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Here, however, Lacan's statements on psychoanalysis and money, and on the anticapitalist nature of psychoanalysis, are to be taken seriously.41 Consider Jacques-Alain Miller's joke about how, in psychoanalytic treatment, exploitation works even better than it does in capitalism: in capitalism, the capitalist pays the worker who works for him, and thus produces profit; while in psychoanalysis, the patient pays the analyst in order to be able to work himself... In psychoanalysis, therefore, we have an intersubjective money relationship in which all parameters of exchange break down. The key point is: why does the patient pay the analyst? The standard answer (so that the analyst stays outside the libidinal circuit, uninvolved in the imbroglio of passions) is correct, but insufficient. We should definitely exclude "goodness": if the psychoanalyst is perceived as good, as doing the patient a favour, everything is bound to go wrong. We should, however, tackle a further question: how does the patient subjectivize his paying? This is where the logic of exchange breaks down: if we remain within the parameters of "tit for tat" (so much for an interpretation of a dream, so much for the dissolution of a symptom), we get nowhere. "Paying the price for services rendered" contains the analysis within the limits of avarice (it is easy to imagine a further acceleration of this logic: pay for two interpretations, and get a third one free...)• What is bound to happen sooner or later is that the analysis gets caught in the paradigmatic obsessional economy in which the patient is paying the analyst so that nothing will happen - so that the analyst will tolerate the patient's babbling without any subjective consequences. On the other hand, there is nothing more catastrophic than a psychoanalyst acting out of charity ("goodness") to help the patient; if anything, this is the most effective way of turning a "normal" neurotic into a paranoiac psychotic. Is the answer to be found, then, in the shift from having to being, along the lines of Lacan's definition of love as an act in which one gives not what one has, but what one doesn't have - that is to say, what one is? The gesture of giving one's being can also be a false (megalomaniac or suicidal) one - witness Nietzsche's final megalomaniac madness, whose structure is strictly homologous to the suicidal passage a I'acter. in both cases, the subject offers himself (his being) as the object that fills, in the Real, the constitutive gap of the symbolic order - that is, the lack of the big Other. That is to say, the key enigma of Nietzsche's final madness is: why did Nietzsche have to resort to what cannot fail to appear to us as ridiculous self-aggrandizing (recall the chapters tides in his Ecce homo: "Why I am so wise", "Why I am so bright", up to "Why I am a destiny")? This is an inherent philosophical deadlock, which has nothing whatsoever to do with any private pathology: his inability to accept the nonexistence of the big Other. Within these co-ordinates, suicide occurs when the subject perceives that the megalomaniac solution does not work.4 2 As Lacan emphasized, one cannot analyse the rich, for whom paying does not matter. So there has to be payment, a price paid - it must hurt.4 3 What, however, does one get for it? The analysis proper begins when one accepts the payment as a purely arbitrary expenditure. By paying for nothing, by engaging in pure expenditure, the patient gets back that for which there is no price - the objet petit a, the cause of desire, that which can emerge only as a pure excess of Grace. The vicious circle of thrift is thus doubly broken: the patient does something totally meaningless within the horizon of the capitalist logic of consumption/accumulation, and receives in exchange the pure surplus itself. The Lacanian name for this gesture of breaking the vicious cycle of the superego is act, and the lack of a clear elaboration of the notion of act in its relation to fantasy is perhaps the key failing of The Sublime Object.

Zizek 8 [Slavoj, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at University of Llubljana, the Elvis of cultural theory, former candidate for Slovenian presidency, For They Know Not What They Do, p.xxxviii-xlii]

why does the patient pay the analyst? if the psychoanalyst is perceived as good, as doing the patient a favour, everything is bound to go wrong. there is nothing more catastrophic than a psychoanalyst acting out of charity ("goodness") to help the patient this is the most effective way of turning a "normal" neurotic into a paranoiac psychotic. there has to be payment, a price paid - it must hurt. By paying for nothing, by engaging in pure expenditure, the patient gets back that for which there is no price - the objet petit a, the cause of desire, that which can emerge only as a pure excess of Grace. The Lacanian name for this gesture of breaking the vicious cycle of the superego is act

Give us the ballot as payment for services rendered – the Aff must pay to make passage to the Act possible

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This predominance of the superego over the law disturbs the relationship of knowledge and belief that determines our everyday ideological horizon: the gap between (real) knowledge and (symbolic) belief. We can illustrate it with the well-known psychological experience of when we say of something (as a rule terrible, traumatic) "I know that it is so, but nevertheless I can't believe it": the traumatic knowledge of reality remains outside the Symbolic, the symbolic articulation continues to operate as if we do not know, and the "time for understanding" is necessary for this knowledge to be integrated into our symbolic universe.2 3 This kind of gap between knowledge and belief, in so far as both are "conscious", attests to a psychotic split, a "disavowal of reality"; propositions of this type are what linguistic analysis calls "pragmatic paradoxes". Let us take, for example, the statement "I know that there is no mouse in the next room, but nevertheless I believe that there is a mouse there": this statement is not logically irreconcilable - since there is no logical contradiction between "there is no mouse in the next room" and "I believe there is a mouse in the next room" - the contradiction comes only on the pragmatic level, in so far as we take into account the position of the subject of the enunciation of this proposition: the subject who knows that there is no mouse in the next room cannot at the same time, without contradiction, believe that there is a mouse there. In other words, the subject who believes this is a split subject. The "normal" solution to this contradiction is of course that we repress the other moment, the belief, in our unconscious: in its place enters some spare moment which is not in contradiction to the first - this is the logic of so-called "rationalization". Instead of the direct split "I know that the Jews are guilty of nothing, but nevertheless... (I believe that they are guilty)" comes the statement of the type "I know that the Jews are guilty of nothing; however, the fact is that in the development of capitalism, the Jews, as the representatives of financial and business capital, have usually profited from the productive labour of others"; instead of the direct split "I know that there is no God, but nevertheless... (I believe that there is)" appears a statement of the type "I know that there is no God, but I respect religious ritual and take part in it because this ritual supports ethical values and encourages brotherhood and love among people." Such statements are good examples of what might be called "lying by way of the truth": the second part of the statement, the claim which follows the syntagm "but nevertheless... ", can on a factual level be largely accurate but nevertheless operates as a lie because in the concrete symbolic context in which it appears it operates as a ratification of the unconscious belief that the Jews are nevertheless guilty, that God nevertheless exists, and so on - without taking into account these "investments" of the unconscious belief, the functioning of such statements remains totally incomprehensible. One of the greatest masters of this was the Stalinist "dialectical materialism", the basic achievement of which, when it was necessary to legitimize some pragmatic political measure which violated theoretical principles, was "in principle it is of course so; nevertheless, in the concrete circumstances... ": the infamous "analysis of concrete circumstances" is basically nothing other than a search for rationalization which attempts to justify the violation of a principle. This gap between (real) knowledge and (symbolic) belief determines our everyday ideological attitude: "I know that there is no God, but nevertheless, I operate as if (I believe that) he exists" - the part in brackets is repressed (belief in a God whom we witness through our activity is unconscious).

Zizek 8 [Slavoj, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at University of Llubljana, the Elvis of cultural theory, former candidate for Slovenian presidency, For They Know Not What They Do, p.241-3]

This predominance of the superego over the law disturbs the relationship of knowledge and belief that determines our everyday ideological horizon when we say "I know that it is so, but nevertheless I can't believe it": the traumatic knowledge of reality remains outside the Symbolic, the symbolic articulation continues to operate as if we do not know, and the "time for understanding" is necessary for this knowledge to be integrated into our symbolic universe. This kind of gap between knowledge and belief attests to a psychotic split, a "disavowal of reality" The "normal" solution to this contradiction is of course that we repress the other moment, the belief, in our unconscious this is the logic of so-called "rationalization". Instead of the direct split "I know that the Jews are guilty of nothing, but nevertheless... (I believe that they are guilty)" comes the statement of the type "I know that the Jews are guilty of nothing; however, the fact is that in the development of capitalism, the Jews, as the representatives of financial and business capital, have usually profited from the productive labour of others" Such statements are good examples of what might be called "lying by way of the truth": the second part of the statement, the claim which follows the syntagm "but nevertheless... ", can on a factual level be largely accurate but nevertheless operates as a lie because in the concrete symbolic context in which it appears it operates as a ratification of the unconscious belief that the Jews are nevertheless guilty One of the greatest masters of this was the Stalinist "dialectical materialism", the basic achievement of which, when it was necessary to legitimize some pragmatic political measure which violated theoretical principles, was "in principle it is of course so; nevertheless, in the concrete circumstances... ": the infamous "analysis of concrete circumstances" is basically nothing other than a search for rationalization which attempts to justify the violation of a principle. This gap between knowledge and ) belief determines our everyday ideological attitude: "I know that there is no God, but nevertheless, I operate as if he exists"

The perm is the purest form of ideological disavowal, functionally saying “I know very well that the Aff links, but nevertheless I’ll act as if it doesn’t.” Even if the perm is technically true in the sense that it is hypothetically possible to do the Aff and the K, the perm is still a lie because it is a rationalization that is unable to incorporate into its symbolic universe the implication of the critique.

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Kritiks

2022

This kernel of the Real encircled by failed attempts to symbolize-totalize it is radically non-historical: history itself is nothing but a succession of failed attempts to grasp, conceive, specify this strange kernel. This is why, far from rejecting the reproach that psychoanalysis is non-historical, one has to acknowledge it fully and thus simply transform it from a reproach into a positive theoretical proposition, therein consists the difference between hysteria and psychosis: hysteria/history is more than a trivial word game - hysteria is the subject's way of resisting the prevailing, historically specified form of interpellation or symbolic indentification. Hysteria means failed interpellation, it means that the subject in the name of that which is "in him more than himself" - the object in himself - refuses the mandate which is conferred on him in the symbolic universe; as such, it falls conditional with the dominant form of symbolic identification - that is, it is its reverse; while psychosis, the maintenance of an external distance from the symbolic order, is “unhistorical" - that is, on the level of psychosis it is not difficult for us to pose equality between psychotic outbursts reported in classical sources, and contemporary clinical cases. The act qua "psychotic" in this sense is ahistorical. However, an ahistoric kernel of the Real is present also in history/hysteria: the ultimate mistake of historicism in which all historical content is "relativized", made dependent on “historical circumstances", - that is to say, of historicism as opposed to historicity - is that it evades the encounter with the Real. Let us take the usual attitude of the university discourse towards the great "Masters of Thought" of our century - towards Heidegger, towards Lacan: its first compulsion is to carry out an arrangement of their theoretical edifices into "phases": Heidegger I (Being and Time) in contrast to Heidegger II ("thought of Being"); phenomenologically Hegelian Lacan of the 1950s, then structuralist Lacan, then the Lacan of the "logic of the Real". In such an arrangement there is of course some pacifying effect, the thought is rendered transparent, properly classified... but we have nevertheless lost something with such a disposition into "phases": we have actually lost what is crucial, the encounter with the Real. We have lost (with Heidegger) the fact that Heidegger's various phases are only so many attempts to grasp, to indicate, to "encircle", the same kernel, the "Thing of thought" which he constantly tackles, dodges and returns to. 2 The paradox is thus that historicity differs from historicism by the way it presupposes some traumatic kernel which endures as "the same", non-historical; and so various historical epochs are conceived as failed attempts to capture this kernel. The trouble with the alleged "Eurocentricity" of psychoanalysis is homologous. Today it is a commonplace to draw attention to the way Freud's myth in Totem and Taboo is based on the Eurocentric anthropology of his time: the anthropologies on which Freud relied were "unhistorical" projections of the modern patriarchal family and society into primeval times - it was only on this basis that Freud could construct the myth of the "primeval father". A breakthrough was only later achieved with Malinowski, Mead, and others who demonstrated how sexual life in primitive societies was organized in a completely different way, how we cannot therefore talk about an "Oedipus complex", how inhibition and anxiety were not associated with sexuality. Things thus appear clear, we know where we are, where the "primitives" are; we have not reduced the Other, we have preserved its diversity,.. nevertheless such historicizing is false: in the simple distinction between our own and past societies we avoid calling into question our own position, the place from which we ourselves speak. The fascinating "diversity" of the Other functions as a fetish by means of which we are able to preserve the unproblematic identity of our subjective position: although we pretend to "historically relativize" our position, we actually conceal its split; we deceive ourselves as to how this position is already "decentred from within". What Freud called the "Oedipus complex" is such an "unhistorical" traumatic kernel (the trauma of prohibition on which the social order is based) and the miscellaneous historical regulations of sexuality and society are none other than so many ways (in the final analysis always unsuccessful) of mastering this traumatic kernel. To "understand the Other" means to pacify it, to prevent the meeting with the Other from becoming a meeting with the Real that undermines our own position. We come across the Real as that which "always returns to its place" when we identify with the Real in the Other - that is to say: when we recognize in the deadlock, hindrance, because of which the Other failed, our own hindrance, that which is "in us more than ourselves".3 Much more subversive than "entering the spirit of the past" is thus in contrast the procedure by which we consciously treat it "anti-historically", "reduce the past to the present". Brecht made use of this procedure in The Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar, where Caesar's rise to power is presented in twentieth-century capitalist terms: Caesar is concerned with stock market movements and speculation with capital he organizes Fascist-style "spontaneous" demonstrations of the lumpenproletariat, and so on. Such a procedure could be brought to self-reference when the contemporary image of the past is projected into the past. So, today, pre-Socratic times are known only in fragments which have survived a turbulent history; we thus inadvertently forget that Heraclitus and Parmenides did not write "fragments" but long, verbose philosophical poems. So it would really be some kind of subversive philosophical humour if we were to represent Heraclitus, let us say, as saying: "I can't write any good fragments today!" (or, on another level, the unknown sculptor of Milos saying: “I can't break the arm off my Venus today!"). Relying on a similar “reductionist", "unhistorical" procedure, Adorno's and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment4 reads The Odyssey retroactively, from the experience of contemporary technical-instrumental reason: of course, such a procedure is "unhistorical"; however, precisely through the feeling of the absurd which it awakens in us, it opens actual historical distance to us (just as with Hegel's claim "the Spirit is a bone", where the real effect of the absurd contradiction is the discord that it awakens in the reader).

Zizek 08 [Slavoj, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at University of Llubljana, the Elvis of cultural theory, former candidate for Slovenian presidency, For They Know Not What They Do, p.101-3]

far from rejecting the reproach that psychoanalysis is non-historical, one has to acknowledge it fully and thus simply transform it from a reproach into a positive theoretical proposition an ahistoric kernel of the Real is present also in history the ultimate mistake of historicism in which all historical content is "relativized", made dependent on “historical circumstances", is that it evades the encounter with the Real. The trouble with the alleged "Eurocentricity" of psychoanalysis is homologous. Today it is a commonplace to draw attention to the way the anthropologies on which Freud relied were "unhistorical" projections of the modern patriarchal family and society into primeval times Things thus appear clear, we know where we are, where the "primitives" are; we have not reduced the Other, we have preserved its diversity,.. nevertheless such historicizing is false: in the simple distinction between our own and past societies we avoid calling into question our own position, the place from which we ourselves speak. The fascinating "diversity" of the Other functions as a fetish by means of which we are able to preserve the unproblematic identity of our subjective position: although we pretend to "historically relativize" our position, we actually conceal its split; we deceive ourselves as to how this position is already "decentred from within". To "understand the Other" means to pacify it, to prevent the meeting with the Other from becoming a meeting with the Real that undermines our own position. We come across the Real as that which "always returns to its place" when we identify with the Real in the Other Much more subversive than "entering the spirit of the past" is thus in contrast the procedure by which we consciously treat it "anti-historically", "reduce the past to the present".

The claim that psychoanalysis is Eurocentric links to itself – it reestablishes the authority of the speaking subject. The “diversity” of the other is becomes a fetish object that preserves the identity of our own subjective position.

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Kritiks

2022

This notion of civility is at the very heart of the impasses of multiculturalism. A couple of years ago, there was a debate in Germany about Leäkultur (the dominant culture): against abstract multiculturalism, conservatives insisted that every state is based on a predominant cultural space which the members of other cultures who live in the same space should respect. Although liberal leftists attacked this notion as covert racism, one should admit that, if nothing else, it offers an adequate description of the facts. Respect of individual freedoms and rights, even if at the expense of group rights, full emancipation of women, freedom of religion (and of atheism) and sexual orientation, freedom to publicly attack anyone and anything, are central constituent elements of Western liberal Leitkultur [culture], and this can be used to respond to those Muslim theologians in Western countries who protest against their treatment, while accepting it as normal that in, say, Saudi Arabia, it is prohibited to practice publicly religions other than Islam. They should accept that the same Leitkultur [culture] which allows their religious freedom in the West, demands of them a respect for all other freedoms. To put it succinctly: freedom for Muslims is part and parcel of the freedom for Salman Rushdie to write what he wants —you cannot choose the part of Western freedom which suits you. The answer to the standard critical argument that Western multiculturalism is not truly neutral, that it privileges specific values, is that one should shamelessly accept this paradox: Universal openness itself is rooted in Western modernity. And, to avoid any misunderstanding, the same applies to Christianity itself. On May 2, 2007, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper, accused Andrea Rivera, an Italian comedian, of "terrorism" for criticizing the pope. As a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, Rivera attacked the pope's position on evolution ("The pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved.") He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a victim of muscular dystrophy who campaigned for euthanasia and died in December 2006 after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator ("I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for Pinochet or Franco"). Here is the Vatican's reaction: "This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church. It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man." It is the underlying equation of intellectual critique with physical terrorist attacks which brutally violates the West European Leitkultur [culture], which insists on the universal sphere of the "public use of reason," where one can criticize and problematize everything— in the eyes of our shared Leitkulture, Rivera’s statements are totally acceptable. Civility is crucial here: multicultural freedom also functions only when it is sustained by the rules of civility, which are never abstract, but always embedded within a Leitkidtur. Within our Leltkultur, it is not Rivera but L'Osservatore Roimino which is "terroristic" with its dismissal of Rivera's simple and reasonable objections as expressions of "blind and irrational rage. " Freedom of speech functions when all parties follow the same unwritten rules of civility telling us what kind of attacks are improper, although they are not legally prohibited; civility tells us which features of a specific ethnic or religious " way of life" are acceptable and which are not acceptable. If all sides do not share or respect the same civility, then multiculturalism turns into legally regulated mutual ignorance or hatred. One of the Lacanian names for this civility is the “Master-Signifier," the set of rules grounded only in themselves ("it is so because it is so, because it is our custom")—and it is this dimension of the Master-Signifier which is more and more threatened in our societies.

