obscenely visible to each of his subjects in the privacy of their own visual field,
yet must be shrouded in a cloak of invisibility in the public realm. This is the site of the gaze. How
are we to oppose such a system, which seemingly coexists with, indeed depends upon its own
systematic transgression? According to iek, not by acts of resistance, since the system is readily
able to accommodate, indeed depends upon such acts.6 Instead, iek suggests opposition
through acts of overconformity, which, rather than protesting let alone breaking the law, insist
upon it to the letter, even when ideological common sense suggests otherwise. In particular, this
means a refusal to turn a blind eye from manifestations of laws obscene underside. As iek puts
it: Sometimes, at least the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of Law on
behalf of the underlying fantasies, but to stick to this letter against the fantasy which sustains it.Is
not an exemplary case of such subversion-through-identification provided by Jaroslav Hseks
The Good Soldier Schweik, the novel whose hero wreaks total havoc by simply executing the
orders of his superiors in an overzealous and all-too-literal way (iek 1997: 30, 22, 31). What
constitutes such strategies of overconformity in the context of a modern panoptic regime of
surveillance? Answer: openly/publicly sticking to the letter of the law by refusing the cloak of
invisibility that shrouds the laws points of failure; in other words, by refusing to indulge what
iek calls the ideological fantasy , orchestrating a direct encounter with the objet a qua gaze.
To put it in ieks terms, it is a matter of actively endorsing the passive confrontation with the
objet a, bypassing the intermediate role of the screen of fantasy (iek 1997: 31). To be specific, it
is matter of not merely saying but also acting out publicly what everyone knows in private but
dares not say: not merely announcing in public that the Emperor is naked, but arresting him for
indecent exposure. By Lacanianizing Foucault, as I have done here, we are able to understand
the logic behind such heterodox strategies for opposing modern regimes of surveillance.
cultural norms (Jimroglou, 2001: 291). After keeping up the camera for a while Jenni received
threats more precisely, was demanded to pose at particular time for one of her net-admirers
(see Burgin, 2002). In one sense her show was a way of creating a subject capable of resisting
the traditional readings of female embodiment, however, at the same time it would seem to
offer the perfect heterosexual male fantasy (Jimroglou, 2001: 287). The harassment she faced
was a form of cyberstalking (Adam, 2001). She closed the camera for a while, but then
eventually put it back again. When she was asked why she chose to reinstall the camera she replied
I felt lonely without the camera (quoted in Burgin, 2002: 230). I find this statement striking. It
places the camera into a position of a companion, or perhaps a pet. Or perhaps a part of Jenni
herself? The camera can be interpreted as a component in an integration of body and technology,
an object embedded in a cyborg subjectivity (Haraway, 1997) where the corporeal and the
mechanic fuse into each other forming an entirety. The life of Jennifer Ringley has been analysed in
a psychoanalytical context, the image being seen as a window, a mirror, a fetish, a cinema etc. (e.g.
Jimroglou, 2001; Burgin, 2002; Zizek, 2002). My aim here is not to provide another
psychoanalytical explanation. Rather, I use her as an example of what is happening in the field
of vision. She is a particular case, indeed, but she is a pioneer rather than an exception. Since the
mid 1990s home webcams have become more and more popular and spread all around the
world. I shall apply to this phenomenon some of the concepts that are well known in the video
surveillance discussion: power, control, and agency. Regime of order / regime of shame Jennis
story made me think about something that could be called empowering exhibitionism. With the
cameras Jenni and others like her discuss with two fundamental regimes through which power
operates. I shall call these the regime of order and the regime of shame. These can be understood
as two common ways of thinking how visibility and transparency connote with power and control.
By the regime of order, I mean the ways in which society regulates individuals. Gathering
knowledge is seen as a form of maintaining control, a look equates with a judgmental gaze
(Burgin, 2002: 235). Everyday life is regulated, not only potential criminal acts. The regime of
order was perhaps most clearly seen taking place in the former socialist countries but it also has
its role in the capitalist world. A telling example of this is what Presdee (2000) has called the
criminalisation of culture. By the regime of shame I mean individuals internalisation of control,
in the Foucauldian sense. The idea of having or doing something that cannot be shown. The
basic need for privacy. The regime of shame keeps people meek and obedient as efficiently as any
control coming from outside. Rejecting it, is unacceptable and immodest. Further, these controls
coming from outside and from inside are most effective when functioning together: the
combination of fear and shame ensures submissiveness. Indeed, home webcams challenge these
both. By revealing their private intimate lives individuals refuse to take part in these two
regimes. If this is exhibitionism that succeeds in overcoming these two, then exhibitionism can
truly work as a form of empowerment. The liberation from shame and from the need to hide leads
to empowerment. Conceptually, when you show everything you become free: no one can
capture you any more, since there is nothing left to capture. These voluntary shows have
something to do with power, but it is difficult to grasp what exactly. Home webcams seem to be
opening up radically new subjectivities, which are yet to be understood (cf. Featherstone and
Burrows, 1995). What Jimroglou (2001: 289) argues in interpreting JenniCAM is that it
challenges traditional definitions of the subject and poses a unique way to conceive of
subjectivity and the agency and power that is implied therein. It is difficult to place home
webcams into the ordinary conceptualisation of power. While a subject and an object are fused,
as happens when the object of a camera simultaneously oversees her own viewing and, hence,
is refuting and resisting the traditional representations of objectification (Jimroglou, 2001:
292), the essence of power seems to fade away. The differentiation between dominating power
and resisting power might be helpful here. Sharp and others (2000: 2) define dominating power
as [...] that power which attempts to control and coerce others, impose its will upon others, or
manipulate the consent of others. In contrast they define resisting power as [...] that power
which attempts to set up situations, groupings or actions which resist the impositions of
dominating power that can involve very small, subtle and some might say trivial moments [...]
(Sharp et al., 2000: 3). This latter definition applies quite well to the lives lived with home
webcams. Home webcams perhaps do not fit into the oldfashioned understanding of resistance,
but resistance, indeed, may take new unexpected forms, being pluralised rather than homogenous,
concealed rather than exposed. Webcams aiming at increasing visibility rather than hiding from
surveillance, can be interpreted as a form of confrontation, surveillance turned into spectacle a
form of resistance.
attempting to do with Lacanian theory to read Hegel played out on a stage populated with Marxist categories, theory that was forged in and against a disintegrating regime that
Overidentification here takes the system at its word and takes the bizarre
contradictory demands of the authorities more seriously than the system takes itself, so seriously
that it cannot bear that knowing participation but cannot refuse it. This is not merely a parody of totalitarianism but
functions as if it were an obsessive identification with it, playing out exactly what a system of power
demands of its supporters in its overt messages but what that system also needs to distance itself
from, as part of its ameliorative attempts to buffer itself from criticism and to contain the criticism
it must permit. For example, the New Collectivism design group submitted a poster for Yugoslavias Youth Day in 1987, the year when it was Slovenias turn to come
itself claimed allegiance to Marxism.
up with the main publicity for an event that also marked Titos birthday. The panel of judges dutifully praised the design a muscular figure leaning forward holding a torch out
into the foreground as embodying the spirit of Yugoslav socialist youth. It transpired that the original design was from 1936 German national socialist propaganda. The
resulting scandal raised questions about symbolic formations operating through the ideological state apparatuses, and that Youth Day turned out to be the last.
Control is
never completely hegemonic. There is always an element of resistance. Surveillance
can be turned to counter-surveillance, to a weapon for those who are oppressed. As Surveillance
Camera Players a theatre group from New York presenting for surveillance cameras show, it is possible to play
with surveillance cameras; to make opposing and critical comments (Surveillance Camera Players, 2000).
Webcams aiming at increasing visibility rather than hiding from the gazes can also be interpreted as
a form of resistance. Lyon (2001) has pointed out, there is not much an individual could do to resist the
multiple forms of surveillance. However, resistance may also take a form of a choreographed
demonstration of cooperation (Faith, 1994: 39). It is not homogenous but pluralized. What we are facing
right now is the cam era an era of endless representations. Arguably, we have arrived at the point where we
live in a society that prefers the sign to the thing, the image to the fact (Weibel, 2002: 219). There is
no way to escape it; we will just have to try to understand it. Eventually, it may be so that
the multiplied representations work as a more effective form of resistance than
the efforts to avoid the gaze(s).
Urban space will always remain less knowable and, thus, less controllable than the restricted panoptic space.
robotics to restore the senses fully. To begin with, an initial consequence of the allegedly all-seeing
surveillance vision of the drones would be to dispel the deceitful secrecy surrounding
counterterrorism . Could they free us from such false pretenses as Saddam Hussein having WMDs?
Could they perhaps help us uncover plots such as the one previous to 9/11? Where counterterrorism
has gone stray is in its inability to rightly interpret terrorist threats and its ignorance of terrorist
subjectivities. There would be no greater antidote to counterterrorist fantasies than full electronic
knowledge of the actual weapons, movements, and organizational links of the terrorists. Robots,
their salesmen tell us, have an undervalued advantage that derives precisely from the fact that they
dont carry all our wonderful human baggage (Singer, p. 65). Drones do not have hangovers or
heartbreaks; in particular they do not commit suicide. If anything, what you can say about terrorists is
that, in their inhumanity, they carry far too much human baggage they carry all the blindness of a man
in love, the follies of a fanatic, the madness of a suicide. From Robespierre to bin Laden, you could
argue that humanity itself is at the root of all terrorism thinking and action. Too frequently, the only
exit terrorists can find to get rid of the burden of their human bodies plagued by unsolvable
impasses, by the paradoxes of politics and ethics, by love and hatred is by killing others and
themselves.
If we accept the contradictory conclusion that some idea of progress inheres in every system of
thought and that the psychoanalytic concept of the death drive shows the impossibility of progress,
this leaves psychoanalytic thought and especially a psychoanalytic political project on difficult ground. It
might explain the seemingly absolute pessimism of the later Freud, Freud after 1920, who appears to have abandoned his belief in
the efficaciousness of the psychoanalytic cure. One of his final essays, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, written in 1937 (just
two years before his death), lays bare Freuds doubts concerning our ability to break from the power of repetition. Here, Freud
conceives of subjects refusal to abandon castration anxiety and penis envy as emblematic of the intractability of repetition. He
notes: At no other point in ones analytic work does one suffer more from an oppressive feeling that all ones repeated efforts have
been in vain, and from a suspicion that one has been preaching to the winds, than when one is trying to persuade a woman to
abandon her wish for a penis on the ground of its being unrealizable or when one is seeking to convince a man that a passive attitude
to men does not always signify castration and that it is indispensable in many relationships in life.31 That is, the repetition
that centers around traumatic loss acts as a barrier that we cannot progress beyond. In light of this
barrier, the formulation of a psychoanalytically informed political project demands that we dissociate
politics from progress as it is usually conceived . We cannot escape progress, and yet the traditional
conception of progress always runs aground. This paradox must become the foundation of any
authentic psychoanalytic politics. It demands that rather than trying to progress toward
overcoming the barrier that separates us from the good society, we begin to view identification with
the barrier as the paradoxical aim of progress. The barrier to the good society the social
symptom is at once the obstacle over which we continually stumble and the source of our
enjoyment.32 The typical politics of the good aims at a future not inhibited by a limit that constrains
the present. This future can take the form of a truly representative democracy, a socialist utopia, a
society with a fair distribution of power and wealth, or even a fascist order that would expel those
who embody the limit. But the good remains out of reach despite the various efforts to reach it. The
limit separating us from the good society is the very thing that constitutes the good society as such .
Overcoming the limit shatters the idea of the good in the act of achieving it. In place of this pursuit,
a psychoanalytic politics insists on identification with the limit rather than attempting to move
beyond or eliminate it. If there is a conception of progress in this type of politics, it is progress toward the obstacle
that bars us from the good rather than toward the good itself . Identification with the limit involves
an embrace of the repetition of the drive because it is the obstacle or limit that is the point to which
the drive returns. No one can be the perfect subject of the drive because the drive is what
undermines all perfection. But it is nonetheless possible to change ones experience within it. The
fundamental wager of psychoanalysis a wager that renders the idea of a psychoanalytic political project thinkable is that
repetition undergoes a radical transformation when one adopts a different attitude toward it . We
may be condemned to repeat, but we arent condemned to repeat the same position relative to our
repetition. By embracing repetition through identification with the obstacle to progress rather than
trying to achieve the good by overcoming this obstacle, the subject or the social order changes its very
nature. Instead of being the burden that one seeks to escape, repetition becomes the essence of ones
being and the mode through which one attains satisfaction. Conceiving politics in terms of the
embrace of repetition rather than the construction of a good society takes the movement that
derails traditional political projects and reverses its valence. This idea of politics lacks the
hopefulness that Marxism, for instance, can provide for overcoming antagonism and loss. With it, we
lose not just a utopian ideal but the idea of an alternative future altogether the idea of a future no longer
beset by intransigent limits and this idea undoubtedly mobilizes much political energy.33 What we gain, however,
is a political form that addresses the way that subjects structure their enjoyment . It
is by abandoning the terrain of the good and adopting the death drive as its guiding principle that
emancipatory politics can pose a genuine alternative to the dominance of global capitalism rather
than incidentally creating new avenues for its expansion and development. The death drive is the
revolutionary contribution that psychoanalysis makes to political thought. But since it is a concept relatively
foreign to political thought, I will turn to various examples from history, literature, and film in order to concretize what Freud means
by the death drive and illustrate just what a politics of the death drive might look like. The chapters that follow trace the implications
of the death drive for thinking about the subject as a political entity and for conceiving the political structure of society. Part 1
focuses on the individual subject, beginning with an explanation of how the death drive shapes this subjectivity. The various
chapters in part 1 trace the implications of the death drive for understanding how the subject enjoys, how the drive relates to social
class, how the drive impacts the subject as an ethical being, and how the subject becomes politicized. The discussion of the impact of
the death drive on the individual subject serves as a foundation for articulating its impact on society, which part 2 of the book
addresses, beginning with the impact of the death drive on the constitution of society. Part 2 then examines how the conception of
the death drive helps in navigating a path through todays major political problems: the inefficacity of consciousness raising, the
seductive power of fantasy, the growing danger of biological reductionism and fundamentalism, the lure of religious belief, and the
failure of attempts to lift repression. The two parts of the book do not attempt to sketch a political goal to be attained for the subject
or for society but instead to recognize the structures that already exist and silently inform both. The wager of what follows is that
the revelation of the death drive and its reach into the subject and the social order can be the
foundation for reconceiving freedom. The recognition of the death drive as foundational for
subjectivity is what occurs with the psychoanalytic cure. Through this cure, the subject abandons the
belief in the possibility of finding a solution to the problem of subjectivity. The loss for which one
seeks restitution becomes a constitutive loss and becomes visible as the key to ones enjoyment
rather than a barrier to it. A political project derived from psychoanalytic thought would work to
broaden this cure by bringing it outside the clinic and enacting on society itself . The point is not, of course,
that everyone would undergo psychoanalysis but that psychoanalytic theory would function as a political theory.
Politically, the importance of psychoanalysis is theoretical rather than practical. Politically, it doesnt matter whether
people undergo psychoanalytic therapy or not. This theory would inaugurate political change by insisting not on the
possibility of healing and thereby attaining the ultimate pleasure but on the indissoluble link between our enjoyment and loss. We
become free to enjoy only when we have recognized the intractable nature of loss. Though
psychoanalytic thought insists on our freedom to enjoy, it understands freedom in a
counterintuitive way. It is through the death drive that the subject attains its freedom. The loss that
founds this drive frees the subject from its dependence on its social environment, and the repetition
of the initial loss sustains this freedom. By embracing the inescapability of traumatic loss, one
embraces ones freedom, and any political project genuinely concerned with freedom must orient
itself around loss. Rather than looking to the possibility of overcoming loss, our political projects
must work to remain faithful to it and enhance our contact with it. Only in this way does politics
have the opportunity to carve out a space for the freedom to enjoy rather than restricting it under
the banner of the good. [CONTINUES ON PAGE 283}There is no path leading from the death drive to utopia. The death
drive undermines every attempt to construct a utopia; it is the enemy of the good society . It is thus not
surprising that political thought from Plato onward has largely ignored this psychic force of repetition and negation. But this does
not mean that psychoanalytic thought concerning the death drive has only a negative value for political theorizing. It is possible
to conceive of a positive politics of the death drive . The previous chapters have attempted to lay out the political
implications of the death drive, and, on this basis, we can sketch what a society founded on a recognition of the
death drive might look like. Such a recognition would not involve a radical transformation of society: in one sense, it would
leave everything as it is. In contemporary social arrangements, the death drive subverts progress with
repetition and leads to the widespread sacrifice of self-interest for the enjoyment of the sacrifice
itself. This structure is impervious to change and to all attempts at amelioration. But in another
sense, the recognition of the death drive would change everything. Recognizing the centrality of the
death drive would not eliminate the proclivity to sacrifice for the sake of enjoyment, but it would
change our relationship to this sacrifice. Rather than being done for the sake of an ultimate
enjoyment to be achieved in the future, it would be done for its own sake. The fundamental problem
with the effort to escape the death drive and pursue the good is that it leaves us unable to locate
where our enjoyment lies. By positing a future where we will attain the ultimate enjoyment (either
through the purchase of the perfect commodity or through a transcendent romantic union or through the attainment of some
heavenly paradise), we replace the partial enjoyment of the death drive with the image of a complete
enjoyment to come. There is no question of fully enjoying our submission to the death drive. We will
always remain alienated from our mode of enjoying. As Adrian Johnston rightly points out, Transgressively
overcoming the impediments of the drives doesnt enable one to simply enjoy enjoyment.1 But we can transform our
relationship to the impediments that block the full realization of our drive. We can see the
impediments as the internal product of the death drive rather than as an external limit. The
enjoyment that the death drive produces also achieves its infinitude through self-limitation. It
revolves around a lost object that exists only insofar as it is lost, and it relates to this object as the
vehicle for the infinite unfurling of its movement. The lost object operates as the self-limitation of
the death drive through which the drive produces an infinite enjoyment. Rather than acting as a mark of the
drives finitude, the limitation that the lost object introduces provides access to infinity. A society founded on a
recognition of the death drive would be one that viewed its limitations as the source of its infinite
enjoyment rather than an obstacle to that enjoyment. To take the clearest and most traumatic example in recent
history, the recognition of the death drive in 1930s Germany would have conceived the figure of the Jew not as the barrier to the
ultimate enjoyment that must therefore be eliminated but as the internal limit through which German society attained its
enjoyment. As numerous theorists have said, the appeal of Nazism lay in its ability to mobilize the enjoyment of the average German
through pointing out a threat to that enjoyment. The average German under Nazism could enjoy the figure of the Jew as it appeared
in the form of an obstacle, but it is possible to recognize the obstacle not as an external limit but as an internal one. In this way, the
figure of the Jew would become merely a figure for the average German rather than a position embodied by actual Jews. Closer to
home, one would recognize the terrorist as a figure representing the internal limit of global capitalist
society. Far from serving as an obstacle to the ultimate enjoyment in that society, the terrorist
provides a barrier where none otherwise exists and thereby serves as the vehicle through which
capitalist society attains its enjoyment. The absence of explicit limitations within contemporary
global capitalism necessitates such a figure: if terrorists did not exist, global capitalist society would
have to invent them. But recognizing the terrorist as the internal limit of global capitalist society
would mean the end of terrorism. This recognition would transform the global landscape and
deprive would-be terrorists of the libidinal space within which to act. Though some people may
continue to blow up buildings, they would cease to be terrorists in the way that we now understand
the term. A self-limiting society would still have real battles to fight. There would remain a need for
this society to defend itself against external threats and against the cruelty of the natural universe.
Perhaps it would require nuclear weapons in space to defend against comets or meteors that would
threaten to wipe out human life on the planet. But it would cease positing the ultimate enjoyment in
vanquishing an external threat or surpassing a natural limit. The external limit would no longer
stand in for a repressed internal one. Such a society would instead enjoy its own internal limitations
and merely address external limits as they came up. Psychoanalytic theory never preaches, and it cannot help us to
construct a better society. But it can help us to subtract the illusion of the good from our own society. By depriving us of this illusion,
it has the ability to transform our thinking about politics. With the assistance of psychoanalytic thought, we might reconceive politics
in a direction completely opposed to that articulated by Aristotle, to which I alluded in the introduction. In the Politics, Aristotle
asserts: Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for everyone
always acts in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community,
which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest
good.3 Though later political thinkers have obviously departed from Aristotle concerning the question of the content of the good
society, few have thought of politics in terms opposed to the good. This is what psychoanalytic thought introduces. If we act on
the basis of enjoyment rather than the good, this does not mean that we can simply construct a
society that privileges enjoyment in an overt way. An open society with no restrictions on sexual
activity, drug use, food consumption, or play in general would not be a more enjoyable one than our
own. That is the sure path to impoverishing our ability to enjoy , as the aftermath of the 1960s has made
painfully clear. One must arrive at enjoyment indirectly. A society centered around the death drive
would not be a better society, nor would it entail less suffering. Rather than continually sacrificing
for the sake of the good, we would sacrifice the good for the sake of enjoyment. A society centered
around the death drive would allow us to recognize that we enjoy the lost object only insofar as it
remains lost.
RHIZOMATICK 2012 (I am a Belgian philosophy student from Leuven university, A POLITICS OF THE DEATH
DRIVE, Sep 22, http://rhizomatick.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/a-politics-of-the-death-drive/)
Suffering has in this context a double meaning: on the one hand there is the suffering of the trauma,
but on the other hand there is the suffering of repression . One could even draw a link with
Benjamins distinction between law-enforcing violence and divine violence. The death drive is the
negation of this latter kind of suffering but repeats the first. It is this first characteristic, its defiance
of repressive suffering, that makes Adorno say that every view of utopia in the present age
resembles death (Beckett is his example). Utopian thinking wants to free the non-identical, that which
doesnt conform to our contexts of meaning, from identification and repression. It is in this sense that we
can speak of a politics of the death drive. According to Adorno, the death drive is even an inescapable
political fate. Our contexts of meaning dialectically turn into their opposite and become the
violence of a second nature (i.e. a culture that we are so used to that we feel it as if it was our nature).
The trauma of nature is repeated in the genocides of the 20th century, the oppression in the
culture industry, etc. Freud knew that very well when he said that the ego tries to protect itself from
the death drive ( and also from the force of nature) not only by repressing it, but also by deflecting
its violence unto others. The agression of the fascist, the racist or the speciesist is the deflected
agression of the death drive against the ego. For the fascist actually envies the image of the Jew as the
non-person of a lower nature. The fascist himself wants to become a piece of nature.
of love, namely, the state might extend its love by recognizing the dangerousness of the one who makes the
demand. At the level the demands rhetorical function, dangerousness is metonymically connected with the
idea that average citizens can effect change in the prevailing order, or that they
might be recognized as agents who, in the instance of the list of globalophobic leaders, can
command the Mexican state to reaffirm their agency by recognizing their dangerousness . The
rhetorical structure of danger implies the continuing existence of the state or governing
apparatuss interests, and these interests become a nodal point at which the hysterical demand is
discharged. This structure generates enjoyment of the existence of oppressive state policies as a
point for the articulation of identity. The addiction to the state and the demands for the states
love is also bound up with a fundamental dependency on the oppression of the state:
otherwise the identity would collapse. Such demands constitute a reaffirmation of a hysterical
subject position: they reaffirm not only the subjects marginality in the global system but the
danger that protestors present to the global system. There are three practical implications for
this formation. First, for the hysteric the simple discharge of the demand is both the beginning
and satisfaction of the political project. Although there is always a nascent political potential in performance, in this
case the performance of demand comes to fully eclipse the desires that animate content of the demand. Second, demand
allows institutions that stand in for the global order to dictate the direction of politics . This is
not to say that engaging such institutions is a bad thing; rather, it is to say that when antagonistic engagement with certain
institutions is read as the end point of politics, the field of political options is relatively constrained. Demands to be
toward institutional politics. Grossberg has identified a tendency in left politics to retreat from the politics of policy and public
debate.45 Although Grossberg identifies the problem as a specific coordination of theory and its relation to left politics, perhaps a
hysterical commitment to marginality informs the impulse in some sectors to eschew engagements with institutions and
institutional debate. An addiction to the states refusal often makes the perfect the enemy of the good,
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
From Enjoyment to Pleasure Nowhere
society . Even as they were horrified by the image of the towers burning and then falling, most Americans, in the strict
psychoanalytic sense of the term, enjoyed the attacks insofar as the attacks allowed them to experience once again their social bond
with great intensity. This is a bond that one suffers, just as one suffers from a terrorist attack. Even though it followed from an
attack, this bond was not one formed through the male logic of friend/enemy, which is why the headline in Le Monde on September
12, 2001, could proclaim, Nous sommes tous Amricains. 27 The bond formed around the September 11 attacks
was not initially a bond of exclusivity with a clear outside and inside. Any subject willing to
accede to the experience of loss could become a part of American society at that moment. The not-all of
the social bond occurs through the experience of loss, but the recognition of this type of bond is unbearable. One enjoys it without
deriving any pleasure from it. It is, in fact, painful. Not only is it painful, but it also entails complete humiliation. The society
experiences the shame of being a victim and enduring trauma the shame of enjoyment itself.
In order to disguise this shameful enjoyment, the United States quickly turned to an assertion
of power that would carry with it the promise of a restored wholeness the recovery of
an imaginary perfect security. The attack on Afghanistan brought pleasure to most members of
American society. This pleasure had the function of rendering the enjoyment that emerged
through traumatic loss bearable, but it could not fulfill its inherent promise. Enjoyment satisfi es,
and pleasure always disappoints. Th e disappointing nature of the attack on Afghanistan paved the way to
the subsequent attack on Iraq in a further attempt to find an actual pleasure equal to
what we anticipated. In terms of American society, these foreign wars serve as alibis for the enjoyment of
the traumatic attacks themselves. Because we seek respite from the loss that binds us, we flee from the social bond
despite our purported desire for it. The authentic social bond exists only in the shared experience of loss that is, only according to
the female logic of not-having. But the attack on Iraq also illustrates the inescapability of the enjoyment attached to loss. The Iraq
War clearly follows from the male logic of having and aims at producing the pleasure resulting from possession: the United
States would conquer a recalcitrant dictator and obtain a firm ally in a globally significant region. This is
both the stated justification for the war and the explanation offered by critics who see it as an exercise in
American imperialism . For both the perpetuators of the war and its critics, the war concerns having, despite the
different inflections they give this idea. But the result of the war is the failure of having and the renewed experience of loss. The
pursuit of the pleasure involved in having returns American society to the traumatic loss involved in the September 11 attacks. Of
course, no one fights wars with the express intention of losing them, but every war brings with it sacrifice and loss,
which is ultimately the substance of the social bond and the source of our ability to enjoy that
bond. The pursuit of the pleasure of having leads to the loss that inevitably accompanies this
pursuit. Imperial powers do not att empt to stretch their military and economic reach to the point that it breaks because of an
inescapable will to power or a biological urge for infi nite expansion. Th e conquering drive of empires has its roots in the search for
what no amount of imperial possession can provide the enjoyment of the experience of loss. Empires conquer increasing
quantities of territory in order to discover a territory that they cant conquer. In this same way, the Afghanistan War disappointed
the American leadership because it didnt provide even the possibility for loss. Donald Rumsfelds lament that the
country didnt have any targets to bomb points in this direction. Iraq, in contrast, promised a
possible defeat, and if it hadnt, Syria or Iran would surely have come within the sights of the
Bush administration. Whatever the proffered justification or hidden motivation ,
powerful societies ultimately go to war in order to reenact a constitutive loss and
facilitate the enjoyment that this loss entails.28 This is the case not just with war but with
any positive project that a social order takes up. Building a monument like the Eiffel Tower provided French society
with a possession that allows for collective identification. But the work involved with the building involved a great sacrifice in time
and in money. When we think of the Eiffel Tower, we rarely think of the sacrifice required for its construction; instead, we think of
the sense of identity that it offers. It provides a positive point of identif cation for France itself as a nation, and French subjects can
find pleasure through this identification. Nonetheless, the enjoyment of the Eiffel Tower, in contrast to the pleasure that it offers,
stems from the sacrifice required to construct it. Every finished societal product such as victory in Iraq, the beauty of the Eiff el
Tower, smooth roads on which to drive promises pleasure, but this pleasure primarily supplies an alibi for the enjoyment that the
sacrifices on the way to the product produce. These sacrifices allow us to experience the social bond by
repeating the act of sacrifice through which each subject became a member of the social order. It
is not so much that the pursuit of pleasure backfires (though it does) but that it is never done
simply for its own sake. We embark on social projects not in spite of what they will cost us
but because of what they will cost us.29
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
There is no path leading from the death drive to utopia. The
we can sketch
what a society founded on a recognition of the death drive might look like . Such a recognition would not
involve a radical transformation of society: in one sense, it would leave everything as it is. In contemporary social
arrangements, the death drive subverts progress with repetition and leads to the widespread
sacrifice of self-interest for the enjoyment of the sacrifice itself. This structure is impervious to change and to
all attempts at amelioration. But in another sense, the recognition of the death drive would change everything.
Recognizing the centrality of the death drive would not eliminate the proclivity to sacrifice for
the sake of enjoyment, but it would change our relationship to this sacrifice. Rather than being
done for the sake of an ultimate enjoyment to be achieved in the future, it would be done for
its own sake. The fundamental problem with the effort to escape the death drive and pursue the good is that it leaves us
previous chapters have attempted to lay out the political implications of the death drive, and, on this basis,
unable to locate where our enjoyment lies. By positing a future where we will attain the ultimate enjoyment (either through the
purchase of the perfect commodity or through a transcendent romantic union or through the attainment of some heavenly paradise),
we replace the partial enjoyment of the death drive with the image of a complete enjoyment to come. There is no question of fully
enjoying our submission to the death drive. We will always remain alienated from our mode of enjoying. As Adrian Johnston rightly
points out, Transgressively overcoming the impediments of the drives doesnt enable one to simply enjoy enjoyment.1 But we
can transform our relationship to the impediments that block the full realization of our drive. We
can see the impediments as the internal product of the death drive rather than as an external limit. The enjoyment that the
death drive provides, in contrast to the form of enjoyment proffered by capitalism, religion, and utopian
politics, is at once infinite and limited. This oxymoronic form of enjoyment operates in the way that the concept does
in Hegels Logic. The concept attains its infinitude not through endless progress toward a point that
always remains beyond and out of reach but through including the beyond as a beyond
within itself. As Hegel puts it, The universality of the concept is the achieved beyond, whereas that bad infinity remains
afflicted with a beyond which is unattainable but remains a mere progression to infinity.2 That is to say, the concept
transforms an external limit into an internal one and thereby becomes both infinite and limited .
The infinitude of the concept is nothing but the concepts own self-limitation. The enjoyment
that the death drive produces also achieves its infinitude through self-limitation. It revolves around a
lost object that exists only insofar as it is lost, and it relates to this object as the vehicle for the infinite unfurling of its movement.
The lost object operates as the self-limitation of the death drive through which the drive
produces an infinite enjoyment. Rather than acting as a mark of the drives finitude, the limitation that the lost object
introduces provides access to infinity. A society founded on a recognition of the death drive would be one that
view ed its limitations as the source of its infinite enjoyment rather than an obstacle to
that enjoyment. To take the clearest and most traumatic example in recent history, the recognition of the death
drive in 1930s Germany would have conceived the figure of the Jew not as the barrier to the
ultimate enjoyment that must therefore be eliminated but as the internal limi t through
which German society attained its enjoyment. As numerous theorists have said, the appeal of Nazism lay
in its ability to mobilize the enjoyment of the average German through pointing out a threat
to that enjoyment. The average German under Nazism could enjoy the figure of the Jew as it
appeared in the form of an obstacle, but it is possible to recognize the obstacle not as an external
limit but as an internal one. In this way, the figure of the Jew would become merely a figure for
the average German rather than a position embodied by actual Jews. Closer to home, one
would recognize the terrorist as a figure representing the internal limit of global capitalist
society. Far from serving as an obstacle to the ultimate enjoyment in that society, the terrorist provides a barrier
where none otherwise exists and thereby serves as the vehicle through which capitalist society
attains its enjoyment . The absence of explicit limitations within contemporary global capitalism necessitates such a
figure: if terrorists did not exist, global capitalist society would have to invent them. But
recognizing the terrorist as the internal limit of global capitalist society would mean the end
of terrorism. This recognition would transform the global landscape and deprive would-be
terrorists of the libidinal space within which to act. Though some people may continue to blow up buildings,
they would cease to be terrorists in the way that we now understand the term. A self-limiting society would still have real
batt les to fight. There would remain a need for this society to defend itself against external threats and against the cruelty of the
natural universe. Perhaps it would require nuclear weapons in space to defend against comets or meteors that would threaten to
wipe out human life on the planet. But it would
enjoyment rather than the good , this does not mean that we can simply construct a society
that privileges enjoyment in an overt way. An open society with no restrictions on sexual activity, drug use, food
consumption, or play in general would not be a more enjoyable one than our own. That is the sure path to impoverishing our ability
to enjoy, as the aftermath of the 1960s has made painfully clear. One
our world includes the limitations imposed by the traceability of the observed, objective, and
extended body, but also that these limitations are themselves qualified by their interpretable and
manipulable character. This holds out a certain promise in the face of the proliferating powers of
surveillance and dataveillance. Various stratagems of resistance are still possible. As Yar describes,
these can range from the concerted efforts of groups such as the CCTV players to the strategies of
those living (to a greater or lesser extent) off the grid, as well as to those constructing and
manipulating identities as hackers and thieves. Finally, as the events in Seattle in 1999 (and in other times
and places since) show, the sheer, mobile, physical mass of political protests still poses a
challenge to authority that is not easily controlled . As these examples suggest, it is not the self
and the body in isolation that present the greatest potential for resistance, but rather the aggregate
effect of combined corporeal presence, working together in coordinated action. To return to our earlier
example, Internet social activists such as those who use Facebook to organise activism, hacktivism or slacktivism, are
vulnerable to being shut off since they do not own the means of production of their
communication (the country-registered Internet itself). This vulnerability, as well as other limitations in communication
freedom, such as the ability of a government to also concoct profiles for the purposes of entrapment, was evident in the Arab
Spring (2011) and according to many is an omnipresent condition for citizens of China (Zhang and Fleming, 2005). However, as the
bank machine description indicated, i t is through tacitly coordinated action in the spaces of awareness of the self and other which
Michel Foucault called the microphysics of power rather than in his broader characterisation of dominant eras through
genealogies that significant aspects of surveillance and the enforcement of social norms take place (Foucault, 1980, 1996; see also
Paras, 2006). It follows that it is also in
suggests that we avoid viewing emotion as a private matter , as individual belonging or psychological
disposition, or, indeed, as something that simply comes from within and then moves outward towards
others. By contrast, we need to appreciate how emotions create the very effect of the surfaces or boundaries of
bodies and worlds (in press, p. 1) and do so by means of certain sticky associations, or bindings. Bindings of this
sort of love, and just as powerfully, of hate - manage crucial ideological alignments: of certain subjects with preferential
rights, of imagined nation with land, and so on. Positive alignments of this sort have a role to play a role which is dynamically
related to and counterbalanced by negative attachments to particular others in bringing imagined subjects together through the
capitalization of the signifier white (p. 2). Although I am tempted to inject an element of discontinuity here this signifier to my
mind is perhaps better approached as a tacit or sliding signifier, the silent denominator or force- field of investments I have
mentioned above I agree wholeheartedly with Ahmeds analysis: The ordinary white subject she suggests, is a
fantasy that comes into being through the mobilization of hate, as a passionate attachment tied
closely to love (p. 3). Moreover: It is the love of White, or those that are recognizable as White, which
supposedly explains this shared communal visceral response of hate. Together we hate [and love]
and this hate [and love] is what makes us together (p. 2). Ahmeds argument points us in the
direction of the affective consolidation of particular types of political subjects subjects of
whiteness, or of Englishness, although other types can clearly be imagined - agentic subjects who are animated with
particular modes of nostalgia, longing and aversion. Although the rhetoric of hate does appear frequently in the
examples Ahmed draws on, the force of the register of love should also be emphasised (as I have done above). One cannot but be
struck by ethical quality of much of this language, the degree to which so much of its central thrust requires various loving
attachments, be they those of heritage, belonging or historical oneness, as indeed is exemplified in Blunkett's commentary. This is
unsurprising: it is difficult to imagine a more effective discursive warrant than that of love to do the job of exclusion. The upshot of
this is that the full spectrum of positive emotions can be put to the work of hate, and frequently is, particularly so
within strategies
of liberal democratic governmentality , where one cannot express, indeed conduct hate in any other
of affect bond subjects, creating forceful associations, attachments ,
we might say, without origins (attachments, that is, which feel as if they predate the assumption of any conscious
political agency). Such an order of affect is also able to do its work via a slippery signifier that never
needs be explicitly rendered in and of itself. This is not to make a routine distinction between connotative and denotative
terms. Not only do certain circulations
routes of signification, rather it is to assert the fact of the affective substantiation of certain communities, which are, certainly,
imagined communities, but affective communities no less. What I have been building towards thus far is an argument about how the
strategic conduction of affect can function as an oblique mode of ontological production. This is a mode of production, a
means of constituting subjects that is capable of effecting passionate attachments and equally
powerful divisions that often speak louder than words and that typically feel as if they predate the
immediate history of either subject or community . My point, to be clear, is that whiteness may be attained
not merely through overtly discursive or representational means. One is reminded here, in respect of the
discursive constitution of whiteness, of Homi Bhabhas (1994) cautioning that the colonial stereotype must not be
understood merely as representational effect, but also, via psychic processes of identification, as
mode of subjectification. Whiteness, indeed, is not a formation of discourse alone - certainly not in
the sense of explicit textual or predicative forms - whiteness comes to feel robust, substantial
also on the basis of circulations and investments of affect, movements that are not always
directly codifiable . This line of discussion touches on a slightly different question, one that I consider to be a crucial factor in
the analysis of racism, and one, alas, that I cannot do justice to here (although I have broached it elsewhere (Hook, in press)). This is
the question of extra- discursive modes of subject constitution and how they come to be operationalised as
insidious technological means for conducting and entrenching racist patterns of affect. Such
technologies are indeed pernicious certainly inasmuch as such patternings, routings and conductions of affect (such as
that of whiteness) often feel as if they exist authentically, individually, in a state prior to the intervention of social and
symbolic meaning after all, as may be argued, the dynamics of affect do often seem to exist in preverbal forms despite the fact
that they are of course clearly amenable to the exploitation of various political and discursive systems. In
order to emphasise my point about the seemingly prediscursive force of the bonds of whiteness, it
helps to point to a crude and most certainly provisional - distinction between emotion and affect: emotion
might be understood as more directly discursive, more immediately aligned to signification (socially
legible, codifiable, something which may be put into words). Affect, by contrast, may be
understood as less secure in its connection to representation, less fixed to a set of physical or
discursive codes, less immanently knowable. If this is the case and I should emphasise the difficulties and political
dangers in attempting to draw too hastily such a dividing line between the discursive and the prediscursive (or between discursive
consciousness and practical consciousness, in Giddens (1984) terms) then we must be prepared to grapple with
whiteness in its most seemingly pre- discursive forms of attachment and belonging, in those affective
modes which despite seeming pre-ideological are of course, at the same time, potent resources of ideological
sentiment and experience. This is the point I wish to end with: simply to insist that whiteness as a
constellation of values and investments a relational interplay of attractions and aversions (Jay, 1984, p. 14), to draw
on Adornos notion of the force-field - must be approached as in part a function of affective modes of
constitution and affirmation. It is true perhaps that the most recalcitrant and indeed sublime aspects of whiteness are best
approached in just such a way, as formations of affect, whether such formations take on the regularised forms
of
fantasy, or of anxiety, or even of fetishism (see Hook, 2005). Unless we are able to grapple with the
vicissitudes of such modes of affective formation, and indeed, with how these modes come to be
operationalised as technological elements of broader procedures of governmental logic, we fail to
appreciate the tenacity and slipperiness of whiteness in this (post)Empire era.
Secretary Robert Gates who, smarted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made the comment that any
future defense secretary who would advise the president to send the American army into the Middle
East should have his head examined. Those who advised George W. Bush to go to Iraq had
followed the thinking by which, as a presidential aide put it, Were an empire now, and when we act,
we create our own reality , while scorning journalists for being mere commentators of an already
fabricated reality-based community (Rich, 2006, p. 4). At the core of this reality is the war on terror
which allows for an alternate reality sustained by the unknown yet intensely fantasized figure of
the Terrorist. The ultimate goal of the Lacanian psychoanalyst is to awaken the subject from the
spell of fantasy . The final moment of the analysis is defined as going through the fantasy: not its
symbolic interpretation but the experience of the fact that the fantasy-object, by its fascinating
presence, is merely filling out a lack, a void in the Other. There is nothing behind the fantasy; the
fantasy is a construction whose function is to hide this void, this nothing that is, the lack in the
Other. (Zizek, 1989, p. 133) The question is therefore how to traverse the fantasy. Traversing the fantasy
surrounding the terrorist does not mean confronting the reality as it is; what it implies is rather
accepting the inconsistencies inherent to the figure itself. Thus, how to gain a minimal distance from
this fantasmatic frame, how to unhook desire and enjoyment from the pursuit of the hunted
terrorists, becomes a critical political problem .
Framework
Framework Toplevel
Predictable dialogue is an impossibility The 1NCs encounter with
negativity is critical to relevant discussion
Berlant and Edelman 14 Lauren and Lee, Prof of English @ U Chicago and Prof of English @ Tufts U. Sex, or the
Unbearable. 2014. Pgs. ix-xii. PWoods.
writing
attend not only to what we can readily agree upon but also to what remains opaque or unpersuasive about the others ideas, what threatens to block or stymie us.
such responses as failures in the coherence or economy of our dialogues, we consider them
still dominated by the privilege of the monograph only rarely affords occasions for critics to converse with each other in print. That may reflect conversations low place in the hierarchy of literary genres.
We are aware that what were saying here sounds a lot like what we say about sexand that, of course, is the point. As the book proceeds, the structural resonances among sex,
politics, and theory become ever more insistently the focus of our analysis.
(nor could they be, given the infinite expansion of knowledge that would require);
Each
of us offers a set of terms that start to look different when the other uses them, and each of us develops ways of testing out, querying, and accounting for the others conceptualizations. This process might make any reader, including the writers themselves, desire
Both of us had that experience in the course of these conversations, and it would be surprising if our readers did not have it too. But the process of negotiating those shifts, of finding ones bearings, is at the center of the
ongoing project of relationality we explore in this text. To sustain the critical dialogue we put fidelity to our ideas and their consequences above the performance of our friendship, on the one hand, or the scoring of points, on the other. (Whether or not we succeed, of
Though friendship serves as the ground from which these dialogues arise, it doesnt
prompt us to deny our differences or obscure our intellectual or political commitments. At the same
time, those commitments themselves are what these dialogues put to the test.
The
differences in our political and theoretical investments did not, of course, disappear, but something
else, new ways of inhabiting those investments, appeared For all the insistence of such
differences, though, we acknowledge at the outset that we came to these dialogues with similar
intellectual backgrounds and theoretical allegiances. Some might see that as a limitation, a failure
of the dialogue to allow for an encounter with the disturbances of multiple kinds of difference. But
even in the narrowcast of an encounter with the similar we recognize no putative sameness of self,
no sovereignty, no coherence, and no identity that doesnt reveal its own radical differences.
any encounter (with the
world, with another, or even with oneself) discloses a nest of differences that carry
course, is not for us to say.)
clarification, surprise, and, most important, transformation; there were moments, that is, when the contours of our own understandings noticeably shifted and something of the others language or intellectual imperatives affected our own.
as well.
To be sure, many
other encounters than this one both could and should take placeand encounters with other sorts of difference than those that develop here. But one of the points this book hopes to make is that
This double valence of negativity accounts for its centrality to a set of debates that have occupied queer theory for some timeand that occupy our debate with each other here.
McGowan 2013 --- Associate Professor at the University of Vermont (Todd, Enjoying What We Dont
Have, Project Muse)//trepka
This is why equality doesnt
solve the problem of the social antagonism. Rather than eliminating the
envy of the others enjoyment, a sense of justice exacerbates it . The demand for equality and
justice has its origins in envy of the others enjoyment. According to Joan Copjec, Envy is not simply an
impediment, but the very condition of our notion of justice .35 Because the idea of equality and justice
is rooted in envy, each member of society has constant suspicions about the others and their
commitment to forgoing pleasure for the sake of the social order as a whole. Suspicions
continually emerge , revealing that the social antagonism remains in force in such a way that makes
eruptions of violence inevitable.
LEGAL EDUCATION: A PSYCHOANALYTIC-SEMIOTIC CRITIQUE, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law VoI.XI no.31
[1998], Springer Link)//trepka
Critical commentary on the nature of law and legal education is rather commonplace. Significant contributions developed during the
Legal Realist eraZizand its successor the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement 2 exposed the layered dimensions of subjectivity,
hierarchy and politics, governing both legal practice and legal discourse. Most recently, the legacy of the CLS agenda and its acerbic
critique of legal education, reasoning, and decision making has found growing legitimacy in the writings of several structural and
post-structural commentators. The criticisms found in "second wave" feminist sociolegal studies 3 and the divergent intellectual
trends encompassing the field of legal semiotics 4 are notable here. Collectively,
thematized forces which define the linguistic coordinates of the law fundamentally
communicated to the novice student through his/her experience of legal education. 7 This essay will
consider what psycho-semiotic processes are at work informing the construction of (juridical)
discourse and knowledge constitutive of that reality known as legal education. Put another way, the aim here is to focus
primarily on the linguistic coordinates themselves governing the student's method of
indoctrination and socialization in the juridical sphere. One under-examined source for this
semiotic investigation both germane to the topic and rich in insight includes the
contributions of Jacques Lacan and selected ideas contained in his complex psychoanalytic
theory . 8 Although Lacan never addressed the question of legal education or the construction of jurisprudence per se, a
growing body of work continues to demonstrate the utility of Lacanian thought when exploring
questions in law 9 and criminology. 1 While there are many differences among these studies, several recurring themes of
import relevant to the dynamics of legal language and cognition are discernible: (1) the argot of lawspeak structures
juridical thought in ways that are not neutral ; (2) legal discourse signifies multiple and, at times,
contradictory meanings ; however, it is reduced to one anchored representation of reality (i.e.,
uni-accentuated desire) consistent with its own internal system of signs; and (3) because legal discourse privileges a
specialized grammar (i.e., its own system of signs), it functions to semiotically cleanse or
invalidate all other discursive codes, regarding them as outside the signifying sphere of the
juridicolinguistic communicative market. 11 As a collective, these principles, assume the form of linguistic (and
therefore social) oppression as manifested in an instructional milieu. In order to investigate the psycho-semiotic method of
indoctrination and socialization for the law student, two pivotal features of Lacan's psychoanalytic topography will be studied: (1)
the intrapsychic and intersubjective dimensions by which (juridical) discourse is conceived of as such and is expressed as articulated
pedagogical desire; and (2) the discursive structure through which conventional (legal) thought finds embodiment as the only
legitimated manifestation ofjouissance (Lacan's jouis-sens, j'ouis sens); that is, an enjoyment in sense or "I hear sense" in the law
school classroom. The combinatory effect of these two Lacanian formulae quashes students' juridical plenitude (sense of
completeness) such that they unconsciously experience jouissance as JO or as a lack ~as route) in their being,
as Lacan designates, as opposed to J~. The former is accessible to woman who are not-all, and by implication, others who are
disenfranchised (i.e., taw students). The latter is the upper limits of jouissance in a phallocentric Symbolic Order accessible to those
who assume the male discursive subject position. The first concept entails a cursory review of the three overlapping and
interdependent paired axes which functionally structure language resulting in semiotic production. These paired tropes include the:
(a) paradigmatic-syntagmatic semiotic axis; (b) condensation-displacement semiotic axis; (c) metaphoric-metonymic semiotic axis.
The second notion calls into question Lacan's Four Discourses, particularly the form which
desire embodies in the discourse of the master versus the discourse of the hysteric . In the
concluding section of the essay, speculation on the future of legal education and the development of a replacement instructional
discourse will be considered. Intraphychic and Intersubjective Semiotic Production In order to conduct a critique of
the
"what happened" (the storytelling) within the instructional setting of a law school classroom,
several summary statements regarding the discursive features of Lacan's schema on discourse construction are warranted. 12 In
the Lacanian topography, the construction of reality emanates from the identification of
phenomenal images found among the floating sea of signifiers inhabiting the primary process
region (i.e., the unconscious or "Other"). These pre-thematized images or forms are saturated
with the Other's accented metaphorical-metonymical signifying practices and receive temporary
coherence, fleeting psychical clarity, in the act of naming (/e donner-horn). This "naming," at the most
conscious level, occurs at the paradigmatidsyntagmatic level of speech production. Thus, following a release of initial, excitatory
energy; energy in which one's visde de conscience is directed toward some pre-thematized sensory data, a view of reality (Lacan's
notion of desire or d~sir) is articulated. 13 Here, desire is a reference to the combinatory effects of subjectivity and discourse (self
and language) giving rise to a specialized grammar and circumscribed knowledge. 14 Within the juridic instructional milieu, the
legal method (and its attendant features including, boundary definition; defining relevance; and case analysis) provides a
narrowly established spatio-temporal frame of reference for semiosis and the articulation of
one's singularly felt juridical desire (i.e., the subject'spas toute or lack in being). Indeed, the method's
commitment to and esteem for the more positivistic and formatistic dimensions of
lawspeak, assumes a reductionistic appreciation for law-finding and legal reasoning. The
argot of the juridico-linguistic communicative market described here embodies a uniquely encoded form ofjouissance. This line of
inquiry has been the basis for several postmodern gender critiques of the law, 15 its method, 16 and (crimino)legal education. 17
Collectively, these positions demonstrate how the law
is phallocratically-conceived, subtending
feminine (or
alternative) ways of knowing . Accordingly, by generalizing this example, implicated in the (psycho-semiotic)
grammar of juridical education is a limited accentuation of discourse consistent with uni-accentuated (malespeak) desire, dismissing
or repressing the notion that students are situated within diverse, competitive, and, often, paradoxical semantic domains with their
overlapping and interdependent effects. Following this provisional reading of Lacanian psychoanalytic semiotics to date, it is
possible to assess the manner in which the three semiotic axes functionally structure discourse in the ossified legalistic paradigm as
conveyed to the neophyte law student vis-a-vis the instructional milieu. The position taken is that the presentation and
review of case material unfold much like the construction of any story . 18 Thus, much like any
narrative, the educational aim is to encourage the audience (students) to recognize, indeed
embrace, certain truth claims (i.e., the "official story") about the law. 19 The linguistic
parameters of this story are always and already pre-arranged). Moreover, at the level of intrapsychic and
intersubjective semiotic production, participants (primarily professors) must address a number of interrelated questions. By
integrating the previous analysis we can identify several lines of inquiry that are non-reflexively considered. Paradigm. What
legalistic jargon (words) speak(s) through me to support the thesis of today's lecture (i.e., the legal principles] under review? Put
another way, in the context of that discourse which presents itself to me, what case references canZizcite, what issues of law
canZizmention, what court opinions/rulings canZizquote, that buttress the lecture's stated thesis? Syntagm. What lines of analyses
announce themselves to me making possible the construction of an argument in support of the lecture's thesis, simultaneously
eliciting desired student responses and moving the discussion in the direction of clarifying the legal principle under consideration?
Further, if students disagree with the lecture's thesis, what additional lines of thought (combination of words) speak through me
enabling me to neutralize their positions and redirect their foci back to the lecture's original thesis? Metaphor. What pre-uttered
images appear before me which, when spoken, unwittingly situate students into the story wherein they adopt the case analysis and
regard its logic as compelling and true (i.e., a convincing narrative)? Metonymy. What lines of though announce themselves to me
directing students to an element of the lecture deductively linking the component to the larger legal principle? For example: in a
class on Legal Ethics the broader issue may be the meaning of zealous client advocacy in the context of ex parte communications. A
constitutive element addressing this theme includes the conditions under which there is a duty to inform opposing counsel of said
communication. The stated example assumes a metonymical function in that the whole (zealous representation) is understood
through the function of one of its illustrative parts (duty to inform). Law, Legal Education, and Lacan's Discursive Structuring
Mechanisms The interdependent and interactive effects of Lacanian semiosis are illustrative of the
psychoanalytics have done much in the way of illuminating the discursive schematizations
which functionally structure language and thought. 2o These investigations provide accessible and useful
commentary on what Lacan himself identified in his 1969-1970 seminar as the idea of the Four Discourses 21. Studies in the
sociology of law 22 and in criminology/criminal justice 23 have applied the operation of the four discourses to selected topics within
these respective disciplines. In the section that follows,Zizexamine the psycho-semiotic process, indeed the dynamic conflict,
governing the operation of two of these formations; namely, the discourse of the master 24 versus the discourse of the hysteric.25 26
A. Legal Education and the Master Versus the Hysteric Discourses The construction of any Lacanian
discourse is produced by a quarter turn in the basic structure. The discursive arrangement of the discourse of the master is depicted
as follows: S1 .......... --)$2 $<-- .......... a In legal instruction there are master signifiers ("due process",
of the hysteric 31 is represented as follows: $ ......... ---> S1 a ~---- ......... $2 In this formation the split or
juridic subject (i.e., the novice student as $) is in the dominant position and endeavours to
communicate through the juridical instructional milieu his/her being and desire .
The student, however, in order to communicate meaning, in order to participate in "good" legal
reasoning, must invoke those master signifiers symbolizing the coordinates of lawspeak.
Here desire and being refer to the intra and interpsychic dynamics forming one's longings,
frustrations, aspirations, alienations, despairs, repressions, ambitions: in short, one's existential
constitution. Notwithstanding, the subject, as de-centered , is in search of meaning consistent
with his/her desire and search for plenitude. The other (here the unwitting instructor or even the insurgent
professor), relying upon the juridico-linguistic communicative market, attempts to incorporate, to embody, the divided (student)
subject's jouissance in the instructional process. Temporarily, the inductee's lack or whole in being (manque d~tre) is filled. In
this instance, the professor acknowledges the student's inability to express his/her desire
within the coordinates of law-talk.
Toplevel
Their framework argument is worse than our Kits not just unfalsifiable but fails
every standard of social theory
MUTZ 2008 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of
Pennsylvania, Is Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory? Annual Review of Political Science Vol.
11: 521-538)
Falsifiability is probably the single most intransigent issue in getting normative theory and
empirical research to speak to one another in the realm of deliberative theory. Several problems
conspire to make deliberative theory elusive in this respect. For some theorists, deliberation is
simply defined as intrinsically good. Obviously, such a claim renders empirical research
irrelevant (see, e.g., Stokes 1998). But even without the assumption of intrinsic goodness, more
complex problems hinder the interaction between empirical studies and political theory.
It is difficult to envision an empirical test that might produce evidence construed by theorists and
empiricists alike as disconfirming the claims of deliberative theory. This is because deliberation falls
short on many of the standards deemed essential to good social science theory , at least as the
theory is currently construed. Beyond the general issue of falsifiability, deliberative theory falls
short of meeting three requirements for productive social theory that are enumerated in
virtually any textbook:
1.
clearly defined concepts;
2.
specification of logical relationships among concepts within the theory;
3.
consistency between hypotheses and evidence accumulated to date.
It is, of course, unfair to criticize a normative theory for lacking the characteristics required of productive
social science theory. But criticism is not my main purpose. Instead, I want to take seriously the
admonition that the two subfields should talk to one another. To make a dialogue possible, this normative
theory must be translated into the terminology of empirical social science and must then be subjected to
the standards of theory testing within the social science tradition. It is crucial to address these three
problems in order to accumulate useful empirical evidence on the potential of deliberative democracy.
Social scientists generally define theory as a set of interrelated statements intended to explain and/or
make predictions about some aspect of social life. Toward those ends, a good theory is supposed to have
well-defined constructs of general theoretical interest. It is supposed to describe logical associations
among these constructs (which are most often causal associations), and it should allow for connections
between the theoretical constructs and observable entities. When theories cannot meet these three
criteria, they are generally unproductive in advancing our understanding of the phenomenon of
interest.2
What happens when empirical researchers attempt to translate deliberative theory into these
terms? First, as Thompson points out, they discover a great deal of conceptual ambiguity as to what
should qualify as deliberation. Moreover, the definitions offered by theorists frequently conflate
causes (criteria defining deliberation) and effects (its beneficial consequences). Second, the tests
of deliberative theory offered to date typically do not develop well-specified explanations for the
relationships between deliberation and its many proposed benefits. Third, deliberative theory is
inconsistent with much of what is already known about political discourse in group contexts.
Many, though not all, of the hypotheses that flow from the deliberative framework are not wellgrounded in either previous theory or empirical evidence.
Although it may seem desirable to let a thousand flowers bloom in this regard, if we cannot agree on
what the independent variable is, we cannot hope to systematically evaluate its impact .
Interestingly, the number of conceptions of deliberation is surpassed perhaps only by the number of
versions of social capital, another concept that has intrigued both theorists and empiricists. Perhaps a
certain amount of conceptual ambiguity is inherent in extremely rich concepts. Whatever the cause, the
lack of agreement about what constitutes deliberation makes it extremely difficult for empirical
researchers to address the claims of normative theory. How can one safely assert that
deliberation has occurred when there are no necessary and sufficient conditions routinely
applied to this concept? For those who study political discourse as it occurs in real-world
contexts, how can one decide if the type of discourse that transpired qualifies?
For theorists, this lack of agreement and uneven stipulation of definitions is less troubling. But for those
who want to know whether deliberation produces its promised benefits before they sink millions
of dollars of foundation money into encouraging more of it, the uncertainty is problematic
indeed. Thompson's (2008) review of what should and should not qualify according to normative theory
illustrates a desire not to exclude, but in so doing renders deliberation a far less useful concept for
empirical research than it might be. For example, Thompson suggests that ordinary political
discussion should be distinguished from the decision-oriented talk that constitutes deliberation.
But this argument is seemingly contradicted by the subsequent suggestion that maintaining this
distinction should not be taken to imply that other forms of discussion are somehow less worthy of a place
in deliberative democracy, but we can more clearly retain the connection to the central aim of deliberative
theory if we treat those other activities as part of a larger deliberative process, rather than instances of
deliberation per se. Likewise, Thompson suggests that although like-minded discussion does not
qualify as deliberation, [T]hat is not to say that discussion among like-minded people cannot
contribute to deliberative democracy.
Empirical researchers attempting to test deliberative theory can be forgiven for wanting to bang
their collective heads against a wall in reaction to definitions of this kind. What does it
mean to say that something is not part of deliberation but is part of the larger deliberative
process? And if one theorist's version of normative theory includes the requirement of consensus
decision-making whereas another's does not, then how do social scientists design studies that
address the implications of deliberative theory?
It is commonly claimed that empirical studies do not fully embrace deliberative theory, and of course this
statement is entirely correct. No study could include all criteria invoked by all theorists collectively, and to
do so would violate even other theorists conceptualizations of deliberation. Thus, the conversation
between theorists and empiricists is next to impossible if one aims to produce research that can
be used to decide whether to pursue deliberation at all, or whether such practices need
refinement in order to work beneficially. The common problem faced by empirical researchers is
that when benefits are not found from a given conceptualization of deliberation in a particular
study, the null findings are as easily attributed to the operationalization of deliberation as to the
theory itself. Given this state of affairs, it is difficult to envision disconfirming evidence that
would be widely accepted as such.
empirical verification. On the other hand, much of the empirical work in this vein has been
deemed irrelevant to the theory of deliberative democracy by political theorists.
Excellent reviews of this literature have been provided elsewhere (in addition to Thompson's article, see
also Ryfe 2005, Delli Carpini et al. 2004, Mendelberg 2002). My purpose here is to delve deeper into the
conversationor lack thereofbetween theory and empirical research in this important area to see what
progress might be made. In contrast to Thompson, I approach this dilemma from the perspective of
empirical social scientists who want to test the posited beneficial consequences of deliberative theory. The
general question before us as empirical researchers is: How can we take what has been, by its origins, a
normative theory and turn it into an empirically testable theory?
I begin with an overview of the problems involved in constructing deliberative democratic theory in terms
that satisfy the requirements for a productive and testable social theory. A great deal of the difficulty in
this conversation results from definitions of deliberative democracy that are too broad and that
effectively insulate the theory from falsification . Falsifiabilitythe possibility of refutationis held to
be essential to the scientific method because it offers the possibility of scientific progress: Faulty theories
will encounter refuting evidence and will be discarded in favor of other theories. Philosophers of science
consider falsifiability an essential requirement for a theory to be deemed scientific (see Popper 1963);
some go so far as to say that unfalsifiable hypotheses are meaningless. As I describe below, unfalsifiable
aspects of deliberative theory translate into concrete obstacles that prevent testing and
improving the theory.
Lack of an ideal speech situation makes their framework claim non falsifiable
MUTZ 2008 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of
Pennsylvania, Is Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory? Annual Review of Political Science Vol.
11: 521-538)
The fact that the ideal conditions do not exist introduces a painful circularity into studies that
attempt to test whether deliberation produces any of the benefits that are theoretically
predicted. If negative evidence is produced by a study that attempts to look at the consequences
of deliberation, such evidence is easily dismissed because the discussion in question did not
meet all of the necessary and sufficient conditions to qualify as deliberation. Once again,
deliberative theory is rendered unfalsifiable.
clear how deliberative theory can be differentiated from any of dozens of other theories. Indeed,
much of the literature cited in overviews of evidence on deliberation does not purport to be
about deliberation so much as about persuasion, social interaction, procedural fairness, etc.
(see, e.g., Delli Carpini et al. 2004). Nor is it clear what a given confirmation or disconfirmation says
about deliberative theory. A more narrowly specified independent variable might better serve
progress toward understanding how to achieve the ends sought by advocates of deliberation.
Upon encountering an unsupportive (or supportive) finding, it is far too easy to dismiss it as
uninformative because the deliberation that took place in that particular study did not satisfy all
of the prerequisites offered collectively by deliberative theory, even if it did satisfy some
theorists definitions.
The solution that theorists have generally offered is not a clear definition of this phenomenon
but an evaluative distinction between good deliberation and bad deliberation. If we grade the
many forms of deliberation along a continuous scale from good to bad, then we can predict that
more beneficial consequences will result from good deliberation than from bad. To the extent that
good deliberation actually brings about more of the beneficial consequences than bad
deliberation, we can conclude that deliberation is delivering the benefits that the theory
promises. The more that political discourse approaches the ideal of equal opportunities to speak,
for example, the more it will bring about the proposed benefits . The more reason-giving that occurs,
the more valuable should be the consequences of this activity. Fishkin (1995, p. 41) calls this continuum
incompleteness:
When some citizens are unwilling to weigh some of the arguments in the debate, the process is less
deliberative because it is incomplete in the manner specified. In practical contexts, a great deal of
incompleteness must be tolerated. Hence, when we talk of improving deliberation, it is a matter of
improving the completeness of the debate and the public's engagement in it, not a matter of perfecting it
empiricists tend to be interested in whether and when the empirically identifiable phenomenon
of discussion has good results, rather than to define it such that it is intrinsically desirable.
Theorists are more likely to treat deliberation as something to promote rather than evaluate . As
Fearon (1998, p. 63) notes, to facilitate meaningful empirical claims about deliberation, we should
keep distinct (a) arguments for why more deliberation would be a good thing and (b) arguments
that in effect define deliberation or deliberative democracy so that these entail good things.
Just as an analysis of the content of a political advertisement tells us nothing about its effects on
voters, the content of deliberation tells us nothing about whether it changes its participants in
the directions theorists hope. More importantly, this confusion means that those claiming to test
or evaluate deliberative theory are often testing completely different hypotheses. For example,
some of the tests of deliberative theory identified by Thompson (2008) are examinations of
whether political discussion in a particular time or place meets the standards to be considered
deliberative. Does the discussion involve reason-giving, equal participation, and so forth? Other studies
also reviewed as empirical tests of deliberative theory evaluate whether, once discussion does meet
one or more standards for deliberation, it produces any of its theoretically claimed benefits.
These are two very different research questions, and their conclusions are logically independent
of one another. A given instance of political discourse might meet all of a given set of
requirements for deliberation and yet still not produce the benefits that have been assumed.
Likewise, political discourse might not meet the criteria for deliberation but still produce some
of the beneficial consequences claimed by deliberative theory. For example, in my social network
studies (see Mutz 2002), I find that exposure to cross-cutting political discourse produces greater
tolerance and greater awareness of rationales for oppositional political views. These effects
result from exposure to oppositional political views even without all the trappings of deliberative
interaction. In our study of political discussions in the American workplace, Jeff Mondak and I similarly
find that people are influenced in the direction of political tolerance and greater awareness of the
rationales for oppositional views simply by listening to their coworkers talk about their political
views (Mutz & Mondak 2006). No one would call such experiences deliberation; participation in
the conversation is not even necessary. Yet understanding the kinds of benefits that derive from
simply listening to others is central to understanding the benefits of the deliberative process as a
whole (Mutz & Mondak 2006, Mondak & Mutz 2006).
mutual respect among those of opposing views, then civility is probably a requirement for the
discourse to be effective, but requiring that the group reach a consensus seems superfluous to
this particular goal. If one envisions Table 1 as a matching game, in which everything on the right must be
matched to one or more factors on the left, then we have a primitive middle-range theory generator for
purposes of deliberative theory.
table with opinions and that they are willing to justify those views publicly in a way that brings
people's views closer together rather than increases conflict. The problem with this assumption
is that people with different pre-existing opinions and partisan orientations are unlikely to
respond the same way to a given argument, regardless of its inherent rationality and appeal.
In a deliberative encounter, given the requirement of respectful attention, we should assume
that people will not be able to selectively expose themselves to different types of information.
Unfortunately, people may still selectively interpret the implications and importance of new
information, typically so that it does not threaten their initial predispositions. In the earliest
empirical studies of the impact of information on mass opinion, Campbell et al. (1960, p. 133)
noted, Identification with a party raises a perceptual screen through which an individual tends
to see what is favorable to his partisan orientation. Subsequent research has accentuated the
importance of this original observation. The now extensive literature on selective processing of
information calls into question the idea that deliberation, through the force of rational
argument, will gradually bring people closer together and make mutually agreeable compromise
possible (see Bartels 2002, cf. Gerber & Green 1998, 1999). When new information enters an
environment, opinionated citizens tend to adjust their views in the same general direction, but
they seldom convergeeven when the new information seems to have obviously unidirectional
implications for the issue at hand. Of course, open-mindedness is also a prerequisite in some definitions
of deliberation, which might seem to eliminate the potential for this problem. But so long as people hold
initial opinions on an issue, as is true of most issues worth discussing among the public, their
information processing is likely to be influenced by them. People need not be closed-minded and
dogmatic in order for biased processing to be problematic.
A2: Policymaking
Theres no internal link between better deliberation and better policymaking
MUTZ 2008 (Diana, Department of Political Science and Annenberg School, University of
Pennsylvania, Is Deliberative Democracy a Falsifiable Theory? Annual Review of Political Science Vol.
11: 521-538)
Whether social scientists like it or not, deliberative encounters are inevitably social situations.
Whenever people interact with one another, they will inevitably have many motives beyond
simply the desire to reach the best policy position. They also want to be perceived as likable and
smart, for example. Models of political reasoning must consider that political reasoning is often
motivated by goals other than accuracy (e.g., Taber et al. 2001).
Most organizers of deliberative events go to great lengths to assure us that the information
provided is valid and unbiased toward any particular outcome, but faith in the deliberative
enterprise rests on believing that organizers and moderators have somehow overcome their own
biases and also counteracted social psychological biases among their participants . Their efforts to
ensure more deliberative group dynamics are admirable, yet many possible dynamics are unlikely to
be recognized based on casual observation. And even when people are motivated purely by a
desire to reach the best, most accurate conclusion with their fellow deliberators, they are still
subject to conscious and unconscious biases as they process what they hear. These biases call
into question whether the process of persuasive argumentation will necessarily lead to a better
outcome. For example, if one person claims to have a larger number of arguments than another,
he or she will be more persuasive, even when both people in fact give the same number of
arguments (see Petty & Cacioppo 1981, Chaiken 1987). In addition, even if everyone in the
deliberative encounter views one another as equal in status, it is likely that some will attribute
their views or arguments to entities of higher status who are not present (e.g., God), thus making
it impossible for the argument to stand solely on the force of its own merit (see, e.g., Petty &
Cacioppo 1981).
head of steam as the deliberative democracy movement has, it seldom slows down for purposes
of advancing scientific understanding. Instead, there is a rush to implement deliberative
encounters willy-nilly, because advocates genuinely believe that its consequences must, of
necessity, be beneficial. Just as drug companies cannot be counted on to publicize the negative
side effects of their drugs, advocateswhether individuals or large organizationswho have
invested huge amounts of time, energy, and money into organizing and promoting deliberation
are not likely to be the first to perceive, let alone publicize, any shortcomings . Thus, whether the
consequences of deliberation are, in fact, consistently beneficial or not, without careful, methodical study,
we will not know why in either case.
Answers
Scholars of politics, not just international relations (IR), long have neglected psychoanalysis. The
attacks on Freud and his followers over the last generation evidently discouraged political scientists from exploring psychoanalytic methods.1 An earlier
generation of scholars Paul Roazen, Fred Alford, Michael Rogin, Fred Greenstein, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, and others had taken a deep
interest and produced many works of distinction. That interest is long gone, except for a minor and embattled presence in the sub-field of political
psychology. Even there, little has changed in three decades since a volume entitled Psychological Models in International Politics appeared, devoid of a
single reference to psychoanalysis.2 Freud, as Paul Roazen lamented long ago, has remained throughout political science something of a spook.3
Roazen referred to American political science. Critics of this summation combed political science to cite at best a few marginal forays (usually British or
Commonwealth in origin) into psychoanalysis, which is of interest only insofar as a particular analyst thereby buttresses his or her paradigmatic
preferences in constructivism or poststructural discourse analysis.4 A major methodological objection to psychoanalysis is that an investigative means
devised for individuals is inadvisable to apply to collective entities. States cannot possess egos, ids, or superegos although a case has been made by
Zizek, and Erich Fromm long before him, for the palpable influence of an institutional unconscious.5 Freud was alert to the perils of overstepping
domains when he pondered whether civilizations could be neurotic.6 Psychoanalysts, an eminent analyst cautions, are: uniquely qualified to
understand, analyze and assist the patient on the couch, but as soon as they move away from this personal confrontation (or the modification of a small
group) to comment on matters outside their training and experience, the value of their comments would appear to depend on their knowledge and
wisdom, not on their qualification.7 While some scholars draw upon cognitive frameworks to analyze otherwise overlooked political phenomena,
psychoanalysis remains firmly on the fringes of IR where Lacanian discourse analysts treat us to such illuminating
sentences as, It then endeavors, via constructing fantasies, to use transitive discourse objects to sustain the desire for the constructed dichotomies,
which hankers for discursive closure.8 Psychoanalysis, contrary to his proponents, neither begins nor ends with Lacan.
that psychological factors exert a significant effect upon politics . Hans Morgenthau wrote that
international politics was primarily psychological in character, and that the personal inclinations and oddities of
leaders can at crucial times matter a great deal.9 If anarchy is what we make of it (and the rise of Athenian power created
anxiety in Sparta), then it pays to ask who we are in our inner worlds as well as in our outer guises when we make something out of whatever we
behold.10 At what point in an explanation do psychological factors from personal quirks to group dynamics to mass perceptions become
important? From the very beginning of our lives, is the psychoanalytic answer. Indeed, psychoanalysis aims to change where the beginning is reckoned
psychoanalysis
had a role in explaining why actors pursue what to the external observer are irrational ,
blinkered, and self-injurious actions.11 Reichs intent was not only to explain deviations from rationality but to inquire into the
to begin in any explanatory probe. In the 1930s, radical analyst Wilhelm Reich was really rather moderate when arguing that
adequacy of our notion of rationality, especially as this seductive and problematic concept is buffeted by changing contexts and personal interests.12
Misperception is a widely accepted phenomenon in IR now, as is the imputed sway in decision-making circles of
as the domino theory .13 But important differences exist between Freuds depth psychology and, to use
shorthand for a bundle of related practices, cognitive psychology.14 The purpose of psychoanalysis is to pry into our
unconscious drives and defenses to illuminate their influence over the motives and behavior of
analogical reasoning, such
the beholder as well as the beheld.15 Cognitive psychology, unlike psychoanalysis, usually exempts practitioners from being prey to their own forms of
unexamined irrationality, which may be one reason for its relative toleration in the field. This essay reconsiders, long after Lasswells heyday, whether
(Extremely significant, Freud says, because unconscious forces, if unexposed, tend to make our decisions for us.) The first section examines Freudian
analysis and its uneasy relation to political analysis.Zizthen examine key issues raised by psychoanalysis regarding the efficacy of IR models, the
concept of selfinterest, and the waging of war. Finally, to appraise the value added of this approach,Zizexamine psychoanalytic understandings of
intervention in Vietnam and, more briefly, the war on terror. The argument is that psychoanalytically attuned approaches yield important insights into
the wielding of power. Psychoanalytic triggers Psychoanalysts regard human emotional life as a continuum in which we share every
feeling and impulse to some degree, and indulge or capitulate to them if the combination of internal and external conditions is right.
Violent emotions are universal, as much so as love, though they usually are channeled in muted ways that avert harm in everyday
life. One is only tempted to summon the psychoanalyst when excesses form a profoundly damaging pattern. The same rule of thumb
goes for bringing psychoanalytic perspectives, or psychological predilections of leaders, to the fore in inquiries: Do so when behavior
is very much out of keeping with observable circumstances. Freud, while shying away from direct applications to politics, always
intended that psychoanalysis contribute to the social sciences and even to public health.17 At minimum, such exploratory
expeditions demand considerable knowledge both of psychoanalysis and of the social scientific field into which one introduces
analytic concepts. One may well ask whether we need to know what, for example, the youthful years of leaders have to do with their
professional lives. Their actions surely are overdetermined.18 Methodological humility, a rare enough trait anywhere, is called for. In
1965, after the long-distance analysis of candidate Barry Goldwater, the American Psychiatric Association president rebuked those
who diagnosed political personalities from afar.19 Psychological reductionism is a tempting pitfall, though anyone trained in
political science, with its overvaluation of quantitative methods and formal theory, is unlikely to stumble into it.20 One thereby
would underestimate familiar tangible forces that shape political decisions. Still, seasoned scholars cannot credibly
deny that international politics is at best only partly a rational enterprise. If so, IR is a valid
arena for psychoanalytic inquiry. What some players within IR deem rational thinking about the unthinkable,
brinksmanship, or winning hearts and minds through supposedly selective violence will
appear irrational to beholders who apply different standards. You cant be too careful is a bromide
that counterproductively spurs dangerous imbroglios , such as the security dilemma.21
Rationality often is what we choose to make of it, under institutional pressure, disciplinary habits, and
unexamined personal traits. Mercer notes how rational choice notions, supposedly stripped of
emotion, consistently lead to distorted depictions of human action, although this insight harks back half a
century or more in Freudian annals.22 Consider too Mannheims classic distinction where what is functionally rational is
not always substantively rational.23 Ellul captured this significant divide acutely when he defined technology as the
application of increasingly refined means to ever more carelessly considered ends.24 Rationality is conceived as rationalization, a
defense mechanism cloaking other motives, which may or may not be conscious. Psychoanalysis is applied not only to
the leadership but also to relations between elites and the citizenry. Rose notes that actors must be
understood not only in terms of their material interests and institutional constraints but also in terms of their images (of reality) and
identifications.25 This venerable formulation sets up interestingly porous dichotomies between
inside and outside (private and public), and between the social and psychic . A lack of personality and
group psychology studies only deprives us of useful ways to burrow into the agentic, which is, after all, where the mutual
constitution of agency and structure that constructivists are so concerned about occurs. As for realists, the political murderers in a
Brecht play apologize to their victim: Sorry force of circumstance a sentiment realists readily understand. But one trouble with
halting inquiry here is that Freud demonstrated how often, to quell a conscience or to fool an outsider, we attribute to circumstances
what are our own impulsions. A
aims. Acknowledging this slippery fact of political life is useful to understanding and even anticipating what actors do. The
story that the US elites invaded Iraq because they feared a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) threat does
not play well anymore despite interesting but tenuous defenses.27 If key actors say they were misled by faulty intelligence,
which they had a strong hand in purveying, then one is well advised to look elsewhere for explanation. Typically, we can
come up with a plausible answer based on material interests such as oil (ridiculed in mainstream circles
at the time). Typically too, there are multiple equilibria in policy choice. Why did these leaders select this course of action when
force of circumstances was not determinative? Why impute credence to what is in actors heads when imputation of material factors
or structural forces can do the job? The reason is that although social structural forces operate apart from
individual human agency, they remain dependent on the character of human beings to
carry them out. It is precisely at this juncture that Freudian theory proves so suggestive, Lichtman argued, For the
conjunction of individual intentions and social structures is embedded dialectically in the alienated institutions of social life and in
the repressed unconscious of specific social agents.28 How does this apply in IR?