Zizek 08 [Slavoj, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at University of London, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology at University of Llubljana, the Elvis of cultural theory, former candidate for Slovenian presidency, In Defense of Lost Causes, p.20]

against abstract multiculturalism, conservatives insisted that every state is based on a predominant cultural space which the members of other cultures who live in the same space should respect. Although liberal leftists attacked this notion as covert racism it offers an adequate description of the facts. Respect of individual freedoms and rights full emancipation of women, freedom of religion (and of atheism) and sexual orientation, freedom to publicly attack anyone and anything, are central constituent elements of Western liberal [culture], and this can be used to respond to those Muslim theologians in Western countries who protest against their treatment, while accepting it as normal that in Saudi Arabia, it is prohibited to practice publicly religions other than Islam. They should accept that the same [culture] which allows their religious freedom in the West, demands of them a respect for all other freedoms. freedom for Muslims is part and parcel of the freedom for Salman Rushdie to write what he wants —you cannot choose the part of Western freedom which suits you. The answer to the standard critical argument that Western multiculturalism is not truly neutral, that it privileges specific values, is that one should shamelessly accept this paradox: Universal openness itself is rooted in Western modernity. the same applies to Christianity itself. the Vatican's official newspaper, accused an Italian comedian, of "terrorism" for criticizing the pope. It is the underlying equation of intellectual critique with physical terrorist attacks which brutally violates the West European [culture], which insists on the universal sphere of the "public use of reason," where one can criticize and problematize everything Freedom of speech functions when all parties follow the same unwritten rules of civility telling us what kind of attacks are improper, although they are not legally prohibited; If all sides do not share or respect the same civility, then multiculturalism turns into legally regulated mutual ignorance or hatred. One of the Lacanian names for this civility is the “Master-Signifier," the set of rules grounded only in themselves

Universal openness is rooted in Western modernity

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I suggest that Lacan’s theory of subject constitution provides us with cognitive landmarks or positions by which to bring the subject of race into representation. Lacan’s provocative thesis that the unconscious is structured like a language and the general precision of his “anti-system” seemed to provide the requisite tools and a language with which to explore and delineate the subject’s acquisition of racial identity. My use of Lacanian psychoanalysis is not a passive “application of Lacanian concepts to issues of race.” I have tried to work with the richest aspects of the theory, and in the process have found it necessary to wrestle with it, and to exert considerable force in inducing it to address race. However, the “appropriation” of Lacan that follows does not take the expected form of ideological revision. I have deliberately avoided the customary ideological “critique” of Lacan, nor do I press the obligatory charge against him for neglecting the all-important issue of race in a France that was, at the moment of his theoretical elaboration, involved in a bloody colonial and racist war against the Algerians. Attention to the person of Lacan and his political responsibility in failing to detail a theory of race is not relevant to my project.2 It seems much more important to stay focused on the question of race itself, and to derive some insight into the issues rather than to be distracted by an essentially academic argument about the “politics of psychoanalysis.” The evident fealty I demonstrate to Lacanian psychoanalysis derives from my belief that first, in its consistency and precision, Lacanian theory offers a vocabulary of linguistic deciphering in relation to subject constitution that is simply unavailable elsewhere; and second, it is important to remain tenacious in one’s intellectual pursuit, here the interrogation of the mystique of “race.” Where race is concerned too much energy is spent on talking about how we talk about race; thus with the clamor of voices sounding off on political correctness, hate speech, the rights of representation, etc., very little attention is devoted to analyzing what race is and why we need it.3

Seshadri-Crooks 2000 [Kalpana, Assistant Prof of English at Boston College, Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race, p.2-3]

Lacan’s theory of subject constitution provides us with cognitive landmarks by which to bring the subject of race into representation. Lacan’s provocative thesis provide the requisite tools and a language with which to explore and delineate the subject’s acquisition of racial identity. the “appropriation” of Lacan that follows does not take the expected form of ideological revision. I have deliberately avoided the customary ideological “critique” of Lacan, nor do I press the obligatory charge against him for neglecting the all-important issue of race Attention to the person of Lacan and his political responsibility in failing to detail a theory of race is not relevant to my project. It seems much more important to stay focused on the question of race itself, and to derive some insight into the issues rather than to be distracted by an essentially academic argument about the “politics of psychoanalysis.” , Lacanian theory offers a vocabulary of linguistic deciphering in relation to subject constitution that is simply unavailable elsewhere

Lacanian psychoanalysis provides critical and unique insights into the production of racialized identity – critiques of Lacan’s failures as an individual do not indict the value of his critical toolbox for understanding and critiquing racism.