The death drive is real, has clinical and empirical support, applies to
countries, and ends in nuclear warweve also got the most qualified
author
KNOLL 2013 (James L. Knoll, IV, M.D. is Associate Professor & Director of Forensic Psychiatry at
SUNY Upstate Medical University & the Forensic Fellowship training program at the Central New York
Psychiatric Center. He has worked as a forensic evaluator for the courts, corrections, and the private
sector. He is the author of over 90 articles and book chapters relating to both psychiatry and forensic
psychiatry, and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Psychiatric Times, Fearful Symmetry: The Balance of Life &
Death, Dec. 20, http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=30278)
The death drive may sometimes be directed outward. If this is the case, the
evidence to the fundamental nature of deep self-destructive tendencies in human beings that
clinically would support the concept of a death drive. [12]
Kernberg has argued that the death drive is more perceptible in severe personality disorders, particularly severe narcissistic
pathology. [13] This observation is consistent with recent suicidology research suggesting that suicide attempters diagnosed with
narcissistic personality disorder have suicide attempts characterized by higher lethality. [14] But while the aggressive drive is
thought of as naturally present, the concept of a death drive is not invoked unless such aggression becomes dominant and when
its main objective is the elimination of the representations of all significant others and, in that context, the elimination of the self
as well. [15]
I shall not here attempt to resolve the long-standing controversy surrounding the death drive, as this subject could fill several texts.
Instead, let us proceed for now under the assumption that humans do, in fact, possess sexual and aggressive/destructive drives
which can be observed in everyday life. Next, if we are to consider this dual drive theory in more depth and, [i]f Freuds
conception of the two instincts is taken to its ultimate conclusion, the interaction of the life and death instincts will
be seen to govern the whole of mental life. [16] The outcome of this interaction then may be attributed to the
manner in which these two instincts are balanced against one another.
3. Homeostasis: Eros & Thanatos
Nothing, whether public or private, is stable; the destinies of men, no less than those of cities, are in a whirl. Whatever structure has
been reared by a long sequence of years. an instant of time, suffices for the overthrow of empires.
Seneca
The routinely observable process in the natural world is for biological organisms to undergo a
pattern of decay, disintegration, and ultimate return to their constituent, non-living particles. Freud simply applied
this scientific fact to the mind and its constituent instincts. He asserted that instincts tend towards a return to an earlier
state, and theorized that the two basic instincts were simply two sides of the same coin. That is, they are a pair of opposing forces
attraction and repulsion which rule in the inorganic world. [17] Thus, he believed an aggressive/destructive instinct could be
traced back to the original death instinct of living matter. [18]
Eschewing any value judgments and pressing forward, Freud stressed that [i]t is not a question of an antithesis between an
optimistic and a pessimistic theory of life, rather, it was merely an issue of biologically concurrent or mutually opposing action of
the two primal instincts which explained the rich multiplicity of the phenomena of life. [19] Thus, one way of conceptualizing
Freuds theory on the death instinct is to view it as part of the organisms natural function of homeostasis.
While the libidinal instinct endeavored to combine what exists into ever greater unities, the destructive instinct sought to dissolve
those combinations and to destroy the structures to which they have given rise. [20] In essence, this was a balancing act between
creation and destruction, observed regularly in the natural world, where the death instinct was simply one side of the equation that
acted on living matter in an effort to return it to an inanimate state. [21]
To clarify, Freud seemed to simply imply that all living matter inexorably returns to non-living matter no great controversy here.
It is in the application of this process to mental life where the controversy arises. Having already described the phenomenon in
which humans pursue pleasure and avoid pain (the Pleasure Principle), he went on to explain why some individuals appeared to
violate this principle. By invoking a natural homeostatic process, the pleasure principle remains intact.
How? By observing that some individuals may become fixed in an emotional state so painful, that
escape into death is preferable, as it means no more pain. The immensity of pain weighing in on the side of continued
life can only be balanced by the finality of the weight in direct opposition: non-life. This is simply an early metaphor for describing
what more recent social science has confirmed. For example, the escape theory of suicide has been used to explain the suicidal
individuals motivation to escape from aversive (excessively painful) self-awareness. [22] When the drive to avoid painful emotions
becomes strong enough, there is a significantly increased risk of distorted judgment that may lead to suicide and/or self-destructive
behaviors.
Returning to Kernberg, he singles out specific, severe personality disorders when pointing out the relevance of a death drive. [23]
Further, he notes that the death drive is not invoked unless aggression becomes dominant, and produces the desire to eliminate
the self and/or others. Yet I would like to broaden this hypothesis with the observation of a simple fact: aggression has been
dominant throughout the entire history of Homo sapiens for many thousands of years . Indeed, we
all belong to the human race that killed over one hundred million members of its own species in the
twentieth century alone. [24]
Just as the homeostatic conception of life and death can be applied to the individual, it may also
be applied to groups, nations and species. In sum, while the individual dies of his internal
[instinctual] conflicts the species dies of its unsuccessful struggle against the external world if
the latter changes in a fashion which cannot be adequately dealt with by the adaptations which
the species has acquired. [25] How often has our species been on the brink of potential selfdestruction, particularly since the advent of nuclear weaponry?
There are certainly no guarantees that we will continue to tip the balance for our species in the
favor of life. It is a sobering fact that no society, no country is free of the history of senseless
wholesale massacre of imagined or real enemies. The relative ubiquity of these phenomena
throughout the history of civilization cannot be ignored. [26] Yet, as Ernest Becker so keenly observed, death is
ignored. In fact, it is outright denied in a variety of ways.
The force of the negative is so prevalent in psychoanalytic practice that it becomes perplexing
why the death drive would remain a questionable tenet among psychoanalysts today. From a
phenomenological standpoint, it is impossible to negate the force and salience of the negative.
The world evening news is about nothing but death, destruction, chaos, conflict, tragedy, and human
agony. Even advocates who champion a pure trauma model of self-destruction or externalized
negativity in the service of explaining human aggressivity must contend with inherently
destructive organizing elements that imperil the organism from within. Even medical science is
perplexed with the internally derived forces that deleteriously ebb the healthy organism from
life, adaptation, and survival based upon attacks by its own immune system or endogenous constitution (e.g., cancer, AIDS, ALS).
Consider the paradoxical processes of how sleep is both regressive yet restorative, and particularly how going to sleep is associated
with wanting to return to a previously aborted state of peace, tranquility, or oceanic quiescenceperhaps a wish for a tensionless
state, perhaps a return to the womb. Excessive sleep is also one of the most salient symptoms of clinical depression and the will
toward death. Furthermore, it would be inconceivable to argue that mankinds externalized aggression is
not inherently self-destructive for the simple fact that it generates more retaliatory hate,
aggression, and mayhem that threatens world accord and the progression of civil societies.
Given the global ubiquity of war, genocide, and geopolitical atrocities, in all likelihood we as a
human race will die by actions brought about by our own hands rather than the impersonal forces
of nature. Homo homini lupusMan is a wolf to man. 2
Contemporary psychoanalysis seems to be uninterested in Freuds classic texts on the primacy
of death, to the point that they are dismissed outright without even being read simply because
credible authorities in the field say so. Here I have in mind the whole relational schools anti-drive theory campaign. In
my opinion, proponents against the death drive simply do not grasp the inherent complexity, nonconcretization, anti-reductionism, and non-linearity of what Freud has to offer us. Critics claim
that the death drive defies evolutionary biology, therefore it must be bogus. But this criticism is merely
begging the question of what we mean by death. And more specifically, what we mean by the
function of death in psychic reality. To be even more precise, how death is organized as
unconscious experience. Just because a species is organically impelled to thrive does not mean it
is devoid of destructive principles derived from within its own constitution that imperil its
existence and proliferation. A logical claim can be advanced that life is only possible through the force of
the negative that brings about higher developmental achievements through the destruction of
the old. This is the positive significance of the negative, an artifact of psychic reality that derives its source from internal negation
and anguish while at the same time transcending its descent into psychic pain. Psychoanalysts are often confused by
viewing death as merely a physical end-state or the termination of life, when it may be
memorialized in the psyche as a primary ontological principle that informs the trajectory of all
psychic activity. Death has multiple facets of interpretation and meaning within conscious experience that are radically
opposed to the logic of negativity that infiltrates unconscious semiotics. What I hope to impress upon the reader is that death is an
ontological category for unconscious experience that can never elude psychic existence; for what we know or profess to know
epistemically as mediated inner experience is always predicated on our feltrelation to death, that is, to the primordial force of
repetitive negation, conflict, and destruction that alerts us to being and life, a dialectic that is ontologically inseparable and mutually
implicative. What we call a life force, drive, urge, or impetus is intimately conjoined with its opposition , that is,
its negation, termination,
or lack. Here life = death: being and nothing are the same.
Even if critics find the death drive theoretically untenable, I still believe it is a useful clinical
heuristic that guides therapeutic practice. What we as analysts face everyday is the inherent selfdestructiveness of patients who can neither find amity nor reprieve from psychic conflict and the
repetitions that fuel their suffering. These inherent capacities for selfdestruction are not merely
located from external sources, for they are both interiorized and internalized, thus becoming the
organizing death-principles at work on myriad levels of unconscious experience. Inherent
capacities for self-destruction take many circuitous and compromised paths , what the modern conflict
theorists would ascribe to symptom formation, addictions, self-victimization, pernicious patterns of recurrence, and harmful
behaviors that hasten physical deterioration or health. All of these tragedies may be further compounded by external trauma and
afflictionwhat Freud first identified in his trauma model of hysteria, but it does not necessarily negate the presence of internally
derived deleterious aggressions turned on the self. We see it everyday in the consulting room. From oppressive guilt, disabling
shame, explosive rage, contagious hate, self-loathing, and unbearable symptomatic agony, there is a perverse appeal to
suffering, to embrace our masochistic jouissanceour ecstasy in pain ; whether this be an addicts craving
for a bottle or a drag off a cigarette, there is an inherent destructiveness imbued in the very act of the
pursuit of pleasure. All aspects of the progression of civilization and its decay are the
determinate teleological fulfillment of death-work.
AT: Perm
The permutation is impossible. Our alternative relies on admitting the failure of
utopianismto combine that with utopianism is to eliminate the radical potential
of the alternative.
Stavrakakis 99 (Yannis, Lacan and the Political, Visiting Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex, pages
116-117).
DJ
Since, however, Lacanian political theory aims at bringing to the fore, again and again, the lack in the
Other, the same lack that utopian fantasy attempts to mask, it would be self-defeating, if not
absurd, to engage itself in utopian or quasi-utopian fantasy construction. Is it really possible and
consistent to point to the lack in the Other and, at the same time, to attempt to fill it in a quasiutopian move? Such a question can also be posed in ethical or even strategic terms. It could be argued of course that Homers vision of a
psychoanalytic politics does not foreclose the recognition of the impossibility of the social but that in his schema this recognition, and the promise to
eliminate it (as part of a quasi-utopian regulative principle) go side by side; that in fact this political promise is legitimised by the conclusions of
psychoanalytic political theory. But this coexistence is nothing new. This
We cannot both accept that utopianism is impossible and endorse it. The crisis
highlighted by the affirmative is an opportunity to reject the fantasmic ideal of
harmony.
Stavrakakis, 99 (Yannis, Lacan and the Political, Visiting Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex, pages 109-110).
DJ
What is at stake in the Lacanian conception of fantasy is , as we have already pointed out, enjoyment (jouissance).
If the effects of the normative idealist or Enlightenment-style critique of racism are severely limited, if this critique is not enough
(Lipowatz, 1995a:213), this is because, to use one of Sloterdijks formulations, it has remained more naive than the
consciousness it wanted to expose (Sloterdijk, 1988:3). In its rationality it has exhausted itself. In other words, it
didnt take into account that what is at stake here is not rational argumentation but the
organisation and administration of enjoyment: The impotence of the attitude of traditional Enlightenment is best
exemplified by the anti-racist who, at the level of rational argumentation, produces a series of convincing reasons against the racist Other, but is
nonetheless clearly fascinated by the object of his critiqueand consequently, all his defence disintegrates in the moment of real crisis (when the
fatherland is in danger for example). (Sloterdijk, 1988:3) Thus, the
AT: Robinson
Robinson is wrong --- misunderstands the lack, too vague, ignores
societys role, and sets up useless binaries
reviewed recent books by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, SlavojZizek, Chantal
Mouffe and Yannis Stavrakakis under the heading The politics of lack. Robinson argues that a poststructuralist conception of politics oriented by a notion of constitutive lack and inspired by Lacanian psychoanalysis is
fundamentally misguided. This approach to politics and political theory is guided by the idea that identity is constituted
around a fundamental lack at the heart of the subject, and that identity is constituted through the identification with external
objects, thus temporarily filling the lack. There are three basic problems with this approach to politics,
according to Robinson. First, as it relies on an abstract ontology, it is unable to properly engage with
concrete politics, and the study of politics is reduced to the subsumption of empirical cases to pregiven ontological categories,
which the former merely exemplify. Second, the kind of radical democratic theory emerging from the lack/Lacanian
approach is only radical in name, but in fact uncritical of existing liberal democracy. Finally, this approach is
conservative and nihilistic, according to Robinson, because it refuses the possibility of progress. While Robinson makes
some succinct points about some of the texts under consideration,Zizwould like to address some of the general points Robinson
makes as well as the assumptions about political theorising behind his critique of these authors.Zizshall address three points: (1) the
use of the labels Lacanian and theorist of lack; (2) the relationship between ontology and politics; and (3) the alleged conservatism
of the Lacanian political theory. (1) Robinson tells us that, although there are differences among the books under review,
[t]here
are, however, sufficient similarities between the books under review here to suggest that they
belong to a single approach, sufficiently similar to each other and sufficiently different from other varieties of poststructuralism to qualify as a distinct paradigm (p. 259). The approach or paradigm is referred to as an ontology of lack, (p. 269),
[a]n approach to politics drawn from Lacanian psychoanalysis (p. 259), Lacanian politics (p. 260) and Lacanianism (p. 267), and
the theorists are referred to as Lacanians (p. 260) and Lacanian theorists (p. 268). Although the use of labels like
these can be useful, one must be careful . First of all, althoughZizwould contend that Mouffe could be
classified as a theorist of lack, she is hardly a Lacanian . In the book reviewed by Robinson, she makes only
a general reference to Lacan (Mouffe 2000, 34). In addition, she makes reference to the developments of an ethics of psychoanalysis
inspired by the work of Lacan in the works of Slavoj Zizek, Yannis Stavrakakis and John Rajchman (Mouffe 2000, 137139). These
developments, she argues, dovetail with her own approach, but neither she nor anyone else has ever claimed that she is a Lacanian
(Robinson 2004, 263). It thus seems to be possible to be a theorist of lack without being a Lacanian,
and one should not confuse the two. Indeed, it seems that we are dealing here with an instance of what Robinson is
criticising, namely the subsumption of a concrete instance (Mouffe) to an a priori category
(Lacanian) with no regard to the specificity of the former. Moreover, there are important
differences between the theorists reviewed by Robinson. Stavrakakis, for instance, has criticised the
work of Badiou and Zizek (Stavrakakis 2003), and Zizek has criticised Laclau for not being radical
enough (Butler, Laclau and Zizek 2000). More examples could be given, but the important point here is that when one talks about
approaches and paradigms, one must be careful to specify exactly what it is that unites the theorists within the approach or
paradigm. Robinson also recognises this: The differences between the texts under review mainly arise around the issue of how to
articulate Lacanian themes into a concrete political discourse (p. 261). That is, we can talk about a Lacanian approach or an
approach inspired by an ontology of lack even though there are differences in the extent to which the theorists
interpret Lacanian themes or the ontology of lack respectively. The identification of an approach can, for
instance, serve as the focal point for a discussion of the relative merits of different poststructuralist approaches (see Tnder and
Thomassen (forthcoming)). Indeed, Robinson seems to aim at precisely this; that is, Robinsons aim is to rescue
poststructuralist political theory from Lacanian political theory (pp. 259, 268ff.). However, his critique
of Lacanian
political theory (asZizshall call it) seems to rest on a conception of political theory hardly
reconcilable with what can broadly be referred to as post-structuralism. What is at stake here is what
kind of political theory is possible from a post-structuralist perspective. (2) The first issueZizwould like to raise in this regard
concerns the relation between ontology and politics. Robinson writes: The books discussed here thus tend to suggest
that it is not possible to derive an original, distinct and attractive political agenda from Lacanian
politics (p. 268, emphasis added). And: since Lacans work deals with politics only very occasionally, the entire project of using
Lacan politically is fraught with hazards (p. 261). Hazards indeed, but not quite in the way that Robinson thinks. What would
be the condition of possibility of deriving a political agenda from a political theory or ontology?
Such derivation would presuppose that one could move in a necessary fashion from a set of
theoretical or ontological assumptions to a set of political conclusions applicable to a concrete
context. Ontology, theory and political agenda would have to be part of the same homogeneous
whole comprising ontological, theoretical and political elements linked by necessity. Clearly , if one
subscribes to a post-structuralist viewpoint, there can be no such homogeneity , whether between ontological,
theoretical and political elements or whether within a particular political agenda, for instance. This is a recurring theme in poststructuralism. The impossibility of this sort of derivation may be a hazard, but one that we will just have to live with. Robinson
believes that, since Lacan did not provide a specific theory of politics , but only a more abstract ontology,
all the political appropriations of Lacan can do is to subsume politics to pregiven Lacanian
categories (p. 261). This is obviously a potential danger, and one that must be avoided. One must insist that
analytical categories are always rearticulated when applied; as Wittgenstein has shown, there is no application that leaves intact the
rule being applied. But
political cannot be reduced to a specific region , but instead refers to a logic permeating
society in its entirety , even if in some places more than others. Since the political understood as contingency permeates
politics, we can use the political as a principle of analysing politics. This is one of the contributions of post-structuralist (including
Lacanian) political theory. (3) According to Robinson, Lacanian political theory is inherently
conservative. Lacanians, Robinson writes, urge that one reconcile oneself to the inevitability of lack. Lacanian politics
is therefore about coming to terms with violence, exclusion and antagonism, not about resolving or
removing these (p. 260). And, about Mouffe, he writes that, as a Lacanian, Mouffe cannot reject exclusion; it is, on a certain level,
necessary according to such a theory (p. 263). Such assertions are only possible if we believe in the
possibility of opposing exclusion to a situation of non-exclusion , which is exactly what
post-structuralists have challenged. Moreover, the post-structuralist (and Lacanian) view does not
necessarily preclude the removal of any concrete exclusion. On the contrary, the
acknowledgement of the constitutivity of exclusion shifts the focus from exclusion versus
non-exclusion to the question of which exclusions we can and want to live with. Nothing in the
poststructuralist (and Lacanian) view thus precludes a progressive politics. Of course, this is not to say that a progressive politics is
guaranteedif one wants guarantees, post-structuralist political theory is not the place to look. There are similar problems with
Robinsons characterisation of Zizeks nihilistic variety of Lacanianism: the basic structure of existence is unchangeable ... [Zizeks]
Lacanian revolutionism must stop short of the claim that a better world can be constructed (p. 267). This, according to Robinson,
reflects an underlying conservatism apparent in even the most radical-seeming versions of Lacanianism (p. 268). Again, the
constitutivity of exclusion and violence does not necessarily mean that the new world cannot be better than the old (p. 268). The
alternative to guaranteed progress is not necessarily conservatism or nihilism, and the impossibility of a perfect society does not
exclude attempts at improvementwith the proviso that what counts as improvement cannot be established according to some
transcendental yardstick. Thus, while Robinson raises many interesting points, there are also some problems with his position.
Here,Zizhave focused on some misunderstandings of the status of the claims made by post-structuralist political theorists, but there
are also some simple misreadings of the texts under review. For instance, when dealing with Mouffes view that antagonism is
ineradicable, Robinson links this to a Hobbesian statism: the exclusionary and violent operations of coercive state apparatuses must
be accepted as an absolute necessity for any kind of social life. This is Hobbesian statism updated for a post-modern era (p. 261).
How Robinson is able to move from the ineradicability of antagonism and exclusion to the exclusionary and violent operations of
coercive state apparatuses ... as an absolute necessity and Hobbesian statism is beyond comprehension. There is certainly nothing
to suggest such an interpretation in the pages referred to by Robinson (Mouffe 2000, 43, 105, 129132).
Psychoanalysis = Falsifiable
Experimental data and empirical evidence prove the validity of psychoanalysis
their authors are dogmatic hacks
Petocz 15 PhD in Psychology, currently teaches history, psychology, and critical thinking at the University of Western
Sydney. Visiting researcher at the Department of Philosophy, Kings College, London University in 2000 (Agnes, 1/12/2015, The
scientific status of psychoananalysis revisited, Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Meeting // SM)
Attacks on psychoanalysis and the long-term therapies derived from it, have enjoyed a long history and much publicity [1-4]. Yet, the
justification for such attacks has been challenged on many grounds, including their methodology [5] and the empirically
demonstrable va- lidity of core psychoanalytic concepts [6,7]. Also, bur- geoning neuroscience research, some of which
is sum- marized below, indicates
Drives Real
Falsifiable evidence from the hard sciences confirms the psychoanalytic theory of
the driveeven if our theory isnt perfect its the best alternative
GUTERL 2002 (Fred, What Freud Got Right, Newsweek, Nov 11,
http://www.neuropsa.org.uk/what-freud-got-right)
But a funny thing happened to Freud on the way to becoming a trivia question: as researchers looked
deeper into the physical structure of the brain, they began to find support for some of his theories.
Now a small but influential group of researchers are using his insights as a guide to future research;
they even have a journal, Neuropsychoanalysis, founded three years ago. Freuds insights on the
nature of consciousness are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience
views, wrote Antonio Damasio, head of neurology at the University of Iowa College of Medicine .
Note that Damasio did not refer to psychoanalysis or the Oedipus complex. Instead the work is going on
at the fundamental level where emotions are born and primitive passions lurk in the shadows of
dreams.
HOW THE MIND WORKS
Beyond the basic animal instincts to seek food and avoid pain, Freud identified two sources of
psychic energy, which he called drives: aggression and libido (the latter encompasses sexuality but also
had a more expansive meaning, involving the desire for stimulation and achievement). The key to his
theory is that these were unconscious drives, shaping our behavior without the mediation of our waking
minds; they surface, heavily disguised, only in our dreams. The work of the past half-century in
psychology and neuroscience has been to downplay the role of unconscious universal drives, focusing
instead on rational processes in conscious life. Meanwhile, dreams were downgraded to a kind of mental
static, random scraps of memory flickering through the sleeping brain. But researchers have found
evidence that Freuds drives really do exist, and they have their roots in the limbic system, a
primitive part of the brain that operates mostly below the horizon of consciousness . Now more
commonly referred to as emotions, the modern suite of drives comprises five: rage, panic, separation
distress, lust and a variation on libido sometimes called seeking. Freud presaged this finding in 1915,
when he wrote that drives originate from within the organism in response to demands placed
on the mind in consequence of its connection with the body. Drives, in other words, are
primitive brain circuits that control how we respond to our environment foraging when were
hungry, running when were scared and lusting for a mate.
The seeking drive is proving a particularly fruitful subject for researchers. Although like the others it
originates in the limbic system, it also involves parts of the forebrain, the seat of higher mental functions.
In the 1980s, Jaak Panksepp, a neurobiologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, became
interested in a place near the cortex known as the ventraltegmental area, which in humans lies just
above the hairline. When Panksepp stimulated the corresponding region in a mouse, the animal
would sniff the air and walk around, as though it were looking for something. Was it hunger? No.
The mouse would walk right by a plate of food, or for that matter any other object Panksepp could think
of. This brain tissue seemed to cause a general desire for something new. What I was seeing, he says,
was the urge to do stuff. Panksepp called this seeking.
To neuropsychologist Mark Solms of University College in London, that sounds very much like
libido. Freud needed some sort of general, appetitive desire to seek pleasure in the world of
objects, says Solms. Panksepp discovered as a neuroscientist what Freud discovered
psychologically. Solms studied the same region of the brain for his work on dreams. Since the 1970s,
neurologists have known that dreaming takes place during a particular form of sleep known as REM
rapid eye movementwhich is associated with a primitive part of the brain known as the pons.
Accordingly, they regarded dreaming as a low-level phenomenon of no great psychological interest. When
Solms looked into it, though, it turned out that the key structure involved in dreaming was actually the
ventral tegmental, the same structure that Panksepp had identified as the seat of the seeking emotion.
Dreams, it seemed, originate with the libidowhich is just what Freud had believed.
Freuds psychological map may have been flawed in many ways, but it also happens to be the
most coherent and, from the standpoint of individual experience, meaningful theory of the mind
there is. Freud should be placed in the same category as Darwin, who lived before the discovery
of genes, says Panksepp. Freud gave us a vision of a mental apparatus. We need to talk about
it, develop it, test it. Perhaps its not a matter of proving Freud wrong or right, but of finishing the job.
played a large role in the ability of humans to engage in large scale cooperation, then this is
because the thought of God would be something like the Person = x similar Kants famous object =
x, functioning as a general structure allowing for the possibility of empathy towards all people
irregardless of their differences. Just as Kants object = x isnt any particular object but a formal
structure that allows objects to be thinkable, so too would the person = x be a formal structure enabling all
interpersonal relations (cf. Deleuzes Tournier and a World Without Others for a good gloss on this
Other-structure). Where individual encounters with particular people tend to be governed by the
same/different schema, allowing for empathy towards those whom we code as like us, the
formal schema of the Person = x would allow these individual differences to be surmounted
to a greater or lesser degree, anyway allowing for the different to be seen as a part of the same. In this
way, differences between different tribes, cultures, languages, customs, etc., could be surmounted to allow
for cooperative activity. Of course, at this meta or transcendental level of personhood the person = x
the same/different schema would still be operative but in a way in which sameness was no longer defined
by local and immediate social relations between individuals. In other words, what this neuro-research
seems to have uncovered is something like belief in the existence of the Lacanian big Other,
where the subject believes, through the screen of fantasy, that the Other is structured in a
particular way and that it desires specific things (the transformation of desire into demand via
fantasy that fills out the lack in the Other).
Historians of science [23,24] using the case-study method of theory change in science, including psy- choanalysis
shown the inadequacy of Pop- pers criterion as a description of how scientists actually work and how theories change in the practice of science . In these accounts, inductive reasoning and the
[23], have
2
Some medical scientists describe Poppers criterion as counterproductive in the real
world [25]. For ex- ample, in formulating epidemiological hypotheses concerning the spread of HIV-AIDS, which have
public health and clinical implications, a Popperian approach which insists on strict falsification of hypotheses is less useful and less frequently used in actual practice than one which uses induction
to gen- eralize from observations in a professionally disci- plined way.
3
Popper neglected the crucial role played by concepts and models in scientific theorizing
[24,26]. Concepts and models (including ideational, mathematical and material models) are not epiphenomena produced as an
incidental by-product of scientific thinking, but actively shape the way scientists think about their field and the questions they ask.
Watson and Cricks use of a material model to discover the double helix structure of DNA is a well-
known example.
4
The probability calculus posed difficulties for Popper as did Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle which challenged a strict falsificationist view of sci- ence and led to some personal friction
between Pop- per and Heisenberg [16, pp.257-259).
5
Popper insisted that there is but one scientific method, equally applicable to the natural
sciences (mathemat- ics, physics, biology, astronomy, geology) social sci- ences (anthropology, linguistics, sociology,
ethnol- ogy, history) and all other endeavours which claim to be scientific [27,28].
6
Popper misrepresented historicism in general and Marxist theory in particular [29,30]. The term *historicism was used by historians long before Popper to refer to the historian's attempt to empathize with peo- ple about whom they
were writing so as to understand them and their social conditions as they understood themselves and which gave rise to certain
actions and events, that is, a contextualist, empathic method of historical scholarship. Popper used the term his- toricism in
an idiosyncratic way to
resistance, surface friction and metal fatigue are invoked to explain the accident, explanations
which are themselves derived from Newtonian mechanics.
Falsifiability Inapplicable/Bad
Falsifiability is a bad standard and doesnt apply to psychoanalysisthis also turns
their framework impact because its an excuse to avoid argumentative clash
CASTELLANO 2012 (Daniel, The Insufficiency of Empiricism,
http://www.arcaneknowledge.org/philtheo/empiricism2.htm)
The successful use of controlled experiments in science to corroborate or falsify hypotheses has led many
to consider this testing process as the defining characteristic of scientific inquiry. Sir Karl Popper
articulated this criterion when trying to find a way to distinguish apparent pseudosciences such as
Freudianism and Marxism from genuine science. Popper asserted that a truly scientific theory must
be falsifiable, that is to say, it can be subjected to a controlled experiment that could conceivably
contradict it. Conversely, any theory that does not admit the possibility of empirical falsification is
regarded as pseudoscience.
The falsifiability standard has attained widespread acceptance among scientists, though philosophers of
science have pointed out several problems with such a definition of scientific method.
First, the falsifiability standard was chosen by Popper deliberately to exclude theories he
intuitively judged unscientific, so it possibly contains more cultural bias than an objective theory of
knowledge should. Second, it is not clear that this standard includes or excludes the theories that
Popper intended. Some Marxists and Freudians are quite amenable to refutation by experiment,
while some mathematical theories of physics deal with particle interactions that are
fundamentally unobservable. Moreover, Poppers definition might be interpreted to exclude
mathematics and many of the social sciences, particularly those studying the unrepeatable past.
Falsifiability might be a good standard for empirical natural science, but not science in the broader,
classical sense of the term.
So-called pseudosciences such as Freudianism, Marxism, and astrology do not meet the falsifiability
standard, to the extent that their defenders resort to special pleading to explain away failed predictions,
rather than admit a failure of their theory. This seems to make the scientific or pseudoscientific status
of a theory depend more on the behavior of its adherents than on any intrinsic characteristic of
the theory as such.
Tautological knowledge, which may be deduced by philosophers and mathematicians, would
seem to be inherently unfalsifiable. This exclusion reminds us that a theory of empirical science
can never serve as a general theory of knowledge, as there are other possible paths to knowledge.
Thus pseudosciences that do not meet the falsifiability standard are not thereby discredited in
the least. All that is proven is that they are not empirical sciences of nature, but neither are
mathematics and philosophy, and that is not to their discredit.
The falsifiability standard counterintuitively suggests that the credibility of a scientific theory is derived
from the possibility of it being wrong. It is more accurate to assert that a scientific theory gains credibility
from its verifiability, by successfully passing tests where it might have been proven wrong. What is
paramount is that a theory is consistent with observation, and this has been the hallmark of
physical science for the last three centuries, without explicit reference to a falsifiability standard.
As long as a theory is confirmed by controlled experiment, the hypothetical possibility of a
negative result is of secondary importance.
Equally counterintuitive is the implication that a theory lacking falsifiability loses credibility. Intuitively, if
a proposition is absolutely not falsifiable, it is certainly true, though it may be merely a tautology.
Regarding pseudosciences as non-falsifiable gives them too much credit, when in fact their
excuses for failed predictions can be refuted by evidence and argument. All too often the
falsifiability standard is used as an excuse to refuse to engage a theory, maintaining that its
exponents will not accept any refutation.
Since falsifiability really means being empirically falsifiable, and the empirical is restricted to
physical observation, Poppers theory furtively incorporates philosophical materialism into his
theory of science, which is then misused as a general theory of knowledge. With one stroke, any
sort of metaphysical, religious, or spiritual speculation is dismissed as not meriting credibility.
Rather than be forced to honestly engage metaphysical arguments with counterarguments, we
are excused from debating them altogether, as if they were beyond reason. Clearly, this position
is unwarranted, and it arises from the error of equating non-empiricism with irrationality.
The scientific method is an excellent way to arrive at near-certain knowledge in areas that are susceptible
to both physical observation and controlled experiment. Many ordinary types of knowledge are not
susceptible to controlled experiment, as is the case with the study of history or any other aspect of
the past, which can never be replicated. Such sciences must use different rules of evidence , and
the basis of certitude in their results is of a different quality than that of the natural sciences. Other types
of knowledge are not susceptible to physical observation, such as our conscious experiences (as
opposed to their neural correlates), or abstract reasoning about mathematical or metaphysical
entities. This non-physical knowledge is not inferior to that of the empirical sciences, but on the
contrary is considered the most certain knowledge of all, as we directly comprehend the truth of
a tautology and directly experience our own consciousness. The knowledge of empirical
sciences, on the other hand, is mediated indirectly through the exercise of our consciousness
and abstract reasoning. From this, the foolishness of philosophical materialism is evident: we
only know matter through the mind, so it is absurd to doubt the existence of the mind or soul
without doubting the existence of matter. Similarly, physics is only intelligible against a background
of logical, metaphysical, and mathematical assumptions.
The natural sciences are still epistemologically subordinate to philosophy , in fact if not in culture.
Our cultural rejection of abstract philosophy in favor of hard science has not eliminated the
need for philosophy, but has simply removed it from conscious discourse, reducing it to a set of
unconsciously held and poorly understood assumptions. Popper himself recognized this in his study
of quantum mechanics, which he called the great quantum muddle, in reference to how physicists
incoherently invoked contradictory philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. Even the most
radically anti-philosophical man has a philosophy, but if he consciously rejects the study of
philosophy, he is doomed to hold his philosophy unconsciously and incoherently.
Empiricism Bad
Lacans approach is rationalist rather than empiricalits still scientific and
contrasts with other kinds of psychoanalysis
EVANS 2009 (Dylan, Science and Truth: an introduction I, The Symptom 10,
http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?p=59 I added Jung in brackets to correct a typo by the author)
Lacan bases this account of the history of science on the writings of Koyr, whose account of
Newtonian physics seems to have been a great influence on Lacan. In addition to Koyr, Lacan is indebted
to the philosophical work of Bachelard and Canguilhem, which clearly place him in the rationalist
rather than the empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science. In other words, for Lacan, what
marks a discourse as scientific is a high degree of mathematical formalization . This is what lies
behind Lacans attempts to formalize psychoanalytic theory in terms of various mathematical formulae.
These formulae also encapsulate a further characteristic of scientific discourse (perhaps the most
fundamental one in Lacans view), which is that it should be transmissible (Lacan, 1973: 60).
Lacans allegiance to the rationalist tradition helps to explain the often biting criticisms which
he levels at much modern scientific research. These criticisms are almost always aimed at forms
of science based on empiricist assumptions (whicb Lacan regards ultimately as a false form of
science), and not at science itself. When he criticises modern science for ignoring the symbolic
dimension of human existence and thus encouraging modern man to forget his subjectivity (Lacan,
1953: 70), he clearly has sueh empiricist vehicles as communication science and behaviourist psychology
in mind. Thus Lacan is not criticizing Science itself, but only a particular form which he regards as
a deviation from true science.Thus it would certainly be wrong to describe Lacan as a luddite, fiercely
opposing the advance of any and all scientific enquiry. Far from it; he insists that the subject of
psychoanalysis can only be the subject of science, for in the era of science it is impossible to
recapture any humanistic subject. Indeed, Lacan stresses that this is what separates Freud from
[Jung]lung. Whereas lung wanted to restore a subject gifted with depths, a subject with some direct,
archetypal access to knowledge (which can be seen as a form of intuitionism), Freud insisted that an
exclusively rational route to knowledge is now such a common presupposition that it cannot be
ignored. In stating that psychoanalysis operates only on the subject of science, Lacan is arguing
that psychoanalysis is not based on any appeal to an ineffable experience or flash of intuition,
but on a process of reasoned dialogue, even when reason confronts its limit in madness.
Lacanian psychoanalysis is scientificits rationalist, not empiricistbut they first
have to win that empiricism is better than rationalism or their mode of science is
just paranoia
EVANS 2009 (Dylan, Science and Truth: an introduction I, The Symptom 10, paragraph ends with a
comma for some reason, http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?p=59)
This brings us back to our initial problem. What status are we to attribute to psychoanalytic theory? Is it a
truly scientific discourse? Lacans confident claims in 1964 about psychoanalysis proceeding
from the same status as science seem to imply that it has already attained scientific status.
However, in Science and truth, only a year later, there are signs that Lacan is becoming more
cautious. Thus he now distinguishes psychoanalysis from science on the grounds that each has a different
mode of relationship to truth as cause. His growing uncertainty is reflected by apparently contradictory
statements in the same paper; he both states that psychoanalysis is not a science but a practice
(pratique) with a scientific vocation (Lacan, 1965: 863), and also speaks of the psychoanalytic science
(Lacan, 1965: 876). By 1977 he has moved even further away from the confident claims of 1964,
However, this statement is perhaps less categorical than it seems at first sight. For in
psychoanalytic theory, ever since Freuds remark on the similarity between delusions and philosophical
systems, there has been an awareness of the logical rigour of psychotic phenomena (Freud, 191213: 73). Indeed, in his later work, Lacan goes on to describe psychosis as an essay in rigor, and halfjokingly (but only half) muses that if he had been a little more psycholic he might have produced a more
rigorous theorisation of psychoanalysis than he did. However, in the paper on science and truth, it is
not psychoanalysis that Lacan compares to a delusion. but science itself; he describes science as
a fully realised paranoia (Lacan. 1965: 874). This is because scientific constructions resemble
the architecture of a delusion in their rigour and explanatory power, and because both science
and paranoia are based on the operation of foreclosure.
Thus the statement in 1977 that psychoanalysis is not a science but a delusion invokes an
opposition that is simply not present, even undermined, in the 1965 paper on science and truth.
In terms of the 1965 paper, the statement that psychoanalysis is a delusion can only be read as
confirming its scientific status. This radical position places, Lacan at an even further distance from the
empiricist tradition than do his appeals to rationalist philosophers. And this is what makes Lacan
particularly impervious tothe kind of criticisms levelled at psychoanalysis today by AngloAmerican philosophers of science. Inspired by Eysencks famous tirade against psychoanalysis in the
1970s (Eysenck & Wilson, 1973), a new generation of philosophers have argued in recent years that
psychoanalytic theory is not scientific because it is not falsifiable (eg. Grunbaum, 1984; Macmillan,
1991; Esterson, 1993). Such criticisms are based entirely on the empiricist account of science
which Lacan rejects,
On the Subject Who is Finally in Question, truth effects its detour [biais] in knowledge (1953a, p. 194) or, in alexandre leupins
blunt translation, Truth makes a hole in science (leupin, 2004, p. 56). Insofar as this hole bears on the
real, its traumatic detour in knowledge befalls science as a kind of psychotic break. Indeed, a
successful paranoia, lacan asserts, might just as well seem to constitute the closure of science insofar
as the latter does not-want-to-know-anything about the truth as cause (196566, p. 742) but instead
sustains its regime of knowledge through the foreclosure (Verwerfung) of incompleteness. Sciences
divide between reason and epistemological crisis reaches back to its enlightenment origins in the
Cartesian cogito, split as it is between, on the one hand, an insistence on clarity and certainty driven
by, on the other hand, a passionate self-doubt. While the latters truth as cause is ultimately foreclosed in the modern
regime of sciences objectified axiomatics, psychoanalysis holds its own rational methodology in productive
tension with the fading of the subject. Thus, psychoanalysis brings a rational, scientific rigor to bear
on its analysis of the unconscious structured as a language without, however, suturing the gap
between its disciplinary knowledge and the particular psychic disposition of the subject rooted in an
unconscious truth as cause. This qualified and paradoxical identification of the subject of science with the psychoanalytic
subject turns on the understanding that, as Jean-Claude Milner (1991) has it, Just because there is an ideal of science, there is no
ideal science (p. 33). Perhaps, however, the loss of its own status as an ideal science is most traumatic for psychoanalysis precisely
in its encounter with the ideal of science not just as it sutures the subject of science but as it likewise drives the systematic rigor of
the psychotic subject.
Falsifiability is useless and even if they win its good, were falsifiable
Dean 5 COLIN LESLIE DEAN, BSC, BA, B.LITT(HON) ,MA, B.LITT(HON), MA, MA(PSYCHOANALYTIC
STUDIES), "THE IRRATIONAL AND ILLOGICAL NATURE OF SCIENCE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE
DEMARCATIONOF SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE IS A PSEUDO PROBLEM"
gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/books/psychoanalysis/THE_IRRATIONAL_AND_ILLOGICAL_NATURE_OF_S
CIENCE_AND_PSYCHOANA.pdf. PWoods.
Grunbaum, in 1984, published a book which took issue with the positivist attack upon the un-falsifiablity of psychoanalysis
Grunbaum " argues that, although perhaps more difficult to study than in the physical sciences, cause-
effect principles apply just as strongly in psychology as in physics . He also shows that many
psychoanalytical postulates are falsifiable ..." A, Bateman, & J, Holmes claim that repression,
unconscious awareness, identification and internalization are scientifically proven . Now
despite Grunbaum's apparent demonstration of the falsifablity of psychoanalysis some theorists claim that the external
validation of psychoanalysis is doomed to fail. These theorists follow Ricoeur in claiming a hermeneutic understanding of
psychoanalysis. They claim that instead of a correspondence with reality, as being the criteria upon which to assess
psychoanalysis, they claim that ". internal coherence and narrative plausibility as the basis for settling disputes." Thus we see
there are those, like Grunbaum, who argue that psychoanalysis can be tested against the facts of
reality and potentially its postulates can be falsified by reality. On the other hand there are those,
like Ricoeur, who advocate a hermenutical approach where it is not a correspondence with
reality that matters but whether the psychoanalytic theory is internally consistent and its
interpretations or narratives satisfying or not. A theory is falsifiable, in the correspondence theory of 'truth' if it does not
agree with reality. In the coherence theory of 'truth' a theory is falsifiable ifit is inconsistent in terms of the system. I will argue
that both criteria are flawed and lack epistemological support. In this regard we see that the debate on the falsifiablity
statement and reality that makes it 'true' or 'false' . O'Hear notes 'true' statements correspond or
picture reality . But the problem with this is that " how can a statement- something linguistic correspond to a fact or state of affairs. Certainly it cannot be a replica of a state of affairs , nor does it fit with it in the way
a nut might be said to correspond with a nut. Further, even if we could make some sense of a simple affirmative factual
statement .... There are considerable problems with knowing just what it is other statements are supposed to correspond to."
What about negative statements that say something is not or does not exist? What
aboutcounterfactural statements? Do mathematical and moral statements correspond to something
in reality? Are there universal statements that correspond to reality? The correspondence theory of 'truth'
that sees statements as corresponding to reality is thus problematic. The problems are such that, as O'Hear notes " ... the
correspondence relation are simply shadowy reflections of statements we regard as true for other reasons rather than as
generally mind-independent realities." When we realize that there is no non-conceptual view about reality we realize that
even 'reality' is a value-laden conceptual laden term . As some argue all theory is value laden
there are no facts uncontaminated by epistemological, metaphysical, other theories, and ontological views. The result of all this
is to undermine the claims of the correspondence theory such that "... there is something futile in thinking that
what we know is achieved by direct access to a mind-independent reality, which would suggest
that a naive correspondence view of truth, at least, is likely to be able to give us little guidance in
our actual inquiries and researches." We shall see that the coherence theory of 'truth' fares no better in guiding our
research or acessing our actual statements about 'truth' or falsidity. In the coherence theory of 'truth' the criteria of 'truth' is that
a statement does not contradict other statements. O'Hear notes that "systems here are regarded as being governed by nothing
more mysterious than normal relations of implication and contradiction." But as has been pointed out it is quite easy to avoid
contradiction by dropping inconsistent statements . If a statement is inconsistent with theory or observation we can just drop
either the theory or observational statement. Also many scientific theory suffer from empirical counter-evidence which we
nevertheless still accept. What happens when two or more theories i.e. Kleinian, Lacanian, Freudian, ego-psychology etc, are lets
say coherent but contain mutually contradictory statements in regard to each other. In other words what about the situation
when theories are coherent but contradict each other. O'Hear points out " that many would regard this as a conclusive objection
to the coherence theory of truth, for surely whether a statement is true or not depends on the facts and not on the systems we are
using to interpret the facts." But here is the big problem. We showed above that facts are themselves value conceptual laden. The
correspondence theory of 'truth' in fact is not epistemologically or metaphysically etc neutral- we see the facts through other
theories. But we have just seen that in seeing the facts through other theories assumes that the theories are coherence, but
coherence theories of 'truth' as we have seen are epistemologically flawed. Thus we see that epistemologically both the
correspondence and coherence theories of 'truth' are flawed. This to my mind say that it does not matter whether
psychoanalysis is falsifiable. Whether it is, or is not is based upon a particular theory of 'truth'
that has no epistemological support. Now regardless of these philosophical investigations I will
show that in terms of each theory there is evidence that even though their criteria are not met
for some theories these theories are still used with ongoing validity. This evidence will also lend
weight to my claim that it does not matter whether psychoanalysis is falsifiable or not, it can still
have validity. There are examples from physics where correspondence with reality has not
resulted in the abandonment of the theory. A theory has been falsified yet nevertheless it is still used.
A classic example is that of Newtonian physics. Newtonian prediction of black-body radiation failed -this was left
to quantum physics to do. Also Newtonian physics failed to predict the motion of three bodies in combined gravitational motion
i.e. planets . Kuhn points out that no one denied that Newtonian physic was not as science because it could not predict the speed
of sound, or Newton's laws of gravitation failed to predict and account for the perigee of the moon or the motion of the moon; as
he states " no one seriously questioned Newtonian theory because of the long recognized discrepancies between predictions from
the theory and both the speed the speed of sound and the motion of Mercury." Thus we see that even if
psychoanalysis is falsified in terms of the correspondence theory of 'truth ,the case of Newtonian
physics shows us that it need not matter in the least. In this regard there is truth in Freud's
provocative idea, when he states, " even if psychoanalysis showed itself as unsuccessful in every
other form of nervous and psychical disease as it does in delusions, it would still remain completely justified as an
irreplacable instrument of scientific research. It is true that in that case we should not be in a position to practice
in science and mathematics there are un-falsifiable entities but this does not stop
them being used in those disciplines. At the very core of science and mathematics there are unfalsifiable entities. Such things as matter, the mathematical point, anti-matter force etc. are
unfalsifiable. Freud notes the presence of un-falsiable objects in psychoanalysis when he states " too it will be entirely in
accord with our expectations if the basic concepts and principles of the new science (instincts, nervous energy, etc) remain for a
considerable time no less indeterminate than those of the older sciences (force, mass, attraction, etc)." Thus we see that even if
psychoanalysis is not falsifiable, in terms of the correspondence theory of 'truth'. just like in mathematics and science, it does
not matter for a theories validity. The coherence theory of 'truth's says that if a theory or statement is inconsistent then it is false.
But there are examples where this is the state of affairs but nevertheless the theories are still used.
taken the valence of a prudential guide for intuitive judgment, Lacan turns to rhetoric to confer
on psychoanalysis a scientific status. Lacans claims to the science of rhetoric respond to a
number of critics who had framed psychoanalysis as an alchemical mix of unfounded theories,
intuitions and inherited practices. Borrowing from Karl Poppers philosophy of science, such critiques of
psychoanalysis argued that analytic practice was non-falsifiable, resting on the idea that no empirical
evidence could be mustered to refute it. Any claim to evidence to the contrary of Freudian theories could always be elided by
generating another explanation with dubious empirical grounding to account for potential exceptions. In drawing on
rhetoric as a systematic mode for theorizing the nature of the sign, representation, and the logic
and social functions of discourse, Lacan rescues Freudian categories from non-falsifiability.
Rhetoric, which is so squarely rooted in art, became one of Lacans most powerful allies in articulating
psychoanalysis as a science, providing a vocabulary for attending to the repeatable elements
of signification that might be held up to empirical verification.
than
wheel out the well-worn objection-a common one even in Freuds time-that psychoanalysis is
unscientific. But even if is true that psychoanalysis is unscientific (by some often objectionable
standard), this does not ipso facto show that it is false. Adolf Grnbaums critique of Freuds so-called Tally
Argument (see below) is an example of one such objectionable standard. This critique is basically a gussied-up version of the
claim that psychoanalysis is not falsifiable. However, the falsifiability (in principle), of a scientific theory, has to
be interpreted in way suitable to the theory in question. It is clear that psychoanalysis is not going to be
falsifiable (in principle) in the way that the physical or biological sciences are- that is, by producing an
experiment that can conclusively falsify it. Nevertheless, as I point out below, aspects of psychoanalysis
certainly are falsifiable, and indeed have been falsified. (1) It is also not difficult to produce examples
of disciplines and theories that are (by certain standards) unscientific but true, or likely to be true. Many
philosophical theories-whether broadly or narrowly construed-are unscientific and true, though it may be difficult to
say which are the true ones. Similarly, some very general theories in social science may be true but
unscientific according to the standards of the physical and biological sciences. Thus, Clifford Geertzs
enormously influential theory of religion as a cultural system (1973: 90) is in my view true but not
experimentally falsifiable. Other criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of fundamental
aspects of psychoanalysis. (2) Although there are many interesting issues in film theory that relate specifically to the horror
genre, the critique of psychoanalytic approaches to interpreting horror is usually more general. Such criticism is often directed at
any kind of psychoanalytic approach to understanding film and spectatorship. My approach therefore mirrors the form of this
criticism. It often discusses critiques of psychoanalytic approaches to film generally rather than horror in particular- even where
horror films are the examples used.
AT: Sexist
Psychoanalysis is not inherently antifeministour account of the
unconscious is useful for feminist criticism
ZAKIN 2011 (Zakin, Emily, Prof of Philosophy, Miami University, "Psychoanalytic Feminism", The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, May 16, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminismpsychoanalysis/#Con)
that our ethical characters and political communities are not perfectable, exposing the
precariousness of both psychic and political identity. The unconscious cannot be assumed to be
inherently either a transgressive or a conservative force, but an unreliable one, promoting revolt
or rebellion sometimes, intransigence and rigid border preservation at other times.
Although they are in often uneasy alliance, the psychoanalytic account of the unconscious provides
feminist theory with resources for both political and ontological inquiry. Ontologically,
psychoanalysis offers a distinctively psychical understanding of sexual difference, how we come
to inhabit our bodies and our identities, and misinhabit them, an analysis reducible to neither
social nor biological categories. Politically, psychoanalysis offers a depiction of the forces that
impel us to organize, disorganize, and reorganize the bonds that hold us together. By offering
insight into the formation of subjectivity and the animating fantasies of social life,
psychoanalysis thus also facilitates feminist analysis of the obdurate elements of patriarchal social
relations, including the symbolic bonds and internal forces that undergird identity and attach sexed
subjects to relations of dominance and subordination. Psychoanalytic feminist attention to the core
constituents of civilization, to the nuclei of sexual difference and communal affiliation, helps
explain the perpetuation of masculine power and enables feminist theorists to articulate
possible correctives, challenges, routes of amelioration, or ethical interruptions that go to the
roots of political life and to its beyond and do not simply operate on the given social terrain.
demands for the fulfillment of desires must be frustrated. This blockage produces feelings of guilt, which in turn are sublimated as a
general social morality. The frustration of demand is both productive in that it authorizes social moral codes and, by extension,
civilization writ large, although it does so at the cost of imposing a contested relationship between desire and social mores.32
Confronted by student calls to join the movement of 1968 Lacan famously quipped: as hysterics
you demand a new master: you will get it! Understanding the meaning of his response requires
a treatment of Lacans theory of the demand and its relationship to hysteria as a n enabling and
constraining political subject position. Lacans theory of the demand picks up at Freuds
movement outward from the paradigmatic relationships between the parent/ child and individual/civilization
toward a more general account of the subject, sociality, and signification. The infrastructure
supporting this theoretical movement transposes Freuds comparatively natural and genetic account of development to a set of
metaphors for dealing with the subjects entry into signification. The site of this excess, where the subject negotiates the terms of a
non-relationship with the Symbolic, is also the primary site differentiating need, demand, and desire. Need approximates the
position of the Freudian id, in that it is a precursor to demand. Demand is the filtering of the need through signification, but as
Sheridan notes, there is no adequation between need and demand.35 The same type of split that inheres in the Freudian demand
inheres in the Lacanian demand, although in Lacans case it is crucial to notice that the split does not derive from
the empirical impossibility of fulfilling demands as much as it stems
Other cannot, by definition, ever give this gift: the starting presupposition of
the mirror stage is the constitutive impossibility of comfortably inhabiting the
Symbolic . The structural impossibility of fulfilling demands resonates with the Freudian demand in that the frustration of
demand produces the articulation of desire. Thus, Lacan argues that desire is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand
for love, but the difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second. 37 This sentiment animates the crucial
Lacanian claim for the impossibility of the other giving a gift that it does not have, namely the gift of love: all demand
implies . . . a request for love. . . . Desire begins to take shape in the margin in which demand becomes separated from
need: this margin being that which is opened up by demand, the appeal of which can be unconditional only in
regards to the Other . . . having no universal satisfaction. . . . It is this whim that introduces the phantom of omnipotence, not
of the subject, but of the other in which his demand is installed.38 This framing of demand reverses the classically liberal
presupposition regarding demand and agency. Contemporary and classical liberal democratic theories presume that the demand is a
way of exerting agency and, further, that the more firmly the demand is lodged, the greater the production of an agential effect. The
Lacanian framing of the demand sees the relationship as exactly the opposite: the more firmly
one lodges a demand, the more desperately one clings to the legitimate ability of an
institution to fulfill it. Hypothetically, demands ought reach a kind of breaking point where the inability of an institution or
order to proffer a response should produce a reevaluation of the economy of demand and desire. In analytic terms, this is the
moment of subtraction, where the manifest content of the demand is stripped away and the
desire that underwrites it is laid bare. The result of this subtraction is that the subject is in a
position to relate to its desire , not as a set of deferrals, avoidances, or transposition but
rather as an owned political disposition.
Planning at the University of Auckland, and is a past president of the New Zealand Planning
Institute. (Lacan, Planning and Urban Policy Formation, August 22nd 2006,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0811114042000335287, HSA)
This article has illustrated that Lacans theoretical conceptualisation of human identity and desire
professional identifications of planners and these beliefs are then induced onto the public as the
only rational urban policy narratives for producing viable answers and city forming policy
behaviours. Urban policy formulation involves the partial shaping of the publics identity as urban residents and actors through
shaping their adoption of narratives and master signifiers that produce specific modes of urban behavioursi.e. urban practices and
submission to regulatory compliance (Gunder, 2003b); and, as this article suggests, the resultant production and loss of pleasure
jouissancethat this incurs. Yet planning and urban policy formulation should not be dismissed because
they are comprised of ideological ideas that are imposed on the public. Rather their ideological
nature is a consequence of policy planning being central to a key dimension of societys
fundamental desire for harmony and security in a better future city, even if this can only be
fulfilled through illusion (Gunder, 2003a). Those who knowurban policy experts and their political
masterscan only survive because the public believes in them (Hillier & Gunder, 2003). Urban policy
formation constitutes new narratives of a better future city and hence new urban realities because this is socially desired
Extinction K
The lesson to be fully endorsed is thus that of another environmental scientist who came to the result that, while one cannot be sure
what the ultimate result of humanity's interventions into geo-sphere will be, one thing is sure: if humanity were to stop abruptly its
immense industrial activity and let nature on Earth take its balanced course, the result would have been a total breakdown, an
imaginable catastrophe. "Nature" on Earth is already to such an extent "adapted" to human interventions, the human "pollutions"
are already to such an extent included into the shaky and fragile balance of the "natural" reproduction on Earth, that its cessation
would cause a catastrophic imbalance. This is what it means that humanity has nowhere to retreat: not only "there is no big Other"
(self-contained symbolic order as the ultimate guarantee of Meaning); there is also no Nature
qua balanced order of self-reproduction whose homeostasis is disturbed, thrown off the rails, by the
imbalanced human interventions. Indeed, what we need is ecology without nature: the ultimate
obstacle to protecting nature is the very notion of nature we rely on.
Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is a vision of what would have happened if humanity (and ONLY
humanity) were suddenly to disappear from the earth - natural diversity blooming again, nature gradually regaining
human artefacts. We, humans, are reduced to a pure disembodied gaze observing our own absence . (As
Lacan pointed out, this is the fundamental subjective position of fantasy: to be reduced to a, the gaze
which observes the world in the condition of the subject's non-existence - like the fantasy of
witnessing the act of one's own conception, the parental copulation, or the act of witnessing one's own burial,
like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. A jealous child likes to indulge in the fantasy of imagining how his
parents would react to his own death, putting at stake his own absence.) "The world without us"
is thus fantasy at its purest: witnessing the Earth itself retaining its pre-castrated state of innocence,
before we humans spoiled it with our hubris. The irony is that the most prominent example comes from the
catastrophe of Chernobyl: the exuberant nature taking over the disintegrating debris of the nearby city Pripyat which was
abandoned, left the way it was.
Against this background, one should also render problematic Badiou's distinction between man qua mortal "human animal" and the
"inhuman" subject as the agent of a Truth-procedure: man is pursuing happiness and pleasures, worrying about death, etc., it is an
animal endowed with higher instruments to reach its goals, while only as a subject faithful to a Truth-Event does it truly raise above
animality. The problem with this dualism is that it ignores Freud's basic lesson: there is no "human animal," a human
being is from its birth (and even before) torn out of the animal constraints, its instincts are
"denaturalized," caught in the circularity of the (death-)drive, functioning "beyond the pleasure principle,"
marked by the stigma of what Eric Santner called "undeadness" or the excess of life. This is why there is no place for "death drive" in
Badiou's edifice, for the "distortion" of human animality which precedes fidelity to an Event. It is not only the "miracle" of a
traumatic encounter with an Event which derails a human subject from its animality: its libido is already in itself derailed. One
should thus turn around the usual criticism of Badiou: what is problematic is not the quasi-religious miracle of the Event, but the
very "natural" order disturbed by the Event.
So, back to the prospect of ecological catastrophe, why do we not act? It is too short to attribute our
disbelief in the catastrophe to the impregnation of our mind by scientific ideology, which leads us to dismiss the sane concerns of our
common reason, i.e., the gut sense which tells us that something is fundamentally wrong with the scientific-technological attitude.
The problem is much deeper, it resides in the unreliability of our common sense itself which,
habituated as it is to our ordinary life-world, finds it difficult really to accept that the flow of
everyday reality can be perturbed. Our attitude here is that of the fetishist split: "I know very
well (that the global warming is a threat to the entire humanity), but nonetheless... (I cannot
really believe it). It is enough to look at my environs to which my mind is wired: the green grass
and trees, the whistle of the wind, the rising of the sun... can one really imagine that all this will be disturbed?
You talk about the ozone hole - but no matter how much I look into the sky, I don't see it - all I see is the same sky, blue or grey!"
And therein resides the horror of the Chernobyl accident: when one visits the site, with the exception of the sarcophagus, things look
exactly the same as before, life seems to have deserted the site, leaving everything the way it is, and nonetheless we are aware that
something is terribly wrong. The change is not at the level of the visible reality itself, it is a more
fundamental one, it affects the very texture of reality . No wonder there are some lone farmers around the
Chernobyl site who continued to lead their lives as before - they simply ignore all the incomprehensible talk about radiations. Do
these farmers not behave like the madman in the old joke circulating among Lacanians to exemplify the key role of the Other's
knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to the mental institution where the doctors do their best to
finally convince him that he is not a grain but a man; however, when he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man)
and allowed to leave the hospital, he immediately comes back very trembling of scare - there is a chicken outside the door and that
he is afraid that it would eat him. "Dear fellow," says his doctor, "you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man". "Of
course I know that," replies the patient, "but does the chicken know it?" The chicken from the joke stands for the big Other which
doesn't know. In the last years of Tito's life, he was effectively such a chicken: some archives and memoirs show that, already in the
mid-1970s, the leading figures around Tito were aware that Yugoslavia's economic situation was catastrophic; however, since Tito
was nearing his death, they made a collective decision to postpone the outbreak of a crisis till his death - the price was the fast
accumulation of external debt in the last years of Tito's life. When, in 1980, Tito finally dies, the economic crisis did strike with
revenge, leading to a 40 per cent fall of standard of living, to ethnic tensions and, finally, civil and ethnic war that destroyed the
country - the moment to confront the crisis adequately was missed. One can thus say that what put the last nail in the coffin of
Yugoslavia was the very attempt by its leading circle to protect the ignorance of the Leader, to keep his gaze happy.
Is this not what, ultimately, culture is? One of the elementary rules of culture is to know when (and how) to
pretend NOT to know (or notice), to go on and act as if something which happened did not
happen. When a person near me accidentally produces an unpleasant vulgar noise, the proper thing to do is to ignore it, not to
comfort him: "I know it was an accident, don't worry, it doesn't really matter!" We should thus understand in the right way the joke
about the chicken: a madman's question is a quite pertinent question in many everyday situations. When parents with a young child
have affairs, fight and shout at each other, they as a rule (if they retain a minimum of decency) try to prevent the child to notice it,
well aware that the child's knowledge would have had a devastating effect on him - so what they try to maintain is precisely a
situation of "We know that we cheat and fight and shout, but the child/chicken doesn't know it." (Of course, in many cases, the child
knows it very well, but merely feigns not to notice anything wrong, aware that in this way his parents' life is a little bit easier.) Or, at
a less vulgar level, recall a parent in a difficult predicament (dying of cancer, in financial difficulties), but trying to keep this secret
from his nearest and dearest...
And this is also our problem with ecology: we know it, but the chicken doesn't know it... The problem is thus that we
can rely neither on scientific mind nor on our common sense - they both mutually reinforce each other's
blindness. The scientific mind advocates a cold objective appraisal of dangers and risks involved
where no such appraisal is effectively possible, while common sense finds it hard to accept that a
catastrophe can really occur. The difficult ethical task is thus to "un-learn" the most basic
coordinates of our immersion into our life-world: what usually served as the recourse to
Wisdom (the basic trust in the background-coordinates of our world) is now THE source of
danger.
One can learn even more from the Rumsfeldian theory of knowledge - the expression, of course, refers to
the well-known accident in March 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the
relationship between the known and the unknown: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are
known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are
things we don't know we don't know." What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the "unknown
knowns," things we don't know that we know - which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the
"knowledge which doesn't know itself," as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the
confrontation with Iraq are the "unknown unknowns," the threats from Saddam about which we do not even suspect what they may
be, what we should reply is that the main dangers are, on the contrary, the "unknown knowns," the disavowed beliefs and
suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves. In the case of ecology, these
disavowed beliefs and suppositions are the ones which prevent us from really believing in the
possibility of the catastrophe, and they combine with the "unknown unknowns." The situation is
like that of the blind spot in our visual field: we do not see the gap, the picture appears
continuous.
If the Freudian name for the "unknown known" is the Unconscious , the Freudian name for the "unknown
unknowns" is TRAUMA, the violent intrusion of something radically unexpected , something the
subject was absolutely not ready for, something the subject cannot integrate in any way. In her Les nouveaux blesss (The New
Wounded), Catherine Malabou proposed a critical reformulation of psychoanalysis along these lines. Her starting point is the
delicate echoing between internal and external Real in psychoanalysis: for Freud and Lacan, external shocks, brutal
unexpected encounters or intrusions, due their properly traumatic impact to the way they touch
a pre-existing traumatic "psychic reality." Malabou rereads along these lines Lacan's reading of the Freudian dream of
"Father, can't you see I'm burning?" The contingent external encounter of the real (the candle collapses and
inflames the cloth covering the dead child, and the smell of the smoke disturbs the father on a night-watch) triggers the true
Real, the unbearable fantasy-apparition of the dead child reproaching his father. In this way, for Freud (and
Lacan), every external trauma is "sublated," internalized, owing its impact to the way a preexisting Real of the "psychic reality" is aroused through it. Even the most violent intrusions of
the external real - say, the shocking effect on the victims of bomb-explosions in war - owe their
traumatic effect to the resonance they find in perverse masochism, in death-drive, in
unconscious guilt-feeling, etc. Today, however, our socio-political reality itself imposes multiple versions of
external intrusions, traumas, which are just that, meaningless brutal interruptions that destroy the
symbolic texture of subject's identity. First, there is the brutal external physical violence : terror
attacks like 98/11, the US "shock and awe" bombing of Iraq, street violence, rapes, etc., but also natural catastrophes, earthquakes,
tsunamis, etc.; then, there is the "irrational" (meaningless) destruction of the material base of our
inner reality (brain-tumors, Alzheimer's disease, organic cerebral lesions, etc., which can utterly change, destroy
even, the victim's personality; finally, there are the destructive effects of socio-symbolic violence (social
exclusion, etc.). (Note how this triad echoes the triad of commons: the commons of external nature, of inner nature, of
symbolic substance.) Basically, Malabou's reproach is that Freud himself succumbs here to the temptation of
meaning: he is not ready to accept the direct destructive efficiency of external shocks - they
destroy the psyche of the victim (or, at least, wound it in an unredeemable way) without resonating in any
inner traumatic truth. It would be obviously obscene to link, say, the psychic devastation of a
"Muslim" in a Nazi camp to his masochism, death-drive, or guilt feeling: a Muslim (or a victim of multiple rape,
of brutal torture...) is not devastated by unconscious anxieties, but directly by a "meaningless"
external shock which can in no way be hermeneutically appropriated/integrated.
For Freud, if external violence gets too strong, we simply exit the psychic domain proper: the choice is "either the shock is reintegrated into a pre-existing libidinal frame, or it destroys psyche and nothing is left." What he cannot envisage is that the victim as
if were survives its own death: all different forms of traumatic encounters, independently of their specific nature (social, natural,
biological, symbol...) lead to the same result - a new subject emerges which survives its own death, the death (erasure) of its
symbolic identity. There is no continuity between this new "post-traumatic" subject (suffering Alzheimer's or other cerebral lesions,
etc.): after the shock, literally a new subject emerges. Its features are well-known from numerous descriptions: lack of emotional
engagement, profound indifference and detachment - it is a subject who is no longer "in-the-world" in the Heideggerian sense of
engaged embodied existence. This subject lives death as a form of life - his life is death-drive embodied, a life deprived of erotic
engagement; and this holds for henchmen no less than for his victims. If the XXth century was the Freudian century, the century of
libido, so that even the worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochist) vicissitudes of the libido, will the XXIst century be the
century of such post-traumatic disengaged subjects whose first emblematic figure, that of the Muslim in concentration camps, is not
multiplying in the guise of refugees, terror victims, survivors of natural catastrophes, of family violence...? The feature that runs
through all these figures is that the cause of the catastrophe remains libidinally meaningless, resisting any interpretation.
The constellation is properly frustrating: although we (individual or collective agents) know that it all
depends on us, we cannot ever predict the consequences of our acts - we are not impotent, but, quite on the
contrary, omnipotent, without being able to determine the scope of our powers. The gap between causes and effects is
irreducible, and there is no "big Other" to guarantee the harmony between the levels, to
guarantee that the overall outcome of our interactions will be satisfactory. The problem is that,
although our (sometimes even individual) acts can have catastrophic (ecological, etc.) consequences, the big
Other prevents us from believing in it, from assuming this knowledge and responsibility:
"Contrary to what the promoters of the principle of precaution think, the cause of our nonaction is not the scientific uncertainty. We know it, but we cannot make ourselves believe in
what we know." This situation confronts us with the deadlock of the contemporary "society of choice" at its most radical. In the
standard situation of the forced choice (a situation in which I am free to choose on condition that I make the right choice, so that the
only thing left for me to do is the empty gesture of pretending to accomplish freely what is in any case imposed on me). Here, on the
contrary, the choice really is free and is, for this very reason, experienced as even more frustrating: we
find ourselves
constantly in the position of having to decide about matters that will fundamentally affect our
lives, but without a proper foundation in knowledge - as John Gray put it:
we have been thrown into a time in which everything is provisional. New technologies alter our lives daily. The
traditions of the past cannot be retrieved. At the same time we have little idea of what the future
will bring. We are forced to live as if we were free.
It is thus not enough to vary the standard motif of the Marxist critique: "although we allegedly live in a society of choices, the choices
effectively left to us are trivial, and their proliferation masks the absence of true choices, choices that would affect the basic features
of our lives..." While this is true, the problem is rather that we are forced to choose without having at our
This need to discover a meaning is crucial when we are confronting potential or actual
catastrophes, from AIDS and ecological disasters to holocaust: they have no "deeper meaning."
The legacy of Job prohibits us such a gesture of taking a refuge in the standard transcendent
figure of God as a secret Master who knows the meaning of what appears to us as meaningless
catastrophe, the God who sees the entire picture in which what we perceive as a stain
contributes to global harmony. When confronted with an event like the holocaust or the death of
millions in Congo in the last years, is it not obscene to claim that these stains have a deeper meaning in
that they contribute to the harmony of the Whole? Is there a Whole which can teleologically justify an event like
the holocaust? Christ's death on the cross thus means that one should drop without restraint the notion of God as a transcendent
caretaker who guarantees the happy outcome of our acts, the guarantee of historical teleology - Christ's death on the cross is the
death of this God, it repeats Job's stance, it refuses any "deeper meaning" that obfuscates the brutal real of historical catastrophes.
And the lesson of ecology is that we should go to the end here and accept the non-existence of
the ultimate big Other, nature itself with its pattern of regular rhythms, the ultimate reference of
order and stability.
However, this lack of the big Other does not entail that we are irrevocably caught in the misery
of our finitude, deprived of any redemptive moments. In his The Cattle Truck, Jorge Semprun reports how he
witnessed the arrival of a truckload of Polish Jews at Buchenwald; they were stacked into the freight train almost 200 to a car,
traveling for days without food and water in the coldest winter of the war. On arrival all in the carriage had frozen to death except for
15 children, kept warm by the others in the centre of the bundle of bodies. When the children were emptied from the car the Nazis let
their dogs loose on them. Soon only two fleeing children were left:
The little one began to fall behind, the SS were howling behind them and then the dogs began to howl too, the smell of blood was
driving them mad, and then the bigger of the two children slowed his pace to take the hand of the smaller... together they covered a
few more yards... till the blows of the clubs felled them and, together they dropped, their faces to the ground, their hands clasped for
all eternity.
One can easily imagine how this scene should be filmed: while the soundtrack renders what goes on in reality (the two children are
clubbed to death), the image of their hands clasped freezes, immobilized for eternity - while the sound renders temporary reality, the
image renders the eternal Real. It is the pure surface of such fixed images of eternity, not any deeper Meaning, which allows for
redemptive moments in the bleak story of the Shoah. One should read this imagined scene together with the final shot of Thelma
and Louise: the frozen image of the car with the two women "flying" above the precipice: is this the positive utopia (triumph of the
feminine subjectivity over death), or the masking of the miserable wreck the car IS in reality at that time? The weakness of the final
shot from Thelma and Louise is that the frozen image is not accompanied by the soundtrack depicting what "really" went on (the car
crash, terrible cries of the dying women) - strangely, this lack of reality undermines the very utopian dimension of the frozen image.
In contrast to this scene, our imagined filmed scene from Semprun would fully assert the Platonic duality of temporal empirical
reality and eternal Idea.
What this means is that, without shame, in conceiving art, we should return to Plato. Plato's reputation suffers because of his claim
that poets should be thrown out of the city - a rather sensible advice, judging from my post-Yugoslav experience, where ethnic
cleansing was prepared by poets' dangerous dreams (the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic being only one among them). If the
West has the industrial-military complex, we in the ex-Yugoslavia had a poetic-military complex: the post-Yugoslav war was
triggered by the explosive mixture of the poetic and the military component. So, from a Platonic standpoint, what does a poem about
the holocaust do? It provides its "description without place": in renders the Idea of holocaust.
Recall the old Catholic strategy to guard men against the temptation of the flesh: when you see in front of
you a voluptuous feminine body, imagine
Real, the Real which announces itself in the seductive appearance of the naked body. That is to
say, in the opposition between the spectral appearance of the sexualized body and the repulsive
body in decay, it is the spectral appearance with is the Real, and the decaying body which is
reality - we take recourse to the decaying body in order to avoid the deadly fascination of the
Real which threatens to draw us into its vortex of jouissance.
Melancholy Alt
Imagining the narrative of extinction and its ethical value
domesticates the event and permits an attitude of mourning where we
attach ourselves to humanity understood as an object outside of
nature. We should adopt a melancholy perspective insteaddont
imagine the death of humanity and mourn for the loss, but accept it in
the narrative of this debate to revise our relationship to the world and
threats of ecological destruction
MATTS AND TYNAN 2012 (Tim Matts holds a Ph.D in Critical Theory from Cardiff
University, Aidan Tynan also holds a Ph.D in Critical Theory from Cardiff University, The Melancholy of
Extinction: Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" as an Environmental Film, M/C Journal, Vol. 15, No. 3)
The discoveries of Charles Darwin in the nineteenth century constituted
with plenty of opportunities to, in Colebrooks words, [domesticate] the sense of the human end by
affirming various modes of post-humanism in ways which ultimately deny the shattering truth of
extinction.
This domestication obviously takes place in one sense on the level of a conscious denial of the scale of the ecological crisis. On
another level, however, environmentally conscious representations of the planet or nature as a sheer
autonomous objectivity, a
intentions, to domesticate the end of humanity through the logic of a post-human mastery of the
story of our own obliteration.
The starker truth with which Melancholia confronts us is that the end of humanity cannot and
will not be internalised by any process of human memorialisation. Von Triers film does not portray any
post-catastrophe world from which we might be able to extract a degree of psychological comfort or residual sense of mastery.
Rather, the narrative frame is entirely bounded by the impact event , which we witness first in the films
opening shots and then again at its close. There
successional logic of the future-anterior. Everything begins and ends with the moment of
impact.
If the narrative itself is concerned with the lives of the characters, particularly the effects of the main characters depression on her
family relationships, then the films central event remains radically disjunctive, incapable of being processed on this interpersonal
level through the standard cinematic tropes of the disaster or survival genres. The value of regarding Melancholia as an
environmental film, then, is that it profoundly de-psychologises the prospect of our extinction while forcing the burden of this
events unfathomable content onto us. Von Triers film suggests that melancholy, not mourning, is a more apt emotional register for
ecological crisis and for the extinction awareness it brings, and in this sense Melancholia represents a valuable alternative to more
standard environmental narratives which remain susceptible to ideological reinscriptions of human (or post-human) mastery. As
ecocritic Timothy Morton suggests, melancholy is more apt, even more ethically appropriate, to an
ecological situation in which the worst has already happened, and in which we find ourselves
[...] already fully implicated (756).
The most influential account of mourning and melancholia comes from Sigmund Freud, who described these attitudes as two
different ways of dealing with loss. In the process of mourning, Freud states that there comes the realisation that the loved object no
longer exists which [demands] that all libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to that object (245). The healthy outcome of
this very painful process is that our libidinal attachments are free once again to take on another object of love; the lost object can be
replaced according to a logic of temporal succession. Melancholia also results from a loss, says Freud, but this time it relates not
simply or primarily to a replaceable external object but, more complexly, to something in the ego itself, not a discrete thing in the
world but a certain way of being in the world which the lost object facilitated. Freud writes that the trauma of melancholia is thus
manifested by the ego itself taking on or embodying the loss.
The ego, stripped of its sense of being, comes to mimic the non-existence of that which once
supported it. The delusion of the melancholics depressive state, says Freud, stems from the
fact that something has ruptured her affective and libidinal attachment to the world, but this
cannot be psychologically processed in terms of a replaceable loss since what is lost was never
simply an external object. Her world is struck by an absence that cannot be mourned because it
is kept alive as a non-being which she is. She has taken on the burden of this structural
impossibility and does not pursue an imaginary resolution of it which , to invoke ieks Lacanian terms
once more, would involve her submitting to the subjective position of fantasy (i.e. becoming a
witness to her own non-existence). The melancholics attitude is , Freud observes, psychologically very
remarkable because it involves an overcoming of the instinct which compels every living thing
to cling to life (246). The melancholic carves out an existence apparently contrary to nature.