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This study argues for the benefit of psychoanalysis in rethinking race as a visible category. Engaging African American literary and theoretical texts with Jacques Lacan’s work, it asks what happens when we interrogate “the American optic” (Baldwin, “Last” 210) through what Lacanian theory teaches us about the role of the visible and the scopic drive in the constitution of the human subject. Subsequently, it proposes a shift in race theory, arguing that the visibility of race does not merely assign the subject a social category or discipline one’s mobility in society but may have an ontological status: in certain symbolic configurations, the subject’s emergence, taking place through the visible, may involve “racialization.” The benefit of such a shift is twofold. First, with the psychoanalytic understanding of the visible, one can better delineate not only the ways in which racialization functions, and is contested, in historically specific symbolic orders but also why race remains an indelible category of identification and politics even after critical race theory has demonstrated the groundlessness of most racial categorizations.2 Second, by engaging psychoanalysis in a dialogue with African American literature and culture, we can open what Houston Baker, Jr., identifies as the “scholarly double bind”—our being constrained by questions and paradigms that, with teleological predictability, guide our work to certain conclusions (Modernism 12–13)—and locate “a signifying device sufficiently unusual in its connotations to shatter familiar conceptual determinations” (Blues 144). That is, through the dialogue between psychoanalytic and African American texts, we are able to revisit, to cast an awry look on, moments in African American literary history that may have been evacuated of their potential for newness. I suggest that Richard Wright’s work is one such site.3 What we know of Wright’s biography supports a psychoanalytic approach to his work. His association with the psychoanalysts Frederic Wertham and Benjamin Karpman, as well as the texts found in his library—among them books by Karl Abraham, Helene Deutsch, Otto Fenichel, Sandor Ferenczi, Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, Th eodor Reik, and Géza Roheim—attest to his familiarity with psychoanalysis.4 According to one biographer, he remained “intensely Freudian”—indeed, “obsessed with psychoanalysis” (M. Walker 286, 245)—throughout his literary and philosophical career.5 Yet, proposing a dialogue between Wright and psychoanalysis invokes inevitable methodological problems. Given that psychoanalysis often comes to us as yet another one of the master’s tools, is it possible to approach questions of race from a psychoanalytic perspective? More specifically, considering psychoanalysis’s historical ties to the discourses of the unprecedented colonial expansion of late-nineteenth-century Europe, as well as the seeming irrelevance of late-twentieth-century Lacanianism to the concerns of African American culture, how are we to open a dialogue between Lacan and Wright, to introduce Jacques to Richard, as I propose to do here? In terms of psychoanalysis’s relation to Wright’s work, nothing may be more decisive than the fact that his writings have been seen as a precursor to the militant black movements of the 1960s and was adopted by numerous Black Panthers and Black Muslims as the emblem of black male rage.6 That psychoanalysis was among the “white” solutions to be rejected in favor of more authentic African American approaches is mediated by Eldridge Cleaver, who recalls his encounters with a prison psychiatrist in Soul on Ice (1968): I had several sessions with a psychiatrist. His conclusion was that I hated my mother. How he arrived at this conclusion I’ll never know, because he knew nothing about my mother; and when he’d ask me questions I would answer him with absurd lies. What revolted me about him was that he had heard me denouncing the whites, yet each time he interviewed me he deliberately guided the conversation back to my family life, to my childhood. That in itself was all right, but he deliberately blocked all my attempts to bring out the racial question, and he made it clear that he was not interested in my attitude toward whites. This was a Pandora’s box he did not care to open. (11) Suggesting the bad faith that informs psychoanalysis’s encounter with politics, Cleaver articulates African American writers’ and thinkers’ distrust of such white disciplines. In the prison psychiatrist, he offers us the stereotypical image of a (psycho)analyst who imposes family romances on everything and hears repressed Oedipal secrets in every word communicated by the analysand, while remaining stubbornly blind to the life-and-death concerns of the latter’s everyday existence. As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari write, there remains “a fundamental relation to the outside of which the psychoanalyst washes his hands, too attentive to seeing that his clients play nice games” (Anti-Oedipus 356). Consequently, psychoanalysis appears for Cleaver not only irrelevant but directly oppressive: concertedly disregarding cultural and political specificity, it ignores the reality of disenfranchisement. Cleaver makes a telling comparison in that, immediately before recounting the above dismal scene, he writes of his first encounter with Wright’s work: “In Richard Wright’s Native Son, I found Bigger Thomas and a keen insight into the problem [of black men’s desire for white women]” (10). Whereas the psychiatrist will not listen to Cleaver, the problems with which the latter is struggling are brought into relief through an encounter with two “authentic” black men, Bigger Thomas and Richard Wright; the issues that take Cleaver to prison and to the psychiatrist are in fact better illuminated by Wright than by psychoanalysis. Contrasting the psychiatrist’s myopic impositions to Wright’s “keen insight,” he effectively disassociates the two and implies that Wright, as a black man, can speak of African American experience where psychoanalysis remains impotent, blind, and oppressive. Cleaver’s example illustrates the argument that psychoanalysis is either impervious to the urgency of political questions or directly racist in its basic assumptions. For example, a number of writers point out psychoanalysis’s colonial loyalties by referring to its analogy between “savagery” and infantilism. While examples abound in Freud, this is perhaps best evidenced by Octave Mannoni’s Prospero and Caliban (1950), whose theorization of colonialism as a response to the psychic “dependence complex” (40) of the natives has become, fairly or unfairly, an exemplary case of the political misappropriation of psychology and psychoanalysis.7 Already in 1955, Aimé Césaire notes that the Eurocentric investment in these disciplines is evident in their insistence on depicting “Negroes-as-big-children” (40).8 In addition to Mannoni’s work, psychoanalytic anthropology has produced numerous other case studies that have elicited vehement criticism.9 In Deleuze and Guattari’s famous estimation, “Oedipus is always colonization pursued by other means” (Anti-Oedipus 170). At worst, psychoanalysis is seen as “conceal[ing] realities and legitimiz[ing] oppression” (Hartnack 233; qtd. in Seshadri-Crooks, “Primitive” 183), while Freud is identifi ed as “the great colonizer of psyches” (Torgovnick 198).10 Wright himself offers similar reservations, writing that any discussion of psychology of the colonized is usually rejected by enlightened commentators because it carries “an air of the derogatory” (White 41). Yet, the last two decades have seen the emergence of studies that, without “exonerating” psychoanalysis, complicate these charges. In Freud scholarship, two trends have developed: one exploring questions of racialization in Freud, the other appropriating (aspects of) Freudian psychoanalysis to read “black” texts. For a number of scholars, Freud’s anthropological texts, such as “Moses and Monotheism,” “Totem and Taboo,” and the early “cocaine papers,” suggest “the historical importance of racial categories in Freud’s work” (Marez 68).11 Focus is placed on the significance of Freud’s own racialized position in fi n-desiècle Europe, where, as Sander Gilman points out, the Jewish “race” was associated with eff eminacy, disease, and “criminal perversions” (“Sigmund” 47).12 Daniel Boyarin similarly argues that Freud’s shift from the so-called seduction theory to the theory of oedipalization was precipitated by the racialization of the Jew, the invention of the homosexual, and the acceleration of racism and homophobia at the end of the nineteenth century (Unheroic 189–220).13 While Gilman and Boyarin tease out the historical complexities in psychoanalysis’s emergence, others have accused Freud of purposefully utilizing the representations of the “savage,” widely circulated in the rapidly expanding colonial Europe, to escape his own racially stigmatized position. In contradistinction to the “primitive,” the argument goes, Freud could claim the privileges of whiteness and civilization, much like Jewish entertainers in early twentieth-century Hollywood could disappear, according to Michael Rogin’s thesis, into racial unmarkedness by donning blackface.14 Thus the significance of Freud’s “race” to the formation of psychoanalytic knowledge is generally acknowledged, but its implications remain contested. While Marianna Torgovnick, for example, finds in Freud a more or less self-serving mechanism of displacement (199),15 for Boyarin the necessity for such negotiations suggests Freud’s “postcolonial anguish,” making him “both the object and the subject of racism” (“Jewish” 42, 40). Jacqueline Rose similarly remarks that, because of his own racial markedness, Freud could not “unproblematically or unequivocally embody the master narrative of the West” (50), and Barbara Johnson locates in Freud’s position something akin to the Du Boisian “double consciousness” (Feminist 10). Apart from considering Freud’s racialized status, or the repression of racial difference in other early psychoanalytic texts,16 critics have involved psychoanalysis in their readings of African American texts and culture, thereby attempting to redress “the poverty of language offered by psychoanalysis for addressing issues of race and culture” (Luciano 158). A number of biographies of African American literary figures, for example, are allegedly “quite Freudian” (Murray 163).17 Similarly, given the psychoanalytic emphasis on family relations, it is not surprising that slavery’s violent disruption of familial ties has been discussed in psychoanalytic terms. Without explicitly engaging psychoanalysis, Hortense Spillers’s influential essay “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” (1987) pointed the way for subsequent theorists to explore the forms of relatedness that African slaves created during their captivity.18 In Mastering Slavery, for example, Jennifer Fleischner considers women’s slave narratives as examples of the self-narration that psychoanalysis, according to her, solicits from the analysand with the hope of his or her “liberation” from childhood traumas (5 and passim).19 The question that more immediately concerns me in this study, however, is the precise way we can engage Lacanian psychoanalysis with African American literature. While Freud’s anthropological texts have provided an obvious starting point for a consideration of his implication in colonialism, Lacan’s possible contribution to an investigation into race is harder to tease out: as opposed to issues of sexual diff erence, there is very little in Lacan’s writing that explicitly relates to questions of race or seeks to explain racism. Nevertheless, the recent turn in Lacanian criticism to politics suggests an opening for this investigation. Antonio Viego, for example, reads Lacan’s abhorrence of ego psychology’s adaptive models, especially their prevalence in the United States, in terms of a critique of “North American coercive assimilatory imperatives working on ethnic-racialized subjects . . . that demand of them a certain mandatory adjustment and adaptation to North American ‘reality’” (5) and suggests an “overlap” between Lacan’s anti-assimilatory critique in the 1950s “and the similar critique of assimilation crafted by early Chicano movement activists” (25). Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek have similarly suggested some ways in which we can approach politics from a Lacanian perspective.20 Recent examples of Lacanian scholarship that engage questions of race and colonialism include the collection The Psychoanalysis of Race (1998), edited by Christopher Lane, Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks’s theory of racialized subjectivity in Desiring Whiteness: A Lacanian Analysis of Race (2000), Abdul JanMohamed’s study of Wright, The Death-Bound Subject: Richard Wright and the Archaeology of Death (2005), and Viego’s psychoanalytic reading of Latino/a cultures and literatures, Dead Subjects: Toward a Politics of Loss in Latino Studies (2007). Seshadri-Crooks, and some contributors to Lane’s volume21 may be seen as “the New Lacanians” of psychoanalytically inflected critical race theory, given their “emphasi[s on] Lacan’s late notions of drive, jouissance, and the real at the expense of his early concepts of desire, the imaginary, and the symbolic” (Mellard 395).22 Perhaps because of the vagaries of Lacan translations into English, the question of the real, with which Lacan was increasingly concerned in the late 1960s and 1970s, has until recently been neglected in Anglo-American scholarship. If the impact of this shift in Lacanian theory from the imaginary and symbolic aspects of subjectivity to the nonhuman, asubjective realm of the real “has not yet fully registered with [Anglo-American] psychoanalytic theorists of gender” (Dyess and Dean 738), its ramifications for psychoanalytic theories of race has remained similarly unexplored. It is this question that Lacanian race theory needs to concern itself with. The current study is a contribution to this emergent field of scholarship. Yet, the specter Cleaver evokes—of psychoanalytic arrogance that dismisses the concerns of African American subjects or texts—is not completely exorcised by the proliferation of these psychoanalytic studies of race and racialization. Given the history of psychoanalysis and race, any attempt to read Wright psychoanalytically will conjure up the threat of infl icting on him the reductive readings to which Cleaver was subjected. Predictably enough, this has been the exact outcome of many a psychoanalytic attempt at Wright scholarship. Two examples of this are Margaret Walker’s psychobiography Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius (1988) and Allison Davis’s chapter on Wright in Leadership, Love, and Aggression (1983): both demonstrate the necessity of relentless suspicion in the face of psychoanalytic approaches to questions of race. Apart from the many inaccuracies Michel Fabre points out in his “Margaret Walker’s Richard Wright,” Walker stands as a representative of a reductive tradition in psychoanalytic criticism that misreads not only the literary (or [auto]biographical) texts under consideration but also psychoanalysis.23 Similarly, Davis’s reading of Wright’s autobiography exemplifi es an elision of the social and political specifi city of the “analysand’s” situation. Davis writes that while “Wright may have allowed his public to believe that his character and behavior were formed by the impact of racial oppression by Mississippi whites,” “[o]ne only needs to read his Black Boy . . . to understand that Wright considered his family the primary source of his anger and his hatred.” In a reading that is both authoritarian and misogynist, Davis insists that Wright’s revolt and anger were not primarily directed against his racist environment, or even that the family structures might have been determined by or mediating such oppressive social structures. Instead, Wright, like his father, was rebelling against his maternal family, “a long, grim line of puritan matriarchs,” which “consisted of a clan of obsessively religious and sadistic women” (156–58). At the very least, Davis fails to realize that “[r]acism becomes a part of the subject’s unconscious because the parents consciously and unconsciously refl ect the racist values of the culture onto the subject from the fi rst moment of life” (Tate, Psychoanalysis 133). We may approach the thorny relation between race and psychoanalysis by noting how it echoes many other interdisciplinary encounters in which the latter has been involved. Discussing its relationship with feminism, Jane Gallop writes: “the worst tendency, the inherent constitutional weakness of psychoanalysis, is to be apolitical (which is to say, to support the institutions in power)” (Daughter’s 101). “One of psychoanalysis’s consistent errors,” she continues, aptly describing Cleaver’s situation, “is to reduce everything to a family paradigm. Sociopolitical questions are always brought back to the model father-mother-child. Class confl ict and revolution are understood as a repetition of parent–child relations. Th is has always been the pernicious apoliticism of psychoanalysis” (144).24 Interrogating the link between literature and psychoanalysis, Shoshana Felman suggests that, to avoid such traps of psychoanalytic application—in which, according to her, psychoanalysis stands as the Hegelian master over the bondsman of literature (“To Open” 5)—we must “engage in a real dialogue between literature and psychoanalysis.” We begin this by reversing the master–slave positions and by “consider[ing] the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature from the literary point of view” (6). Th e objective in establishing this dialogue, Felman continues, is not, however, simply to overturn the positions, but, rather, “to disrupt this monologic, master–slave structure” (6) altogether so that one can “avoid both terms of the alternative” and “deconstruct the very structure of opposition, mastery/ slavery” (7). Yet, skeptical about the possibility of nonreductive psychoanalytic approaches to other disciplines, Françoise Meltzer, in her introduction to Th e Trial(s) of Psychoanalysis (1988), sees psychoanalysis as an inherently colonial project, a form of “empire-building”—what Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus call “the analytic imperialism of the Oedipus complex” (23)— that seeks to incorporate all other disciplines within its own paradigm and assumptions (Meltzer 7). According to her, Felman’s attempted reversal of the master–slave relationship of psychoanalysis and literature betrays the constitutive reductiveness and “totalizing teleology” of the psychoanalytic approach. For what guarantees that such a reversal has any deconstructive eff ects on the dialectic hierarchy? According to Meltzer, Felman’s unstated assumption is that the positions of the master (for psychoanalysis) and that of the slave (for literature) are so “natural” that any role reassignment would, by its sheer absurdity, quickly abolish the structure itself (3). At bottom, Felman’s argument is a mere variation of psychoanalytic narcissism in which all other disciplines are but mirroring surfaces for psychoanalysis to discover its inalienable and unchangeable truths: “Not content to see itself as one in a number of enterprises, the psychoanalytic project has at its foundation a vision of itself as the meaning which will always lie in wait; the truth which lies covered by ‘the rest’” (2). According to Meltzer, psychoanalysis must be reduced from its position of metadiscursive arrogance: “Psychoanalysis is not on trial in order to be attacked,” she writes, “but in order to be put back into its place—or, at least, into a place” (5). For her, the only way to bring psychoanalysis and other disciplines together is to return the violence of the previous encounters in the exact same form onto psychoanalysis. Meltzer’s response to Felman indicates the diffi culty in engaging ethically and productively with any constellation of discourses contaminated by histories of violent hierarchies. (And we may suspect that all such encounters are marked by a certain degree of violence.) She correctly admonishes us that, rather than applying psychoanalytic theory to other disciplines, we must interrogate it. Th is does not mean primarily that we are to criticize it—rather, we must not assume that we are already familiar with its insights, which can then be applied to other fi elds of knowledge. Yet, what should give us pause is Meltzer’s desire to repeat the dialectic of violent reduction of which psychoanalysis stands accused. Here we should ask, what is the ethics of a justice that announces the defendant’s incarceration and confi nement to “its place” in the opening statement of the trial? Moreover, wanting to “put [psychoanalysis] back into its place” (emphasis added), Meltzer assumes that we already know what this place is. In this, we are reassured that nothing unexpected will be uncovered during the trial, nothing new unearthed. Th e testimony will not complicate notions of guilt or responsibility; the whole procedure is committed to a rigid politics of foreseeability. It is precisely an opening to the unexpected that Gallop points to as ethical engagement in analysis. She suggests that, as a way to negotiate the difficult division between psychoanalysis and politics—which Cleaver’s example perfectly illustrates—we must involve the analyst in the scene of interpretation: “Analysis, if it is not to be a process of adapting the patient to some reigning order of discourse, must include the risk of unseating the analyst” (Daughter’s 102; emphasis added).25 For Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin, for example, the adaptive aims of psychiatry and psychoanalysis reveal the disciplines’ colonialist and racist allegiances.26 Always insisting on what may be called the maladaptive aims of treatment, Lacan, too, refers to the dangers of misdirected analysis when he writes that “the inability to authentically sustain a praxis results, as is common in the history of mankind, in the exercise of power” (“Direction” 216). Yet, while critics such as Deleuze and Guattari condemn psychoanalysis tout court—“It is certain that psychoanalysis pacifies and mollifies, that it teaches us resignation we can live with” (“Deleuze” 229)—Lacan identifies the adaptive methods of ego-psychology as inauthentic practice. Hence, while observing the reductive approaches in the history of psychoanalysis— where psychoanalytic knowledge appears as an uncontested master interpreting its objects—we should note with Lacan that such a rigid postures of self-identity belong to the unethical subject whose relationship to the other is characterized by imaginary misrecognition. The ethical subject, for Lacan, is the mobile subject of desire or, increasingly in his later work, of the drive. That the institution of psychoanalysis is often characterized by rigid, masterly interpretative ambition should not prevent us from seeing what remains unfixable and mobile—that is, inherently ethical—in psychoanalytic discourse. Our inability to rest in one position long enough for it to materialize into a master’s throne or the voyeur’s keyhole constitutes the ethics of psychoanalysis. In this ethical perspective, moreover, lies psychoanalysis’s availability for political work. “Psychoanalysis,” as Tim Dean writes, “is political precisely to the extent that the position of the analyst diametrically opposes that of the master” (Beyond 108). Correspondingly, Meltzer’s assumption of already knowing what psychoanalysis can do and her ambition to firmly locate psychoanalysis—to “be actively reductive with psychoanalysis” (7) and to “put [it] back into its place” (5)—appear in this context as decidedly unethical. As Adam Phillips observes, “the fact that psychoanalysis is difficult to place . . . may be one of its distinctive virtues” (3). One should nevertheless remain doubtful about all claims to “good-natured” exchanges between discursive fields. Edward Said argues that the seemingly neutral setting of “discursive situations” usually masks the fact that “far from being a type of idyllic conversation between equals, [these situations are] more usually of a kind typefied [sic] by the relation between colonizer and colonized, the oppressor and the oppressed” (“Text” 181–82; see also Gandhi 28). Like all exchanges established across disciplines, discourses, and knowledges, the dialogue between African American and psychoanalytic literatures is inevitably marked by disparities. Establishing such encounters is an effort where we find our “good intentions” always compromised and endlessly betrayed. However, while violence may indeed be unavoidable in these encounters, we must resist letting this violence solidify into a structure. Furthermore, in all their inherent dangers and pitfalls, such dialogues are precisely what psychoanalysis is all about. Through its engagement with an other, psychoanalysis— and, importantly, other disciplines participating in this dialogue—retains the mobility characteristic of the ethical subject of desire. I am not the first to see such troubled encounters as potentially productive. The editors of Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism (1997) observe in the intersection of race and psychoanalysis (and, in their project, of feminism) as many “transformative possibilities” as “stubborn incompatibilities” (Abel et al. 1). Encounters that take place or erupt in this treacherous middle-ground, they warn, must not be considered entirely reconcilable. Yet, through such implication we can avoid, however momentarily and without any guarantees of success, reductive psychoanalytic readings that, in their insistence on “reduc[ing] everything to a family paradigm” (Gallop, Daughter’s 144), bypass sociopolitical questions of power and disenfranchisement. It is, exactly, this reductive analytical reading to which Cleaver objects in his account of his sessions in prison—not the fact that analysis implicates the family: “each time [the psychiatrist] interviewed me he deliberately guided the conversation back to my family life, to my childhood. That in itself was all right, but he deliberately blocked all my attempts to bring out the racial question” (11; emphasis added). (Psycho)analysis’s emphasis on the familial is not necessarily oppressive; Oedipus becomes “the fountainhead where the psychoanalyst washes his hands of the world’s inequities” (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus 128) only when the analyst refuses everything outside the family, turns a blind eye to the possibility that the family may be imbricated in society and its politics. Thus, if psychoanalysis has participated in the Western projects of colonialism, Fanon’s example clearly shows that its historical role in anti colonial and antiracist struggles is anything but negligible. Similarly, in African American thinking, Du Bois’s disillusionment with the ability of objective, scientific knowledge to fight race prejudice coincides with his discovery of racism’s unconscious support. In his autobiographical texts, he suggests that this “twilight zone” of “stronger and more threatening forces” that remain in excess of “conscious and rational” motivation behind race prejudice can be explored through Freud’s insights (Dusk 282, 283, 296). I thus suggest that the question, What can psychoanalysis do?, can and must be answered only through the future encounters in which it will be engaged. One way to think about the transformative potential of these encounters is to give the term its Deleuzian specifi city. Th at is, we can think of the dialogue between psychoanalytic and African American texts as an encounter between bodies, as an opening onto an unforeseeable becoming that may transform the encountering bodies beyond recognition—with all the violence that this phrase suggests.27 Deleuze teaches us that, unlike what Meltzer assumes in her trial scenario, encounters cannot be legislated. For him, bodies are always defi ned by their relations to other bodies, by their ability to be transformed by the “resonance” that exists between their internal and external relations. Our regarding bodies as autonomous betrays the fact that we have misunderstood their interimplication, have missed their profound resonance. Bodies, consisting of smaller bodies and their relations to one another, are separable yet interconnected: separable in the specifi city of their internal relations, yet connected through the bodies they inevitably share with other bodies, in which they enter into a diff erent relation. In their encounter, bodies are never completely compatible, never pieces of a puzzle that snugly complement one another, but are always held together by a certain friction, gravitational pull, or violent harmony. Our success in joining two separate bodies (of work) seamlessly cannot but betray the fact that we have dismissed their true complexity. I suggest that the Deleuzian understanding of bodies’ interimplication, eschewing any notions of harmonious compatibility, characterizes the most productive work emerging from the encounter between psychoanalysis and race. Conversely, the understanding of the necessary transformation that takes place in all encountering bodies reveals some problems in the recent studies on psychoanalytic and African American texts. I take Claudia Tate’s Psychoanalysis and Black Novels as an example: her work warrants detailed attention because of the centrality it accords to Wright and the largely favorable reviews it has drawn as a timely opening between psychoanalysis and African American writing.28 As Tate notes in her introduction, many commentators, “demanding manifest stories about racial politics,” have marginalized African American texts that engage questions not directly dealing with society’s racial and racist structuring. Texts that “focus on the inner worlds of black characters without making that world entirely dependent on the material and psychological consequences of a racist society” (5) have been rejected for neglecting to interrogate and critique racism and, consequently, considered “not black enough” (4). Tate counters this critical history by reading a number of novels that, from the perspective of the African American canon, have appeared “anomalous” in the output of their authors. She argues that these texts in fact reveal what has been implicit in the more canonical works: according to her, they are central to their authors’ oeuvre and the concerns of the black canon in that they “not only inscribe[] but exaggerate[] a primary narrative, an ‘urtext,’ that is repeated but masked in the canonical texts” (8). Tate in eff ect proposes that, rather than continuing what Henry Louis Gates, Jr., calls the “curious valorization of the social and polemical functions of black literature” that has stunted black literary criticism (“Criticism” 5–6),29 critics of African American texts should pay attention to the workings of unconscious processes, which can neither be explained as eff ects of a (racist) environment nor contained by the authors’ or readers’ political designs. In her impressively researched readings, she shows how black texts are amenable to analyses that pay attention to what she calls “textual subjectivity . . . structured by the mediation of desire and prohibition” (25) or the “implicit narrative fragments of desire and pleasure inscribed in the rhetorical organization and language of the text” (27). Her range of references in psychoanalytic theory is similarly ambitious: she draws from Lacan, Freud, and Melanie Klein while gesturing to Karen Horney’s and Marie Bonaparte’s theories of femininity. Although demonstrating her familiarity with the fi eld of psychoanalysis, however, Tate does not extend to its theories the kind of detailed investigative eff ort with which she reads African American texts. Th is is a conscious choice: she writes in her introduction that, because her audience consists mainly of scholars and readers of African American literature, she is “not interested in consolidating and privileging the theoretical demands of individual schools of psychoanalysis” (12). For her, the numerous psychoanalytic theories “facilitate [her] analysis of unconscious textual desire in the novels as unacknowledged fantasies of lost and recovered plenitude” (13). What she ends up doing, however, is not merely refusing to take sides in intra-disciplinary debates around diff erent psychoanalytic approaches. Rather, her neglect of critical engagement with psychoanalysis leads not only to a reductive theoretical understanding, but also to psychoanalysis’s approximating the kind of “narcissistic,” “ubiquitous subject, assimilating every object into itself,” that Meltzer sees it as. In the mode of psychoanalytic “facilitat[ion],” where what is being read are the black novels, not the psychoanalytic texts, Tate unwittingly perpetuates a familiar hierarchy between literature and psychoanalysis: their potential dialogue is reduced to an application where our understanding of psychoanalysis is not aff ected by its encounter with African American writing. Similarly, in Mastering Slavery, Fleischner, while sympathetic to a psychoanalytic approach to slave narratives, ultimately fails to achieve (what Deleuze would call) an encounter between, or (in Felman’s terms) the implication of, psychoanalytic and literary texts.30 For Tate and Fleischner, psychoanalysis never emerges as a body of text to be read; rather, it surfaces as received theory, “enabl[ing] an approach” to literature (Fleischner 4). Immobilizing psychoanalysis as a body of texts with transparent meaning, texts that need not be read, such an approach reduces the “mutually illuminating and interpenetrative” (Spillers, “‘All’” 77) encounter to an application. A failure to engage psychoanalysis allows it to function as a master discourse through which the meaning of other texts can be glossed. Such a dynamic can be discerned in the history of the institutionalization of psychoanalysis: psychoanalysis becomes most oppressive and normative precisely when it congeals into institutions with a received and well-understood canon; at the moment of institutionalization and canonization psychoanalysis loses its capacity for the kind of self-interrogation that I argue marks psychoanalytic approaches proper. It is to avoid the kind of unintentional reduction that Tate and Fleischner exemplify that I will spend a fair amount of time considering psychoanalytic texts in this study, beginning with the fi rst chapter, which outlines in detail Lacan’s theory of the visible. Lacan allows us to understand how the process of racialization, in immobilizing the racial(ized) subject, also enables the “imaginarization” of the white symbolic order—a concept I will explicate as the study progresses—whereby the symbolic is rendered blind and vulnerable to challenges. Understood psychoanalytically, subject formation is not predetermined by societal or historical contingencies but opens a space for the subject’s “incalculability” (Copjec, Read 208), premised on the unpredictable interventions of the unconscious and the real. Mobilizing such incalculability, Bigger Thomas— the protagonist of Wright’s debut novel, Native Son (1940)—disappears from the disciplinary radar of the white symbolic order. Even though he is soon arrested in and by his own strategies of subversion, his “flight,” in repeating the dynamics of dissemblance and performance familiar from African American history, opens the possibility of understanding contingency and unpredictability as politically salient strategies.