This is the context in which Justine remarks that the earth, as an ungrievable object, is evil.
Her melancholia is never explained in the course of the film, and, indeed, we see little of her
personality apart from the events which manifest her psychological crisis. The film opens with
the moment of interplanetary impact itself. The great blue planet of Melancholia approaches
and begins to swallow the earth into its atmosphere. We cut immediately to Justine and her
sister in the moments just before the impact: the air is electrified by the approaching collision
and birds cascade from the trees. Our way into the narrative is this moment of chaos and
dispersion, but von Triers depiction of it, his use of highly choreographed slow-motion shots
resembling tableaux vivants, distance us from any sense of urgency or immediacy. It is as if the
closer we come to the collision, the less real and the more stylised the world becomes; as if the
impact holds a content which cannot be rendered in realist terms.
By contrast, the subsequent scenes focusing on Justines interpersonal drama use a shaky, handheld camera which embeds us in the
action. The narrative follows Justine on her wedding day. As events unfold we see cracks appear in the wedding partys luxurious
facade: Justines divorced parents argue viciously; her wealthy brother-in-law, who funded the wedding, fears that the occasion may
be ruined by petty squabbling, to his great expense. Beneath these cracks, however, we realise that there is a deeper, more
inexplicable crack opening up within Justine herself. At one point she retreats with her newlywed husband from the tumult of the
wedding party. We expect from this scene an articulation or partial resolution, perhaps, of Justines mental conflict, or at least an
insight into her character. In a more conventional story, this moment of conjugal intimacy would allow Justine to express an
authentic desire, distinct from the superficial squabbling of her family, a means to be herself. But this doesnt happen. Justine
inexplicably rejects her husbands overtures.
In clinical terms, we might say that Justines behaviour corresponds to anhedonia, a loss of interest in the normal sources of
pleasure or enjoyment. Invoking Freud, we could add to this that the very objective viability of her libidinal attachments has been
called into question and that this is what precipitates her crisis. If such attachments are what ground us in reality, Justines desire
seems to have become ungrounded through the emergence of something nonobjectifiable, to borrow a term from philosophers
Deleuze and Guattari (What is Philosophy?, 209). This something is revealed only in the second half of the film with the
appearance of Melancholia and the prospect of its obliterating impact. Justine is drawn to this new planet, in one scene luxuriating
naked beneath its blue glow. We could argue, in one sense, that she has discovered in Melancholia a correlate to
her own self-destructive desire: the only thing that can possibly gratify her is the annihilation of
the earth itself.
However in another, more constructive sense, we can say that her melancholic desire amounts
to a kind of geophilosophical critique, a political and ultimately ecological protest against the
territorialisation of her desire according to a supposed acceptability of objects. Deleuze and Guattari
suggest that, if desires libidinal attachments form a kind of ground or territory then all territories
interact with one another at some level because they are all equally founded on lines of
deterritorialization sweeping them towards a mutually shared, extra-territorial outside (A
Thousand Plateaus, 9). Or, putting it in plainer terms: beneath every ground is a non-ground such that
the earth cannot ultimately ground itself in itself. Every mental, material, or social territory is
founded upon this global movement of ungrounding.
The trauma of Justines melancholia refers us to something which cannot be resolved within the
given territories of her social or interpersonal milieus. While her illness can be registered in terms of the events
of the films narrative time, the films central eventthe collision with Melancholiaremains irreducible to the memorial properties
of storytelling. We may thus argue that the impact event is not strictly speaking an element of the films narrative, but rather a pure
cinematic sign evoking a radical form of ecological openness. The film moves through different territoriesconjugal, familial,
economic, scientificbut what propels us from one territory to another is the impact event whose content is reducible to none of
these territories.
Of all the films characters, only Justine is open to this absolute irreducibility, this resistance
to closure. Her openness to Melancholia is not determined by whether or not it can be
objectified, that is, rendered assimilable to the terms of a given territory. Both her brother-inlaw (an amateur astronomer) and her sister attempt to calculate the chances of impact, but
Justine remains open to it in a manner which does not close off that which precludes survival. In
the end, as Melancholia bears down on the Earth, Justines attitudewhich in Freuds terms is
antithetical to the instinct for lifeturns out to be the most appropriate one.
The point of this article is certainly not to argue that we should acquiesce to the traumatic realities
of environmental crisis. Its aim, rather, is to suggest that well-being and harmony may no longer
describe the appropriate emotional register for ecological thinking, given the current urgency of
the crisis. Human and ecological health may, after all, be radically different and
incommensurable things. The great anthropologist and structuralist thinker Claude Lvi-Strauss once remarked:
I am concerned with the well-being of plants and animals that are threatened by humanity. I think ecologists make the mistake of
thinking that they can defend humans and nature at the same time. I think it is necessary to decide if one prefers humans or nature.
I am on the side of nature (qtd in Conley, 66).
Lvi-Strauss may well be right when he says that a common human and ecological health may be an illusion of wishful thinking.
However, what if there is a common trauma, whose ineradicability would not be a tragedy but,
rather, evidence of radical openness in which we no longer have to pick sides (humans or plants
and animals)? What if the proper base from which to begin thinking ecologically were not a
conception of a harmonious human-ecological whole but a foundational non-harmony, an
encounter with which contains something ineliminably traumatising? In a recent paper, the philosopher
Reza Negarestani proposes just such a traumatic account of ecological openness. All existence, understood
geophilosophically, is, says Negarestani, conditioned by a concatenation of traumas or cuts [...] there is no
single or isolated psychic trauma [...] there is no psychic trauma without an organic trauma and
no organic trauma without a terrestrial trauma that in turn is deepened into open cosmic vistas.
Ecological openness, in this sense, would be necessarily melancholic , in the terms described above, in
that it would necessitate the perpetual precariousness of those links by which we seek to ground
ourselves.
Ecology is all too often given to a mournful attitude, which is , as weve argued, the very attitude of
psychological incorporation, healing, and normalisation. Similarly, nature, we are told, holds
the key to harmonious self-regulation. But what if today such notions are obstacles to a genuine
awareness of the ecological realities facing us all (humans and non-humans)? What if this ideal
of nature were just a product of our own desire for stability, order, and regularityfor some
imaginary extra-social and non-human point of reference by which to attain to a position of
mastery in the telling of the story of ourselves?
Narcissism K
America 1NC
The assumption that foreign decisions are made in reaction to
American leadership is the height of narcissismits not only wrong
but causes the US to be blamed for every failure and turns the case
WEINER 2013 (Greg, teaches political science at Assumption College, Narcissistic Polity
Disorder: Its Diagnosis and Treatment, Library of Law and Liberty, July 9,
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2013/07/09/narcissistic-polity-disorder-its-diagnosis-and-treatment/)
The recently published fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual contains no
diagnosis for Narcissistic Polity Disorderthe books scope being confined to the personality disorder of a similar
namebut should the editors ever wish to expand into political science, they will find an excellent
case study in the interview Senator John McCain gave on CBS Face the Nation last Sunday. It turns out the Egyptian
coup, which gave all signs of being a conflict among Egyptians about Egypt, was in fact about
well, us.
Its a strong indicator, McCain said, of the lack of American leadership and influence since we
urged the military not to do that, McCain explained. The attentive reader will recognize failure of American
leadership as an emission from the F6 button of McCains keyboard, which he hits anytime an adverse event
occurs anywhere in the world. But it turns out Egypt is not the only country into whose water the Senator gazes and sees
Americas reflection. He continued:
[T]he place is descending into chaos but so is the entire Middle East because of the total vacuum and lack of American leadership
whether it be the massacres in SyriaLebanon isis beset by sectarian violence, Jordan is about to collapse under the weight of
refugees, Iraq is unraveling, Afghanistan, were having grave problems organizing a follow on force in Afghanistan. America has not
led and America is not leading and when America doesnt lead bad things happen and other people do lead and Egypt is just one
segment of a failure of American leadership over the last five years and we need to start being leaders rather thanthanthan
bystanders.
Sectarian violence in the Middle East, an ancient and evidently incurable phenomenon, an American failure?
Thus McCains understanding of leadership and its breathtaking condescensionin, ironically, the name of the neoconservative
project of spreading freedom. Note that within that modelsomeone is going to lead and it is therefore best for it to be a,
make that the, righteous nation little
room is left for the very thing McCain claims he wants to promote: nations
actually making choices about their own futures from within. In the present case, Egyptians are fighting
about Egypt; the real issue, according to McCain, must be what the United States had to say, or failed to say, about it. The generals
could not possibly have been motivated by (a) different aspirations for Egypt, (b) venality, (c) power or (d) some combination of the
above: We must understand their motives for the coup in terms of whether they complied with our request that they not do that.
To be sure, north of $1.5 billion in foreign aid ought to buy some influence with Egypts governors, although primarily what it buys is
assurance of Egyptian compliance with the countrys peace with Israelwhich the generals may be likelier to keep than the Muslim
Brotherhood. If what it was supposed to buy was democracy as an American gift to the Egyptian people, we ought not to be
surprised if Egyptians turn around and resent the arrogance of our beneficenceand hold us
accountable for its failures too.
McCains interpretation of the turmoil in the Middle Eastnote, incidentally, the utter lack of self-awareness as to Iraqs descent
into chaosis powerful evidence of the extent to which American exceptionalism, poorly understood, can
slouch into narcissism. So widespread is the phenomenon that all politicians , even those accused of
harboring heretical thoughts about exceptionalism, must make obeisance to it. (President Obama: [T]here is no
substitute for American leadership.)
It did not start this way. John Winthrops
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with
our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a
by-word through the world.
That was 1630; this is 2013. No one seriously believes the United States can retreat from the world .
They
"recognizes" himself in the mirror and falsely identifies the reflection as an image of the unified
wholeness and mastery he does not in fact possess. In that moment, the infant, with his smiling mother's
assent, is lured into an illusion of false certainty and omnipotence that splits him off from his fragmented body/self with its accompanying experiences of terror and uncertainty . Lacan's conception of
the mirror sequence describes the way a mental construction of a perfect, alienating identity can originate,
separating the infant from his own insufficient self image . The / itself that takes form here is an artificial
representation, a self split between its idealized mirror image and the raw truth of human existence.3 It is not difficult to imagine,
then, how this narcissistic ideal can be later projected onto objects of desire who mirror this ideal .
Narcissism is not limited to the psychology of individuals . American culture, politics, and
its recent national wounding uncannily mirror these narcissistic phenomena. The Patriot Act
and the War on Terror can be seen as unconscious fantasies enacted upon the world stage . In this
post-September 11 world many individuals err on the side of security and rigid borders, thereby sacrificing
freedom, relationality, and dimensionality. Nor is narcissism merely a contemporary phenomenon. Literature and
history provide ample illustrations of the historical and cultural contexts underlying the problem of narcissism and the way it is
transcended.
The essence of narcissism is the repudiation of the other in its differences. Sometimes this takes
the form of appropriating the other under the guise of romantic love, and some- times it takes the form
of casting out the other to protect the vulnerable self. In these pages I attempt to present a theory of the
transcendence of narcissism, in which the humble capacity to love comes about through the surrender of the self to the shattering
truth of the other.
Western culture's most ancient tale of love, "Psyche and Amor," which forms part of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, will introduce us to
these dynamics. The story features a leading manAmor, the very personification of Lovewhose amorous desires are so embedded
in narcissism that he never dares to reveal himself to the object of his passion. The couple. Psyche and Amor, remains suspended in
a dark fusion removed from life until Psyche has finally had enough; the illusion is pierced and shattered, and loss ensues. Emerging
from his state of wounding, Amor comes in a new way to the side of his beloved, the mortal human Psyche, his act signifying the
inner "awakening of the sleeping soul through love," as James Hillman puts it.4 How many hundreds of modern romantic dramas
follow in the train of the Tale of Psyche and Amor, telling the story of the selfish or hardened man who uses everyone, then loses
everything, but then finds a woman from whom he learns how to love?
More than a millennium later, the tales of medieval courtly romances portray the fate of lovers whose longing for oneness can be
realized not on earth but only in their sacrifi- cial death and reunion in Heaven. These are tragedies portraying an idealized longing
for true love that can never be sustained in our flawed human condition.
The blissful fantasy of everlasting union merely conceals the face of narcissism . This romantic ideal
privileges the allure of the lovers' paradise over the enduring struggles in human relationships in all their vicissitudes. These are the
romantic fantasies of a happi- ly-ever-after ending, illusions ultimately deriving from childhood experiences. Time and again,
lovers plunge blindly into brief enthrallments that are doomed to failure , yet hold fast to their
unquestioned, cherished beliefs, and to a faith in an idyllic innocence that is inevitably shattered. Young lovers blindly enter
marriage with the fantasy that romantic love will endure forever. But predictably, when the burning fires of first love's desires have
cooled to warm embers, many men devalue the apparently known quantity at home and look to a passionate love affair with a
mysterious other, in which to be absorbed. For the narcissist this process signals the avoidance of human
relationship in its fullness, rife with difficulties, limitations, and ethical responsibilities, in favor
of the grandiose illusion of ecstatic oneness and freedom from all pain .
Ultimately the narcissistic avoidance of the difficulties of life arises in response to a pri- mal experience
the inevitable wounding and loss suffered in the earliest infant-mother relationship. Thus narcissistic dynamics are
deeply impacted by the experience of trauma. Psychological wounds too devastating to bear are reflexively
partitioned and buried, while si- multaneously, reactionary wars of retaliation against
one's pain are staged in order to provide safeguards from disavowed shame and profound
vulnerabilities. Throughout life grandiose fantasies in all their forms will magically supplant the
experience of unbearable vulnerabil- ity, literally obliterating it.
These clinical themes are richly amplified by cultural signifiers found in the myths and mysteries of antiquity and from the medieval
Tales of Courtly Love through the literature of the mystics and Romantics, to Gothic horror stories and modern romances from
contempo- rary popular culture. These provide the historical and cultural contexts for the contemporary problem of narcissism as
well as its transcendence.
As we will see, Levinas's postmodern philosophy describes the way the encounter with the ineffable Face of the
Other shocks and deconstructs the sameness and narcissism within eros, freeing the subject to
assume an enduring responsibility for the other from which new and transcendent capacities to
love may be envisioned.
My theory of the transcendence of narcissism is based on the work of two men: C. G. Jung and the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.
Jung's theory of the complexes (see the Glossary for italicized terms) illuminates two vital concepts that are threaded throughout
this book: the ego's primitive identification with the negative or overly positive aspects of the Mother, and the relationship of the
puer aetemus, the eternal boy, with his split-off counterpart, the senex, the old man. We can see how these complexes come about by
observing the characters in Apuleius' The Golden Ass, which contains the immortal Tale of Psyche and Amor." The path through
which they are overcome leads from the romantic, narcissistic, predatory preoccu- pations of what I call the mother-bound man to
the wound that shatters the isolation of his standpoint. Through the work of the transcendent fimction this shattering may culminate
in the emergence of empathic dimensions of emotion and a humble yet still masculine stand- point.
One of the ways this book contributes to the development of contemporary analytic psychology is through the cross-fertilization of
Jungian and contemporary psychoanalytic ideas. For instance, I argue that narcissistic defenses arise not after the development of
the complexes, but prior to them. The puer aeternus psychology described by Jung comes into being in reaction to the narcissistic
defenses that have appropriated the infant's most archaic, unsignifiable complexthe mother. These narcissistic defenses
encapsulate the infant's ego, protecting it from experiences reminiscent of its original loss of maternal containing. Another original
area of contribution may be found in my analysis of the Grail Legend, where I view von Eschenbach's Parzival through the lens of
eros development in its dual guise, as both a narcissistic and wounding process and one that is relational and healing.
The work of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas provides the second major source for my theory of how narcissism may be
transcended. A traumatic encounter with an utterly unknowable, transcendent Other *sometimes
initiated by analytical work or psychotherapy may
among other things, the individual's endless, romantically driven projections and erotic fantasies . There is
therefore a painful, even violent, yet redemptive potential to the wounding. Levinas's postmodern philosophy is essential to an
understanding of this kind of encounter with the Other by a subject; he too emphasizes its capacity to decenter the ego's
"solipsism" the belief that the self is the only reality and the only thing that we can be certain of. Levinas attempts to describe this
shift from an ego-centered view of the universe as some- thing that defies understanding or category. All religious experience
perhaps stems from such a primordial awareness. His ethical philosophy, informed by the Holocaust in which his entire family was
murdered, centers upon the "relation of infinite responsibility to the other person."6 Levinas provides a profound
insight into the dangers of how individuals can be so easily subsumed in the vision of a
tyrannical utopia which he often refers to as a "totality."
To Levinas, the Other is unknowable, ineffable, ungraspable, tormenting, enigmatic, infinite, irreducible, sacred.
Its mere trace can only be glimpsed interpersonally or inter- subjectivelya term defining a psychological
experience created between individuals. The Other does not originate in the psyche. It is infinite, already
there, before subject or object exists, and our subjective awareness of it comes through the
primacy of its impact upon us. It transcends subjective being, defies our concepts or categories,
and cannot be engulfed or appropriated by ego consciousness .7
As Levinas would say, the trace of the Other is glimpsed in the irreducible "face of the human other," who is revealed in (her)
vulnerability, sacredness, and nakedness.8 In Levi- nas's ethical view, one's responsibility emerges from the trauma
he feels for
the useless suffering and destitution of the one now standing before him. He is taken
hostage to the guilt of surviving when the other is stricken. He is even compelled to wish to
substitute himself for the other, to put himself in (her) placebut it is too late. This is the
torment of which Levinas speaksthe unavoidable responsibility to the other invoked by the shatter-
ing Other. It is impossible to evade this summons, which accuses one and even leads him to wonder just
how much truth he can bear.
In moving from the ethics of human justice and compassion to personal psychology, one can observe how the
traumatic
impact of the Other destabilizes and shatters the ego's narcis- sism , awakening the subject from his
slumber. Such a violent blow often appears to the ego in forms that are dark and shadowy, or that threaten
to obliterate its fixed orientation and need for certainty, its wish for everything to remain the
same. For Levinas, the ego's need to appropriate alteritythe other's differenceand to reduce it to
sameness is the origin of all violence: narcissism is violence. In those cases where the shattering
encounter is successfully navigated, a restructuring of a man's core of being occurs. An inner cohesion develops that
enables him as an ethical subject to bear love's separations, uncertainties, longing, as well as its
closeness.
Here I propose a significant revisioning of Jung's concept of the enigmatic Self, concep- tualizing it as an idea akin to Levinas's
unknowable Other, where both, I contend, transcend subjective being and the boundaries of the psyche. I argue that this revised
understanding of the Self provides the basis for what I have previously described as a unifying theory of the
transcendence of narcissism.
The obsession with policy solutions in debate and the belief that we
can change the world through what we do here is simply hubris
recognizing that we are not all-powerful is the necessary condition for
empathy
RAHNEMA 1997 (Majid, Professor American Univ in Paris. The Post Development
Reader)
If the post-development era is to be free of the illusions, ideological perversions, hypocrisy and falsehoods that pervaded the
development world, the search for signposts and trails leading to a flow of 'good life' (the fidnaal in Dadacha's language)
should be informed by an entirely new rationale and set of assumptions. This should help, at the local and
transnational levels, the jen and the min to rediscover themselves, to learn from each other, to explore new possibilities of
dialogue and action, and to weave together relationships of a different kind, transcending the
present barriers of language, and thereby going beyond the paradigms that the development era has so persistently
maintained for the last fifty years. The search for new possibilities of change The end of development should not be seen as an end to
the search for new possibilities of change, for a relational world of friendship, or for genuine processes of regeneration able to give
birth to new forms of solidarity. It should only mean that the binary, the mechanistic, the reductionist, the
inhumane and the ultimately self-destructive approach to change is over. It should represent a
call to the 'good people' everywhere to think and work together. It should prompt everyone to
begin the genuine work of self-knowledge and `self polishing' (as the ahle sayqal do, according to Rilrni), an
exercise that enables us to listen more carefully to others, in particular to friends who are ready to do the same
thing. It could be the beginning of a long process aiming at replacing the present 'clis-order' by an 'aesthetic
order' based on respect for differences and the uniqueness of every single person and culture. On powerlessness and
the 'mask of love' A first condition for such a search is to look at things as they are, rather than as we
want them to be; to overcome our fears of the unknown; and, instead of claiming to be able to
change the world and to save 'humanity', to try saving ourselves from our own compelling need
for comforting illusions. The hubris of the modern individual has led him or her to believe that
the existential powerlessness of humankind can usefully be replaced with compulsive actomania'.
This illusion is similar to the modern obsession with fighting death at all costs. Both
compulsions tend, in fact, to undermine, disfigure and eventually destroy the only forms of power that define
true life. Paradoxically, it is through fully experiencing our powerlessness, as painful as that may
be, that it becomes possible for us to be in tune with human suffering , in all its manifestations; to
understand the 'power of the powerless' (to use Vaclay Havel's expression); and to rediscover our oneness with all
those in pain. Blinkered by the Promethean myth of Progress, development called on all the 'powerless' people to
join in a world-wide crusade against the very idea of powerlessness, building its own power of seduction and conviction on the mass
production of new illusions. It designed for every taste a 'mask of love' an expression coined by John McKnight" to
define the
modern notion of care' which various 'developers' could deploy when inviting new
recruits to join the crusade. It is because development incarnated a false love for an abstract
humanity that it ended up by upsetting the lives of millions of living human beings. For half a
century its 'target populations' suffered the intrusion in their lives of an army of development
teachers and experts, including well-intentioned field workers and activists, who spoke big words
from conscientization to learning from and living with the people. Often they had studied Marx, Gramsci, Freire and the latest
research about empowerment and participation. However, their lives (and often careers) seldom allowed them to enter the intimate
world of their 'target populations'. They were good at giving people passionate lectures about their rights, their
entitlements, the class struggle and land reform. Yet
which they became addicted prevented them discovering the extraordinary redeeming power of
human powerlessness, when it opens one's soul to the world of true love and compassion.
Similar 'masks of love' have now destroyed the possibilities of our truly `caring'. Thus, when we
hear about the massacres in Algeria, Rwanda, Zaire, the Middle East or Bosnia, or the innumerable children, women
and men dying from starvation, or being tortured and killed with impunity, we feel comforted and relieved when we
send a cheque to the right organization or demonstrate on their behalf in the streets. And although
we are fully aware that such gestures are, at very best, like distributing aspirin pills to dying
people whom nothing can save; although we may have doubts as to whether our money will reach the victims, or
fears that it might even ultimately serve those governments, institutions or interests who are
responsible for this suffering; we continue to do these things. We continue to cheat ourselves,
because we consider it not decent, not morally justifiable, not 'politically correct', to do
otherwise. Such gestures, which we insist on calling acts of solidarity rather than charity', may however be explained
differently: by the great fear we have of becoming fully aware of our powerlessness in situations
when nothing can be done. And yet this is perhaps the most authentic way of rediscovering our
oneness with those in pain. For the experiencing of our powerlessness can lead us to encounter
the kind of deep and redeeming suffering that provides entry to the world of compassion and
discovery of our true limits and possibilities. It can also be the first step in the direction of
starting a truthful relationship with the world, as it is. Finally, it can help us understand this
very simple tautology: that no one is in a position to do more than one can. As one humbly
recognizes this limitation, and learns to free oneself from the egocentric illusions inculcated by
the Promethean myth, one discovers the secrets of a power of a different quality: that genuine
and extraordinary power that enables a tiny seed, in all its difference and uniqueness, to start its
journey into the unknown.
Heg/Deterrence Link
Deterrence relies on a narcissistic mythit relates all foreign
behavior to US policy
WEINER 2014 (Greg Weiner, who teaches political science at Assumption College, Narcissistic
Polity Disorder: Treating the Advanced Case, Library of Law and Liberty, March 6,
http://www.libertylawsite.org/2014/03/06/narcissistic-polity-disorder-treating-the-advanced-case/)
Or, OK, not, but dont tell Senator Lindsey
interpreting events that have nothing to do with them as personal insults. Psychiatrists call this
narcissism, and the problem with treating it is the near incapacity of those who suffer from the
disorder to see it in themselves.
Prolif Link
The concept of a US prolif signal is narcissismcountries make
decisions unrelated to US models
MIRENGOFF 2014 (Paul, GEORGE WILL AND THE NARCISSISTIC VIEW OF AMERICAN
certain regimes the importance of having nuclear weapons. It would be interesting to know just how pacific
U.S. policy would have to be in order to unteach the importance of having nukes.
Will has fallen, quite uncharacteristically, into the narcissistic view of
Other things being equal, any foreign power with aggressive territorial and/or ideological
ambitions would like to have nuclear weapons. And any such foreign power with substantial
resources and firm control over its population will be strongly tempted to pursue their
acquisition.
Having nuclear weapons serves many purposes other than dissuading America from imposing
regime change. For example, as Scott points out, obtaining nuclear weapons would help preserve the
rule of the mullahs in Iran quite apart from anything the U.S. might do to bring about regime
change. (There has been plenty of regime change in the Middle East lately; the U.S. has had little
to do with almost all of it). In addition, nukes would enhance Irans regional dominance and enable
the mullahs to threaten, if not attack, Israel.
What could teach Iran the importance of not having nukes? Probably nothing at this juncture.
Reserve University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence
and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph
M., Psychological Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)
Unlike assassination, war has been extremely common; indeed, Sluka (1992) summarized various estimates that there
have
been approximately 14, 000 wars since 3600 B.C ., and the four decades following World War II contained only 26
days of world peace. Generalization is therefore quite hazardous. Still, recent and salient evidence seems hard to
reconcile with the view that low self-esteem (as in lack of national pride) prompts nations to go
to war. It is difficult to characterize imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, or Husseins Iraq , for example,
as suffering from low self-esteem; rather, such cases seem to fit the pattern of excessively
favorable views of self that produce dreams of glory and anger that the rest of the world fails to
pay sufficient respect. Staub (1985) concluded that cultural attitudes of superiority are important causes
of warfare and other violence.
If we examine war from the perspective of the individuals who carry it out rather than from the perspective of national ideology,
once again there seems ample evidence of egotism. Keegan (1993) has concluded that professional soldiers, from the
Romans to the present, were not generally attracted and sustained in military life by financial gain but rather by
pride in belonging to a valued group, concern over winning admiration and fellowship of colleagues, accumulation of honor, and
largely symbolic recognitions of success.
Recent efforts to understand the attitudes that make people favorably inclined toward war have been summarized by Feshbach
(1994). In his research program, two sets of attitudes stood out (see Kosterman & Feshbach, 1989). He called the first of these
patriotism, which he explained chiefly in terms of attachment feelings, although some element of pride is involved. The second
attitude he referred to as nationalism, which he explicitly defined in terms of belief in the superiority of ones nation over others.
Both of these attitudes are positively related to militaristic attitudes, but nationalism shows much stronger
relationships to prowar and pronuclear attitudes. Nationalism is also positively correlated with
individual aggressive tendencies. These results indicate that feelings of collective superiority are
linked to violent, militaristic inclinations, ranging from personal conflicts to nuclear war .
Critique
Most of the work reviewed in this section was done by historians, sociologists, and political scientists. When judged by psychologists
standards of methodological rigor, this work is relatively weak, but when judged on its own terms it fares better. Moreover, the
convergence of evidence across different disciplines helps rule out the danger that disciplinary
biases or methodological artifacts have shaped the conclusions .
Conclusion
Except for assassination, it appears that political
Violence Impacts
The belief that American institutions are a model for the world will
only result in frustration and violenceanyone who fails to conform
will be branded an outcast and subject to destruction
CALDWELL 2006 (Wilbur, author of several books, American Narcissism: The Myth of National
Superiority, pp. 6-8)
Many nations fear the United States practices a contemporary' brand of soft imperialism, which is engulfing the world under the
auspice of economic globalization. Inherent in these fears is the notion that globalization carries with it inevitable Americanization.
At the same time, a broader globalization debate rages as to whether American led globalization will save the Third World or simply
exploit it. In spite of such fears, and despite the setbacks, Americans remain convinced that eventually all
nations are destined to fall into step and adopt the American way." All the while, we decry the
rigid fundamentalism of our enemies while we remain utterly blind to our own .
Very early on in the American experience, citizens began to harbor the notion that American
institutions, values, and way of life were so superior to those of other nations and that their spread
throughout the world was inevi- table. Despite the now obvious pluralistic nature of the modern (or post- modern)
world, such ideas still engage the American mind . In 2002, US State Department Planning Director Richard Haass,
described what he called the doc^ trine of integration. Its aim is to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements
that will sustain a world consistent with US interests and values and thereby promote peace, prosperity, and justice. These arrange
^ ments" involve ideas thought to be universal like the rule of law, human rights, private property, and religious tolerance. It is
believed that this kind of inte gration will lead to prosperity, liberalization, and democratization and thus to peace and stability.
Surely, this is all well and good and very much in line with Americas core values. Still, such a scheme is grounded in the
idea of the superi ority of our values and the assumption that our culture and institutions will
follow on the heels of reform.
For many Americans, the inevitable world victory is as simple as the facts of economics, commerce, and material progress. Our
population, our wealth,... our manufacturers, and our agricultural resources are all so expanding that the commercial relations of
this country' will be such that they must come and go with us. Here is the full brown myth of national economic superiority exuding
a shameless pride, the self-satisfied musing of a people who feel that they have materially acquitted themselves so admirably as to
prove their superi ority over all peoples.21
Others are convinced that the United States possesses "the most perfect form of government
ever devised by man;"22 that US institutions, moral fiber, and ideology are so superior to those of
other nations that all will fall prey, not to force but to a superior population, changing their
customs until, one by one, the entire world will be drawn to our civilization, our laws, and our
culture. As George Boutwell pompously and incorrectly wrote in 1869, Other nations take by force of arms, ours by force of
ideas.2
Over the years, the halls of Congress have continued to ring with the same arrogance that inspired Boutwell in the 1860s and
inflamed Rodo in 1900. Senator Beveridge waxed poetic in 1898, Our institutions will follow on the wings of commerce. And
American law, American order, American civilization, and the American flag will plant themselves on shores hitherto bloody and
benighted, but, by those agencies of God, henceforth to be made beautiful and bright.24 Or as Tyler Dennett put it in 1922,
American policy is adopted in great ignorance of the actual facts... and in a blissful and exalted assumption that any race ought to
regard conquest by the American people as a superlative blessing.
All of this blindly overlooks the undeniable fact that the transfer of insti- tutions, laws , economic
systems and social mores, not to mention entire cultures, from one people to another is not a simple matter. Rod6
points to the great fallacy of the evangelical American superiority myth by quoting the 19th'Century French historian Jules Michelet:
the transferal of what is natural and sponta- neous in one society to another where it has neither natural nor historical roots, ... [is]
like attempting to introduce a dead organism into a living one by simple implantation."
None of this is intended to imply that the original core values put forth in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution
do not represent important steps toward a universal common good. Certainly, Americans have good reason to be proud and to be
faithful to the causes of universal liberty and equality. However, such faith must be tempered with a realistic and therefore modest
sense of our own significance. We must openly approach the world in a quest for knowledge and
certitude,27 acknowledging that American ideals, values, institutions, and the American way of
life are works in progress, not con- summate Ultimate Truths.
Still, Americans are sure that they, like Woodrow Wilson, have seen visions that other nations have
not seen," and that, accordingly, the United States mission has always been to become the light
of the world."28 Indeed, from the very beginning, the American national identity was built on audacious visions of choseivness,
destiny, and mission. Ronald Reagan was not the first nor the last in a long line of entrenched American visionaries to proclaim
American exceptionalism, with its missionary implications of the Puritan "city on the hill, no longer a stationary beacon, but an
active force, the "leader of the free world" directing its forces against empires of evil."29
With such visions comes a warning: the adoption of political and social values... as a framework
for national identification is possible only if these values arc based on some source of apparent ultimate truth
which confers on them absolute validity if they can claim universality.30 If Americans unflinchingly believe
that theirs is the single principle of Absolute Truth representing the uni versal interests of
humankind, then any opposition will appear either criminal or inhuman. As Arthur Schlcsingcr Jr.
puts it, Those who are convinced that they have a monopoly on Truth always feel that they are
saving the world when they slaughter heretics. Their object remains the making of the world over in the
image of their dogmatic ideology their goal is a monolithic world, organized on the principle of the infallibility of a single
creed."32 If Americans are so egotis- tical as to believe that their nation with its gleaming lamp of
Ultimate Truth is
the envy of the world, then they will perceive no wrong in trying to make the world
over in Americas image, by whatever means. However, the world is a very- complex and diverse place, and Ultimate
Truth is a highly elusive and unstable substance. Thus, these are not only very arrogant ideas; they are also very dan gerous ideas.
Reserve University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence
and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph
M., Psychological Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)
Several main conclusions can be drawn from our survey of relevant empirical evidence. It must be noted that direct, prospective
studies linking sophisticated measures of self-appraisal to real violence have been quite rare, and so it has been necessary to look for
converging evidence from diverse sources and multiple methods. The volume and diversity of the evidence are necessary to
compensate for the lack of unambiguous, rigorous work focused on the hypotheses. With a topic as full of ethical, practical, and
theoretical complexities as violence, this problem may be inevitable.
The traditional view that low self-esteem is a cause of violence and aggression is not tenable in
light of the present evidence. Most studies failed to find any support for it, and many provided
clear and direct contradictory findings. Aggressors seem to believe that they are superior,
capable beings. Signs of low self-esteem, such as self-deprecation, humility, modesty, and self-effacing mannerisms,
seem to be rare (underrepresented) among violent criminals and other aggressors. The typical, self-defining
statements by both groups and individuals who aggress indicate a belief in their superiority, not
inferiority. Violent and criminal individuals have been repeatedly characterized as arrogant,
confident, narcissistic, egotistical, assertive, proud, and the like. By the same token, violent, aggressive, and
criminal groups tend to share beliefs in their own superiority, ranging from the man of honor
designation of Mafia initiates to the master race ideology of the Nazis. Also, from individual
hate crimes to genocidal projects, violence that is linked to prejudice is generally associated with
strong views that ones own group is superior and the out-group is inferior , even subhuman.
Reserve University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence
and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph
M., Psychological Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)
In contrast to the low self-esteem view, we propose that highly
seemingly lesser beings, and indeed they might even aggress against these lesser beings without
compunction, just as people kill insects or mice without remorse ( Myers, 1980). Also, many violent
episodes involve a substantial element of risk, and a favorable self-appraisal might furnish the
requisite confidence to take such a chance. In plain terms, egotists might be more likely to
assume that they will win a fight, and so they would be more willing to start it .
Our main argument, however, does not depict self-esteem as an independent and direct cause of violence. Rather, we propose that
the major cause of violence is high self-esteem combined with an ego threat. When favorable
views about oneself are questioned, contradicted, impugned, mocked, challenged, or otherwise put in jeopardy,
people may aggress. In particular, they will aggress against the source of the threat.
In this view, then, aggression emerges from a particular discrepancy between two views of self: a
favorable self-appraisal and an external appraisal that is much less favorable. That is, people
turn aggressive when they receive feedback that contradicts their favorable views of themselves
and implies that they should adopt less favorable views. More to the point, it is mainly the people who
refuse to lower their self-appraisals who become violent.
Collective narcissism is seen as an extension of individual narcissism to the social aspects of self .
It is an ingroup, rather than an individual self, that is idealized. A positive relationship between individual and collective narcissism
can be expected because the self-concept consists of personal self and social identities based on the groups to which people belong
( Hornsey, 2003). Idealization of self may be followed by idealization of ingroups (see Rocass, Klar, & Liviatan, 2006). It has been
demonstrated that the evaluation of novel ingroups (created in minimal group paradigm tasks) is shaped by peoples evaluations of
themselves: Individuals with high personal self-esteem evaluate their new ingroups more positively
than do individuals with low self-esteem ( Gramzow & Gaertner, 2005). Collective narcissists may see
groups as extensions of themselves and expect everybody to recognize not only their individual
greatness but also the prominence of their ingroups. It has also been suggested that, especially in collectivistic
cultures, individual narcissism may stem from the reputation and honor of the groups to which one belongs (e.g., Warren &
Capponi, 1996).
However, narcissistic idealization of a group may also be a strategy to protect a weak and
threatened ego. This possibility has been suggested by Adorno (1998; see also Arendt, 1971; Vaknin, 2003), Fromm (1941), and
status politics theorists ( Gusfield, 1963; Hofstadter, 1965; Lipset & Raab, 1970). These authors suggested that narcissistic
identification with an ingroup is likely to emerge in social and cultural contexts that diminish the ego and/or socialize individuals to
put their group in the center of their lives, attention, emotions, and actions. Thus, the development of narcissistic group
identification can be fostered by certain social contexts independent of individual-level narcissism.
Therefore, one form of narcissism does not have to automatically lead to another, and people can be narcissistic only at an individual
or only at a collective level. The relationship between individual and collective narcissism, although positive, is likely not to be high.
Most important, collective narcissism is expected to predict intergroup attitudes and actions, whereas individual narcissism is
expected to be related to interpersonal actions and attitudes (see Abrams & Hogg, 1988; Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; but see also
Jordan, Spencer, & Zanna, 2005).
Collective Narcissism and Intergroup Aggression
The threatened egotism theory provides an explanation for numerous findings linking individual
narcissism and interpersonal aggressiveness and hostility ( Baumeister et al., 2000; Baumeister, Smart, &
Boden, 1996; Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Raskin, Novacek, & Hogan, 1991; Rhodewalt & Morf, 1995, 1998), interpersonal
dominance tendencies ( Ruiz, Smith, & Rhodewalt, 2001), and the inability to forgive ( Exline, Baumeister,
Bushman, Campbell, & Finkel, 2004), accompanied by a tendency to seek vengeance ( Brown, 2004).
According to the threatened egotism theory, individual narcissism is a risk factor that contributes to a violent
and aggressive response to perceived provocation: unfair treatment, criticism, doubts, or insult.