Tuhkanen 09 [Mikko, Prof of English and Africana Studies at Texas A&M, The American Optic, p.xi-xxii]

This study argues for the benefit of psychoanalysis in rethinking race it asks what happens when we interrogate “the American optic” through what Lacanian theory teaches us about the role of the visible and the scopic drive in the constitution of the human subject. the visibility of race does not merely assign the subject a social category or discipline one’s mobility in society but may have an ontological status with the psychoanalytic understanding of the visible, one can better delineate not only the ways in which racialization functions, and is contested, in historically specific symbolic orders but also why race remains an indelible category of identification by engaging psychoanalysis in a dialogue with African American literature and culture, we can open the “scholarly double bind” and locate “a signifying device sufficiently unusual in its connotations to shatter familiar conceptual determinations” through the dialogue between psychoanalytic and African American texts, we are able to revisit, to cast an awry look on, moments in African American literary history that may have been evacuated of their potential for newness. Given that psychoanalysis often comes to us as yet another one of the master’s tools, is it possible to approach questions of race from a psychoanalytic perspective? the last two decades have seen the emergence of studies that, without “exonerating” psychoanalysis, complicate these charges. critics have involved psychoanalysis in their readings of African American texts and culture, thereby attempting to redress “the poverty of language offered by psychoanalysis for addressing issues of race and culture” the recent turn in Lacanian criticism to politics suggests an opening for this investigation. Viego reads Lacan’s abhorrence of ego psychology’s adaptive models in terms of a critique of “North American coercive assimilatory imperatives working on ethnic-racialized subjects . . . that demand of them a certain mandatory adjustment and adaptation to North American ‘reality’” and suggests an “overlap” between Lacan’s anti-assimilatory critique and the similar critique of assimilation crafted by early Chicano movement activists” Recent examples of Lacanian scholarship that engage questions of race and colonialism include Seshadri-Crooks’s theory of racialized subjectivity JanMohamed’s study of Wright and psychoanalytically inflected critical race theory Lacan identifies the adaptive methods of ego-psychology as inauthentic practice. Hence, while observing the reductive approaches in the history of psychoanalysis— where psychoanalytic knowledge appears as an uncontested master interpreting its objects—we should note with Lacan that such a rigid postures of self-identity belong to the unethical subject whose relationship to the other is characterized by imaginary misrecognition. That the institution of psychoanalysis is often characterized by rigid, masterly interpretative ambition should not prevent us from seeing what remains unfixable and mobile—that is, inherently ethical—in psychoanalytic discourse. Our inability to rest in one position long enough for it to materialize into a master’s throne or the voyeur’s keyhole constitutes the ethics of psychoanalysis. In this lies psychoanalysis’s availability for political work. “Psychoanalysis,” “is political precisely to the extent that the position of the analyst diametrically opposes that of the master” Like all exchanges established across disciplines, discourses, and knowledges, the dialogue between African American and psychoanalytic literatures is inevitably marked by disparities. while violence may indeed be unavoidable in these encounters, we must resist letting this violence solidify into a structure. in all their inherent dangers and pitfalls, such dialogues are precisely what psychoanalysis is all about. Through its engagement with an other, psychoanalysis retains the mobility characteristic of the ethical subject of desire. Encounters that take place or erupt in this treacherous middle-ground, they warn, must not be considered entirely reconcilable. if psychoanalysis has participated in the Western projects of colonialism, Fanon’s example clearly shows that its historical role in anti colonial and antiracist struggles is anything but negligible. Du Bois’s disillusionment with the ability of objective, scientific knowledge to fight race prejudice coincides with his discovery of racism’s unconscious support. What can psychoanalysis do?, can and must be answered only through the future encounters in which it will be engaged. Lacan allows us to understand how the process of racialization, in immobilizing the racial(ized) subject, also enables the “imaginarization” of the white symbolic order whereby the symbolic is rendered blind and vulnerable to challenges. Understood psychoanalytically, subject formation is not predetermined by societal or historical contingencies but opens a space for the subject’s “incalculability” premised on the unpredictable interventions of the unconscious and the real. Mobilizing such incalculability opens the possibility of understanding contingency and unpredictability as politically salient strategies.

Despite the racist history of psychoanalysis, there can and should be a productive dialogue between black scholarship and the psychoanalytic account of visibility

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

In “Love Thy Neighbor? No, Thanks!” Slavoj Zizek (1998) begins with some general musings on the bad press that psychoanalytic approaches to racism enjoy these days. Arguing against these critiques of “psychological reductionism” and an “abstract-psychologistic approach,” Zizek persuades us in his ever-entertaining ways that the psychoanalytic frame is exactly the lens that can diagnose the machinations of racism in northern-western cultures and, by exposing their internal inconsistencies, presumably help us to disrupt them. I agree with Zizek and much of the recent work in the intersections of psychoanalysis and race1 that the dynamics of psychoanalysis have much to offer to readings of race and racism in contemporary settings of Eurocentric cultures—particularly the dead-end, circular readings of social constructionism.2 However, I also suggest that these lenses of psychoanalysis have much to tell us about white inhabitants of these cultural symbolics of phallicized whiteness and, more particularly, some of the silent assumptions about space and embodiment which constitute that whiteness. Psychoanalysis may be an appropriate lens for diagnosing our cultural racism exactly because it enacts some of the central dynamics which sediment that racism. Of course, in carving out a space that I refer to as ‘our cultural symbolic,’ I am already at odds with most Lacanians’ understandings of ‘the symbolic.’ While I understand that Lacan was attempting to unravel the structures of signification and dynamics of subjectivation that occur within the symbolic, I wish to speak of this symbolic as a historicized and particular phenomenon. Referring to ‘our cultural symbolic,’ I am referring more specifically to the symbolic that dominates cultures of phallicized whiteness and structures signifiers in a way that gives disproportionate and abusive power to some persons— some bodies—over others. Following out Lacanian dynamics of signification and subjectivation, I am reading ‘our cultural symbolic’ as a process that signifies some bodies as more powerful, more valuable, and more meaningful than others—namely, those white male straight Christian propertied bodies that we have already encountered in the emergence of the neutral liberal individual.

Winnubst 06 [Shannon, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Ohio State, Queering Freedom, p.58-9]

the psychoanalytic frame is exactly the lens that can diagnose the machinations of racism in northern-western cultures and, by exposing their internal inconsistencies help us to disrupt them. the dynamics of psychoanalysis have much to offer to readings of race and racism in contemporary settings of Eurocentric cultures—particularly the dead-end, circular readings of social constructionism. these lenses of psychoanalysis have much to tell us about white inhabitants of these cultural symbolics of phallicized whiteness and some of the silent assumptions about space and embodiment which constitute that whiteness. Psychoanalysis may be an appropriate lens for diagnosing our cultural racism exactly because it enacts some of the central dynamics which sediment that racism. ‘our cultural symbolic’ signifies some bodies as more powerful, more valuable, and more meaningful than others—namely, those white male straight Christian propertied bodies that we have already encountered in the emergence of the neutral liberal individual.

Even if they’re right that psychoanalysis enacts some of the dynamics of racism, it is precisely for this reason that the psychoanalytic frame is critical to understand our cultural symbolic of whiteness

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The first issue I would 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 Lacan’s 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 post-structuralism. The impossibility of this sort of derivation may be a ‘hazard’, but one that we will just have to live with.

Thomassen 04 (Lasse Thomassen PhD – PhD in Ideology and Discourse Analysis as well as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and Professor of Politics and Queen Mary University of London, “Lacanian Political Theory: A Reply to Robinson”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 November 2004, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2004.00157.x, MG)

The first issue I would like to raise in this regard concerns the relation between ontology and politics not quite in the way that Robinson thinks 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. The impossibility of this sort of derivation may be a ‘hazard’, but one that we will just have to live with.

Robinson’s arguments are beyond comprehension – all their indicts are inevitable, unfactual, and don’t preclude our theorization of the world

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When we think of therapy of any kind, including psychoanalysis, we usually think of a trajectory moving from dissatisfaction to some degree of satisfaction. Subjects enter therapy with a psychic ailment causing dissatisfaction, and if the treatment succeeds, they leave with the ability to lead a more satisfying existence.3 If subjects didn't feel dissatisfaction, they wouldn't enter into any therapy, and if they didn't attain some satisfaction as a result, therapy would cease to be a viable practice.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 54-55]

When we think of therapy of any kind we usually think of a trajectory moving from dissatisfaction to some degree of satisfaction.

You’re not gonna like it.

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We might think of this change of perspective in terms of the way that athletes and fans view their devotion to sports. The increasing importance of sport in the contemporary world testifies in one sense to the dominance of commodity logic and its narcotizing effect. Sports figures and their fans associate the ultimate enjoyment with victory, and their focus on victory provides an escape from the dissatisfaction that inheres in everyday life under capitalism. But the focus on victory hides where the real enjoyment lies both for the athletes themselves and for the fan. Though one finds fleeting pleasure in winning, enjoyment derives from the sacrifice of time and the effort that go into making victory possible.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 71-72]

We might think of this change of perspective in terms of the way that athletes and fans view their devotion to sports. The increasing importance of sport in the contemporary world testifies in one sense to the dominance of commodity logic and its narcotizing effect. Sports figures and their fans associate the ultimate enjoyment with victory, and their focus on victory provides an escape from the dissatisfaction that inheres in everyday life But the focus on victory hides where the real enjoyment lies both for the athletes themselves and for the fan. Though one finds fleeting pleasure in winning, enjoyment derives from the sacrifice of time that go into making victory possible.

They’re going to say that we want the ballot too, but the framing question should be whether the affirmative has justified winning the ballot. Our point is that the 1AC’s critique and strategy of disorientation is unproductive politics.

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But as theorists of contemporary cynicism have shown, cynical subjects don’t really sustain a thoroughgoing cynicism relative to enjoyment. While they disbelieve in the possibility of enjoyment or authentic commitment, they do believe in belief. That is, they believe that there are others who really believe. Despite the cynical knowledge that this belief is false, the cynical subject does believe in the enjoyment that comes from belief, and as a result, cynicism doesn’t offer the respite from anxiety that it initially promises.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 115-117, 1 July 2013, MG)

cynical subjects don’t really sustain a thoroughgoing cynicism relative to enjoyment. While they disbelieve in the possibility of enjoyment or authentic commitment, they do believe in belief cynicism doesn’t offer the respite from anxiety that it initially promises.

Both cynicism and law are wrong moves – only an embracement of anxiety can endure an encounter with the Other and create the experience of enjoyment

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Capitalism bombards us with the image of our dissatisfaction. Challenging capitalism today doesn’t depend on focusing subjects on how dissatisfied they are with capitalist relations of production. This type of response plays into the hands of the capitalist system and the promise of a better future that it employs. This is the response that manifested itself in the nineteenth-century critique of capitalism’s injustice and in the twentieth-century critique of capitalism’s repressiveness. Despite the vast differences between these two lines of critique, they share an emphasis on the dissatisfaction that capitalism produces, and this line of attack does fully uncover capitalism’s real psychic appeal.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 267-271, 20 September 2016, MG)

Capitalism bombards us with the image of our dissatisfaction. Challenging capitalism today doesn’t depend on focusing subjects on how dissatisfied they are with capitalist relations of production. This type of response plays into the hands of the capitalist system and the promise of a better future that it employs

The alternative is to interpret the 1AC and turn it towards total satisfaction – only by uncovering what is hidden in the psyche can the banality of the everyday and capitalism be addressed

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In contrast, economy in the drive results in an excess of enjoyment through the enjoyment of excess. When subjects eliminate the detours that sidetrack the death drive, they experience this enjoyment of excess. This is the kind of excess that one cannot find within the capitalist system. Capitalism uses excess in order to create thrift ; the economy of the drive uses thrift to unleash excess. This dialectical relationship between thrift and enjoyment becomes apparent in Freud’s analysis of the economy of the joke, an analysis that leads to the conclusion that the ultimate problem with capitalism is that it isn’t funny.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 76-78, 1 July 2013, MG)

In contrast, economy in the drive results in an excess of enjoyment through the enjoyment of excess. When subjects eliminate the detours that sidetrack the death drive, they experience this enjoyment of excess. This is the kind of excess that one cannot find within the capitalist system the ultimate problem with capitalism is that it isn’t funny.

The 1AC wasn’t funny, vote negative to joke over the 1AC’s desire

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By enjoying in a public way, the subject becomes what we might call a fool. The fool is a subject who ceases to court the social authority’s approbation and becomes immune to the seduction of social recognition or rewards. Recognition has a value for the subject only insofar as the subject believes in the substantial status of social authority — that is, insofar as the subject believes that the identities that society confers have a solid foundation. The fool grasps that no such foundation exists and that no identity has any basis whatsoever. The only possible foundation for the subject lies in the subject itself — in the fantasy that organizes the subject’s enjoyment. Such a subject becomes a fool because it constantly acts in ways that make no sense to the social authority. It acts out of the nonsense of its own enjoyment.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 136-139, 1 July 2013, MG)

By enjoying in a public way, the subject becomes what we might call a fool. The fool is a subject who ceases to court the social authority’s approbation and becomes immune to the seduction of social recognition or rewards The fool grasps that no such foundation exists and that no identity has any basis whatsoever. The only possible foundation for the subject lies in the subject itself — in the fantasy that organizes the subject’s enjoyment. Such a subject becomes a fool because it constantly acts in ways that make no sense to the social authority. It acts out of the nonsense of its own enjoyment.

The alternative is to play the part of the Genuine Fool, the fool who defies the good and acts on its own enjoyment – it cannot be combined with any desire or identity, or else it will fail

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Psychoanalysis owes its existence to capitalist modernity. It emerges in response to the sense of dissatisfaction that capitalism produces through its incessant focus on the object of desire. Whereas capitalism privileges the object of desire to the exclusion of the lost object, psychoanalysis reverses this valuation and identifies the lost object as the central force within the subject. Psychoanalysis doesn’t make existence fully satisfying for the subject by giving it a fully satisfying object. Instead, it turns the subject’s attention to the integral role that loss has in its satisfaction and reveals the inexistence of a fully satisfying object.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 183-184, 20 September 2016, MG)

Psychoanalysis owes its existence to capitalist modernity. It emerges in response to the sense of dissatisfaction that capitalism produces through its incessant focus on the object of desire. Whereas capitalism privileges the object of desire to the exclusion of the lost object, psychoanalysis reverses this valuation and identifies the lost object as the central force within the subject. Psychoanalysis turns the subject’s attention to the integral role that loss has in its satisfaction and reveals the inexistence of a fully satisfying object.

Psychoanalysis is the only way to approach capitalism

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It is in this place of despair from which we should understand the politics of the sublime. Because it is an inevitable byproduct of discontinuous subjectivity, the death drive cannot be wished away. We will probably always desire continuity that we cannot have and the object from which we are rent by our separation from the world as a whole. What the sublime offers is a reconfiguration of desire. We defer enjoyment questing after objects and ignore sacrifices in the meantime, whether it is global poverty tolerated for the sake of a middle-class material comfort or radioactive contamination for the sake of peace-through-strength. Todd McGowan argues that a recognition of the death drive might not remake the material structure of society—at least not immediately—but that it could have a profound effect on the way we understand enjoyment. Instead of seeking to overcome every limit as an obstacle to enjoyment (as I have argued we do with the limits of language in the Real), we have to enjoy the limits themselves as obstacles to the movement of the drive. Desire may be inevitable, but we can change the way we orient ourselves towards the frustrations and repetitions of the drive, learning to enjoy the partial challenges of our limits instead of deferring enjoyment for the achievement of some utopian state that we will never reach (McGowan, conclusion). Some of this enjoyment can already be identified in survivalism, for example, when preppers camp in the wilderness, practice skills they imagine using, or grow their own food. The problem is essentially temporal. What makes survivalism coalesce around violence is the understanding that the world needs to end for society to be remade. Suddenly prepping becomes just work, utility in Bataille’s sense, means to an end. Although there is obviously enjoyment in the sense of affective investment in the practices and tropes of survival, it remains organized around the “big payoff” of a world-shattering disaster, and thus enjoyment is mostly deferred and attachment forms to the disaster itself, fabulously textual as it may be. What ruins the game of fort-da is the same thing that ruins other rule-bound games. As Roger Caillois argues, the assumption that games must then result in something else, some “real world” benefit, turns them into work. To avoid the “corruption” of games, play must be an end in itself, something useless in the sense of Bataille’s sovereign poetry (Caillois 44). The sublime is a language suited for this change. The sense of being in the presence of silence, an active force that exceeds language, breeds both terror and fascination, but what results from this desire might be otherwise. Instead of deferring enjoyment for the eventual mastery of all contingent experience in mediation, the sublime draws a limit to the value of language used for productive work. That limit can be a source of enjoyment instead of (solely) frustration. Realizing that the Real cannot be mediated into the Symbolic does not have to mean that our attempts to do so have failed. Bataille’s distinction between poetry and other language revolves around the basic observation that poetry, in his sense, does not aim to do anything by organizing the world differently. It is expression without utility (“Hegel, Death, and Sacrifice” 25). The sublime is not a sufficient principle for any politics. It is useful instead to reveal the investments that cause political solutions to fail and repeat themselves serially. Ned O’Gorman’s argument that the sublime can have no politics because it cannot make practical differentiations is correct if one understands politics to be about the allocation of scarce resources and rhetoric to be about this conception of politics (“Political Sublime” 889). As Bataille defines it, politics is concerned with the handling of excess, not scarcity (Accursed Share 24-26). The teratology of rhetoric I suggest as a supplement is directed towards excess rather than scarcity. Nuclear war is a problem of excess in a double sense: the excess of reality that is the Real, and the excess of energy that thermonuclear processes provide for warfare. Concern for the sublime should lead us to seek the places where the excess of the general economy tears through the scarcity of the particular economy. Doing so, and observing the distortions that appear in the Symbolic, is a step towards tracking the motions of desire that stitch together the tropes of nuclear myth. Sublime language will not help much in figuring out the details of nuclear arms verification measures—or which Russian ICBM fields to target, for that matter. Instead, it should help us to accept the limits of our ability to map the world and reincorporate its breakdowns, and to appreciate these inevitable failures for what they are. An often overlooked theme in Longinus’s On the Sublime is the futility of accumulation for its own sake. Longinus decried what he saw as the decline of rhetoric into something meant to achieve specific goals rather than be admired for its own sake. The pursuit of wealth, power, and pleasure are not the only goals of rhetoric, and cannot be its only aim. We must enjoy sublime language for its own sake, not only for what it can get us. This is not desire without restriction, for “surely if our selfish desires were altogether freed from prison, as I were, and let loose upon our neighbors, they would scorch the earth with their evils,” because we perpetually desire something more beyond our grasp and thus cannot be satisfied (58). Words—mediation in general, we might now say—must be something to be enjoyed as artifice because “they are in truth the mind’s peculiar light” (41). The sublime’s most dangerous manifestations occur in attempts to control contingency with rational order and calculate the incalculable. The political implication of teratology is that we should sometimes resist this violent recuperation and leave some mysteries alone. To change our relationship towards the death drive means to accept that artifice can be enjoyed for its own sake, not just as a promissory note for the absent Real. There may be no ultimate, objective value for the human species that we can discover in the Real, but this does not need to be a council of despair. Instead of inventing reasons that the species must survive, we should admit that we have no good reason at all to do so. We don’t need one. If all values are arbitrary, then there is no reason not to live, assuming that we want to do so. To live without a reason is precisely the kind of sovereignty Bataille seeks through poetry, a sovereign life rather than a commitment to individual survival as a means to a perpetually deferred end. Learning to accept limits, even enjoy their impediment to the drive, is perhaps necessary but not sufficient to change our orientation towards nuclear warfare and the imagination of human extinction. To require rational answers to the ultimate questions raised by the Bomb is to play the wrong kind of game.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

It is in this place of despair from which we should understand the politics of the sublime. Because it is an inevitable byproduct of discontinuous subjectivity, the death drive cannot be wished away. We will probably always desire continuity that we cannot have and the object from which we are rent by our separation from the world as a whole. What the sublime offers is a reconfiguration of desire We defer enjoyment questing after objects and ignore sacrifices in the meantime, whether it is global poverty radioactive contamination a recognition of the death drive might not remake the material structure of society—at least not immediately—but that it could have a profound effect on the way we understand enjoyment Instead of seeking to overcome every limit as an obstacle to enjoyment Desire may be inevitable, but we can change the way we orient ourselves towards the frustrations and repetitions of the drive, learning to enjoy the partial challenges of our limits instead of deferring enjoyment for the achievement of some utopian state that we will never reach it remains organized around the “big payoff” of a world-shattering disaster, and thus enjoyment is mostly deferred and attachment forms to the disaster itself, fabulously textual as it may be. What ruins the game of fort-da is the same thing that ruins other rule-bound games. the assumption that games must then result in something else, some “real world” benefit, turns them into work. The sublime is a language suited for this change. The sense of being in the presence of silence, an active force that exceeds language, breeds both terror and fascination, but what results from this desire might be otherwise. Instead of deferring enjoyment for the eventual mastery of all contingent experience in mediation, the sublime draws a limit to the value of language used for productive work. That limit can be a source of enjoyment instead of (solely) frustration. Realizing that the Real cannot be mediated into the Symbolic does not have to mean that our attempts to do so have failed. The sublime is useful to reveal the investments that cause political solutions to fail and repeat themselves serially The teratology of rhetoric I suggest as a supplement is directed towards excess rather than scarcity. Nuclear war is a problem of excess in a double sense: the excess of reality that is the Real, and the excess of energy that thermonuclear processes provide for warfare. Concern for the sublime should lead us to seek the places where the excess of the general economy tears through the scarcity of the particular economy Doing so, and observing the distortions that appear in the Symbolic, is a step towards tracking the motions of desire that stitch together the tropes of nuclear myth. Sublime language will not help much in figuring out the details of nuclear arms verification measures—or which Russian ICBM fields to target it should help us to accept the limits of our ability to map the world and reincorporate its breakdowns, and to appreciate these inevitable failures for what they are The pursuit of wealth, power, and pleasure are not the only goals of rhetoric, and cannot be its only aim. We must enjoy sublime language for its own sake, not only for what it can get us This is not desire without restriction, for “surely if our selfish desires were altogether freed from prison, as I were, and let loose upon our neighbors, they would scorch the earth with their evils,” because we perpetually desire something more beyond our grasp and thus cannot be satisfied Words mediation in general must be something to be enjoyed as artifice because “they are in truth the mind’s peculiar light The sublime’s most dangerous manifestations occur in attempts to control contingency with rational order and calculate the incalculable The political implication of teratology is that we should sometimes resist this violent recuperation and leave some mysteries alone. To change our relationship towards the death drive means to accept that artifice can be enjoyed for its own sake, not just as a promissory note for the absent Real. There may be no ultimate, objective value for the human species that we can discover in the Real, but this does not need to be a council of despair. Instead of inventing reasons that the species must survive, we should admit that we have no good reason at all to do so. We don’t need one. If all values are arbitrary, then there is no reason not to live, assuming that we want to do so. To live without a reason is precisely the kind of sovereignty Bataille seeks through poetry, a sovereign life rather than a commitment to individual survival as a means to a perpetually deferred end Learning to accept limits, even enjoy their impediment to the drive is necessary to change our orientation towards nuclear warfare and the imagination of human extinction. To require rational answers to the ultimate questions raised by the Bomb is to play the wrong kind of game.

The alternative is a politics of the sublime – rather than attempt to calculate and describe nuclear war, understand it through its sublime aspects, as something the stands in a place outside the symbolic order, thus revealing its cracks and reconfiguring desire towards more productive ends.

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I would like to conclude by outlining the implications that I see in this project for communication studies and the politics of anti-nuclear activism. The significance of the Real suggests that omissions, breakdowns, and silence are important objects of study. We should not think of the inability to capture and translate something just as the failure of mediation but also the triumph of excess. The former centers the Symbolic order of human mediation as the key agent. The latter acknowledges that the universe outside our ken sometimes evades our grasp. The silence of Trinity was not just an absence of speech. It was the triumph of the Real, silence as its own revelation—an affirmative force. It is not necessary to ascribe agency to the Real to recognize that it is more than the space left outside of language. Neither should we ignore it because it is beyond our ability to translate. Its deformations alter the Symbolic, giving us outlines for speculation, even if we can never truly see what is behind the curtain. A theory of communication thus should at least speculate about what exceeds mediation. The word theory itself presents an opportunity. Nicolas of Cusa claimed that the word derived from theoro, “I see,” which is also the origin of Theos, “God” (213). God “looks on all things,” and thus does theory (Nicolas 237).” Theoria is the gaze that lights 182 the shadows to reveal the world. This understanding of theory is Bataille’s Sun of reason and truth, that rational source of enlightenment figurative and literal. But the Sun is also rotten, a harbinger of mania for those who stare at it too intensely (Bataille, Visions of Excess 57-8). It can be supplemented with another tradition, one derived from téras and later therion, the Greek origins of our word “monster.” Monster, related to “demonstrate” was once a disruption, a revelation, an apocalypse in its original sense of unveiling. Theory should not only trace the order of the world. It should be a teratology of the Real, an acknowledgment that the monstrous world “bites back.” Teratology was once the “account of marvels” (“Teratology”). It was once pejorative: “when bold writers, fond of the sublime, intermix something great and prodigious in everything they write,” not altogether a positive thing (Bailey). The word evokes the sublime in a rhetorical sense, linked with “prodigious monsters” of thought and desire (Shipley 197). The importance of the Real establishes the significance of the death drive for theories of communication. While the drive has generally been considered an aspect of the Symbolic order—the subject, formed through the alienation of the mirror phase, is driven to invest in objects (signifiers) that stand in for something lost that could make it whole. The formulation of the death drive here is somewhat different, drawing also from Bataille’s concept of continuity. The subject’s initial formation marks it as discrete from everything else, which is the necessary condition for death, since a change in state of a part of the whole does not destroy said whole. Eros, exemplified in copulation, momentarily merges the self with another, as does Thanatos more permanently in the state of death. The Symbolic is necessarily always mediated, and the Real is not. The emergence of the Real hints at a world beyond mediation, and thus towards continuity. Since the Real cannot be adequately captured, subjects cathect to whatever seems to represent it, and thus the drive does operate in the Symbolic, which is often misrecognized as real. Identifying the death drive as a desire to move beyond mediation shows the necessity of a broad view of communication. The connections that form between sites of investment for Lacan either proliferate meaning by referencing outwards (metonymy) or condense meaning by establishing a particularly saturated connection defines the sites involved by this strong relation (metaphor). These rhetorical tropes are typically used to analyze language, but they can be reframed to apply to mediation more generally, including the material aspect of individual media. This is not to say that everything is a text. Instead, it is a call to explore how concepts developed for language might be adapted to other media, and also how they must be changed to do so. In their canonical book Remediation, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin identify a seeming paradox in media. There are “contradictory imperatives for immediacy and hypermediacy…a double logic of remediation. Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” (Bolter and Grusin 5, emphasis in original). Both immediacy and hypermediacy have a long history—the first in the evolution of Western European painting, for example, and the second in illuminated medieval manuscripts (Bolter and Grusin 11-12). The death drive enriches this observation by underpinning it with a theoretical explanation: we desire the Real (immediacy), but are frustrated in achieving it, as detailed in Chapter 1. Instead, we enjoy our seeming ability to control presence and absence, latching on to our own subjectivity and misrecognizing the Symbolic for the Real—hence the enjoyment of hypermediacy. These imperatives are contradictory in a sense, but they follow from one another according to the logic of the death drive. Recall that Lacan’s argument for the primacy of the death drive is partly that all drives seek their own extinction. In the desire for immediacy, media also seek their own extinction. In its failure, it is redirected back on itself in hypermediacy. Bolter and Grusin define a medium as “that which remediates. It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real” (65-66). This definition essentially makes various media metaphors for one another, containers that reference other containers. If metaphor is remembered as metapherein, then this process can be thought of as material metaphor. To say that remediation is the defining aspect of media as Bolter and Grusin do is consistent with metaphor as the “archetrope” of language, as Miller names it. The common element is mediation itself. Remediation is metaphor, in which significance is transferred from one container to another, as in Lacan’s pots, with the relationship of the two configuring the importance of the connection. Metaphor is also a kind of remediation. The importance of the vehicle is transferred to the tenor and vice versa, and both use language to stand in for something else—a concept, an object, a person, place. The dynamic of the death drive should suggest a different, more porous, theory of metaphor. One term does not replace another and simply suppress it. Rather, it allows its users to enjoy the absent term which is always still present in the metaphor. The vehicle “countervalue,” for example, stands in for the tenor “nuclear attack against civilians.” This sense is not lost, but displaced. Metaphor is a dynamic process rather than a one-way substitution. One aspect is the replacement of one term by another, but this is not the end: the point of metaphor is that there is an cathectic investment in the relationship between two terms, the trait that enthymematically connects them. Concealment is one part of the process, but making the principle that connects the concealed tenor to the expressed vehicle present is another, a fort-da dynamic. It is the mediation between terms which serves to anchor enjoyment. The sublime aspect of metaphor is the charge of the Real which makes a particular connection so bright as to conceal others. At the same time, a broad understanding of mediation has implications for metaphor and metonymy. The trope is stunted when it is confined to language: not only does language stand in for other things, but different media create different conditions for investment. The simulated globe of First Strike stands in for the conglomeration of matter that constitutes the Earth itself, but the media of choice that videogames allow permits a different kind of investment. For a subject to read about the radioactive wasteland of a post-nuclear Earth is one thing, but for that subject to simulate its creation is quite another. Metonymy, the proliferation of meaning that gestures from one trope out towards others, is mediated in different ways by changing technology. As the example of survivalist online communities shows, some of the labor of connection is now done by automated systems based on aggregated data. An Amazon review of Farnham’s Freehold leads to a reviewer profile that leads to One Second After, where targeted ads lead to survival equipment, where reviews lead to message boards and message boards spin out across the Internet. Some of these selections are made by readers, while others are automatically generated, smoothing the paths between one thing and another. Communities form in part around these shared spaces, connected not directly but by their shared relationship to a message board, a particular electronic text, or a lifestyle. Users of Survivalist Singles are connected in part by electronic means. The electronic connections of the Internet make possible an itinerary that begins with Farnham’s Freehold and ends with a marriage proposal made in a bunker. The death drive as a desire for the Real also implicates anti-nuclear politics. As detailed in the Introduction, much anti-nuclear scholarship adopts the “concealment thesis,” the assumption that the nuclear weapons complex persists as it does because there is insufficient public deliberation. Deliberation is constrained in part because the language of nuclear war conceals its “reality,” the horror of destruction. Thus Jonathan Schell graphically imagined destruction in Fate of the Earth, Hilgartner et al. decry “nukespeak,” and what Carol Cohn calls “technostrategic discourse” is the subject of thorough critique for its use of euphemism and mind-numbing arcane terminology. If the terms were changed, if “God terms” were replaced with “devil terms,” as Brummett suggests, then unimpeded debate might occur, and as Schippa argues, nuclear forces might be constrained. However, anti-nuclear scholarship in this vein has an uncanny resonance with the sublime discourse of the Bomb. It too seeks an appointment with the Real and makes nuclear imagination a site of enjoyment. Bataille argues that a taboo is necessary in language only because we desire to cross it in the first place, and the existence of the taboo is in itself enjoyable because it creates the possibility of forbidden, exciting transgression. This helps to explain the link between sex and death in strategic terminology, which is the subject of Cohn’s work on the language of defense intellectuals. Many nuclear euphemisms have a sexual connotation—“deep penetration,” “spasm war,” “hardening,” and “bang for the buck” (Cohn 693). These terms certainly reflect a particular exercise of violent masculinity. What they also share with terms like “countervalue” is the attraction to a forbidden Real, the continuity represented by both sex and death. A concept of the death drive as the desire for unmediated experience suggests that changing the language of expression for this taboo—perhaps even changing the patriarchal terms through which taboo and desire were expressed in the nuclear age—would not automatically change the investments that pin together nuclear warfare as a cultural technology. Instead, critique aimed at making the reality of nuclear war present in language contributes to the movement of desire that sustains our investment in the myths and tropes of nuclear war in the first place. Metaphor operates like the cycle of fort-da, where changing one signifier to make the signified term absent can itself be a source of enjoyment, a sense of power over presence and absence. We like to have our yellowcake and eat it too. The danger of seeking the Real of nuclear warfare in language is that the inevitable failures of this project have already proven to have uncanny consequences. The fear of human extinction that struck George Kistiakowsky at Trinity and was developed by Schell’s “infinite risk” formulation was a message inverted several times. All sacrifices are made acceptable by it. Survivalists took the supreme value of human life as an injunction to live at all costs, and communities formed around the fruits of this (affective) labor. The Real of nuclear warfare became a challenge and the promise of a new frontier, a strangely mediated means of escaping an overly mediated society. The themes of EMP novels show a prominent trend of anti-state sentiment in right-wing survivalism. Rather than inspiring revulsion, the imagination of nuclear horror has been met with anticipation and no small amount of enthusiasm. Instead of democratic engagement, it has resulted in a turn towards libertarian self-reliance, hostility to outgroups, and a refusal to engage in the fallen politics of a demos fated to burn when Armageddon comes. Even when the horror of nuclear war inspires political engagement, there is no guarantee that anti-nuclear initiatives result. That Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was justified on these grounds should be a warning, according to Jan Nolan, because “the public’s concern about nuclear weapons can be readily turned to fear. And this kind of public sentiment helped spawn the industry of nuclear deceit…Calls to public activism with unspecific objectives may thus not be the best approach. Frightened Americans looking for solace are a great constituency for clever political strategists” (283). Project Plowshare and its more contemporary echoes suggest that fear can also be transformed easily into a promise of salvation. The valence of the Bomb switches easily for those beholden to its power; our reverence for it does not.