Interpersonal aggression is a means of defending the grandiose self-image. Narcissists invest
emotionally in their high opinion of themselves, demand that others confirm that opinion, and
punish those who seem unlikely to do so. Because they require constant validation of unrealistic
greatness of the self, narcissists are likely to continually encounter threats to their self-image
and be chronically intolerant of them ( Baumeister et al., 1996). Individual narcissists are suggested to possess high
but unstable personal self-esteem (e.g., Kernis, 1993). Such personal self-esteem is vulnerable to sudden drops that produce
heightened sensitivity to ego threats, in turn leading to hostility ( Bushman & Baumeister, 1998; Kernis, 1993). Thus, individual
narcissism is related to cognitive, motivational, and emotional functioning that impairs interpersonal relations (e.g., Morf &
Rhodewalt, 2001), even though it is, at the same time, associated with subjective well-being ( Sedikides, Rudich, Gregg, Kumashiro,
& Rusbult, 2004). Few studies suggest that defensive personal self-esteem that is proposed to characterize individual narcissists
( Jordan, Spencer, Zanna, Hoshino-Browne, & Correll, 2003) may be also related to intergroup bias ( Jordan, Spencer, & Zanna,
2005).
The threatened egotism theory explains the link between individual aggressiveness and retaliatory aggression in interpersonal
contexts. We argue that collective (rather than individual) narcissism explains variance in intergroup (rather
than interpersonal) aggressiveness and hostility. The mechanism underlying this relationship should be analogous to the
mechanism underlying the link between individual narcissism and interpersonal aggressiveness (see Baumeister et al., 1996;
Emmons, 1987; Staub, 1989, for suggestions that some form of group-level narcissism should be linked to intergroup
aggressiveness). Collective narcissists are assumed to be emotionally invested in a grandiose image of their ingroup. This image
sensitive to signs of disrespect are more likely to interpret ambiguous events in an ingroupthreatening manner and to react aggressively.
Empathy Alt
Empathy for the other breaks narcissism and is necessary for the
survival of all humanityour alternative is the only one with rigorous
scientific support
KAIVALYA 2013 (Alanna, author of several books, Rethinking the Demise of Narcissus: Healing
Modern Day Narcissism, The Kaivalya Yoga Method, December, 2013,
http://alannak.com/resources/blog/rethinking-narcissus-healing-modern-day-narcissism)
Indeed, the remedy for narcissistic tendencies is to get over oneself and love another . Because, here in
the United States, we have taken the desire for self-admiration too farso far that our culture has blurred the distinction between
self-esteem and narcissism in an extreme, self-destructive way (Twenge & Campbell, 18). The obsessive use of self-reflective outlets
of the digital age are contributing to disconnection, rather than connection. Connection to others is what will turn the
tides. It is what provides the substrate for the potential of mental health and well-being. This has been shown over and
over again in a series of studies with various psychologists , maybe none so dramatic as the work of Harry
Harlow and his experiments with baby rhesus monkeys in which he substituted their real mothers for wire-frame mothers. The lack
of connection to their real mothers resulted in significant mental health disorders and baby monkeys without playmates or real
mothers behaved in socially incompetent ways (Honig, web). In the modern, scientifically based age, researchers are taking a
different look at the importance and effects of empathy and connection in the human being. At
the University of
California, researchers, Dr. V.S. Ramachandran and Dr. Dacher Keltner, are studying the neuroscientific aspect of
empathy in something called, ironically, mirror neurons. These are neurons that fire in the brain when the brain
recognizes something (an experience, a sensation, a situation) it has encountered before. For example, when someone is poked with
a needle in their arm and another person witnesses it, the witness will empathize because their mirror neurons will produce the
same neurological effect as if he or she were being poked with the needle. It is the neuroscientific reason why
humans can step into someone elses shoes. These mirror neurons cannot distinguish between a
real and imagined experience, so witnessing anothers pain is literally the equivalent of
experiencing it oneself. Cognitively speaking, everyone is capable of putting themselves in
everyone elses shoes through this mirroring effect in the brain .
But, of course, interaction with another human being is necessary to experience this mirrored empathy. Solving the problem of
narcissism may not be as simple as activating mirror neurons, but it certainly provides a starting point. Focusing on the
power of interconnectivity increases mental health and well-being and, actually, ensures our survival as a
species. Despite the bad reputation Charles Darwin received for his treatise on The Origin of the Species, he is quoted as saying,
Sympathy is the strongest instinct in human nature. Science is showing that rather than the old oft-quoted adage survival of the
fittest, survival and evolution as a species has been dependent on interactivity and the ability to cultivate compassion and sympathy
for fellow humans. In a recent study by Corradini and Antonietti, mirror neurons are explored as the basis of empathy, as well as the
key to understanding the intentions of others and in it they determined that the activation of the Mirror Neuron System in
preadolescents while observing and imitating emotional facial expressions is positively correlated with the level of empathic skills
(1155). It is only through the external mirror of relationships to otherspsychologically, and neuroscientificallythat humans are
able to discern how the actions of one will affect another. Amazingly, there doesnt even need to be a common
language because intentions are embodied. Such an embodiment is shared both by the actor
and the observer so that by merely looking outside oneself others are conceived not as bodies
endowed with a mind but as persons like us (Corradini & Antonetti, 1155). Jungian thought would agree from a
psychological point of view, that it is through the lens of relationship to another that unconscious projections are brought to life so
that they may be resolved. It is through relationship that humans have learned not just to interact and create healthy human
relationship, but also to avoid unhealthy relationship and destructive behavior. Through empathy, humans have built
bonds that help one another to survivein the most primal sense of the word, but also in the
psychological senseby building healthy relationships that allow for growth and harmony . As the
tragic story of Narcissus illustrates, without connection to others, one cannot survive. Loneliness may be the most tragic affliction of
humankind, as it cuts us off from the life-giving source of connection that fuels psychological, emotional and physical well-being. In
the words of Narcissus, Was ever...anyone more fatally in love? And do you remember anyone who ever thus pined away? It both
pleases me and I see it; but what I see and what pleases me, yet I cannot obtain...we are kept asunder by a little water (Ovid, 67). A
little water, indeed. It is cracking through the surface of the water and delving into the depths through
relationship and support of others that heals both the surface wounds and reveals the true
nature of what lies beneath that perfect reflection. Without the ability to reach out, those with
narcissistic tendencies may never reach in to dredge up the depths of their soul to lay it bare and
open for allincluding themselvesto see. It is when a human sees the reflection of his own depths
in another that the wound of Narcissus can be healed, by stepping through the surface of the
water to pull up the soul that lurks below.
Solves Violence
Our alternative solves international violenceweve got empirical and
experimental evidence
CAI AND GRIES 2013 (Huajian Cai1 and Peter Gries2 1Key Laboratory of Behavior Science,
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2Institute for USChina Issues,
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA, National narcissism: Internal dimensions and
international correlates, PsyCh Journal 2)
Consistent with previous research on collective narcissism (de Zavala et al., 2009), we found low correlations between national
narcissism and individual narcissism, but moderate correlations with CSE (Study 1 and Study 2), as well as SDO and RWA (Study 1).
The low to moderate correlations suggest that national narcissism is both conceptually and empirically
distinct from these related constructs. National narcissism was the most stable and powerful predictor of
variance in all outcome variables. Notably, it predicted not only political outcomes (such as
international attitudes and foreign policy preferences, Study 1 and Study 2) but also an economic
outcome (purchase intentions, Study 2) over and above individual narcissism, CSE, and variables such as SDO
and RWA, which are well established as reliable predictors of attitudes and behaviors towards
outgroups. By contrast, individual narcissism and national CSE did not contribute any unique variance to the political outcome
variables. This suggests that individual narcissism does not impact attitudes towards international affairs and that national
narcissism, an excessive love of ones nation, is more harmful than patriotism (national CSE), a more positive love of or loyalty to
ones own country. Drawing on Brown et al. (2009), we further hypothesized that national narcissism would be composed of two
distinct internal dimensions, national grandiosity and national entitlement. Our data supported this idea. First, like national
narcissism, both national grandiosity and national entitlement were positively and moderately correlated with national CSE (Study 1
and Study 2), SDO, and RWA (Study 1). Second, although national grandiosity and national entitlement were significantly correlated
with each other, they both predicted national narcissism uniquely. Notably, this pattern held true in both China and the U.S.,
suggesting the robustness of the relations. These findings provide convergent evidence about the distinctiveness and relatedness of
national entitlement and national grandiosity as two internal dimensions of national narcissism.
By using diverse outcome variables, we found ample evidence of the unique predictive power of national
entitlement and national grandiosity. For policy preferences toward the competing nation, both
national entitlement and grandiosity were uniquely predictive (in both the U.S. and China); for prejudice
against the people of the competing nation, national entitlement was predictive (in both the U.S. and China), but national
grandiosity was not; for negative attitudes toward the competing government, both national entitlement (in China) and national
grandiosity (in both the U.S. and China) were predictive; and for purchase intentions, both national entitlement and national
grandiosity (in China) were predictive. These findings suggest that both national entitlement and national grandiosity are useful and
distinctive, although their predictive ability varied by outcome variable and culture. A strength of our study is that we
used relatively diverse samples from two different cultures. Psychological research is
increasingly criticized for relying too heavily on well educated and largely White college
students, undermining the external validity of research findings (e.g., Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010; Kitayama, 2010). As
noted above, only 44.8% of the Study 1 sample and 64% the Study 2 sample were college students, the participants age ranged from
18 to 66 years (Study 1) and 11 to 66 years (Study 2), and our second sample was not White but Chinese. Replication in other
countries, particularly those associated with different psychological distances (or those construed at different levels; Trope &
Liberman, 2010), however, is still needed to determine whether the findings obtained in this study can be reliably generalized to
other international contexts.
The findings reported in this study have important implications. Theoretically, we contribute to the extant literature by
introducing and validating the concept of national narcissism and its two internal dimensions, national grandiosity and national
entitlement. This has implications for both individual difference psychology and political psychology. These findings also have
foreign policy implications. If national narcissism and its internal dimensions appear to have a
greater impact on international attitudes than even CSE, SDO, and RWA, might some of the therapeutic
interventions suggested in the narcissism literature be applied to national narcissism? We hope that
national narcissism can help bridge the gap between the social psychological and personality
sciences on the one hand, and political psychology on the other hand, and perhaps even contribute
to the reduction of global conflict.
Solves China
Narcissism underpins US-China relationsthe alt is necessary to
avoid war
CAI AND GRIES 2013 (Huajian Cai1 and Peter Gries2 1Key Laboratory of Behavior Science,
Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2Institute for USChina Issues,
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA, National narcissism: Internal dimensions and
international correlates, PsyCh Journal 2)
We chose the case of U.S.China relations for several reasons. First, America is an established superpower today while China is a
former and rising superpower. As citizens of powerful nations, Americans and Chinese are more likely
than people from other nations to maintain narcissistic feelings about their nations (Young & Pinsky,
2006). Second, because they are competing for global influence, both Americans and Chinese tend to
view each other as peer competitors, and thus as threats to those high on national narcissism.
Third, from a foreign policy perspective, U.S. China relations are intrinsically important as the most consequential bilateral
relationship of the 21st century. If national narcissism is found to operate in the context of U.S.China
Reserve University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence
and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph
M., Psychological Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)
The most important situational factor that interacts with favorable self-appraisals to cause violence is an ego threat. The evidence
conformed broadly to the view that violence is often caused by an encounter in which a favorable self-appraisal is confronted with an
external, less favorable evaluation. In all spheres we examined, we found that violence emerged from threatened egotism, whether
this was labeled as wounded pride, disrespect, verbal abuse, insults, anger manipulations, status inconsistency, or something else.
For huge nationalities, medium and small groups, and lone individuals, the same pattern was
found: Violence resulted most commonly from feeling that ones superiority was somehow being
undermined, jeopardized, or contradicted by current circumstances.
We do not wish to claim that threatened egotism is the sole cause of aggression, and indeed there is ample room to discuss
biochemical or genetic causes, modeling effects, instrumental aggression, and other factors. But in terms of the potent link between
self-appraisals and violence, the discrepancy between favorable self-views and external threats is the most important cause.
The theory that the discrepancy between self-appraisals and external evaluations causes
violence led to the further prediction that violence would be increased by anything that raised
the frequency or impact of such discrepancies. We proposed that inflated or unrealistically
positive self-appraisals would tend to lead to violent responses , because to the extent that feedback clusters
around accurate, realistic appraisals, it will tend to contradict such unrealistically favorable opinions of self. There was moderate
support for that view, including evidence about tyrants, career criminals, psychopaths, and convicted rapists. Also, some of the
most effective direct predictors of violence were narcissism scales , particularly subscales for grandiosity and
exhibitionism. It remains to be determined how these self-enhancing illusions compare with the positive illusions of nonviolent
people and how widely disseminated they are. For the present, however, it seems reasonable to accept the view that inflated, overly
positive self-appraisals are associated with violence.
Reserve University; Laura Smart Department of Psychology, University of Virginia Joseph M. Boden
Department of Psychology, Case Western Reserve University, Relation of threatened egotism to violence
and aggression: The dark side of high self-esteem. By: Baumeister, Roy F., Smart, Laura, Boden, Joseph
M., Psychological Review, 0033295X, 1996, Vol. 103, Issue 1)
Only a minority of human violence can be understood as rational, instrumental behavior aimed
at securing or protecting material rewards. The pragmatic futility of most violence has been
widely recognized: Wars harm both sides, most crimes yield little financial gain, terrorism and
assassination almost never bring about the desired political changes, most rapes fail to bring sexual
pleasure, torture rarely elicits accurate or useful information, and most murderers soon regret their actions as pointless and selfdefeating ( Ford, 1985; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Groth, 1979; Keegan, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1993; Scarry, 1985). What
drives people to commit violent and oppressive actions that so often are tangential or even
contrary to the rational pursuit of material self-interest? This article reviews literature relevant to the
hypothesis that one main source of such violence is threatened egotism , particularly when it consists of
favorable self-appraisals that may be inflated or ill-founded and that are confronted with an external evaluation that disputes them.
The focus on egotism (i.e., favorable self-appraisals) as one cause of violent aggression runs contrary to an
entrenched body of wisdom that has long pointed to low self-esteem as the root of violence and
other antisocial behavior. We shall examine the arguments for the low self-esteem view and treat it as a rival hypothesis to
our emphasis on high self-esteem. Clearly, there are abundant theoretical and practical implications that
attend the question of which level of self-esteem is associated with greater violence. The widely
publicized popular efforts to bolster the self-esteem of various segments of the American population in recent decades (e.g., see
California Task Force, 1990) may be valuable aids for reducing violence if low self-esteem is the culpritor they may be
making the problems worse.
A2: Framework
The myth of American superiority fosters bad policy and also
interpersonal violence and contempt for cultural difference
CALDWELL 2006 (Wilbur, author of several books, American Narcissism: The Myth of National
Superiority, pp. 141-142)
Still, what is remarkable about the American myth of national superiority is neither its all inclusive scope nor its blind audacity. As
Orwell points out, such myths are typical of modern nationalism everywhere. What is extraordinary about the
American conviction of national superiority is the fanatical fervor with which it is believed and
the ferocious tenacity with which it is defended. Self-serving ideas of American superiority
generate pseudo-religious feelings, notions of serving something larger than the self, and
unshakable cer- tainties that such ideas are right.561 Many today place an excessive,
exaggerated and exclusive emphasis" on the superiority of the nation at the expense of other
critical values.562 This vain obsession results in an overestimation of the nation and of conationals to the detraction of all other nations and national peoples . As Kecmanovic observes, the
logical result of such an overestimation is "dislike and hostility" toward other nations and other
nationals and "a belief that they are inferior and deserving of contempt ."563 This in turn results
in placing national issues above broad humanitarian issues .
American contempt for other nations has followed hand in hand with notions of American
superiority and faith in a national providential destiny. Despite its universal intent, the rhetoric of
America's presumed predestined mission abounds with aggressive language, threats, and culturally
denigrating slurs. John OSullivan, the author" of Manifest Destiny, lashed out at a world of inferior nations:
For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut from the light giving light of truth, has America
been chosen; and her high example shall smite unto death the ty ranny of kings, hierarchs and
oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads now endure an
existence scarcely more envi able than that of the beasts of the field.564
Linking other nationals to the beasts of the field exemplifies a kind of dehumanization that is
often the natural conclusion of American contempt for non Americans . According to Kecmanovic, this
kind of dehumanization is widely employed in the denigration of rival national groups. 565
Underlying the de humanization of non-Americans is the notion that Americans are a pseudo
species created with supernatural intent" and possessors of not only a distinct sense of identity," but the
only true human identity."566 The logical result of such a belief is to place the nation of true
humanity" above all other sub human" nations, thus in effect placing the national cause above
the cause of mankind as a whole. This reordering of priorities has a tendency to falsify', to
misrepresent the real relations between national groups and the intensions of the people ."567 We
arc human. They are not. It is the nationalists classical justi- fication for murder .
The threatened egotism theory explains the link between individual aggressiveness and retaliatory aggression in interpersonal
contexts. We argue that collective (rather than individual) narcissism explains variance in intergroup (rather than interpersonal)
aggressiveness and hostility. The mechanism underlying this relationship should be analogous to the mechanism underlying the link
between individual narcissism and interpersonal aggressiveness (see Baumeister et al., 1996; Emmons, 1987; Staub, 1989, for
suggestions that some form of group-level narcissism should be linked to intergroup aggressiveness). Collective narcissists
are
invested in a grandiose image of their ingroup. This image is excessive and
demands constant validation. Therefore, it is vulnerable to challenges from within (e.g., internal criticism)
assumed to be emotionally
or from outside (e.g., from outgroups that endanger or put into doubt the prominence of an ingroup). It is expected that intergroup
hostility and aggression are a means of protecting the groups image. Thus, collective narcissists are expected to be
particularly prone to interpret the actions of others as signs of disrespect, criticism, or disapproval of an ingroup and to react
aggressively. They are also expected to react aggressively to actual criticism and other situations that threaten a
positive image of an ingroup. They are expected often to feel
who are sensitive to signs of disrespect are more likely to interpret ambiguous events in an
ingroup-threatening manner and to react aggressively.
Americanness correlated positively with desires for tougher policies towards specific foreign
countries the vast ma-jority of the time. In general, the correlations were the highest for
countries seen as posing the greatest threats to the United States, such as Iran (r = .34, .38, .28,
respectively) and North Korea (r = .29, .29, .17). As we will see in Chapter 8, the one exception was Israel: greater patriotism (r
= -.22), nationalism (r = -.30), and national narcissism (r = -.21) as an American were associated with desires for friendlier policies
towards Israel.
Seshadri-Crooks K
1NCK
The affirmatives celebration of racial identity establishes racism as a
political object but effaces the concept of race. This annihilates
difference in the name of racial sameness
Seshadri-Crooks 2KKalpana Seshadri-Crooks is a professor at Boston College
(Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, pg. 6-9, HSA)
I am suggesting two things: first, the order of racial difference attempts to compensate for sexs failure in language; second, we must
Whiteness tries
to fill the constitutive lack of the sexed subject. It promises a totality, an overcoming of
difference itself. For the subject of race, Whiteness represents complete mastery , self-sufficiency,
and the jouissance of Oneness . This is why the order of racial difference must be distinguished from, but read in
relation to, sexual difference. If sex is characterized by a missing signifier, race, on the contrary, is not and
cannot be organized around such an absence a missing signifier that escapes or confounds
language and inter-subjectivity. Race has an all-too-present master signifier Whiteness which
offers the illegal enjoyment of absolute wholeness . Race, therefore, does not bear on the paradigm of
failure or success of inter-subjectivity on the model of the sexual relation. The rationale of racial difference and its
organization can be understood as a Hobbesian one. It is a social contract among potential adversaries secured
to perpetuate singular claims to power and dominance , even as it seeks to contain
the consequences of such singular interests . The shared insecurity of claiming absolute
humanness, which is what race as a system manages, induces the social and legal validation of race as a discourse
of neutral differences. In other words, race identity can have only one function it establishes
differential relations among the races in order to constitute the logic of domination. Groups must
be differentiated and related in order to make possible the claim to power and
domination . Race identity is about the sense of ones exclusiveness, exceptionality and uniqueness. Put very simply, it is an
not therefore analogize race and sex on the sexual model of linguistic excess or contradiction. The signifier
identity that, if it is working at all, can only be about pride, being better, being the best. Race is inextricably caught up in a
Hobbesian discourse of social contract, where personal (or particular) interest masquerades as public good. Sexual difference, on the
other hand, cannot be founded upon such a logic. The values attached to male and female are historically contingent as feminists
have long suggested, but power cannot be the ultimate cause of sexual difference. Racial difference, on the other hand, has no other
reason to be but power, and yet it is not power in the sense of material and discursive agency that can be reduced to historical
mappings. If such were the case, as many have assumed, then a historicist genealogy of the discursive construction of race would be
in order: Foucault not Lacan, discourse analysis not psychoanalysis. But race organizes difference and elicits
investment in its subjects because it promises access to being itself. It offers the prestige of being
better and superior; it is the promise of being more human , more full, less lacking. The
possibility of this enjoyment is at the core of race. But enjoyment or jouissance is, we may recall, pure
unpleasure. The possibility of enjoyment held out by Whiteness is also horrific as it implies the
annihilation of difference . The subject of race therefore typically resists race as mere social
construction, even as it holds on to a notion of visible, phenotypal difference. Visible
difference in race has a contradictory function. If it protects against a lethal sameness, it also facilitates the
possibility of that sameness through the fantasy of wholeness. Insofar as Whiteness dissimulates the
object of desire, 10 any encounter with the historicity, the purely symbolic origin of the signifier,
inevitably produces anxiety. It is necessary for race to seem more than its historical and cultural
origin in order to aim at being. Race must therefore disavow or deny knowledge of its own
historicity, or risk surrendering to the discourse of exceptionality, the possibility of wholeness and
supremacy. Thus race secures itself through visibility . Psychoanalytically, we can perceive the
object cause of racial anxiety as racial visibility, the so-called pre-discursive marks on the body (hair, skin,
bone), which serve as the desiderata of race. In other words, the bodily mark, which (like sex) seems to be
more than symbolic, serves as a powerful prophylactic against the anxiety of race as a discursive
construction. We seem to need such a refuge in order to preserve the investment we
make in the signifier of Whiteness . Thus race should not be reduced to racial
visibility, which is the mistake made by some well-meaning and not-so-wellmeaning advocates of a
color blind society . Racial visibility should be understood as that which secures
the much deeper investment we have made in the racial categorization of human
beings . It is a lock-and-key relation, and throwing away the key of visibility because it happens to
open and close is not going to make the lock inoperable. By interrogating visibility we can
ask what the lock is preserving, and why . The capacity of visibility to secure an investment in identity also
distinguishes race from other systems of difference such as caste, class, ethnicity, etc. These latter forms of group identity, insofar as
they cannot be essentialized through bodily marks, can be easily historicized and textualized. Nothing prevents their deconstruction,
the case of race, visibility maintains a bulwark against the historicity and
historicization of race . (In fact, Brennan suggests that the egos era is characterized by a resistance to history.) It is this
function of visibility that renders cases of racial passing fraught and anxious . My contention that the
category of race is inherently a discourse of supremacy may seem inattentive to the advances that
our legal systems and liberal social ideologies have made precisely in relation to racism and racist practices.
Modern civil society refuses to permit its subjects the enjoyment of supremacist rhetoric , the rhetoric of
exceptionality, by distinguishing between race and racism. It draws this distinction between a supposed ontology
whereas in
(the study of physical or cultural differences) and an epistemology (discriminatory logic) in the name of preserving a semblance of
inter-subjectivity. Race, it suggests, is a neutral description of human difference ; racism, it suggests, is
the misappropriation of such difference. The liberal consensus is that we must do away with such
ideological misappropriation, but that we must celebrate difference . It is understood as a baby and the bath
water syndrome, in which the dirty water of racism must be eliminated, to reveal the cleansed and beloved fact of racial identity.
This rather myopic perspective refuses to address the peculiar resiliency of race , the
subjective investment in racial difference , and the hyper-valorization of
appearance . It dismisses these issues or trivializes them because race seems a historical inevitability.
The logic is that people have been constituted for material and other reasons as black and white and that this has had powerful
historical consequences for peoples thus constituted. Whether race exists or not, whether race and racism are artificial distinctions
or not, racialization is a hard historical fact and a concrete instance of social reality. We have no choice, according to this reasoning,
but to inhabit our assigned racial positions. Not to do so is a form of idealism, and a groundless belief that power can be wished
making this ostensibly pragmatic move, such social theorists effectively reify
race . Lukcs, who elaborated Marxs notion of reification in relation to the commodity form in History and Class
away. In
Consciousness, is worth recalling here: Its basis is that a relation between people takes on the character of a thing, and thus acquires
a phantom objectivity, an autonomy that seems so strictly rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental
nature: the relation between people. (1923:89) To arrest analysis of race at the point where one discerns and
marks its historical effects is to reproduce those very relations of power that one
intends to oppose . It is to render race so objective that it is impossible to conceive human
difference or inter-subjectivity anew. Modern civil society engages in such reification
because ultimately its desire is to keep the dialectic between races alive . It must thus
prohibit what it terms racism in order to prevent the annihilation not so much of the inferior races but
of the system of race itself. This is how the system of desiring Whiteness perpetuates itself,
even in the discourses that are most pragmatically aimed against racism . The
resilience and endurability of race as a structure can thus be attributed to its denials and disavowals. On the
one hand, it is never in the place that one expects it to be: it disavows its own historicity in order to
hold out the promise of being to the subject the something more than symbolic a sense of wholeness, of
exceptionality. On the other hand, as a social law, it must disavow this object in order to keep the system
viable and to perpetuate the dialectic: the race for Whiteness. Exploring the structure of race
requires a toleration of paradox, an appreciation of the fact that it is an inherently contradictory discourse, and a willingness
to see beyond relations of power in order to mine the depth of subjective investment in it.
project; it should be aimed at infiltrating normative bourgeois self-definition. The practice of discoloration will be more effective if it is not restricted
to particular intellectual groups or artists. Gramsci suggests that a philosophical movement, even as it elaborates a form of thought superior to
common sense and coherent on a scientific plane. never forgets to remain in contact with the simple and indeed finds in this contact the source of
the problems it sets out to study and to resolve. (Gramsci 1971:330) In other words, we cannot voluntarily abandon the quotidian logic of race. To do so
would be a form of vanguardism that will only reinforce the system as the necessary point of differentiation. Rather, it is to the common sense of race
that we must appeal. Otherwise, we will fail to address social contradiction in its specificity. Thus producing a sub-culture of discolorationists or
encouraging subjects voluntarily to refuse racial identity (as advocated for white people by the journal Race Traitor) possibly will not be effective.
2NCOverview / Impact
The 1ACs assignment of signifiers is a microcosm of their allegiance
to the master signifier a point which defines everyone around
them this turns the case the desire for wholeness is a form of
suturing the lack destined to fail
Seshadri-Crooks 2KKalpana Seshadri-Crooks is a professor at Boston College
(Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, pg. 58-60, HSA)
The striking phrase "the
great and immanent absence that sustains the system of chromatism; it actually enables one to see,
even as it presents a threat to ordinary vision. As the cause of color, of visibility itself, Whiteness
as light is beyond mere perception ; he who looks upon it would, in Melville's terms, end as "the wretched
infidel [who] gazes himself blind" (l86). Melville's notion of Whiteness as the formless and dangerous essence
of visibility is wholly compatible with the view of Whiteness as the master signifier of race that I
have been delineating so far. In the last chapter, my emphasis was on the capacity of Whiteness to engender the
structure of racial difference. Here, I will focus on the lethal and illegal fantasy of sameness and
mastery that Whiteness offers as the real yet concealed motivation for the maintenance of race. The
master signifier makes difference possible, but it is also excluded from the play of signification that
it supports. In Lacan's terms, we could propose that the dual character of Whiteness, as support and panic-inducing kernel,
exists in a relation of "extimacy" (Lacan's term for the paradox of the excluded interior) to the symbolic system it engenders. This
signifier, in its awesome and terrifying aspect, discloses itself as something inassimilable
to the very system that it causes and upholds. In our terms, Whiteness engenders the scale of
human difference as racial embodiment, but this ostensibly " neutral" system of differences is
organized around the exclusion of Whiteness, particularly the terror that it presents as pure and
blinding light, which would annihilate and erase difference . I argue that this " terror"
should be understood as the raison d'etre for race itself- the will to preeminence, to mastery, to
being- which must necessarily be prohibited by social and juridical law. This ineffable and excluded
power of Whiteness, as that which makes perception possible but is itself the blinding possibility
beyond the visible, should be explored as the " lure" that fuels and perpetuates racial visibility while holding out a
promise of something beyond the empirical mark. I suggested in the previous chapter that the visible bodily marks of race
serve to guarantee Whiteness as something more than its discursive construction. Whiteness, I
argue, attempts to signify being, but this audacious attempt is impossible because of the simple fact
that Whiteness is only a cultural inventio n. This impossibility, based on the historicity of
Whiteness, generates anxiety. But anxiety in race identity is endemic insofar as Whiteness tries to
fill a space which must remain empty, or unsignified. This is where so-called ordinary visible difference, telling
people apart on basis of bodily detail, comes to sustain the regime of race. If we can find a
non-discursive basis (the marks on the body) for our faith in race, then th e function of
Whiteness, as the unconscious promise of wholeness, is preserved. Our
investment in phenotype actually serves a dual function . On the one hand, it allows the
co-existence of race as social construction, which serves to defend against the jouissance of
Whiteness. On the other, it preserves that fantasy of wholeness by valorizing phenotype as
something pre-discursive. In this chapter, I explore the lethal fantasy at the core of race, which is
the possibility of transcending or reaching beyond the visible phenotype. It is the possibility of being
itself, where difference and lack are wholly extinguished. As the master signifier of race, Whiteness
maintains the structure of (visible) diffe rence- the chain of metonymic substitutions which locates the subject as desiring
(thus eternally lacking) Whiteness. The fantasy of encountering Whiteness would be, for the subject
of race, to recover the missing substance of one's being. It would be to coincide, not with a transcendental ideal,
some rarefied model of bodily perfection, but with the "gaze," that void in the Other, a piece of the Real, that could
annihilate difference. The Lacanian view about our general sense of visual reality or conscious perception is that it is itself
subtended by our drive to search, recognize and recover the object of desire. In other words, what we take to be the
evidence of our eyes, the fruit of our active looking, is largely caused by an unrecognized and
underlying need to encounter that which Lacan terms "the gaze." The gaze is "that which always escapes the grasp of
that form of vision that is satisfied with imagining itself as consciousness" (XI: 74). It is beyond reality and visual
perception which, as Freud established, are founded on language and thought. The gaze is of the order of
the Real, because it directly addresses lack- the lack in the Other and the lack in the subject.
Encountering it would be lethal, insofar as it is contingent on the subject's
constitutive lack or castration (XI: 73), the subject as manque a etre (or subject as a want-to-be.) To encounter
the gaze would be to relinquish one's subject status, to give up meaning for being. The gaze
promotes the fantasy of wholeness, but at the price of one's distinctive subject status. The gaze
thus causes desire , it is the consummate version of the objet petit a, and more importantly it is the object of
the scopic drive. Translated or extended to the sphere of race, it is Whiteness as being itself that
functions as the lure-the gaze that causes desire and is at the center of the drive's trajectory. Put
more starkly, it is our drive for supremacy, for the jouissance of absolute humanness , that sustains our
active looking. Setting aside the historical fact that such a goal is impossible because race has no
purchase on the body's jouissance, or in anything beyond its own cultural origins, we must
nevertheless take up the persistence of the fantasy of Whiteness.
The discourse of Whiteness is above all, to use Guillaumins terms, autoreferential rather than altero-referential. Guillaumin
writes: The auto-referential system, centered on the Self, was historically the first to be put in place; it coincided with the preeminence of the aristocracy, to whom its race symbolism was specific. Their eyes remain fixed on their own existence which, both
in their own minds and in reality, regulates the course and symbolism of social activity. It is perhaps legitimate to see in this system
a form of ethnocentrism. However, aristocratism is not yet racism because unlike racism, it is not founded on a belief in its own
naturalness. Altero-referential racism is centered on the Other, and seems to arise only in egalitarian societies. A fundamental trait
of such a system is the occultation of the Self, of which people have no spontaneous awareness; there is no sense of belonging to a
specific group. (Guillaumin 1995:50) Guillaumins terms are useful not so much in distinguishing between premodern and
contemporary notions of race, as she suggests, but rather in discerning the emergence of race through the self-splitting referred to
earlier. Guillaumins failure to discern the notion of Whiteness as the organizing principle of Eurocentrism (as distinguished from
banal ethnocentrisms) enables her to exonerate both ethnocentrism and aristocratism as not true racism. But proper attention to
the crucial element of class at play in Whiteness reveals that it is not about aristocratism, but about the peoplethe volk, with
precisely the sense of its own naturalness that Guillaumin disavows as an element in auto-referential systems. I would also suggest
that the altero-referential system does not so much displace but is founded on the auto-referential notion of Whiteness. Thus the
discourse of race as we understand it today is an effect of that internal splitting that we identified
earlier as the cause of race. The structure of race is totalizing, and attempts to master and overcome all
difference within its boundaries. The dichotomy of self and other is within Whiteness in the
competition over who properly possesses Whiteness, or sovereign humanness . H.F.K.Gunthers (1927)
classification along physiognomic lines is a part of the logical nucleus of racial visibility grounded in
the narcissism of small differences that grounds racial visibility. Thus in Gunthers classification, other
European races such as the Mediterranean can carry the Negro strain, or the Tartar may carry
the Asiatic. The signifier Whiteness is about gaining a monopoly on the notion of
humanness , and is not simply the displaceable or reversible pinnacle of the great chain of being .
22 However, one must not forget that as the unconscious principle or the master signifier of the
symbolic ordering of race, Whiteness also makes possible difference and racial inter-subjectivity . It
orders, classifies, categorizes, demarcates and separates human beings on the basis of what is considered
to be a natural and neutral epistemology. This knowledge is also the agency that produces and maintains
differences through a series of socially instituted and legally enforced laws under the name of equality,
multiculturalism, antidiscrimination, etc. Anti-racist legislations and practices, in other words, work
ultimately in the service of race, which is inherently , unambiguously, structurally
supremacist . The structure of race is deeply fissured, and that is discernible in the constitutive
tension, or contradiction between its need to establish absolute differences, and its illegal desire to
assert sameness. In fact, race establishes and preserves difference for the ultimate goal of sameness ,
in order to reproduce the desire for Whiteness . As Foucault might have put it, race separates in
order to master. However, unlike the technologies of power that Foucault so painstakingly detailed, the analysis of race cannot
be exhausted through its historicization. Race produces unconscious effects, and as a hybrid structure located
somewhere between essence and construct, it determines the destiny of human bodies . It is our
ethical and political task to figure out how destiny comes to be inscribed as anatomy, when that anatomy
does not exist as such.
to the racial signifier.) We only have to consider the numerous accounts from literature and autobiography that enact the
scene of becoming racially visible to oneself. Besides Fanon, who speaks of discovering that he is "black" during his first visit to
France, there is Stuart Hall, who in "Minimal selves" says that for many Jamaicans like himself, " Black is an identity which
had to be learned and could only be learned in a certain moment" ( 1996b: 116). This process of introjecting the
signifier is repeated by other characters such as Janie in Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, James Weldon
Johnson's protagonist in Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and by Oulaudah Equiano in his autobiographical narrative. There
are doubtless numerous other examples that one could cite. The fact that the secondariness of race seems to apply
only to so-called "people of color," and that there are rare, or virtually no instances of a socalled
"white" person discovering his or her race may lead to several specious speculations such as:
"black" people identify with "whites" as the latter are more powerful and define the norm. Such
misidentification on the part of "blacks" leads to trauma when they discover the reality of their
blackness (Fanon's thesis). Other problematic views might be that "white" people impose an identity
upon those they have colonized in order to justify their dominance, or "whites" have no race or
race consciousness; "whites" are not racially embodied, and this is an index of their transparency
and power, etc. While some of these propositions might make some ideological sense, all of these
conclusions nevertheless presume the pre-existence of "black" and "white" as if
these were natural and neutrally descriptive terms. I would suggest that the difference among
black, brown, red, yellow and white rests on the position of each signifier in the signifying chain in
its relation to the master signifier, which engenders racial looking through a particular process of
anxiety. Perhaps the more effective ideological stance may be not to raise race
consciousness among so-called "whites," as scholars in Whiteness studies suggest, but to trouble
the relation of the subject to the master signifier. One must throw into doubt the security
and belief in one's identity, not promote more fulsome claims to such identity.
Racial identity, too, I would like to suggest i.e., words like black and white, when used as nouns
works like names. 10 That is, they are rigid designators they are signifiers that have no
signified. They establish a reference, but deliver no connotations or meaning whatsoever. We can,
of course, reasonably argue that race does not exist insofar as the identity of a person as black or
white is contingent upon a cluster of concepts that are themselves too protean to be able to
uphold anything like a necessary truth. We can cite historical evidence to show that groups that
were once considered white are no longer classified as such for this or that reason, etc. But as my
discussion in Chapter 1 specified, arguments leveled at race theory are highly
ineffectual and possess insufficient explanatory power . Thus rather than lapse into the
historicist argument, it may be more productive to view racial color designators as operating not
unlike proper names. The proper name is neither wholly ones own (i.e., we are all named by
others) nor is it meaningful. One inhabits the name as the reference of oneself, and as Kripke
asserts, it bears no relation to a set of properties that establish either its meaning or its
reference: Nixon is Nixon, or as he says, quoting Bishop Butler, everything is what it is and not
another thing (Kripke 1982:94). Is this not true for black and white? If someone is
designated as one or the other, there is a necessary truth to that designation, but does it mean?
What would be the cluster of concepts that could establish such an identity? Even in identity
statements such as blacks are people of African descent or whites are people of European
descent, though the predicates supposedly define and give the meaning of black and white,
establishing the necessity of these concepts in every counter-factual situation will not be possible if
only because national designations, and the notion of descent, are historically volatile and
scientifically invalid respectively. No set of qualitative descriptions can establish black
or white identity across all possible worlds, but we cannot therefore say that black and white
do not exist, which is the error that a number of critical race theorists fall into. 11 As Kripke says, it
is not how the speaker thinks he got the reference, but the actual chain of communication, which
is relevant. Obviously the name is passed on from link to link. But of course not every sort of
causal chain reaching from me to a certain man will do for me to make a reference. There may
be a causal chain from our use of the term Santa Claus to a certain historical saint, but still the
children, when they use this, by this time probably do not refer to that saint. It seems to me
wrong to think we give ourselves some properties which somehow qualitatively uniquely pick
out an object and determine our reference in that manner. (Kripke 1982:93 4) If we substitute
black or white, etc. for Santa Claus in the above quotation, we discern two things
immediately: first, the paradigm of black as reaching back to Africa, as Santa Claus could to a
medieval saint, is the source of an insurmountable confusion in critical race theory. The idea that
black means people of African descent leads into the thicket of debates about biological
descent, which will inevitably run into the false contradiction between culture and biology.
Second, we can now see that the notion of racial passing is nothing but an intervention into
the passing of the name from link to link . Changing ones identity from black to white, or
viceversa, means that one passes from one chain of communication to another. For instance, when
the Ex-Colored Man in James Weldon Johnsons Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man decides
to pass from black to white, he does so by passing from one chain to another: I finally made up my
mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would
change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would (Johnson
1995:90, emphasis added). In his last lecture, Kripke himself suggests the possibility of black
and white as rigid designators by advocating the view that terms for natural kinds are much
closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposedPerhaps some general names (foolish,
fat, yellow) express properties. In a significant sense, such general names as cow and tiger
do not, unless being a cow counts trivially as a property. Certainly cow and tiger are not short
for the conjunction of properties a dictionary would take to define them. (Kripke 1982:127 8) It
should be noted that Kripkes use of yellow in the above quotation is a reference to color and not
to a human race, which could not, according to the above logic, express properties. In this context,
we can understand the utterance black is beautiful not as an attempt at substituting a negative
cluster of concepts with a positive one in order to reclaim the properties attached to black
identity; rather, it is intelligible as an attempt to preserve the rigid designation of
black , by displacing its so-called properties onto black as a color, to mark its
function as a general name, than as a property of group identity .
2NCAT: Perm
Regimes of visibility force us to accept race as an a priori fact of
human differencesymbolic criticism becomes foreclosed with the
introduction of the aff
Seshadri-Crooks 2KKalpana Seshadri-Crooks is a professor at Boston College
(Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, pg. 31-32, HSA)
If we reduce racial practice to racism, defined as powers agency to hierarchize and discriminate, we must accept race
as an a priori fact of human difference . The concept of race as a system that fixates on
arbitrary marks on the body becomes neutralized , and racism becomes the enemy. In other words, there
is no possibility of interrogating the structure and constitution of the subject of race . The question
How do we become white, black, brown, or yellow ? will be foreclosed . We will fail to discern racial
practice as stemming from race rather than from racism. By locating our reading of race on the
ostensibly dual plane of the mirror relation alone, which leads to the simpler opposition now entrenched in cultural studies between the self and
the other, we risk confining race to a notion of the ego as false consciousness . Race,
we will then be led to assert, is an illusory, narcissistic construct, and racism is an ego defense . If the
order of race or Whiteness pertained only to the subjects assimilation of his/her ego ideal, then
race as such would seem to have nothing to do with the symbolic or the real of the
unconscious , that is, with the psychical structure of the subject. It would seem to be free of the effects of the signifier ,
thereby rendering language neutral and free of race. As Fanon implies, racial visibility must be distinguished from the moment when
the subject introjects an ego ideal as a coherent body image. But by marking the temporal difference in the constitution of the
bodily ego and the raced body, we will see that the anxiety that Fanon refers to is not caused by the ideology of
blackness, but by the structure of Whiteness . Less cryptically: we will see that racial anxiety, the unconscious anxiety
that is entailed by the sight of racial difference, has its cause not in ideology, but in the structure of race itself, and in the
functioning of its master signifier, Whiteness. In the following, I return to the theory of the mirror stage, and examine the process of the
12
integration of the bodily image to magnify the role of the symbolic in subtending the body image. I undertake this brief elaboration of Lacans notion of the imaginary, which will
be familiar to many readers, to clarify my claim that race cannot be mapped onto the simpler theory of misrecognition and ego identification, and that one can do so only
through an inadequate understanding of the imaginary, and of the raced subject.
**Aff**
Cant Explain IR
Psychoanalysis cant explain international relations --- the move from
the clinic to the macro-sphere is too great --- obviously not everyone
shares the exact same fantasies and theres no mechanism to actualize
change
Boucher 2010 --- literary and psychoanalytic studies at Deakin University (Geoff M., Zizek and
institutional embodiments of this Other using psy- choanalytic categories. In Chapter 4, we saw Zi2ek's
resulting elision of the distinction between the (subjective) Ego Ideal and the (objec- tive) Symbolic Order. This leads him to
analyse our entire culture as a single subject-object, whose perverse (or perhaps even psychotic)
structure is expressed in every manifestation of contemporary life. Zizek's decisive political-theoretic
errors, one substantive and the other methodological, are different (see Figure 5.1) The substantive problem is to equate any
political change worth the name with the total change of the subject-object that is, today, global capitalism. This is a type
of change that can only mean equat- ing politics with violent regime change, and ultimately
embrac- ing dictatorial govermnent, as Zizek now frankly avows (IDLC 412-19). We have seen that
the ultra-political form of Zizek's criti- cism of everyone else, the theoretical Left and the wider
politics, is that no one is sufficiently radical for him - even, we will discover, Chairman Mao. We now see
that this is because Zizek's model of politics proper is modelled on a pre-critical analogy with the total transformation of a subiect's
entire subjective structure, at the end of the talking cure. For what could the concrete consequences of this governing analogy be?
We have seen that Zizek equates the individual fantasy with the collective identity of an
entire people . The social fantasy, he says, structures the regime's 'inherent transgressions' : at
once subjects' habitual ways of living the letter of the law, and the regime's myths of origin and of identity. If political action
is modelled on the Lacanian cure, it must involve the complete 'traversal' - in Hegel's terms, the
abstract versus the determinate negation - of all these lived myths, practices and habits. Politics must involve the periodic founding
of of entire new subjectobjects. Providing the model for this set of ideas, the first iekian political subject was Schellings divided
God, who gave birth to the entire Symbolic Order before the beginning of time (IDLC 153; OB 1448). But can the political
theorist reasonably hope or expect that subjects will simply give up on all their inherited
ways , myths and beliefs, all in one world- creating moment? And can they be legitimately
asked or expected to, on the basis of a set of ideals whose legitimacy they will only
retrospectively see, after they have acceded to the Great Leap Forward ? And if they do not
for iek laments that today subjects are politically disengaged in unprecedented ways what
means can the theorist and his allies use to move them to do so?
Not Science
Psychoanalysis is a bunk science --- its untestable, produces
contradictory analyses, and cant make predictions
Beystehner 13 --- J.D. from University of Georgia (Kristen M, Psychoanalysis: Freud's Revolutionary
Approach to Human Personality, http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/beystehner.html)//trepka
Storr (1981) insists, "Only a few fundamentalist psychoanalysts of an old-fashioned kind think that Freud was a
scientist or that psychoanalysis was or could be a scientific enterprise," and that, "...to understand persons cannot
be a scientific enterprise" (p. 260). Although many psychoanalysts themselves would undoubtedly consider psychoanalysis to be a
science, many critics would disagree. Popper, by far one of psychoanalysis' most well-known critics and a strong critic of Grnbaum,
insists that psychoanalysis cannot be considered a science because it is not falsifiable. He claims that psychoanalysis' "so-
called predictions are not predictions of overt behavior but of hidden psychological states. This
is why they are so untestable" (Popper, 1986, p. 254). Popper (1986) claims that only when individuals are not neurotic is
it possible to empirically determine if prospective patients are currently neurotic (p. 254). Popper (1986) asserts that
psychoanalysis has often maintained that every individual is neurotic to some degree due to the fact
that everyone has suffered and repressed a trauma at one point or another in his or her life (p. 255). However, this concept of
ubiquitous repression is impossible to test because there is no overt behavioral method of doing
so (p. 254). Other critics claim that psychoanalysis cannot be considered a science due to its lack of
predictions. Psychoanalysts, critics maintain, state that certain childhood experiences, such as abuse or
molestation, produce certain outcomes or states of neurosis. To take this idea one step further, one
should be able to predict that if children experience abuse, for instance, they will become
characterized by certain personality traits. In addition, this concept would theoretically work in reverse. For instance,
if individuals are observed in a particular neurotic state, one should be able to predict that they had this or that childhood
experience. However, neither of these predictions can be made with any accuracy (Colby, 1960, p. 55).
Additional critics insist that psychoanalysis is not a science because of the lack of interpretive rules or regulations. Colby (1960)
contends that critics of psychoanalysis have difficulties with the idea that "there are no clear, intersubjectively shared lines of
reasoning between theories and observations" (p. 54). For instance, one psychoanalyst will observe one
phenomenon and interpret it one way, whereas another psychoanalyst will observe the same
phenomenon and interpret it in a completely different way that is contradictory to the first
psychoanalyst's interpretation (Colby, 1960, p. 54). Colby (1960) concludes that if analysts themselves cannot
concur that a certain observation is an example of a certain theory, then the regulations that
govern psychoanalytic interpretation are undependable (p. 55). Eysenck (1986) maintains:Zizhave always taken
it for granted that the obvious failure of Freudian therapy to significantly improve on spontaneous remission or placebo
treatment is the clearest proof we have of the inadequacy of Freudian theory, closely followed by
the success of alternative methods of treatment, such as behavior therapy. (p. 236) Whereas critics, such as Popper
(1986), insist that Freud's theories cannot be falsified and therefore are not scientific, Eysenck claims that because Freud's theories
can be falsified, they are scientific. Grnbaum (1986) concurs with Eysenck that Freud's theory is falsifiable and
therefore scientific, but he goes one step further and claims that Freud's theory of
psychoanalysis has been proven wrong and is simply bad science.
Not Falsifiable
Pyschoanalysis is non-falsifiable hindsight thinking
Samuels 93Training Analyst Society of Analytical Psychology and Science Associate
American Academy of Psychoanalysis (Andrew, Free Associations, The mirror and the
hammer: depth psychology and political transformation, Vol. 3D, Psychoanalytic Electronic
Publishing) DJ
The paper is about the depth psychology of political processes, focusing on processes of political change. It is a contribution to the longstanding
ambition of depth psychology to develop a form of political and cultural analysis that will, in Freud's words, 'under-stand the riddles of the world'. It
has to be admitted that there is an equally longstanding reluctance in the non-psychological community to accept the many and varied ideas and
suggestions concerning political matters that have been offered by analysts of all persuasions. I do not believe this can all be put down to resistance.
an equally diverse group of psychoanalysts, on what grounds could the argument that psychoanalysis
failed to produce visible and useful knowledge possibly possess any merit? The answer is in the question:
it was precisely the sheer amount and diversity of psychoanalytic subfields that delegitimized
psychoanalysis as a whole: the presence of such diversity of opinion within the same field undermined the
authority of any one subfield. Rather than adding to a collective fund of psychoanalytic knowledge, each
of these different subfields took a different approach to psychoanalytic theory and practice. Former
American Psychiatric Association president Alan Stone said: Today, at least in my opinion, and I am not
entirely alone in thinking this, neither Anna Freud's Ego Psychology nor Melanie Klein's Object Relations
Theory seem like systematic advances on Freud's ideas. Rather they seem like divergent schools of
thought, no closer to Freud than Karen Horney who rebelled against Freudian orthodoxy. 13 The frequent
emergence of these competing divergent schools of thought and their dissenting followers, then, made
any developments in psychoanalysis seem to other scientists less like legitimate scientific discoveries and
more like competing hypotheses. In contrast with more established fields like biology, innovations in
psychoanalysis often seemed to contradict earlier psychoanalytic ideas as well as one another, frequently
forming branches and sub-branches without regard to maintaining any sort of continuity or internal
consistency in psychoanalysis as a whole. 14,15 In fact, many of these developments were reactionary in
nature, responding to other trends in psychoanalysis rather than to new clinical data. This is the case of
Heinz Kohuts development of self psychology, which was a reaction against the subfields of ego
psychology and classical drive theory. The revival of American interest in the work of Melanie Klein in
the second half of the twentieth century has also been described as a reaction against ego psychology. 16
Furthermore, never did one of these new theories thoroughly abrogate and replace a previous one in the
way that, for example, Einsteins theory of general relativity transformed Newtonian physics. This is not
to say that a new idea in psychoanalysis would not have been met with resistance upon its introduction;
however, it soon proved that psychoanalysis on the whole lacked the tools that other disciplines had to
debunk or prove new theories. By what criteria could psychoanalysts reject or accept a new hypothesis?
In physics, a new model was expected to be compatible with currently available data, as well as able to
make predictions to be confirmed by observation17; similarly, a new pharmaceutical drug was expected
to prove itself by beating a control in a double-blind trial. But such criteria, even if psychoanalysts wanted
to use them, were not as conveniently applied to unconscious phenomena proposed by psychoanalysis.
Even the gathering of data from clinical psychotherapy was typically unable to resolve the conflict
between two competing subfields; problematically, any clinical data that could potentially prove the
efficacy of one psychoanalytic school could be interpreted to support others as well. 18 In an article for
Psychoanalytic Psychology, psychologist Robert Holt, even as he argued for the validity of
psychoanalysis as a testable scientific theory,19 admitted the difficulty of producing data that could
settle disputes between psychoanalytic and non-psychoanalytic theories, let alone between schools within
psychoanalysis:
Prevents Action
Lacans politics of lack is misguided --- its too abstract and cant solve
politics
Thomassen, Department of Government, University of Essex, 4 (Dr Lasse, LACANIAN POLITICAL
Robinson 5 --- PhD in political theory at the University of Nottingham (Andrew, The Political Theory
of Constitutive Lack: A Critique, Project Muse)//trepka
Conclusion: The constitutive lack of radicalism in Lacanian politics There is more than an accidental relationship between the
mythical operation of the concept of "constitutive lack" and Lacanians' conservative and pragmatist politics. Myth is a way of
reducing thought to the present: the isolated signs which are included in the mythical gesture are thereby attached to extra-historical
abstractions. On an analytical level, Lacanian theory can be very "radical" , unscrupulously exposing the
underlying relations and assumptions concealed beneath officially-sanctioned discourse. This
radicalism, however,
never translates into political conclusions : as shown above, a radical rejection of anti-"crime"
rhetoric turns into an endorsement of punishment, and a radical critique of neo-liberalism turns
into a pragmatist endorsement of structural adjustment. It is as if there is a magical barrier
between theory and politics which insulates the latter from the former. One should recall a remark once
made by Wilhelm Reich: 'You plead for happiness in life, but security means more to you'133. Lacanians have a "radical" theory
oriented towards happiness, but politically, their primary concern is security. As long as they are engaged in
politically ineffectual critique, Lacanians will denounce and criticize the social system, but once
it comes to practical problems , the "order not to think" becomes operative. This "magic" barrier is
the alibi function of myth. The short-circuit between specific instances and high-level
abstractions is politically consequential. A present evil can be denounced and overthrown if
located in an analysis with a "middle level", but Lacanian theory tends in practice to add an
"always" which prevents change . At the very most, such change cannot affect the basic matrix posited by Lacanian
theory, because this is assumed to operate above history. In this way, Lacanian theory operates as an alibi: it offers a little bit of
theoretical radicalism to inoculate the system against the threat posed by a lot of politicized radicalism134. In Laclau and Mouffe's
version, this takes the classic Barthesian form: "yes, liberal democracy involves violent exclusions, but what is
this compared to the desert of the real outside it?" The Zizekian version is more complex: "yes, there can be a
revolution, but after the revolution, one must return to the pragmatic tasks of the present". A good example is provided in one of
Zizek's texts. The author presents an excellent analysis of a Kafkaesque incident in the former Yugoslavia where the state gives a
soldier a direct, compulsory order to take a voluntary oath - in other words, attempts to compel consent. He then ruins the impact of
this example by insisting that there is always such a moment of "forced choice", and that one should not attempt to escape it lest one
end up in psychosis or totalitarianism135. The
an imagined example, a Lacanian living in France in 1788 would probably conclude that
democracy is a utopian fantasmatic ideal and would settle for a pragmatic reinterpretation of the
ancien regime. Laclau and Mouffe's hostility to workers' councils and Zizek's insistence on the
need for a state and a Party139 exemplify this neophobe tendency. The pervasive
negativity and cynicism of Lacanian theory offers little basis for constructive activity . Instead
of radical transformation, one is left with a pragmatics of "containment" which involves a
conservative de-problematization of the worst aspects of the status quo. The inactivity it
counsels would make its claims a self-fulfilling prophecy by acting as a barrier to
transformative activity. To conclude, the political theory of "constitutive lack" does not hold together as an analytical
project and falls short of its radical claims as a theoretical and political one. It relies on central concepts which are constructed
through the operation of a mythical discourse in the Barthesian sense, with the result that it is unable to offer sufficient openness to
engage with complex issues. If political theory is to make use of poststructuralist conceptions of contingency, it would do better to
look to the examples provided by Deleuze and Guattari, whose conception of contingency is active and affirmative. In contrast, the
idea of "constitutive lack" turns Lacanian theory into something its most vocal proponent, Zizek, claims to
attack: a " plague of fantasies".
(Matthew and Geoff, iek and Politics: An Introduction, p. 182 185, Figure 1.5
included)
Can we bring some order to this host of criticisms? It is remarkable that, for all the criticisms of ieks political Romanticism, no one has argued that the ultraextremism of ieks
political position might reflect his untenable attempt to shape his model for political
action on the curative final moment in clinical psychoanalysis. The differences between these two realms, listed in
Figure 5.1, are nearly too many and too great to restate which has perhaps caused the theoretical oversight. The key thing is
this. Lacans notion of traversing the fantasy involves the radical transformation of peoples subjective structure:
a refounding of their most elementary beliefs about themselves, the world, and sexual difference. This is undertaken in the security of
the clinic, on the basis of the analysands voluntary desire to overcome their inhibitions, symptoms and anxieties. As a clinical and existential process, it has its
own independent importance and authenticity. The analysands, in transforming their subjective world, change the way they regard the
objective, shared social reality outside the clinic. But they do not transform the world. The political relevance of the
clinic can only be (a) as a supporting moment in ideology critique or (b) as a fully- fl edged model of politics, provided that the political subject and its social
object are ultimately identical. Option (b), ieks option, rests on the idea, not only of a subject who becomes who he is only through his (mis)
recognition of the objective sociopolitical order, but whose traversal of the fantasy is immediately identical with his transformation
of the socio- political system or Other. Hence, according to iek, we can analyse the institutional embodiments of this Other using psychoanalytic
categories. In Chapter 4, we saw ieks resulting elision of the distinction between the (subjective) Ego Ideal and the (objective) Symbolic Order. This leads
him to analyse our entire culture as a single subjectobject, whose perverse (or perhaps even psychotic) structure is expressed in
every manifestation of contemporary life. ieks decisive political- theoretic errors, one substantive and the other methodological, are different (see Figure 5.1) The
substantive problem is to equate any political change worth the name with the total change of the subjectobject that is,
today, global capitalism. This is a type of change that can only mean equating politics with violent regime change, and ultimately embracing dictatorial government, as
iek now frankly avows (IDLC 41219). We have seen that the ultra- political form of ieks criticism of everyone else, the
structure, at the end of the talking cure. For what could the concrete consequences of this governing analogy be? We have
equates the individual fantasy with the collective identity of an entire people. The social fantasy, he says,
structures the regimes inherent transgressions: at once subjects habitual ways of living the letter of the law, and the regimes myths of origin and of identity. If
political action is modelled on the Lacanian cure, it must involve the complete traversal in Hegels terms, the
abstract versus the determinate negation of all these lived myths, practices and habits. Politics must involve the periodic founding of entire new subject
objects. Providing the model for this set of ideas, the fi rst iekian political subject was Schellings divided God, who gave birth to the entire Symbolic Order before
the beginning of time (IDLC 153; OB 1448). But can
the political theorist reasonably hope or expect that subjects will simply
give up on all their inherited ways , myths and beliefs, all in one world- creating moment? And can they be legitimately asked or
expected to, on the basis of a set of ideals whose legitimacy they will only retrospectively see, after they have acceded to the Great Leap Forward? And if they do
not for iek laments that today subjects are politically disengaged in unprecedented ways what means can the theorist and his allies
use to move them to do so?
intellectual alibis for themselves in the very work they champion, including, in Cohen's case,
psychoanalysis. What Marshall Berman says of Foucault seems true also of psychoanalysis; that it offers `a
world-historical alibi' for the passivity and helplessness felt by many in the 1970s, and that it has
nothing but contempt for those naive enough to imagine that it might be possible for modern human- kind to be free. At every
turn for such theorists, as Berman argues, whether in sexuality, politics, even our imagination, we are nothing
but prisoners: there is no freedom in Foucault's world, because his language forms a seamless web, a cage far more
airtight than anything Weber ever dreamed of, into which no life can break . . . There is no point in trying to resist the
oppressions and injustices of modern life, since even our dreams of freedom only add more links to our chains; however, once
we grasp the futility of it all, at least we can relax.59 Cohen's political defeatism and his conviction in the explanatory power of
his new faith of psychoanalysis lead him to be contemptuous and dismissive of any attempt
at political solidarity or collective action. For him, `communities' are always `imagined', which, in his
view,
means based on fantasy, while different forms of working-class organisation, from the craft fraternity to the revolutionary group,
are dismissed as `fantasies of self-sufficient combination'.60 In this scenario, the idea that people might come
together, think together, analyse together and act together as rational beings is
impossible. The idea of a genuine community of equals becomes a pure fantasy, a `symbolic retrieval' of something that
never existed in the first place: `Community is a magical device for conjuring something apparently solidary out of the thin air of
modern times, a mechanism of re-enchantment.' As for history, it is always false, since `We are always dealing with invented
traditions.'61 Now, this is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense at that. Is history `always false'? Did the
Judeocide happen or did it not? And did not some people even try to resist it? Did
did not people resist that too and, ultimately, bring it to an end? And are communities always
`imagined'? Or, as Sivanandan states, are they beaten out on the smithy of a people's collective struggle? Furthermore,
all attempts to legislate against ideology are bound to fail because they have to adopt
`technologies of surveillance and control identical to those used by the state' . Note here the
Foucauldian language to set up the notion that all `surveillance' is bad. But is it? No society can function without
surveillance of some kind. The point, surely, is that there should be a public conversation about such moves and that those
responsible for implementing them be at all times accountable. To equate, as Cohen does, a council poster about `Stamping out
racism' with Orwell's horrendous prophecy in 1984 of a boot stamping on a human face is ludicrous and insulting. (Orwell's
image was intensely personal and destructive; the other is about the need to challenge not individuals, but a collective evil.)
Cohen reveals himself to be deeply ambivalent about punitive action against racists, as though punishment or other firm action
against them (or anyone else transgressing agreed social or legal norms) precluded `understanding' or even help through
psychotherapy. It is indeed a strange kind of `anti-racism' that portrays active racists as the `victims', those who are in need of
`help'. But this is where Cohen's argument ends up. In their move from politics to the academy and the world of `discourse', the
postmodernists may have simply exchanged one grand narrative, historical materialism,
for another, psychoanalysis.62 For psychoanalysis is a grand narrative, par excellence. It is a
theory that seeks to account for the world and which recognises few limits on its explanatory potential. And the claimed
radicalism of psychoanalysis, in the hands of the postmodernists at least, is not a
radicalism at all but a prescription for a politics of quietism, fatalism and defeat . Those
wanting to change the world, not just to interpret it, need to look elsewhere.
Perm
The perm solves --- privacy laws allow an outlet for individual
autonomy
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
This article seeks to understand why, despite its deconstruction by a range of critical theorists, there remains a stubborn
reliance on the concept of autonomy to justify privacy law, even among post-structuralists. It seeks to explain
the connection between privacy and autonomy through psychoanalytic theory (particularly the work of Jacques Lacan). This article
suggests that psychoanalytic theory can help explain why autonomy is a necessary but unachievable
fantasy, and that laws purpose is to support this fantasy by allowing individuals to defer
confronting it as a fantasy. Using the example of Australian data protection law, this article suggests that
the law facilitates an economy of personal information, which imbues personal information with value and
enables individuals to attempt to practise autonomy by controlling the disclosure and use
of their personal information. But the law provides only imperfect control. It therefore provides an explanation for why
complete autonomy cannot be achieved. In this way, privacy law functions as a means to manage anxiety.
The article concludes by suggesting that data protection laws can and should recognise this role ,
and offers some tentative views on how psychoanalytic work can and should inform future law
reform in this area. If recent proposals for reform are any indication, the justification for privacy law in Australia is
increasingly about protecting individual autonomy: ensuring that individuals do not lose control
over what others may do with [ their] personal data .1 This focus has developed despite the concept of
autonomy increasingly coming under critique by scholars writing from a range of perspectives, though each with the objective of
deconstructing the autonomous, Cartesian subject that privacy laws are presumed to protect.2 Clearly, these critiques have not yet
disrupted the unsettled intuitions3 that interlink autonomy and privacy. These stubborn intuitions are particularly interesting from
an Australian perspective, given that most federal law reform in this area historically has been progressed with very different
justifications, 4 which are less about autonomy than communal interests such as economic growth and national security. 5 Equally
interesting is that, in the United States, autonomy has been used to justify non-intervention in management of personal information
by the private sector.6 Even in Australia, the emphasis on autonomy comes almost as a cover to the erosion of the protection of
personal data in other areas. 7 Autonomy is a theme that seems to resonate with popular understandings of privacy, even if it can be
deployed selectively and for divergent purposes. This article seeks to explain the connection between privacy and autonomy through
psychoanalytic theory (particularly the work of Jacques Lacan). Its thesis is that autonomy is a necessary but
unachievable fantasy , and that privacy laws purpose is to support this fantasy by allowing individuals to defer
confronting it as a fantasy. Writing from Australia (which has to date been reluctant to protect privacy rights through the common
law, and which lacks a statutory tort of privacy),8 the article applies Lacans work to Australian data protection
laws, particularly the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).9 The article ultimately suggests that we should acknowledge privacy
laws role in supporting the fantasy of autonomy, and tentatively suggests ways in which it could
better support this fantasy. The article proceeds in the following way. The first section provides a brief summary of
the role of autonomy in privacy theory to date in particular, the traditional justification of privacy as protecting autonomy, the
recent post-structuralist critiques of autonomy, and the way these critiques have been applied to
reconceptualise privacy laws . The article then demonstrates how tenets of Lacans psychoanalytic theory explain
remains a
necessary fantasy . The third section applies this understanding to data protection laws. The final section makes some
why, despite the comprehensive deconstruction of autonomy by post-structuralist legal theorists, autonomy
tentative suggestions about how a better understanding of the psychological needs fulfilled by privacy laws can and should inform
future law reform in this area.
Meyers 6/16/14 --- Masters of Public and International Law candidate, University of
Melbourne (Zach, Autonomy as a Fantasy, Taylor and Francis Online)//trepka
Linguistic systems structure identity and cannot represent the infants unstructured existence, the omnipotence it has lost69 after
all, linguistic systems are entirely constituted by divisions, which cannot express wholeness
except through further divisions. Indeed, Lacan sees the metaphoric significance the infant associates with the reel, the
treatment of objects as signifiers for something else, as the first mark of the subject.70 The mirror stage (that is, the creation of a
sense of self) involves the repression of this wholeness. The social order, like language or the law, is therefore useful
precisely because it enables a person to both purport to be confronting a loss, while always
deferring it , leaving the reel (or the repressed loss) suspended between, and requiring the
constant repetition of, fort and da. The pleasure for which the infant is searching in the fort-da game is therefore a way
to overcome the castration to exceed the boundary of the cot that reminds of the absent mother, and to manage the loss of
omnipotence, which existed prior to the mirror stage. The game results in pleasure from the infants attempt
to
transgress the boundaries of the self, the (social) law governing the boundaries of identity. But
this pleasure is combined with pain (what Lacan refers to as a joissance), because all that can be
achieved through the game is a substitute for that omnipotence , in the form of an imagined sense of
autonomy. Each return of the reel to the infant functions as a reminder that the infant is still not whole in the sense it was prior to
entering the social realm. The reel itself, in this game, means nothing it is simply an object that supports and explains the
individuals existing desire,71 an object that is imagined and treated by the individual as offering the potential to overcome its
structured and split self of identity. Desire in Data Protection Laws Collectively, these aspects of Lacans
Staring with the wrong choice is key --- creates the conditions for
future change --- the juxtaposition of the aff and alternative is
uniquely important
Re 12 --- writer, philosopher and historian (Jonathan, Less Than Nothing by Slavoj iek review,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/27/less-than-nothing-slavoj-zizek-review?newsfeed=true)//trepka
Of course he relies on a formula: to be iekian is to hold that Freudian psychoanalysis is essentially correct, and that its
implications are absolutely revolutionary. But iek's Freud is not everyone's. Old-fashioned Freudians believe that we have masses
of juicy secrets locked up inside us, unacknowledged by our well-ordered rational consciousness and clamouring to be set free. For
iek, however, as for Lacan before him, Freud's great insight was that everything about us our
vaunted rationality as much as our unavowable impulses is soaked with craziness and
ambivalence all the way through. "The first choice has to be the wrong choice ," as iek
says in his monumental new book, because "the wrong choice creates the conditions for the right
choice". There is no such thing as being wholly in the right, or wholly in the wrong; and this
principle applies to politics as much as to personal life . Politics, as iek understands it, is a rare and splendid
thing: no actions are genuinely political unless they are revolutionary, and revolution is not revolution unless it institutes "true
change" the kind of comprehensive makeover that "sets its own standards" and "can only be measured by criteria that result from
it". Genuine revolutionaries are not interested in operating on "the enemy's turf", haggling over various strategies for satisfying preexisting needs or securing pre-existing rights: they want to break completely with the past and create "an opening for the truly New".
Authentic revolutions have often been betrayed, but as far as iek is concerned, they are never misconceived.
The notion of the death drive is on the one hand too wide, explaining all types of aggression as well as the
putative urge towards complete rest. This leads the notion to be economically incoherent , as will be discussed in the
next section. But a prior point must be examined: are all types of aggression the same ? Freud suggests a positive answer, but as a psychological
taxonomy this approach seems to erase important differences . For example, if both sadism and masochism stem
from the same aggressive source, should they be classified as belonging to the same group ? Should they
be clinically approached in a similar fashion? The answer to both these questions seems to be no. The problems and symptoms
characterising sadism are very different from the ones characterising masochism, as is their treatment. Another example, group aggression and
individual aggression: should we attempt to describe or treat the two as belonging to the same cluster ?
Again, the answer seems to be negative. As to the second point, one could justifiably ask: what does the death drive mean? Because it is so general,
the notion of the death drive is vague. The death drive cannot explain a given situation because it
itself becomes meaningful only as a collection of situations . On Freud's account, any behaviour meriting the
adjective 'aggressive' arises from the death drive . If we take a certain set of aggressive behaviours, say, sadistic ones, the death drive would
come to signify this set. If we take another set of masochistic behaviours, the death drive would mean this set. As it stands, the significance of the
notion seems entirely dependent on the observed phenomenon . If Freud were never to meet any
masochists, would his notion of the death drive exclude masochism? Any science relying on observation and empirical data
relics on this data and should be willing, in principle, to modify and update its concepts in accordance with new empirical observations. The opening paragraph of
Instincts and Their Vicissitudes describes this process. We have often heard it maintained that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basic concepts.
In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and
then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them. Even at the stage of description it is not possible to avoid applying certain abstract ideas to the material in
hand, ideas derived from somewhere or other but certainly not from the new observations alone [...]. They must at first necessarily possess some degree of
indefiniteness; there can be no question of any clear delimitation of their content. So long as they remain in this condition, we come to an understanding about their
meaning by making repeated references to the material of observation from which they appear to have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed
There is no
initial restriction on the type of behaviour that could be classified as aggressive or as lowering tension .
Hence we find sadism and masochism, passive-aggressive and substance-induced aggression, aggression
displayed in group situation and aggressive fantasy, all tied to the death drive as their source . By analogy,
any behaviour that leads to discharge of energy or lowering of tension would be in accordance with the
Nirvana principle. One way of responding to this issue is by applying the term 'aggression* purely descriptively. Karli, for example, proposes the following
<SK 14:1U;GW 10:210). This seems to be a sophisticated, fruitfully flexible approach. But in the case of the death drive, it seems to be too flexible.
definition: aggression means, "threatening or striking at the physical or psychic integrity of another living being" (Karli, 1991, p. 10). He sees the danger in the shift
from using aggression descriptively to attributing to it an explanatory and causal role. When
Can we then just do away with repression and lead lives under the sign of the death drive? No,
this would perpetuate the violence of the trauma of nature. The breaking of community in the
disintegration of meaning cannot be completed, but remains to-come . This disintegration is always a
scream and a scream is a scream-to-someone. The scream adresses itself to someone (this someone is more exactly an anyone, since
we dont care whom exactly is adressed). The scream presupposes a broken community, but a community
nonetheless. We cannot perform the scream (death drive) nor hear it (the uncanny) without
standing in community. We can make this more concrete with Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. While the protagonists
await death (in the form of Godot, the utopia they dream of), they await it together. While the play is an allegory for the loss of
communication and the breaking of community, it is also the appearance of a community in this breaking,
a
communication of communication itself (the scream speaks the speaking). The result of this politics of the
death drive is a baseless community, a community without anything in-common, without a
shared culture.
AT: Scapegoating
Best data proves scapegoating is wrong --- if the aff doesnt solve, the
US will be more lenient towards other countries
Gollwitzer 4 --- University of Trier, Germany (Mario, Do Normative Transgressions Affect Punitive Judgments?
An Empirical Test of the Psychoanalytic Scapegoat Hypothesis, SagePub)//trepka
DISCUSSION The psychoanalytic scapegoat hypothesis implies (a) that
decision and punitiveness share a common cause, that is, the moral
reprehensibility of the deed. The first explanation implies that conflict scores do not differ
between transgressors and nontransgressors. This is, however, not the case, because conflict scores wereexcept
for the moonlighter scenarioconsistently higher among transgressors than among nontransgressors. The suggestion that
transgressors mildness bias was simply due to their recklessness can therefore be ruled out. The second explanation would result in
the argument that the relation between transgression decision and punitive judgments is spurious, because they can both be traced
back to the same cause, that is, the moral evaluation of the deed. The mediation effect of moral evaluation was not significant in the
present analyses: The effect sizes of transgression decisions on punitive judgments remained largely unaffected by entering moral
evaluation scores as a covariate. This finding contradicts the alternative hypothesis that moral evaluation was the common cause for
transgression decisions as well as for punitive judgments. Besides investigating the main effect of transgression decision on
punitiveness, we tested whether the subjectively experienced decision conflict in a dilemma
situation affects punitive judgments among transgressors. Although the size of this correlation was
consistently positive in sign across the six scenarios, it was not statistically deviant from 0. Thus, this particular
finding cannot be used as an argument for or against the scapegoat hypothesis. Taking
authoritarianism as a possible moderator variable into account was a further attempt to demonstrate scapegoating effects in a
subpopulation where they appear to be most likely to occur. The negative sign of the three-way interaction regression coefficient
shows that this was not the case. One might think of the possibility that this three-way interaction did not emerge because
authoritarianism and transgression decisions were confounded. This would be a reasonable interpretation because authoritarianism
implies conventionalism, which means refraining from committing something unlawful because it is unlawful (Adorno et al., 1950).
Therefore, it could be that individuals high in authoritarianism principally do not give in to immoral temptations. Contrary to this
speculation, however, transgression decisions in each of the six vignettes were correlated only weakly with authoritarianism (.05 <
r < .12, average r = .04). Thus, nontransgressors are not automatically high authoritarians. Taken together, the present study
presents both weak and strong results. The major aim was to test the psychoanalytic scapegoat
hypothesis against an alternative hypothesis based on a blame-avoidance motivation . Concerning the
main effect of transgression on punitive judgments, the results strongly support the blame-avoidance
hypothesis. Concerning the effect of transgressors decision conflict on punitive judgments, however, the results support neither
the effect of decision conflicts. For example, the subjective quality of experienced decision conflicts in tempting situations
might have trait-like qualities: Individuals might consistently differ in the way they perceive and solve moral decision conflicts and
in the amount of unease connected to these decision conflicts. These interindividual differences could be assessed and tested as
predictors for punitive judgments. Second, moral conflicts may be better captured by assessing them on a more idiosyncratic level.
Participants could be interviewed about temptation situations in which they recall having experienced a strong decision conflict;
subsequently, their punitive judgments could be assessed in an adaptively constructed criminal case vignette that resembles this
particular temptation. Finally, a possible conflict- punitiveness relation might be moderated by other variables than
authoritarianism. Because fear of an Idbreakthrough is considered the crucial motor of
never received the empirical attention that it might deserve. The present study was
a first attempt to test specifically derived implications of the scapegoat hypothesi s. It seems that
although the process of scapegoating and its psychodynamic roots, as conceptualized in psychoanalytic writings, is not testable as
such, its implications can be incorporated into contemporary accounts of punitiveness and retributive justice. If these implications
repeatedly fail to receive empirical backup, the scapegoat hypothesis should be at least reformulated, or
dismissed .