Matheson 15 [Calum Matheson, PhD is Associate Professor of Public Deliberation and Civic Life and the incoming Chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.; “Desired Ground Zeroes: Nuclear Imagination and the Death Drive”; 2015; https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/210598703.pdf]//eleanor

The significance of the Real suggests that omissions, breakdowns, and silence are important objects of study. We should not think of the inability to capture and translate something just as the failure of mediation but also the triumph of excess. The former centers the Symbolic order of human mediation as the key agent. The latter acknowledges that the universe outside our ken sometimes evades our grasp. The silence of Trinity was not just an absence of speech. It was the triumph of the Real, silence as its own revelation—an affirmative force. It is not necessary to ascribe agency to the Real to recognize that it is more than the space left outside of language. Neither should we ignore it because it is beyond our ability to translate. Its deformations alter the Symbolic, giving us outlines for speculation, even if we can never truly see what is behind the curtain A theory of communication should speculate about what exceeds mediation. The importance of the Real establishes the significance of the death drive for theories of communication. The Symbolic is necessarily always mediated, and the Real is not. The emergence of the Real hints at a world beyond mediation, and thus towards continuity. Since the Real cannot be adequately captured, subjects cathect to whatever seems to represent it, and thus the drive does operate in the Symbolic, which is often misrecognized as real. Identifying the death drive as a desire to move beyond mediation shows the necessity of a broad view of communication. The connections that form between sites of investment for Lacan either proliferate meaning by referencing outwards (metonymy) or condense meaning by establishing a particularly saturated connection defines the sites involved by this strong relation (metaphor it is a call to explore how concepts developed for language might be adapted to other media, and also how they must be changed to do so. Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them” The death drive enriches this observation by underpinning it with a theoretical explanation: we desire the Real (immediacy), but are frustrated in achieving it, Instead, we enjoy our seeming ability to control presence and absence, latching on to our own subjectivity and misrecognizing the Symbolic for the Real—hence the enjoyment of hypermediacy In the desire for immediacy, media also seek their own extinction. In its failure, it is redirected back on itself in hypermediacy It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real” If metaphor is remembered as metapherein, then this process can be thought of as material metaphor. To say that remediation is the defining aspect of media is consistent with metaphor as the “archetrope” of language Remediation is metaphor, in which significance is transferred from one container to another, with the relationship of the two configuring the importance of the connection. Metaphor is also a kind of remediation. The importance of the vehicle is transferred to the tenor and vice versa, and both use language to stand in for something else—a concept, an object, a person, place. The dynamic of the death drive should suggest a different, more porous, theory of metaphor. One term does not replace another and simply suppress it. Rather, it allows its users to enjoy the absent term which is always still present in the metaphor. The vehicle “countervalue,” for example, stands in for the tenor “nuclear attack against civilians.” This sense is not lost, but displaced Metaphor is a dynamic process rather than a one-way substitution. One aspect is the replacement of one term by another, but this is not the end: the point of metaphor is that there is an cathectic investment in the relationship between two terms, the trait that enthymematically connects them. Concealment is one part of the process, but making the principle that connects the concealed tenor to the expressed vehicle present is another, a fort-da dynamic. It is the mediation between terms which serves to anchor enjoyment. The sublime aspect of metaphor is the charge of the Real which makes a particular connection so bright as to conceal others. a broad understanding of mediation has implications for metaphor and metonymy. The trope is stunted when it is confined to language: not only does language stand in for other things, but different media create different conditions for investment. Metonymy, the proliferation of meaning that gestures from one trope out towards others, is mediated in different ways by changing technology. The death drive as a desire for the Real implicates anti-nuclear politics much anti-nuclear scholarship adopts the “concealment thesis,” the assumption that the nuclear weapons complex persists as it does because there is insufficient public deliberation. Deliberation is constrained in part because the language of nuclear war conceals its “reality,” the horror of destruction technostrategic discourse” is the subject of thorough critique for its use of euphemism and mind-numbing arcane terminology terms certainly reflect a particular exercise of violent masculinity. What they also share with terms like “countervalue” is the attraction to a forbidden Real, the continuity represented by both sex and death. A concept of the death drive as the desire for unmediated experience suggests that changing the language of expression for this taboo—perhaps even changing the patriarchal terms through which taboo and desire were expressed in the nuclear age—would not automatically change the investments that pin together nuclear warfare as a cultural technology critique aimed at making the reality of nuclear war present in language contributes to the movement of desire that sustains our investment in the myths and tropes of nuclear war in the first place Metaphor operates like the cycle of fort-da where changing one signifier to make the signified term absent can itself be a source of enjoyment, a sense of power over presence and absence. The danger of seeking the Real of nuclear warfare in language is that the inevitable failures of this project have already proven to have uncanny consequences the imagination of nuclear horror has been met with anticipation and no small amount of enthusiasm. Instead of democratic engagement, it has resulted in a turn towards libertarian self-reliance, hostility to outgroups, and a refusal to engage in the fallen politics of a demos fated to burn when Armageddon comes. Even when the horror of nuclear war inspires political engagement, there is no guarantee that anti-nuclear initiatives result. Calls to public activism with unspecific objectives may thus not be the best approach fear can also be transformed easily into a promise of salvation. The valence of the Bomb switches easily for those beholden to its power; our reverence for it does not

The silence of Trinity was the ultimate triumph of the real – nuclear war can only be understood through metaphor, futile attempts to calculate the gap in the symbolic order – trying to make nuclear war present through language sustains investment in those very myths and tropes in the first place .

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

The structure of the fantasy The racist fantasy is a structure that operates regardless of the actual identity of those occupying the various positions within the fantasy. It is a shared social structure rather than the product of a certain individuals. Although individuals are necessary to sustain the fantasy, it is a part of the basic social structure that forms individual existence within the society. In this sense, while it is possible for individuals to opt out of or reject the racist fantasy, these individual victories are insignificant as long as the fantasy remains foundational for the society. To say that a society is racist is to say that a racist fantasy underlies its social order. Fantasy provides a structure through which subjects can envision a path to obtaining the fantasy object, whatever that object is. The fantasy object might be a particular commodity, a lifestyle, or even a type of social status. But whatever it is, it promises unrestrained enjoyment for the subject. For the fantasizing subject, the object appears to have the utmost importance. It seems as if it is the nodal point of the fantasy. But despite this belief, the actual fantasy object can be anything at all. The specific object is insignificant. What is important is the position that this object has in the fantasy, not what the object is. In order to be a fantasy object, the object need only be unattainable. The unattainability of the object is the source of its value. Because it is unattainable, the fantasy object appears to hold within it the secret of a perfect enjoyment. If one could attain it, one would quickly recognize that it is an object like any other and cannot provide the enjoyment that it promises insofar as it remains unattainable. It is with the object that the fantasy performs its magic for the subject’s prospects of enjoyment. Fantasy has the effect of rendering an inherently unattainable object attainable and thereby making an unrestrained enjoyment seem possible. Even if the fantasy shows the subject deprived of the object, it nonetheless depicts the object as possible. Outside the fantasy structure, the subject simply confronts the traumatic impossibility of its desire.10 Fantasy doesn’t just make the impossible possible. It does so, ironically, by placing a barrier between the subject and its object. The fantasy object is possible only insofar as something blocks the subject’s access to it. By prohibiting the impossible object, fantasy creates the illusion that the object is attainable but for the prohibition. This barrier enables the subject to avoid encountering the disappointment of actually obtaining the object and thus plays the pivotal role in the fantasy. As the fantasy stages it, if the subject were to attain this object, it would achieve an enjoyment without any restriction. As a result, the fantasy must place an obstacle in the way of the object. The obstacle, not the object, is the crucial ingredient. The fundamental task of fantasy is to transform an impossible satisfaction that no one could attain into a prohibited satisfaction that becomes unattainable due to the fantasized obstacle that prevents the subject from having its object. There is no such thing as complete satisfaction. But complete satisfaction comes to appear possible through the erection of an obstacle to it. This operation enables subjects to believe that if they eliminate the obstacle they can attain the impossible and overcome their status as lacking subjects. Fantasy allows one to imagine an enjoyment without lack, but it does so only by creating an obstacle who bears responsibility for the failure to attain this enjoyment. In the racist fantasy, as in any fantasy, the object is unimportant. The only significance that the object of the racist fantasy has is that it is unattainable. The object can be any unattainable object. But what characterizes the racist fantasy and differentiates it from other forms of fantasy is that the obstacle to the object—what bars the subject’s access to unrestrained enjoyment—is the racial other. The fantasy’s key player is the racial other because this figure makes the object unattainable. As the obstacle to complete enjoyment, the racial other is responsible for all the subject’s—and the society’s—failures.11 This figure gives the racist fantasy its racist hue. The fantasy defines the subject through the racial other that threatens it, which gives the subject a wholly secondary and insignificant status within the structure. The racial other bars the subject from enjoying the object by monopolizing the object for itself. The illegitimate enjoyment of the racial other occurs at the expense of the fantasy’s subject. This other enjoys in the subject’s stead, triggering resentment for the racial other. The racist fantasy produces a different and privileged relationship to enjoyment in the racial other that provides the basis for what we see as racial difference. It is not that racial difference first exists and then brings with it different relationships to enjoyment. Instead, we establish racial difference on the basis of how we distribute the relationships to enjoyment.12 In Trauma and Race, Sheldon George notes the primacy that enjoyment or jouissance has in establishing racial difference. He claims, “it is ultimately jouissance that grounds difference, establishing this difference through its circumscription of the fantasy object.”13 The fantasy always depicts the racial other’s enjoyment as illegitimate, as a violation of the law, of morality, or of social mores. The racial other becomes enshrined as racial as a result of the position of obstacle that this figure has in the racist fantasy. In the American version of the racist fantasy, the racial other is often a black man who enjoys white women at the expense of white men. The black man’s superior sexual prowess renders him more able to please white women. The fantasy produces this figure of blackness, as Frantz Fanon has theorized in Black Skin, White Masks. 14 Against such a challenger, the white man has no chance to measure up. In this sense, the racist fantasy does not clearly and simply establish the white man’s superiority in all domains. As a sexual being, the black man, the racial other, thoroughly dominates the white man, which is why he is an unsurmountable obstacle to the white man’s complete enjoyment of white women. The fantasy is racist insofar as it grants the black man an inherent sexual superiority that leads to the victory over white men with white women. The racist fantasy attributes absolute enjoyment to the racial other in order to give the subject an obstacle that makes its own full satisfaction seem hindered rather than impossible. The white man’s failures with women thus become the fault of the black man, not the white man. The racial other, not the very structure of subjectivity, is the bar preventing the subject from enjoying the way it imagines it might. The racial other always has an enjoyment advantage deriving from its fantasized racial inheritance. It is a genetic gift, like athletic ability or intelligence. But what makes possible its victory over the subject in the fantasy is not just this inheritance but also the other’s willingness to bypass the Symbolic restrictions that the subject observes. In other words, on the terrain of sex, the racial other cheats. The figure does not obey the constraints of civilized society that the subject abides by. The racial other uses seduction and ultimately has recourse to violence in order to enjoy the object in a way that the subject cannot. According to the fantasy, he is savage and unrestrained by civilization in the way that the white man is not. This fantasy produces the belief in black criminality in the American cultural imagination. The association of blackness with illicit sexual enjoyment provides the lens through which black men appear as inherently criminal. This criminality then helps to explain how the black man bests the white man in the competition for white women. Without resorting to his inherent criminality, the black man would not be able to beat out the white man on the terrain of sexual competition. In the fantasy, sexual prowess alone is usually not enough. Criminality often comes in support.15 The inherent criminality of the racial other points to an additional figure in the fantasy. The third party in the fantasy is the figure of authority that the racial other dupes in order to enjoy the object. The racial other gets around the barrier that the authority poses in a way that the subject cannot by breaking the law or using subterfuge to evade the constraints that govern everyone else. The ability of the racial other to evade the restrictions of the law has a direct link to this figure’s lack of morality. Even though the fantasy portrays the racial other as lacking the intelligence of the subject, this figure nonetheless has superior skills in manipulation. Within the fantasy, the fecklessness of legal authority against the racial other’s stratagems require extraordinary measures. This is the justification in American society for the intervention of an extralegal force to contain the racial other. Entities such as the Ku Klux Klan arise directly from this fantasy formation as a response to the image of a black evasion of traditional social authority. The bungling white sheriff cannot prevent the black man from surreptitiously absconding with white women. The Klan sees itself as a necessary expedient for disciplining black enjoyment that the white legal structure cannot succeed in disciplining. Law is never enough for the excess that black enjoyment represents. Within the American version of the racist fantasy, legitimate authority cannot successfully police illicit black enjoyment.16 Only the supplemental army of whites that come together as the Ku Klux Klan can bring this excess back into the confines of the social order through their disciplining mechanisms, including the extraordinary measure of lynching. The Klan is a supplementary police force that targets unrestrained black enjoyment. The inadequacy of the traditional authority figures speaks to the vast difference that separates white and black in the racist fantasy. Traditional authority effectively contains white enjoyment because it operates within the socially defined limits, but the extreme sexuality and criminality of blackness places it beyond the reach of the normal functioning of this authority. The extraordinary status of a group like the Klan testifies to the extraordinary nature of black enjoyment. But this enjoyment exists only within a racist fantasy that posits its existence. Without this underlying racist fantasy and the outsized part that it grants to black enjoyment, the Klan would be unimaginable. The aim of the fantasy is the production of enjoyment, which it accomplishes through its vision of the racial other. The racist fantasy locates enjoyment in the figure of the racial other that both accesses the fantasy object and blocks the subject’s path to this object. Thus, despite reviling this racial other, the racist subject must unconsciously identify with this figure in order to access the enjoyment that it hoards for itself. The supreme irony of racism is that the only enjoyment available to the racist subject derives from the racial other whom this subject reviles. The racist enjoys through the target of the racism, an action that is only possible through the mechanism of fantasy. The primacy of the fantasy in relation to the legal and social forms of racism becomes apparent when we take stock of the effectiveness of trying to ameliorate racism by changing the legal apparatus. The emancipation of slaves in the United States at the end of the American Civil War didn’t lead to the gradual elimination of racism but paved the way for the racist separatism of Jim Crow laws that lasted until the 1960s. The Civil Rights laws of the 1960s finally did away with the legal discrimination of Jim Crow but left the racist fantasy fully intact. Despite these measures and those that followed after the 1960s, racism remained ensconced in social practices, workplace opportunities, policing methods, housing allotments, and overall cultural attitudes. The waning of legalized racism had the effect of sustaining or even exacerbating racism in these extralegal channels. The persistence of racism depends on an intractable underlying fantasy. Racism endures because the fantasy endures, not because we have failed to come up with the proper legal remedy or the most enlightened educational methods. The racist fantasy remains the same while the legal and social structure changes. Even proposals like slave reparations, which seem like a radical remedy to racism, do not threaten the fantasy and actually risk strengthening it by solidifying the image of the racial other who illegitimately enjoys in the stead of the nonracial subject. The fight against racism must target the enjoyment that racism provides by disrupting the racist fantasy structure. As long as the fantasy endures, racism will remain insoluble. Responding to racism requires first understanding how the fantasy relates to desire and enjoyment.

McGowan 22 (Todd McGowan, Professor of English at the University of Vermont, USA, “The Bedlam of the Lynch Mob: Racism and Enjoying Through the Other,” Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, pgs. 22-25)//JRD