Gray 2012 --- Emeritus Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics
(John, The Violent Visions of Slavoj iek, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jul/12/violent-visions-slavoj-zizek/?
pagination=false)//trepka
While he rejects Marxs conception of communism, iek devotes none of the over one thousand pages of Less Than Nothing to
specifying the economic system or institutions of government that would feature in a communist society of the kind he favors. In
effect a compendium of ieks work to date, Less Than Nothing is devoted instead to reinterpreting Marx by way of Hegel
one of the books sections is called Marx as a Reader of Hegel, Hegel as a Reader of Marxand reformulating
Hegelian
philosophy by reference to the thought of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. A poststructuralist who rejected the belief that reality can be captured in language, Lacan also rejected the standard interpretation of
Hegels idea of the cunning of reason, according to which world history is the realization by oblique and indirect means of reason
in human life. For Lacan as iek summarizes him, The Cunning of Reasonin no way involves a faith in a secret guiding hand
guaranteeing that all the apparent contingency of unreason will somehow contribute to the harmony of the Totality of Reason: if
anything, it involves a trust in un-Reason. On this Lacanian reading, the message of Hegels philosophy is not the progressive
unfolding of rationality in history but instead the impotence of reason. The Hegel that emerges in ieks writings thus bears little
resemblance to the idealist philosopher who features in standard histories of thought. Hegel is commonly associated with the idea
that history has an inherent logic in which ideas are embodied in practice and then left behind in a dialectical process in which they
are transcended by their opposites. Drawing on the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou, iek radicalizes this idea of
dialectic to mean the rejection of the logical principle of noncontradiction, so that rather than seeing rationality at work in history,
Hegel rejects reason itself as it has been understood in the past. Implicit in Hegel (according to iek) is a new kind of
paraconsistent logic in which a proposition is not really suppressed by its negation. This new logic, iek suggests, is well suited
to understanding capitalism today. Is not postmodern capitalism an increasingly paraconsistent system, he asks rhetorically, in
which, in a variety of modes, P is non-P: the order is its own transgression, capitalism can thrive under communist rule, and so on?
Living in the End Times is presented by iek as being concerned with this situation. Summarizing the books central theme, he
writes: The underlying premise of the present book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zeropoint. Its four riders of the apocalypse are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution,
imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water),
and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions. With its sweeping claims and magniloquent rhetoric,
this passage is typical of much in ieks work. What he describes as the premise of the book is
simple only because it passes over historical facts . Reading it, no one would suspect that, putting aside the
killings of many millions for ideological reasons, some of the last centurys worst ecological disastersthe destruction of nature in
the former Soviet Union and the devastation of the countryside during Maos Cultural Revolution, for exampleoccurred in
centrally planned economies. Ecological devastation is not a result only of the economic system that exists in much of the world at
the present time; while it may be true that the prevailing version of capitalism is unsustainable in environmental terms, there is
nothing in the history of the past century that suggests the environment will be better protected if a socialist system is installed. But
to criticize iek for neglecting these facts is to misunderstand his intent, for unlike Marx he does not aim to ground his theorizing in
a reading of history that is based in facts. Todays historical juncture does not compel us to drop the notion of the proletariat, or of
the proletarian positionon the contrary, it compels us to radicalize it to an existential level beyond even Marxs imagination, he
writes. We need a more radical notion of the proletarian subject [i.e., the thinking and acting human being], a subject reduced to
the evanescent point of the Cartesian cogito, deprived of its substantial content. In ieks hands, Marxian ideaswhich in Marxs
materialist view were meant to designate objective social factsbecome subjective expressions of revolutionary commitment.
Whether such ideas correspond to anything in the world is irrelevant. There is a problem at this point, however: Why should
anyone adopt ieks ideas rather than any others? The answer cannot be that ieks are true in
any traditional sense. The truth we are dealing with here is not objective truth, iek writes,
but the self-relating truth about ones own subjective position; as such, it is an engaged truth, measured not
by its factual accuracy but by the way it affects the subjective position of enunciation. If this means anything, it is that truth is
determined by reference to how an idea accords with the projects to which the speaker is committedin ieks case, a project of
revolution. But this only poses the problem at another level: Why should anyone adopt ieks project? The question cannot
be answered in any simple way, since it is far from clear what ieks revolutionary project
consists in. He shows no signs of doubting that a society in which communism was realized would be better than any that has
ever existed. On the other hand, he is unable to envision any circumstances in which communism might be realized: Capitalism is
not just a historical epoch among others. Francis Fukuyama was right: global capitalism is the end of history.1 Communism is
not for iekas it was for Marxa realizable condition, but what Badiou describes as a hypothesis, a conception with little
positive content but that enables radical resistance against prevailing institutions. iek is insistent that such resistance must
include the use of terror: Badious provocative idea that one should reinvent emancipatory terror today is one of his most profound
insights. Recall Badious exalted defense of Terror in the French Revolution, in which he quotes the justification of the guillotine
for Lavoisier: The Republic has no need for scientists.2 Along with Badiou, iek
Khmer Rouge for attempting a total break with the past. The attempt involved mass killing and
torture on a colossal scale; but in his view that is not why it failed: The Khmer Rouge were, in a
way, not radical enough: while they took the abstract negation of the past to the limit, they did not invent any
new form of collectivity. (Here and elsewhere the italics are ieks.) A genuine revolution may be
impossible in present circumstances, or any that can be currently imagined. Even so,
revolutionary violence should be celebrated as redemptive, even divine. While iek has
described himself as a Leninist,4 there can be no doubt that this position would be anathema to the Bolshevik leader. Lenin had no
qualms in using terror in order to promote the cause of communism (for him, a practically attainable objective). Always deployed as
part of a political strategy, violence was instrumental in nature. In contrast, though iek accepts that violence has failed to
achieve its communist goals and has no prospect of doing so, he insists that revolutionary
precedent may be seen in the work of the French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, who defended the use of violence against colonialism as
an assertion of the identity of subjects of colonial power; but Fanon viewed this violence as part of a struggle for national
independence, an objective that was in fact achieved. A clearer precedent can be found in the work of the early-twentieth-century
French theorist of syndicalism Georges Sorel. In Reflections on Violence (1908), Sorel argued that communism was a utopian myth
but a myth that had value in inspiring a morally regenerative revolt against the corruption of bourgeois society. The parallels
between this view and ieks account of redemptive violence inspired by the communist hypothesis are telling. A
celebration of violence is one of the most prominent strands in ieks work . He finds fault with Marx
for thinking that violence can be justified as part of the conflict between objectively defined social classes. Class war must not be
understood as a conflict between particular agents within social reality: it is not a difference between agents (which can be
described by means of a detailed social analysis), but an antagonism (struggle) which constitutes these agents. Applying this view
when discussing Stalins assault on the peasantry, iek describes how the distinction between kulaks (rich peasants) and others
became blurred and unworkable: in a situation of generalized poverty, clear criteria no longer applied, and the other two classes of
peasants often joined the kulaks in their resistance to forced collectivization. In response to this situation the Soviet authorities
introduced a new category, the sub-kulak, a peasant too poor to be classified as a kulak but who shared kulak values: The art of
identifying a kulak was thus no longer a matter of objective social analysis; it became a kind of complex hermeneutics of suspicion,
of identifying an individuals true political attitudes hidden beneath his or her deceptive public proclamations. Describing
mass murder in this way as an exercise in hermeneutics is repugnant and grotesque; it is also
characteristic of ieks work. He criticizes Stalins policy of collectivization, but not on account
of the millions of human lives that were violently truncated or broken in its course. What iek
criticizes is Stalins lingering attachment (however inconsistent or hypocritical) to scientific Marxist
terms. Relying on objective social analysis for guidance in revolutionary situations is an error: at some point, the process has to
be cut short with a massive and brutal intervention of subjectivity: class belonging is never a purely objective social fact, but is
always also the result of struggle and social engagement. Rather than Stalins relentless use of torture and lethal force, it is the fact
that he tried to justify the systematic use of violence by reference to Marxian theory that iek condemns. ieks rejection of
anything that might be described as social fact comes together with his admiration of violence in his interpretation of Nazism.
Commenting on the German philosopher Martin Heideggers much-discussed involvement with the Nazi regime, iek writes: His
involvement with the Nazis was not a simple mistake, but rather a right step in the wrong direction. Contrary to many
interpretations, Heidegger was not a radical reactionary. Reading Heidegger against the grain, one discovers a thinker who was, at
some points, strangely close to communismindeed, during the mid-Thirties, Heidegger might be described as a future
communist. If Heidegger mistakenly chose to back Hitler, the mistake was not in underestimating the violence that Hitler would
unleash: The problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, his violence was not essential enough. Hitler did not really
act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, for he acted so that nothing would really change, staging a gigantic spectacle of
pseudo-Revolution so that the capitalist order would survive. The true problem of Nazism is not that it went too far in its
subjectivist-nihilist hubris of exercising total power, but that it did not go far enough, that its violence was an impotent acting-out
which, ultimately, remained in the service of the very order it despised. What was wrong with Nazism, it seems, is thatlike the later
experiment in total revolution of the Khmer Rougeit failed to create any new kind of collective life. iek says little regarding the
nature of the form of life that might have come into being had Germany been governed by a regime less reactive and powerless than
he judges Hitlers to have been. He does make plain that there would be no room in this new life for one particular form of human
identity: The fantasmatic status of anti- Semitism is clearly revealed by a statement attributed to Hitler: We have to kill the Jew
within us. Hitlers statement says more than it wants to say: against his intentions, it confirms that the Gentiles need the antiSemitic figure of the Jew in order to maintain their identity. It is thus not only that the Jew is within uswhat Hitler fatefully
forgot to add is that he, the anti-Semite, is also in the Jew. What does this paradoxical entwinement mean for the destiny of antiSemitism? iek is explicit in censuring certain elements of the radical Left for their uneasiness when it comes to unambiguously
condemning anti-Semitism. But it is difficult to understand the claim that the identities of anti-Semites and Jewish people are in
some way mutually reinforcingwhich is repeated, word for word, in Less Than Nothingexcept as suggesting that the only world
in which anti-Semitism can cease to exist is one in which there are no longer any Jews. Interpreting iek on this or any issue is not
is his inordinate prolixity, the stream of texts that no one could read in
their entirety, if only because the torrent never ceases flowing. There is his use of a type of
academic jargon featuring allusive references to other thinkers, which has the effect of enabling
him to use language in an artful, hermetic way. As he acknowledges, iek borrows the term divine violence from
Walter Benjamins Critique of Violence (1921). It is doubtful whether Benjamina thinker who had important affinities with the
Frankfurt School of humanistic Marxismwould have described the destructive frenzy of Maos Cultural Revolution or the Khmer
Rouge as divine. But this is beside the point, for by using Benjamins construction iek is able to praise violence and at the same
time claim that he is speaking of violence in a special, recondite sensea sense in which Gandhi can be described as being more
violent than Hitler.5 And there is ieks regular recourse to a laborious kind of clowning wordplay: Thevirtualization of capitalism
is ultimately the same as that of the electron in particle physics. The mass of each elementary particle is composed of its mass at rest
plus the surplus provided by the acceleration of its movement; however, an electrons mass at rest is zero, its mass consists only of
the surplus generated by the acceleration, as if we are dealing with a nothing which acquires some deceptive substance only by
magically spinning itself into an excess of itself. It is impossible to read this without recalling the Sokal affair in which Alan Sokal, a
professor of physics, submitted a spoof article, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum
Gravity, to a journal of postmodern cultural studies. Equally, it is hard to read this and many similar passages in iek without
suspecting that he is engagedwittingly or otherwisein a kind of auto-parody. There may be some who are tempted to condemn
iek as a philosopher of irrationalism whose praise of violence is more reminiscent of the far right than the radical left . His
writings are often offensive and at times (as when he writes of Hitler being present in the Jew) obscene. There is
a mocking frivolity in ieks paeans to terror that recalls the Italian Futurist and ultra-nationalist Gabriele DAnnunzio and the
Fascist (and later Maoist) fellow traveler Curzio Malaparte more than any thinker in the Marxian tradition. But there is another
reading of iek, which may be more plausible, in which he is no more an epigone of the right than he is a disciple of Marx or Lenin.
Whether or not Marxs vision of communism is the inherent capitalist fantasy, ieks visionwhich apart from rejecting earlier
conceptions lacks any definite contentis well adapted to an economy based on the continuous production of novel commodities
and experiences, each supposed to be different from any that has gone before. With the prevailing capitalist order aware that it is in
trouble but unable to conceive of practicable alternatives, ieks formless radicalism is ideally suited to a culture transfixed by the
spectacle of its own fragility. That there should be this isomorphism between ieks thinking and contemporary capitalism is not
surprising. After all, it is only an economy of the kind that exists today that could produce a thinker such as iek. The role of global
public intellectual iek performs has emerged along with a media apparatus and a culture of celebrity that are integral to the
current model of capitalist expansion. In a stupendous feat of intellectual overproduction iek has created
a fantasmatic critique of the present order, a critique that claims to repudiate practically
everything that currently exists and in some sense actually does, but that at the same time
reproduces the compulsive, purposeless dynamism that he perceives in the operations of capitalism.
Achieving a deceptive substance by endlessly reiterating an essentially empty vision, ieks
worknicely illustrating the principles of paraconsistent logic amounts in the end to less
than nothing .
Seriously, he thinks the Holocaust is not only okay, but didnt go far
enough
Re 12 --- writer, philosopher and historian (Jonathan, Less Than Nothing by Slavoj iek review,
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/27/less-than-nothing-slavoj-zizek-review?newsfeed=true)//trepka
iek refuses to indulge in sanctimonious regrets over the failings of 20th-century communism. He has always had a soft spot for
Stalin, and likes to tell the story of Uncle Joe's response when asked which of two deviations was worse: both of them are worse, he
said, with perfect Lacanian panache. iek's objection to Stalinism is not that it involved terror and mass
murder, but that it sought to justify them by reference to a happy communist tomorrow: the
trouble with Soviet communism, as he puts it, is "not that it is too immoral , but that it is
secretly too moral ". Hitler elicits similar even-handedness: the unfortunate Fhrer was "trapped within the
horizon of bourgeois society", iek says, and the "true problem of nazism" was "not that it
went too far but that it did not go far enough".
**Other**
Surveillance/Gaze
FYI explains the gaze in relation to surveillance and interprets
Sartres The Look
Friesen et al. 12 Dr. Norm Friesen is Canada Research Chair in E-Learning Practices at Thompson Rivers
University. His academic credentials include a PhD in Education from the University of Alberta. Andrew Feenberg, School of
Communication, Simon Fraser University. Grace Smith, Arapiki Solutions, Inc. (Norm Friesen, Andrew Feenberg, Grace Smith, and
Shannon Lowe, 2012, Experiencing Surveillance, pp. 82-83, (Re)Inventing The Internet,
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-6091-734-9_4 // SM)
The passage begins with a description of a hypothetical situation described from a first person
perspective (I have just glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole. I am alone, 1956,
p. 259). This situation is, in a sense, a prototypical scenario of surveillance that is complete with
the effacement or anonymity of the observer from the perspective of the observed that is
characteristic of Benthams panopticon and of other forms of surveillance.
Sartre characterizes this situation using verb phrases that are common in phenomenological
analysis: Things are presented as to be heard and to be seen. The door and keyhole are
presented as to be looked through close by and a little to one side. The point, as Sartre himself
says, is to describe things not from an objective, impartial view (as if from nowhere), but rather,
as they are tied up in our existence, projects, and intentions: No transcending view comes to
confer upon my acts the character of a given on which a judgment can be brought to bear
(Sartre, 1956, p. 259, emphasis in original). From the perspective of the person who would be
spying, that is precisely how the door and keyhole appear: not in terms of their physical
dimensions or material composition, but as an arrangement that can be looked through in a
particular way in order to gain surreptitious access to what is said and done on the other side.
But this entails special care and stealth, and the keyhole requires of the onlooker a specific and
telling kneeling or bending posture. Sartre continues, arguing that in this surreptitious situation,
his acts are in no way known. [Instead] I am my acts . . . I am a pure consciousness of things,
and things [are] caught up in the circuit of my selfness (p. 259; emphasis in original).
Sartres point is not that this observing self exists in solipsistic isolation, but that the self or
consciousness is fully absorbed in the act of viewing and in the object of its gaze: My attitude . . .
has no outside; it is a pure process of relating the instrument (the keyhole) to the end to be
attained (the spectacle to be seen), a pure mode of losing myself in the world, of causing myself
to be drunk in by things as ink is by a blotter (Sartre, 1956, p. 259). Lived space, in this
instance, is constituted solely by the space or the world observed through the keyhole. The lived
body momentarily disappears, as the observers intentional focus is absorbed wholly in what he is
seeing and hearing on the other side. Lived relation is defined for a moment by the objectifying gaze
of a hidden and anonymous observer, and by the people, actions, or objects observed on the other
side.
But phenomenologically speaking, this is only half of the story. Sartre begins to explore the
other half by introducing a kind of eidetic variation, as it is called: A deliberate change is
introduced in a particular aspect of the circumstances constituting the scenario or the larger
lifeworld for the purposes of discovering how this aspect affects the configuration of meanings,
projects and objects, and their interrelationship in that world: But all of a sudden, I hear
footsteps in the hall. By introducing the presence of another who is able to view the secretively
observing self, Sartre is able to explore an entirely different ontological modality: First of all, I
now exist as myself for my unreflective consciousness. It is this irruption of the self which has
been most often described [as follows]: I see myself because somebody sees me (Sartre, 1956, p.
260). The self, earlier absorbed in the observation of others, now becomes itself the object of
observation.
Being caught in the act of surreptitious surveillance, however, is not a matter of suddenly and
simply knowing that someone is watching you; it is a change in ones way of being. The self is
transformed from a subject to an object. It is no longer absorbed by what is being viewed through
the keyhole; it becomes less of a subject or a consciousness, absorbed by the acts of others, and
instead becomes an object, something fixed in the gaze of another. It experiences itself as seen
through the eyes of the person who is viewing it. Lived space suddenly becomes the space of the
hallway rather than the space on the other side of the keyhole. Lived relation is now largely
determined by the objectifying gaze of a second observer. The lived body now becomes an object of
acute awareness, and lived time is defined by anticipation of the response of the other.
Sartres description also reveals a further aspect of the body that is significant for surveillance.
This corporeal element is indicated in what Levinas referred to as the autosignifying function of
the body in the gaze of another, and what Feenberg has called the extended body, manifest in
forms of objectification such as signs and traces (1987, pp. 120, 112; Feenberg, 2006). This aspect
is registered by the audible footsteps in the hall, and in the telling posture of the body of the
observer at the keyhole. It is, in other words, the material aspect of the body that is perceived as
meaningful by others, and indirectly by ourselves as well.
The audible footsteps and the posture at the keyhole, moreover, act as signals that go beyond the
bodys physical boundaries: They are the results of bodily presence that indicate a particular
intention or consequence, but that are not tantamount to it: The observer at the keyhole may
discover that the footsteps are those of an unconcerned child or a blind person; from the
perspective of the person coming down the hall, the observer at the keyhole may well turn out to
be a locksmithsomeone looking at the keyhole, rather than through it. The significance of these
extensions of the body, or of its various auto-significations is clearly contingent, depending on
their interpretation and on the circumstances surrounding them. They do not precisely belong
to our body and yet they are indices of our bodily presence that track us, and for which we can be
held responsible. In todays world, they include the traces of DNA we shed as a natural organic
function, and the automatic registration of movements, transactions, logins and downloads that
increasingly accompany our everyday activities. As such, these aspects of the extended body
provide new avenues for identification and control, as well as means for deception and resistance
that are further explored in the next section.
Surveillance Bad
Colonialism
The colonial desire to make people more identifiable is the worst form of
objectification
Eileraas, Karina received her doctorate in Women's Studies from UCLA in June 2003. Her areas of interest include feminist
theory, colonization and transnational studies, performance and visual culture, 4, September 2003 (Reframing the Colonial
Gaze: Photography, Ownership, and Feminist Resistance, MLN, Volume 118, Number 4 (French Issue), pp.807-840) DJ
During the Algerian revolution, Algerians were required to carry identity cards that would render them
"visible and 'legible'" to French colonial authorities. Soldiers rounded up entire communities of Algerians, and
forcibly unveiled Algerian women, to take their ID card portraits. Although the French practice of unveiling sought to render
Algerian women identifiable to colonial authorities, it also violated local custom and religious practice.
Identity cards formalized the French fantasy of empire, and functioned within a broader discursive network to deny citizenship rights [End
Page 812] to colonial Algerians who were not of French descent. As a final attempt at French signature or authorship within the receding colony,
Algerian identity cards marked an effort to both defer and compensate for impending national loss on the dawn of a traumatic rupture within l'empire
franais. Within this context, the Algerian identity portraits composed by French army photographer Marc Garanger can be read as ambivalent
performances of national fantasy. Photography
consciousness spurred Garanger to work feverishly during his two-year tenure to create a
portfolio of images that would memorialize colonial injustice. Although photography constituted
Garanger's official duty relative to the French nation, it also offered a tool with which to record
his opposition to colonial practice: To express myself with my eye, I took up my camera. To shout my
disagreement. For twenty-four months I never stopped, sure that one day I would be able to testify, to tell stories with these images. . . . All of
this I did with more force than the dominant military ideology of the era that surrounded me with hatred and violence. My spirit's revolt was
proportionate to the horrors that I witnessed. 18 Driven by this spirit of revolt, Garanger
Control
Surveillance is not just a collection of information, but a material force used to
control subjects. And as technology grows so does the modes of surveillance
Thompson, teaches in the English Departments of Fordham University and Adelphi University. A former student of Seamus
Deane at the University of Notre Dame where he completed his Ph.D., 2002 ( Spurgeon, Vol. 2, pp. 96-97) DJ
It is my premise that surveillance in general is less about information , as most theorists would claim, and
more about the material display of force -1ess about taking notes than spatializing the force
monopolized by the state. The most influential theorization of surveillance for cultural studies scholars is that of Michel
Foucault, in Discipline and Punish (1977). lt is clear, however, that something has changed between the older forms of surveillance
that Foucault critiques -the model of surveillance, for him, being the Panopticon that Bentham sketched out- and contemporary
surveillance. For one, these modes of surveillance are material forces of social control , not sketches and not
plans or theories to be generalized later, hypothetically, into all possible social institutions. They are not, in other words, Bentharn's
unbuilt architecture. Secondly, what once was to be applied in prisons, insane asylums, or schools, is
being applied to society in general. out 'in the open', in public space. And third, expensive technologies and
procedures of instruction (backed by the accumulated resources only available to the state) are
necessitated by these new modes of surveillance (most exemplified by helicopter surveillance). These
developments, I think, transform the concept of surveillance itself. We can no longer think of it as an activity in
which anybody off the street can participate, for example, as a sort of self-sustaining automechanistic practice. Foucault's observation about the ultimate surveillance "machine", the Panopticon, no longer holds:
"Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the
director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants " (Foucault, 1977: 202). Today the servants
would be powerless to operate (or to turn off) the machine of surveillance or in the case of helicopter surveillance- powerless even to
access the equipment. With the advent of photographic, and specifically filmic modes of surveillance
the concept of surveillance within critical discourses needs to be retrofitted . One reason why is that
surveillance has always been for its theorists a problem of information: it involves the recording and
processing of information about (national, colonial, etc.) subjects as a way of locating and fixing
individuals by means of a vast structure of data. The central point about surveillance in the plague town for
Foucault is that it is based "on a system of permanent registration: reports from the syndics to the intendants, frorn the intendants
to the rnagistrates or mayor" (196). At the heart of this logic of surveillance is an "uninterrupted work of writing" (197). It is a
body of information, written down in "reports", which enables the "capillary functioning of
power". This description of the relations between power, information, and surveillance is still of
course useful to critiques of the state. The North of Ireland is a site of constant and pervasive processing of
inforrnation by the colonial state. For exarnple, soldiers flying aerial surveillance for the RAF in Belfast have boasted publically that
not only do they have the license plate nurnbers of every car moving in and out of the city in their on-board cornputers, but that they
know the color of every sofa in every living roorn in the city. (Whether this is true, or even possible is of course another question.)
This is indeed an advanced exarnple of the kind of inforrnation-based rnodel of surveillance Foucault rightly foregrounds. The
advancernent of cornputer technology, as some critics have noted, represents a sort of technological
amplification of the structures states or imperial powers employed to control and reproduce
subjects. This, to some theorists, represents simply an intensification of surveillance. And ways of
describing and critiquing it must therefore match this exponential expansion. Cornputers, by this logic,
sirnply enhance the sarne, classic structures of information behind surveillance. The cornputer and the technologies accornpanying
it, like closed circuit television (CCTV), are sirnply conceived of as more sophisticated procedures of writing, recording, of
registration. In sum, the practice of surveillance has always been theorized as a sort of locator
service, which produces and secures subjects by keeping track of them in textual forms. New
technologies simply ramify and reproduce on a massive scale old modalities of surveillance.
Patriarchy
The normalizing power of the gaze reinscribes a patriarchal society fixated on
fulfilling sexual desires.
Roof, Judith work ranges through many areas of twentieth-century and contemporary studies, including comparative
modernisms; drama and performance studies; film studies; theories of sexuality; science, literature, and culture; and contemporary
British and American fiction, 2007 (Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History, vol. 2. Detroit: Macmillan
DJ
To gaze is to look at something, often with concentration, curiosity, or pleasure. Simply gazing is
more a practice of contemplation or fascination than it is either a manifestation of voyeurism
(looking for the purposes of sexual pleasure) or a practice of surveillance or control associated with various
forms of punishment. Gazing constitutes a large portion of cultural activity in modern societies. Theater, film, and television
Reference p.610-612)
all offer themselves as spectacles to be seen, and form themselves in relation to viewers' predilections. Other venues for gazing
include sports, zoos, casinos, travel and sightseeing, and even computer games. As viewers find pleasure in these
entertainments, they rarely think about either how the displayed activities are actually arranged
to be seen or what power relations there are between the display and the viewer. Viewers often
feel they have a choice in how and what they watch, though they are equally powerless to change
or often even participate in what they see. Computer games bring a measure of control to the gazer. To gaze may
well muster curiosity, sexual pleasure, and issues of power. Sexualized control scenarios tend to
gender this power, especially in so far as gazing is associated with active volition, whereas the
image or object to be looked at is associated with passivity and sometimes victimhood. In its
connections to the activity and phallic character of looking, gazing is often associated with
masculinity and looking with sexual aggressiveness. The image or object to be looked at is associated with
femininity and passive objecthood. Thus, in its most extreme forms, gazing is linked both to gender stereotypes
and to less traditional sexual satisfactions such as scopophilia, or pleasure in watching, and the
passive/active dynamics of sadomasochism. Voyeurism and scopophilia are most often practiced
by males, sometimes in public spaces such as strip shows and pornographic films, sometimes privately as with pornographic
magazines and Internet sites, and sometimes illegally and covertly as peeping toms. Often voyeuristic activities are restricted to
certain areas and to adult consumers; sometimes voyeurism is a crime. Exhibitionism, or setting out one's sexual organs to be seen,
is practiced by both males and females, often, though not always, as a component of sexual arousal. Males constitute the
majority of those who expose their genitals to strangers; doing so constitutes the crime of
indecent exposure. Sigmund Freud theorized that those who enjoy exhibitionism also wish to look, while those who look also
wish to be seen. Gazing also reflects and effects a complex distribution of power that in its sexualized form
constitutes sadomasochism, or sexual pleasure derived from taking or relinquishing power . To be constrained
as the object of someone else's gaze is to be in the watcher's power. The viewer may wield sadistic power in
humiliating what he or she watches. At the same time, the one who offers her- or himself up to the gaze
might exert a certain power in commanding the gaze as well as in delaying or withholding full
view. The one who watches may be constrained from doing more than watching, experiencing a type of bondage produced by the
rules of viewing. Most often what is offered for view is presented in costumes designed to constrain movement, limit access, and
signal the distribution of power via leather, chains, harnesses, and masks.
The development of cinema has reproduce a new panoptic structure where women
are created a powerless object
Block, Marcelline has a BA, Harvard; MA, Princeton; PhD candidate, Princeton is Lecturer in History at Princeton, 2008 (
Situating the Feminist Gaze and Spectatorship in Postwar Cinema. Newcastle upon Tyne, GBR: Cambridge Scholars Publishing)
DJ
Laura Mulveys work launched the field of feminist film theory in the 1970s. Mulveys foundational essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)
explained the impact of visual relations and gender in celluloid and formed the basis for most subsequent psychoanalytic readings of women in film.
Specifically, Mulvey notes that Hollywood
informs readings of nearly all visual media, despite the advances that Mulvey, among others, have noted in technologies
that have profoundly altered what can be packed into a second of screen time . 7 Feminist film theorists
such as Barbara Creed, Cynthia Freeland, and Sue Thornham have long worked to account for different gazes and subject positions in order to
gaze in
feminist psychoanalytic readings can also work against a primary circumstance of power
formation. The distinction between who or what is doing the looking and who or what is
being observed is an important binary. In his 1975 Surveiller et punir (translated in 1977 as Discipline and Punish ), Michel
supplement and/or problematize the heteronormative binary of Mulveys theory of subjectobject looking relations. 8 Considerations of the
Foucault identified the function of this binary through the social operation of carceral and educational authority. Foucaults figural Panopticon, like
Jeremy Benthams literal prison design, deprives certain subjects of any gaze, transforming looking relations into power relations, an ability to
discipline and punish without physical violence or bodily disfiguration. 9 This binary also evokes Lacans sardine can, which is seen as an object
precisely because it does not possess a gaze with which to look back at the seeing subject. By
White Gaze
To conceptualize the presence of power the USFG has over our bodies is not wrong,
but to disassociate that power as something wholly external to yourself is an error
of the framers and debaters who do not recognize the false cognition of non-white
bodies that has left many under the watch of the White Gaze.
Deborah Heggs, 11-19-2013, ("The White Gaze Is it Fear or Racism?," Guardian Liberty Voice,
http://guardianlv.com/2013/11/the-white-gaze-is-it-fear-or-racism/ Read more at http://guardianlv.com/2013/11/the-white-gazeis-it-fear-or-racism/#fZQjZylwQfYDjQvb.99) DJ
The White Gaze should be terrifying to anyone aware of its meaning. Not only does it strike without
warning; but in many cases, it takes, and destroys lives when it does. Is the White Gaze fear or racism?
Though its not a physical ailment, the White Gaze is a debilitating sickness, caused by the horribly
apathetic state of mind, called racism. It can cause such mental devastation that even if you
survive, the pain is indelibly etched on your brain with heart-wrenching torment. George Yancy,
Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University stated in a recent article, that the White Gaze is the fear that white
people have of blacks. In short, its defined as looking at the world through the eyes of a white
person who has undertones of, or is blatant in, their racism. Simply put, the gaze means that you
that you have no right to belong. You have no right to belong in certain neighborhoods; you have no right to belong in
certain schools. And if youre black, you have no right to belong anywhere that those affected by the
White Gaze feel that you shouldnt be. When those who are gazing see you as a threat, or
someone to be feared, even if the feeling is contrived, murder often follows. Sadly, for many,
being at the wrong place or in the wrong situation has proven fatal . Many Michigan residents are outraged
of the November 2nd murder of 19-year-old Renisha McBride. Even more are wondering if 54-year-old Theodore
P. Wafer was afflicted by the White Gaze when he took the life of this innocent, unarmed, young black woman. Wafer, of
Dearborn Heights, Michigan shot McBride in the face with a shotgun when she knocked on his front door seeking help after being in
a car accident. Sources say that McBride, who had been drinking crashed her car sometime around 1:00 a.m. A woman at the scene
said that Miss McBride sustained minor injuries from the accident and was bleeding from the head. According to the unidentified
woman, McBride kept saying I want to go home. According to sources, McBride, who appeared shaky and disoriented left the
scene and somehow wandered to Wafers front porch. The distressed and dazed McBride knocked on Wafers door seeking help, but
instead, she was met with a deadly shotgun blast which ended her young life. The question again arises, was the White Gaze
responsible for Police shooting and killing 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell? Reports indicate that Ferrell, an unarmed black
man, was shot and killed by police in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ferrell, who was in a devastating car crash on Saturday, September
14, 2013, ran towards Police for help, but instead he was tased and shot to death. The former Florida A&M University football star
was seeking assistance after he was in a serious car wreck. According to Police Chief Rodney Monroe, Ferrell more than likely
climbed out of the back window of his badly damaged vehicle and ran to the closest house for help. Upon answering the door, the
homeowner inside thought it was her husband knocking at the door, but opened the door to find Ferrell. Chief Monroe further stated
that the woman closed the door, hit her panic alarm and called 911. When Police arrived at the scene, a man matching the
homeowners description of Ferrell ran towards them. Upon seeing the young black man running in their direction, one officer fired
his stun gun, but Ferrell still ran towards them for help. At that time Officer Randall Kerrick opened fire; shooting Ferrell multiple
times, killing him at the scene. No one gave Jonathan Ferrell the benefit-of-doubt because in their eyes, he didnt belong.
Undoubtedly, the most publicized story of the White Gaze is that of George Zimmerman. For over a year, papers were satiated with
news of the 28-year-old man who took the life of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on February 26, 2012. Zimmerman, who was
a neighborhood watch patrolman in Sanford, Florida for a private community, stalked and fatally shot Martin, because in his eyes,
Martin didnt belong in the gated community which he was patrolling. After police arrived, Zimmerman, an armed White-Hispanic
man was taken to the hospital for head injuries. While Trayvon Martin, an unarmed young Black man, was taken to the morgue.
Though no one can say for sure that these murders were White Gaze related, we can undoubtedly say, that they were senseless.
When life is lost to violence, it doesnt matter whether its because of the White Gaze, fear,
blinding racism or just plain-old-hatred, it doesnt diminish the pain of those left behind.
Though we may never know the true motive for these senseless acts of violence, one certainty
prevails, No one knows what lurks in the hearts of men, but men themselves. And the White
Gaze is proof-positive of that.
Through inheriting the oppositional gaze, the Black Body can form a resisitance
against dominating modes of power and gain possible agency
Bell Hooks, 1992 (Boston: South End Press, Black Looks: Race and Representation pg115-116,
http://www.umass.edu/afroam/downloads/reading14.pdf)
DJ
about these connections, about the ways power as domination reproduces itself in different locations employing similar apparatuses, strategies, and
mechanisms of control. Since I knew as a child that the dominating power adults exercised over me and over my
Emphatically stating that in all relations of power "there is necessarily the possibility
of resistance," he invites the critical thinker to search those margins, gaps, and locations on and
through the body where agency can be found. Stuart Hall calls for recognition of our agency as black spectators in his essay "Cultural
Identity and Cinematic Representation." Speaking against the construction of white representations of blackness as totalizing, Hall says of white presence: "The
error is not to conceptualize this 'presence' in terms of power, but to locate that power as wholly
external to usas extrinsic force, whose influence can be thrown off like the serpent sheds its
skin. What Franz Fanon reminds us, in Black Skin, White Masks, is how power is inside as well as outside: .. .the movements, the attitudes, the glances of the Other
fixed me there, in the sense in which a chemical solution is fixed by a dye. I was indignant; I demanded an explanation. Nothing happened. I burst apart. Now the fragments have been put
together again by another self. This
"look," fromso to speakthe place of the Other, fixes us, not only in its
violence, hostility and aggression, but in the ambivalence of its desire. Spaces of agency exist for
black people, wherein we can both interrogate the gaze of the Other but also look back, and at
one another, naming what we see. The "gaze" has been and is a site of resistance for colonized
black people globally. Subordinates in relations of power learn experientially that there is a
critical gaze, one that "looks" to document, one that is oppositional. In resistance struggle, the
power of the dominated to assert agency by claiming and cultivating "aware ness" politicizes
"looking" relationsone learns to look a certain way in order to resist.
Biopower
Surveillance electronically extends panoptic power that results in
biopolitical control over the populace
Koskela 3 Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Helsinki (FI) (Hille, Vol 1, No 3 (2003): Foucault and
Panopticism Revisited, Cam Era the contemporary urban Panopticon, http://www.surveillance-andsociety.org/articles1(3)/camera.pdf // SM)
In Michel Foucaults words, Jeremy Bentham the designer of the Panopticon invented a technology of power designed to solve
the problems of surveillance (1980: 148). The idea of video surveillance is almost literally the same: a technological
solution designed to solve the problems of surveillance in urban space. People under surveillance
are as in the Panopticon to be seen but to never know when or by whom; under control but
without physical intervention. Recently, the number of surveillance cameras in urban space has grown massively (different
cities in detail, see e.g. Takala, 1998; Lyon, 2002; McCahill and Norris, 2002; Tpfer et al., forthcoming). It can be claimed that
through surveillance cameras the panoptic technology of power has been electronically
extended: our cities have become like enormous Panopticons (Lyon, 1994; Fyfe and Bannister,
1998; Tabor, 2001). A number of authors have pointed out that the surveillance of cities shows interesting and important parallels to
Foucaults thought (Fyfe and Bannister, 1996; Herbert, 1996; Soja, 1996; Hannah, 1997b; Norris and Armstrong, 1999; Fox, 2001
among others). Cities, like the Panopticon, can be seen as a laboratory of power (Foucault, 1977: 204). In
both cases surveillance links knowledge, power and space (Herbert, 1996: 49). In cities, the routine of
surveillance makes the use of power almost instinctive: people are controlled, categorised,
disciplined and normalised without any particular reason.
surveillance will lead to a vicious circle of defence . It is likely to make urban space
segregated, polarised, more difficult to approach and stay in, less lively, less spontaneous and even dead (Davis, 1990;
Flusty, 1994; Mitchell, 1995; Ellin, 1997; Koskela, 2000a). Furthermore, surveillance can be used as a tool for
reinforcing the purification and homogenisation processes of urban space . What
follows is [t]he destruction of the street, or city centre, as an arena for the celebration of difference
that
(Bannister et al., 1998: 26). The urban experience of being watched through a surveillance camera is, naturally, only one of the
approaches to surveillance. With computerisation, surveillance is becoming more subtle and intense . It also
spreads from material space to cyberspace. It has been argued that the real superpanopticon exists in electronic environments in
the word wide web of surveillance (Lyon, 2001). The webcams distribute images to the audience on the Internet connecting local
gazes with the global community (Green, 1999). Local presence is replaced not by absence but, rather, by tele-
presence (Virilio, 2002: 109). The computer integrated surveillance systems link visible surveillance to
the other forms of technological control (e.g. Curry, 1997; Graham, 1998; Whitaker, 1999). When surveillance
cameras are combined with visitors registers and people-finding tools , such as face recognition systems,
supervision touches a wide range of issues around privacy and human rights . While older surveillance
systems mainly watched over the public as anonymous crowd new technologies make it possible to recognise
individuals and to combine faces to data bases of criminals, activists, etc. We are accompanied
by our data doubles (Lyon, 2002) or digital individuals (Curry, 1997), and this
exponentially increases the panoptic power of surveillance (Norris, 2002: 270).
Telesurveillance is the main component of representation and control in what has been called the
era of the great global optic (Virilio, 2002: 110).