The racist fantasy is a structure that operates regardless of the actual identity of those occupying the various positions within the fantasy. It is a shared social structure rather than the product of a certain individuals. Although individuals are necessary to sustain the fantasy, it is a part of the basic social structure that forms individual existence within the society. In this sense, while it is possible for individuals to opt out of or reject the racist fantasy, these individual victories are insignificant as long as the fantasy remains foundational for the society. To say that a society is racist is to say that a racist fantasy underlies its social order. Fantasy provides a structure through which subjects can envision a path to obtaining the fantasy object, whatever that object is. The fantasy object might be a particular commodity, a lifestyle, or even a type of social status. But whatever it is, it promises unrestrained enjoyment for the subject. For the fantasizing subject, the object appears to have the utmost importance. What is important is the position that this object has in the fantasy, not what the object is. In order to be a fantasy object, the object need only be unattainable. The unattainability of the object is the source of its value. Because it is unattainable, the fantasy object appears to hold within it the secret of a perfect enjoyment. If one could attain it, one would quickly recognize that it is an object like any other and cannot provide the enjoyment that it promises insofar as it remains unattainable. Fantasy has the effect of rendering an inherently unattainable object attainable and thereby making an unrestrained enjoyment seem possible. Outside the fantasy structure, the subject simply confronts the traumatic impossibility of its desire. Fantasy doesn’t just make the impossible possible. It does so by placing a barrier between the subject and its object. The fantasy object is possible only insofar as something blocks the subject’s access to it. By prohibiting the impossible object, fantasy creates the illusion that the object is attainable but for the prohibition. This barrier enables the subject to avoid encountering the disappointment of actually obtaining the object and thus plays the pivotal role in the fantasy. As the fantasy stages it, if the subject were to attain this object, it would achieve an enjoyment without any restriction. the fantasy must place an obstacle in the way of the object. The obstacle, not the object, is the crucial ingredient. The fundamental task of fantasy is to transform an impossible satisfaction that no one could attain into a prohibited satisfaction that becomes unattainable due to the fantasized obstacle that prevents the subject from having its object. There is no such thing as complete satisfaction. But complete satisfaction comes to appear possible through the erection of an obstacle to it. This enables subjects to believe that if they eliminate the obstacle they can attain the impossible and overcome their status as lacking subjects. Fantasy allows one to imagine an enjoyment without lack, but it does so only by creating an obstacle who bears responsibility for the failure to attain this enjoyment. In the racist fantasy the object is unimportant. The only significance that the object of the racist fantasy has is that it is unattainable. The object can be any unattainable object. But what characterizes the racist fantasy and differentiates it from other forms of fantasy is that the obstacle to the object what bars the subject’s access to unrestrained enjoyment is the racial other. The fantasy’s key player is the racial other because this figure makes the object unattainable. As the obstacle to complete enjoyment, the racial other is responsible for all the subject’s—and the society’s—failures. This figure gives the racist fantasy its racist hue. The fantasy defines the subject through the racial other that threatens it, which gives the subject a wholly secondary and insignificant status within the structure. The racial other bars the subject from enjoying the object by monopolizing the object for itself. The illegitimate enjoyment of the racial other occurs at the expense of the fantasy’s subject. This other enjoys in the subject’s stead triggering resentment for the racial other. The racist fantasy produces a different and privileged relationship to enjoyment in the racial other that provides the basis for what we see as racial difference. It is not that racial difference first exists and then brings with it different relationships to enjoyment. Instead, we establish racial difference on the basis of how we distribute the relationships to enjoyment. Sheldon George notes the primacy that enjoyment or jouissance has in establishing racial difference. The fantasy always depicts the racial other’s enjoyment as illegitimate, as a violation of the law, of morality, or of social mores. The racial other becomes enshrined as racial as a result of the position of obstacle that this figure has in the racist fantasy. the racial other is often a black man who enjoys white women at the expense of white men. The fantasy produces this figure of blackness Against such a challenger, the white man has no chance to measure up. the racist fantasy does not clearly and simply establish the white man’s superiority in all domains the black man, the racial other, thoroughly dominates the white man, which is why he is an unsurmountable obstacle to the white man’s complete enjoyment The racist fantasy attributes absolute enjoyment to the racial other in order to give the subject an obstacle that makes its own full satisfaction seem hindered rather than impossible. The white man’s failures thus become the fault of the black man, not the white man. The racial other, not the very structure of subjectivity, is the bar preventing the subject from enjoying the way it imagines it might. The racial other always has an enjoyment advantage deriving from its fantasized racial inheritance. But what makes possible its victory over the subject in the fantasy is not just this inheritance but also the other’s willingness to bypass the Symbolic restrictions that the subject observes. The figure does not obey the constraints of civilized society that the subject abides by. The racial other uses seduction and ultimately has recourse to violence in order to enjoy the object in a way that the subject cannot. According to the fantasy, he is savage and unrestrained by civilization in the way that the white man is not. This fantasy produces the belief in black criminality in the American cultural imagination. The inherent criminality of the racial other points to an additional figure in the fantasy. The third party in the fantasy is the figure of authority that the racial other dupes in order to enjoy the object. The racial other gets around the barrier that the authority poses in a way that the subject cannot by breaking the law or using subterfuge to evade the constraints that govern everyone else. The ability of the racial other to evade the restrictions of the law has a direct link to this figure’s lack of morality. Even though the fantasy portrays the racial other as lacking the intelligence of the subject, this figure nonetheless has superior skills in manipulation. Within the fantasy, the fecklessness of legal authority against the racial other’s stratagems require extraordinary measures. This is the justification in American society for the intervention of an extralegal force to contain the racial other. the Ku Klux Klan arise directly from this fantasy formation as a response to the image of a black evasion of traditional social authority. The Klan sees itself as a necessary expedient for disciplining black enjoyment that the white legal structure cannot succeed in disciplining. aw is never enough for the excess that black enjoyment represents. Within the American version of the racist fantasy, legitimate authority cannot successfully police illicit black enjoyment. The Klan is a supplementary police force that targets unrestrained black enjoyment. Traditional authority effectively contains white enjoyment because it operates within the socially defined limits, but the extreme sexuality and criminality of blackness places it beyond the reach of the normal functioning of this authority. the Klan testifies to the extraordinary nature of black enjoyment. this enjoyment exists only within a racist fantasy that posits its existence. Without this underlying racist fantasy and the outsized part that it grants to black enjoyment, the Klan would be unimaginable. The aim of the fantasy is the production of enjoyment, which it accomplishes through its vision of the racial other. The racist fantasy locates enjoyment in the figure of the racial other that both accesses the fantasy object and blocks the subject’s path to this object. Thus, despite reviling this racial other, the racist subject must unconsciously identify with this figure in order to access the enjoyment that it hoards for itself. The racist enjoys through the target of the racism, an action that is only possible through the mechanism of fantasy. The emancipation of slaves in the United States at the end of the American Civil War didn’t lead to the gradual elimination of racism but paved the way for the racist separatism of Jim Crow laws that lasted until the 1960s. The Civil Rights laws of the 1960s finally did away with the legal discrimination of Jim Crow but left the racist fantasy fully intact. racism remained ensconced in social practices, workplace opportunities, policing methods, housing allotments, and overall cultural attitudes. The waning of legalized racism had the effect of sustaining or even exacerbating racism in these extralegal channels. The persistence of racism depends on an intractable underlying fantasy. Racism endures because the fantasy endures, not because we have failed to come up with the proper legal remedy or the most enlightened educational methods. The racist fantasy remains the same while the legal and social structure changes. The fight against racism must target the enjoyment that racism provides by disrupting the racist fantasy structure. As long as the fantasy endures, racism will remain insoluble. Responding to racism requires first understanding how the fantasy relates to desire and enjoyment.

This is a debate first and foremost about desire – race as social structure exists not as an absolute truth but rather as a product of fantasy, of the unconscious construction of a racialized other as the barrier to the subject’s enjoyment. We must challenge race as a signifier on the level of the unconscious or we do not challenge it at all.

K - Psychoanalysis - Michigan 7 2022 BFHR.html5

Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

In contrast to Marxism and left -wing theories, which take justice as the point of departure in arguing against class society, psychoanalysis begins with freedom — or, more precisely, with the lack of freedom that exists under capitalism. In other words, psychoanalysis shares with Marxism a critical attitude toward capitalism (though this is predominantly implicit in the former), but psychoanalytic thought sees the problems that capitalism engenders in other terms than Marxism does. It poses a different critique, and, as a result, it implies a different response, a response that insists on freedom as the fundamental value rather than equality. Political philosophers constantly wrestle with the seemingly opposed poles of freedom and justice. Isaiah Berlin famously characterizes freedom and justice as positions that must constantly be measured against each other in order to construct a good society. He claims: “The extent of a man’s, or a people’s, liberty to choose to live as he or they desire must be weighed against the claims of many other values, of which equality, or justice, or happiness, or security, or public order are perhaps the most obvious examples. For this reason, it cannot be unlimited.”4 Most political philosophers who stress freedom ( John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Hayek, and so on) are implicitly or explicitly procapitalist, or at least antisocialist, because socialism demands a restriction on individual liberty.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 80-82, 1 July 2013, MG)

In contrast to Marxism and which take justice as the point of departure in arguing against class society, psychoanalysis begins with freedom — or, more precisely, with the lack of freedom that exists under capitalism. In other words, psychoanalysis shares with Marxism a critical attitude toward capitalism (though this is predominantly implicit in the former), but psychoanalytic thought sees the problems that capitalism engenders in other terms than Marxism does. It poses a different critique, and, as a result, it implies a different response, a response that insists on freedom as the fundamental value rather than equality Most political philosophers who stress freedom are implicitly or explicitly procapitalist, or at least antisocialist, because socialism demands a restriction on individual liberty.

Their vision can’t take down capitalism because it begins with a vision for justice not freedom – they’ll result in unfreedom of subjects

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2022

Where is the other? The contemporary proliferation of racism in spite of our knowledge about its wrongs suggests that we have an unconscious investment in racism that continues and multiplies. Armed with education and a belief in racism’s fundamental immorality, people today should have no problem leaving racist ideas and practices behind. But education and morality are not enough. They are powerless in the face of an unconscious investment, which provides the foundation for racism’s continuing appeal for those who indulge in it. The unconscious investment is the central pillar of racism’s intransigence. Unless one takes the unconscious as the starting point for making sense of racism’s appeal, the mystery of the enduring power of racism is almost impossible to decipher. Today, there is a proliferation of historical accounts of all the various manifestations of racism. These accounts make clear the extent of the problem, but they do not help us to resolve it because they never attack racism at the point where it has a hold over us. The struggle against racism requires an engagement with the unconscious, but deciphering the unconscious appeal of racism places us on the difficult terrain of psychoanalytic interpretation.1 When we look at the terminology deployed in the contemporary combat against racism, one might mistakenly assume that the combatants have already taken the unconscious into account. The predominance of the term unconscious bias specifically names this aspect of the psyche. But this apparent nod to psychoanalytic thought is ultimately misleading. Although the term unconscious bias has become a regular part of the anti-racist lexicon, the analysis of the unconscious has not. In fact, the proponents of the term often take pains to distinguish their thought from Freud’s. In Blindspot, their leading work on unconscious bias, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald assure us that “an understanding of the unconscious workings of the mind has changed greatly in the century since Freud’s pathbreaking observations.”2 According to Banaji and Greenwald, Freud’s unscientific conception of the unconscious has given way to a scientifically verifiable one: we have now collectively moved beyond Freud’s failure to be scientific enough.3 But in the process of this shift, what has been lost is Freud’s insistence on the radical otherness of the unconscious in relation to consciousness. The problem manifests itself in the second part of the term unconscious bias. Bias suggests a distortion of knowing and suggests that the problem is confined to how we know. This term indicates the belief that racism represents a failure to know accurately. But once one begins with the premise that the problem of racism is a problem of knowing, one necessarily misses the radicality of the problem. Armed with this understanding, to correct our unconscious bias, we just need a little diversity training that teaches us that our biases are unfounded. All we need to do, in short, is to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. But if racism is unconscious, this means that it is not simply a problem of knowing but a problem of enjoying.4 We enjoy at odds with how we know. That is to say, we enjoy not in spite of knowing better but because we know better. Our unconscious investment in racism delivers an enjoyment that comes at the expense of what we know, when we transgress the norms that we know we should obey. No matter how much we know better, this enjoyment will find a way to manifest itself. Instruction alone cannot alter how we enjoy. The interchangeability of the term unconscious bias with implicit bias makes clear the problem. The reference to the unconscious is superficial and does not have anything to do with the unconscious that psychoanalysis theorizes. The type of theorizing about racism that sees it in terms of unconscious bias implicitly categorizes racism as an epistemological problem. Unconscious bias denotes racism that persons have without knowledge, not the part of racism that resists knowledge, which is the effect of the unconscious. The unconscious isn’t simply a lack of knowledge. It is what one does without being able to know it prior to acting. The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge. Taking this understanding of the unconscious as our point of departure, we must reverse the relationship between racism and knowledge. Racism is not the result of a bias in our knowing, but rather we have a bias in our knowing because of racism. To find the root of racism we must look not at mistakes in knowing but at successes in enjoying. These successes occur through fantasy. An analysis of racism that focuses on the unconscious must take fantasy as its starting point.5 While not every society relies on a foundational racist fantasy, every society that has structural racism does. Fantasy organizes enjoyment in a way that highlights threats to this enjoyment, which is why it provides a foundation for obfuscating social inequalities.6 Racism manifests itself first and foremost not through an exclusionary legal or social apparatus that gives one race an elevated social position that it denies to others. The primary manifestation of racism is the racist fantasy. The racist fantasy serves as the foundation for the legal and social apparatus of discrimination that arises around it. It has primacy because it provides a way of organizing enjoyment for the members of a society that enables them to sustain the image of an unlimited and complete satisfaction. This fantasy becomes especially necessary in the capitalist universe. Without the racist fantasy, people in capitalist society would lose faith in this image of total satisfaction. Racism keeps the image of an unlimited satisfaction alive by erecting the racial other as a barrier to it. In order to confront racism, it is not enough to make reference to what is not conscious, to our implicit biases. We must recognize the unconscious fantasy that sustains racism and resists efforts at education or consciousness raising. This fantasy remains despite the efforts at educating away the society’s racism. Without broaching the fundamental role that the racist fantasy plays in the formation and perpetuation of racism, we will have no chance at addressing the racism that resists enlightenment and awareness. This combat has to involve itself in the enjoyment that the racist fantasy produces.7 Although there are purely individual fantasies, there are also collective ones that enable societies to cohere around them. The racist fantasy is the primary example of a collective fantasy.8 It establishes a bond between members of the society by separating those who belong from those who don’t belong through their mode of enjoying themselves. The irony is that the enjoyment of those who belong depends on their identification with the enjoyment of those who don’t. This identification occurs through the racist fantasy. The racist fantasy creates an avenue for members of the society to find enjoyment in a direction that doesn’t threaten the structure of the society but instead affirms it. The danger that enjoyment poses to the social order lessens when it occurs through the organizing principle of the racist fantasy, which channels it in socially innocuous ways. Even though we imagine that racism has deleterious effects on our bond with each other, that it harms the social order, the racist fantasy nonetheless can provide a social glue that holds a society together. Through the shared enjoyment that comes from a mutual investment in this fantasy, members of the society have a clear connection to each other. Those who don’t share in the fantasy, however, exist outside of the bond and are inherently suspect as members of the society. They are members of the society but don’t belong.9 Although those invested in it have some conscious knowledge of the racist fantasy, the way that the fantasy organizes enjoyment is unconscious. It is thus impervious to knowledge. The fact that the racist fantasy is responsible for much of the deployment of enjoyment in contemporary society means that efforts at correcting our knowledge about racism will come to nothing. The racist fantasy organizes the society’s enjoyment around racist resentment. We can learn about the wrongs of racism, but we need something more to undermine the racist fantasy that underwrites racism’s staying power. Fantasies are resistant to greater knowledge because they concern how people enjoy rather than how they know. Racism is a fantasy problem, not a knowledge problem. Racism sticks around in our era of increased knowledge about its wrongheadedness because we are psychically invested as a society in a fundamental racist fantasy. Although people may consciously want to put racism behind them, their unconscious desire clings to it as a source of enjoyment. The path to this enjoyment runs through the underlying racist fantasy.

McGowan 22 (Todd McGowan, Professor of English at the University of Vermont, USA, “The Bedlam of the Lynch Mob: Racism and Enjoying Through the Other,” Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, pgs. 19-21)//JRD

The contemporary proliferation of racism in spite of our knowledge about its wrongs suggests that we have an unconscious investment in racism that continues and multiplies. Armed with education and a belief in racism’s fundamental immorality, people today should have no problem leaving racist ideas and practices behind. But education and morality are not enough. They are powerless in the face of an unconscious investment, which provides the foundation for racism’s continuing appeal for those who indulge in it. The unconscious investment is the central pillar of racism’s intransigence. Unless one takes the unconscious as the starting point for making sense of racism’s appeal, the mystery of the enduring power of racism is almost impossible to decipher. historical accounts make clear the extent of the problem, but they do not help us to resolve it because they never attack racism at the point where it has a hold over us. The struggle against racism requires an engagement with the unconscious, but deciphering the unconscious appeal of racism places us on the difficult terrain of psychoanalytic interpretation Although the term unconscious bias has become a regular part of the anti-racist lexicon, the analysis of the unconscious has not. But once one begins with the premise that the problem of racism is a problem of knowing, one necessarily misses the radicality of the problem. Armed with this understanding, to correct our unconscious bias, we just need a little diversity training that teaches us that our biases are unfounded. All we need to do is to fill in the gaps of our knowledge. if racism is unconscious, this means that it is not simply a problem of knowing but a problem of enjoying. We enjoy at odds with how we know. That is to say, we enjoy not in spite of knowing better but because we know better. Our unconscious investment in racism delivers an enjoyment that comes at the expense of what we know, when we transgress the norms that we know we should obey. No matter how much we know better, this enjoyment will find a way to manifest itself. Instruction alone cannot alter how we enjoy. The reference to the unconscious is superficial and does not have anything to do with the unconscious that psychoanalysis theorizes. Unconscious bias denotes racism that persons have without knowledge, not the part of racism that resists knowledge, which is the effect of the unconscious. The unconscious isn’t simply a lack of knowledge. It is what one does without being able to know it prior to acting. The unconscious acts ahead of our knowledge. Taking this understanding of the unconscious as our point of departure, we must reverse the relationship between racism and knowledge. Racism is not the result of a bias in our knowing, but rather we have a bias in our knowing because of racism. To find the root of racism we must look not at mistakes in knowing but at successes in enjoying. An analysis of racism that focuses on the unconscious must take fantasy as its starting point. While not every society relies on a foundational racist fantasy, every society that has structural racism does. Fantasy organizes enjoyment in a way that highlights threats to this enjoyment, which is why it provides a foundation for obfuscating social inequalities. Racism manifests itself not through an exclusionary legal or social apparatus that gives one race an elevated social position that it denies to others. The primary manifestation of racism is the racist fantasy. The racist fantasy serves as the foundation for the legal and social apparatus of discrimination that arises around it. It has primacy because it provides a way of organizing enjoyment for the members of a society that enables them to sustain the image of an unlimited and complete satisfaction. This fantasy becomes especially necessary in the capitalist universe. Without the racist fantasy, people in capitalist society would lose faith in this image of total satisfaction. Racism keeps the image of an unlimited satisfaction alive by erecting the racial other as a barrier to it. In order to confront racism, it is not enough to make reference to what is not conscious, to our implicit biases. We must recognize the unconscious fantasy that sustains racism and resists efforts at education or consciousness raising. This fantasy remains despite the efforts at educating away the society’s racism. Without broaching the fundamental role that the racist fantasy plays in the formation and perpetuation of racism, we will have no chance at addressing the racism that resists enlightenment and awareness. This combat has to involve itself in the enjoyment that the racist fantasy produces. The racist fantasy establishes a bond between members of the society by separating those who belong from those who don’t belong through their mode of enjoying themselves. The racist fantasy creates an avenue for members of the society to find enjoyment in a direction that doesn’t threaten the structure of the society but instead affirms it. The danger that enjoyment poses to the social order lessens when it occurs through the organizing principle of the racist fantasy, which channels it in socially innocuous ways. Through the shared enjoyment that comes from a mutual investment in this fantasy, members of the society have a clear connection to each other. Those who don’t share in the fantasy, however, exist outside of the bond and are inherently suspect as members of the society. They are members of the society but don’t belong. Although those invested in it have some conscious knowledge of the racist fantasy, the way that the fantasy organizes enjoyment is unconscious. It is thus impervious to knowledge. The fact that the racist fantasy is responsible for much of the deployment of enjoyment in contemporary society means that efforts at correcting our knowledge about racism will come to nothing. The racist fantasy organizes the society’s enjoyment around racist resentment. We can learn about the wrongs of racism, but we need something more to undermine the racist fantasy that underwrites racism’s staying power. Fantasies are resistant to greater knowledge because they concern how people enjoy rather than how they know. Racism is a fantasy problem, not a knowledge problem. Racism sticks around in our era of increased knowledge about its wrongheadedness because we are psychically invested as a society in a fundamental racist fantasy. Although people may consciously want to put racism behind them, their unconscious desire clings to it as a source of enjoyment. The path to this enjoyment runs through the underlying racist fantasy.

They have missed the mark – racism is not a product of ignorance but one of enjoyment. Their politics can only ever re-entrench hierarchies of racialization as they represent racism as a caricature of epistemological formations rather than that of the unconscious. The truth of racial hierarchies lies not in the failure to know the horrors of racism but rather in the human, all too human horror of knowing in the first place.

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2022

Perhaps the most vexing question for those who challenge capitalist relations of production is the one that asks what system will replace the capitalist one. Communism has been discredited, and those who hold onto the idea of communism, like Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, have no concrete account of what this idea would look like in practice. It is communism as an ideal, as Badiou readily admits, rather than as a concrete historical possibility. Their communism informs their thinking and practice, but it is not a system ready to be imposed. Other champions of communism, like Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, also fall victim to this inability to envision the communist future in anything other than superficial and ambiguous terms. They are cautious not to invoke any concrete descriptions that might function as rallying cries for a political movement. Still others, like Simon Critchley or Judith Butler, champion resistance to capitalism as an end in itself and offer no sense of an alternative.26

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 197-199, 20 September 2016, MG)

Perhaps the most vexing question for those who challenge capitalist relations of production is the one that asks what system will replace the capitalist one. Communism has been discredited, and those who hold onto the idea of communism have no concrete account of what this idea would look like in practice. It is communism as an ideal rather than as a concrete historical possibility. Their communism informs their thinking and practice, but it is not a system ready to be imposed. Other champions of communism, like Negri and Hardt, also fall victim to this inability to envision the communist future in anything other than superficial and ambiguous terms. They are cautious not to invoke any concrete descriptions that might function as rallying cries for a political movement

Imagining a communist society is a thought experiment gone wrong that embraces the horror of the real, enables catastrophic dissatisfaction, and creates disaster

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2022

Capitalism has a parasitic relationship to signification. It mirrors the effects that language has on the speaking being, while cementing the psychic dependence that the speaking being has on the illusory desire of the Other that emerges through signification. Capitalism remolds the subject in its own image and protects the subject from confronting its own traumatic satisfaction. It is, of course, possible to break this hold, to which the bare fact of recognizing it attests. But doing so requires discovering the extent and power of its reach.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 63-65, 20 September 2016, MG)

Capitalism has a parasitic relationship to signification. It mirrors the effects that language has on the speaking being, while cementing the psychic dependence that the speaking being has on the illusory desire of the Other that emerges through signification. Capitalism remolds the subject in its own image and protects the subject from confronting its own traumatic satisfaction

Deleuze and Guattari are goofy – the system wants you to invest into desire which cements psychic dependence on capitalism

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2022

The brilliance of Ricardo’s formulation has stood the test of time, and we should have a proper appreciation for it. Prominent defenders of capitalism in the twentieth century, like F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, continued to reason like this in order to justify the ways of capitalism to humanity. Ricardo’s logic cannot be countered because it is perfectly circular: capitalism gratifies human desires, but it is only through the free market that we can know those desires. Ricardo never articulates the nature of human desires prior to their fulfillment, which renders his solution so elegant and utterly irrefutable. From this perspective, any attempt to argue for an alternative would ipso facto represent a loss of touch with desire as such. Though Ricardo’s argument is irrefutable, it does rest on the vitalist assumption that desire is natural, that it emerges out of life itself. According to this assumption, we simply cannot be made to desire what we don’t already desire.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 129-130, 20 September 2016, MG)

capitalism gratifies human desires, but it is only through the free market that we can know those desires any attempt to argue for an alternative would ipso facto represent a loss of touch with desire as such

Deleuze and Guattari can’t explain the denial of desire but we can – reject the goofballs

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

When experts become the voice of authority, the political landscape undergoes a dramatic change, the ramifications of which have become increasingly visible in the last few decades. The transformation of authority that began in the seventeenth century realized itself at the conclusion of the twentieth, and the result has been a reversal of traditional political alignments. This social revolution strips the forces of social change of their favorite weapon — knowledge — because use of this weapon has the effect of turning subjects against social change, despite the fact that that change is clearly in their best interests. In today’s world, expert knowledge necessarily confronts the subject as an external imperative laced with the power of prohibition. The rise of the expert corresponds to the increasing complexity and treacherousness of everyday life; contemporary existence seems to demand expert analysis to render it navigable. In his account of the emergence of what he calls a “risk society,” Ulrich Beck notices the politics of expert knowledge changing sides. He points out: “The non-acceptance of the scientific definition of risks is not something to be reproached as ‘irrationality’ in the population; but quite to the contrary, it indicates that the cultural premises of acceptability contained in scientific and technical statements on risks are wrong." The technical risk experts are mistaken in the empirical accuracy of their implicit value premises, specifically in their assumptions of what appears acceptable to the population.”9 Experts provide guidelines that allow subjects to navigate the contours of contemporary society, in which risk confronts us everywhere, but the experts perform this function with no proper sense of what the population desires. In this process, experts inevitably assume the role of authority figures. As Beck’s statement above indicates, from the perspective of the general population itself, the relationship between the expert and the population is adversarial. Through psychoanalytic thought, we can gain insight into the ramifications of the rise of the expert authority and the decline of the master. The emergence of the expert as the figure of authority fundamentally changes the political terrain, and our political thinking must adjust to this transformation. Psychoanalytic thought represents a privileged vehicle for making the adjustment. Combating the expert is much more difficult than combating the master: the knowledge that would subvert mastery becomes part of the power that the expert wields and thus loses its subversive power. A different political program — one that focuses on enjoyment rather than knowledge — becomes necessary because the master and the expert take up radically different positions relative to enjoyment. Unlike the master, the earlier form of social authority, the expert not only prohibits enjoyment but also appears to embody this enjoyment through the act of laying down regulations. The expert enjoys informing subjects about the dangers they face or the ways they should alter their behavior, and it is this enjoyment that subjects rebel against. The enjoyment that the expert derives from providing counsel is the explicit focus of Peter Segal’s Anger Management (2003), which finds comedy in the abuse that an anger management therapist heaps on his client. The film recounts the travails of a timid businessman, Dave Buznik (Adam Sandler), who is sentenced to anger management therapy aft er a misunderstanding occurs between a flight attendant and him while he is traveling. His therapist, Dr. Buddy Rydell ( Jack Nicholson), practices an aggressive treatment that involves intimidating Buznik, screaming at him, and even invading his personal life. At the end of the film, rather than helping Buznik, Rydell appears to have wooed Buznik’s girlfriend away from him and basically destroyed his life. Here we see all the ways that the expert enjoys deploying knowledge, and this enjoyment occurs at the expense of the subject receiving the advice. But in the last instance Anger Management remains fully ensconced in the regime of the expert, despite the comedy it tries to create at the expense of this regime. The film’s ending reveals that Rydell has set up the entire experience — including the incident with the flight attendant and the sentencing by the judge — in order to impel Buznik to express himself, especially to his girlfriend. Rather than a course in anger management, Rydell has actually been offering a course in self-expression. This denouement transforms the film’s (and the viewer’s) relationship to the expert: rather than impugning the rule of expertise and knowledge, the film becomes an affirmation of it. The ending of the film doesn’t simply spoil an otherwise trenchant critique of expert rule but infects the critique throughout the film. The critique — and the comedy, unfortunately — never go far enough because the idea that the expert really knows and really has the best interests of the client at heart informs the entirety of the film. The film’s investment in the expert that it appears to critique portends the film’s failure as both comedy and critique. 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 expert’s 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 csi: 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 expert’s genius at finding a solution. Expert knowledge — a knowledge not accessible to the ordinary subject — has 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 expert’s 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 subject’s 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 sexualization.”11 Instead of emancipating the subject, knowledge traumatizes and plays the central role in the subjection of the subject to the order of social regulation.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan, Professor of English at the University of Vermont, USA, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis,” pgs. 170-172)//JRD

When experts become the voice of authority, the political landscape undergoes a dramatic change, the ramifications of which have become increasingly visible in the last few decades. This social revolution strips the forces of social change of their favorite weapon — knowledge — because use of this weapon has the effect of turning subjects against social change, despite the fact that that change is clearly in their best interests. In today’s world, expert knowledge necessarily confronts the subject as an external imperative laced with the power of prohibition. The rise of the expert corresponds to the increasing complexity and treacherousness of everyday life; contemporary existence seems to demand expert analysis to render it navigable. The non-acceptance of the scientific definition of risks is not something to be reproached as ‘irrationality’ in the population; but quite to the contrary, it indicates that the cultural premises of acceptability contained in scientific and technical statements on risks are wrong." The technical risk experts are mistaken in the empirical accuracy of their implicit value premises, specifically in their assumptions of what appears acceptable to the population. Experts provide guidelines that allow subjects to navigate the contours of contemporary society, in which risk confronts us everywhere, but the experts perform this function with no proper sense of what the population desires. In this process, experts inevitably assume the role of authority figures. the relationship between the expert and the population is adversarial. we can gain insight into the ramifications of the rise of the expert authority The emergence of the expert as the figure of authority fundamentally changes the political terrain and our political thinking must adjust to this transformation. Combating the expert is much more difficult than combating the master: the knowledge that would subvert mastery becomes part of the power that the expert wields and thus loses its subversive power. A different political program — one that focuses on enjoyment rather than knowledge — becomes necessary because the master and the expert take up radically different positions relative to enjoyment. Unlike the master, the earlier form of social authority, the expert not only prohibits enjoyment but also appears to embody this enjoyment through the act of laying down regulations. The expert enjoys informing subjects about the dangers they face or the ways they should alter their behavior, and it is this enjoyment that subjects rebel against. this enjoyment occurs at the expense of the subject receiving the advice. Management remains fully ensconced in the regime of the expert The rule of the expert has such a degree of hegemony today that it is difficult to think of any attempt to contest it or expose the expert’s enjoyment without ultimately partaking of it. the works that allow audiences to enjoy along with the expert multiply throughout the culture. Expert knowledge — a knowledge not accessible to the ordinary subject — has 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 expert’s 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. the expert is always in the subject’s face never allowing the subject room to breathe. Under the rule of the expert, subjects experience a sustained traumatization induced by exposure Exposure to this type of authority, to “this excess of knowledge,” produces “an intensification of the body [that] is first and foremost a sexualization.” Instead of emancipating the subject, knowledge traumatizes and plays the central role in the subjection of the subject to the order of social regulation.

Reject their illusions of grandeur and dictum of expertise.

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2022

Throughout most of his seminars, Jacques Lacan attacks love as a narcissistic illusion. When the subject loves, it places the other in exactly the same position that the ego occupies in the narcissistic relation. Both narcissism and love enable the subject to short-circuit the relationship with social authority while still remaining within the domain of that authority. One feels free without having to endure the groundlessness of actual freedom. Though he does see the possibility of an exception, Lacan says in a statement representative of his overall attitude, “love is only accessible on the condition that it remains always narrowly narcissistic.”16 While in love with someone else, one loves oneself through this other. No one feels like a narcissist when she or he loves, but this is just the result of love’s deception. Nonetheless, narcissism is not the last word on love.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 211-213, 20 September 2016, MG)

love as a narcissistic illusion. When the subject loves, it places the other in exactly the same position that the ego occupies in the narcissistic relation. Both narcissism and love enable the subject to short-circuit the relationship with social authority while still remaining within the domain of that authority. One feels free without having to endure the groundlessness of actual freedom love is only accessible on the condition that it remains always narrowly narcissistic.”16 While in love with someone else, one loves oneself through this other. No one feels like a narcissist when she or he loves, but this is just the result of love’s deception

Embracing an ethic of love is a narcissistic illusion that traumatizes the subject and forces others to change in dissatisfying ways

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2022

But the inescapability of the idea of progress goes still further. It is not just the normative appeal that implies this idea; any system of thought, even one that confines itself to pure descriptions, inevitably points toward the possibility of progress. The act of articulating a system of thought implies the belief that a better world is possible and that the knowledge the system provides will assist in realizing this better world. If I didn’t believe in the possibility of improvement, I would never bother to articulate any system at all. The very act of enunciating even the most pessimistic system attests to a fundamental optimism and hope for progress beyond the status quo. This is true for an extreme pessimist like Arthur Schopenhauer as much as it is for an avowed utopian like Charles Fourier. The position from which one enunciates the pessimistic system is the position invested in the idea of progress, even when the enunciated content of the system completely denounces the idea. Though the good may be impossible to realize, it is also impossible to abandon entirely. The production of knowledge itself points, often despite itself, toward a better future.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 17-19, 1 July 2013, MG)

But the inescapability of the idea of progress goes still further any system of thought, even one that confines itself to pure descriptions, inevitably points toward the possibility of progress. The act of articulating a system of thought implies the belief that a better world is possible and that the knowledge the system provides will assist in realizing this better world. If I didn’t believe in the possibility of improvement, I would never bother to articulate any system at all. The very act of enunciating even the most pessimistic system attests to a fundamental optimism and hope for progress beyond the status quo The position from which one enunciates the pessimistic system is the position invested in the idea of progress, even when the enunciated content of the system completely denounces the idea The production of knowledge itself points, often despite itself, toward a better future.

Formulating alternative systems of knowledge production is a ruse of progress and solely amplifies the power of the death drive, confronting bodies with a horror of knowing

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Kritiks

2022

We have all had the experience of watching two people talking, despite that both are effectively really only talking about – and listening to – themselves. Lacan confronts this problem of substance-less speech, the dead-end alley of selfproclaiming talk, with his notion of ‘empty speech’. It is not hard to guess why he would prioritize this issue: an obvious clinical imperative lies with avoiding such a situation, where talking too much leads us away from truth. Any number of colloquial terms evoke the type of talk I have in mind here, the idea for example that someone has ‘verbal diarrhoea’, that they are ceaselessly blathering, ‘gassing on’ or that they talking at me rather than to me. This ego-led type of interpersonal communication is well depicted in an episode of the US TV show The Sopranos. The lead character, Tony, is forced to take a hiatus from his therapy, and at first struggles to find a suitable listener to take her place. It quickly becomes apparent that her replacement, an old friend of Tony’s, is not up to the task: although he listens at first, he uses the pauses in Tony’s speech to insert stories and complaints of his own – in other words, he listens and responds with his ego. Their resulting conversation is like a comedic parody of a dialogue: their respective narratives hardly connect; they speak over one another, paying little if any attention to what the other is saying; any break in the other’s speech becomes the opportunity for their counterpart to rehearse something about themselves. We have the situation, in short, where two speakers, seemingly involved in a dialogue, are actually involved in two self-enclosed monologues, each using the other as a communicative vehicle for a story they are telling themselves about themselves. In his 1961–1962 seminar on Identification, Lacan coins a term for this tendency to reduce everything to the perspective of me: ‘mihilism’. In such exchanges each participant is locked into a narcissistic closed-circuit of ego speech in which the only thing that matters is how this communicative content rebounds off their own imaginary sense of self. The familiar phrase, that someone is ‘speaking shit’ comes to mind – not in the sense of flagrant dishonesty, but in the sense of speech that one misleads oneself with, attempting thereby to secure or comfort one’s self, to reduce one’s anxiety, to make one’s self feel whole. Import - antly, what I am attempting to invoke is not something that can be reduced to impoliteness or a banal form of self-centredness. As will become apparent as we continue, such an ego-centred or ‘imaginary’ dimension of communication is not merely an anomaly, an irritating aspect of everyday speech that blocks true dialogue. This empty speech should be viewed rather as a constant tendency within communicative exchange between people, an impasse of dialogue that is inherent to inter-subjective dialogue itself. This discussion of the problems underlying the imaginary register of communication sounds a note of caution regards the popularity of types of narrative analysis in psychology, particularly when such narrative analyses are deployed to ostensibly critical ends. Now while it is true that not all narrative forms can be limited to the function of empty speech, it is also the case that soliciting narratives from research subjects typically elicits the story an ego wants to tell about itself, which, in Lacanian terms, is for the most part a defensive and/or idealized formation, an index of the ego’s fundamental imaginary alienation. Hence Lacan’s description of empty speech as speech in which ‘the subject seems to be talking in vain about someone who, even if he were his dead ringer, can never become one with the assumption of his desire’ (2006, p. 211). Personal narratives often exemplify the imaginary functioning of empty speech: much narrative form typically works to create wholeness, cohesion, to provide the continuity of a storyline, the closure of a narrative arc (the resolution of crisis or challenge) along with the basis of a viable imaginary identification (a protagonist). Hence the priority in Lacanian psychoanalytic treatments afforded to disrupting ego-narratives, overturning the imaginary powers of self-narration, via free association, the abrupt halting of sessions and so on.1 To this discussion of empty speech we must make a vital qualification. The imaginary dimension to speech is not only a problem; it is also absolutely necessary to communication, it is a precondition for dialogue to occur at all. As Soler (1996) argues, empty speech affords a means of connecting with others, it calls out for the recognition that they can provide, it contains the prospects of a type of imaginary mediation – that one might be understood, loved – but it is, in itself, insufficient for transformation, for symbolic forms of truth.

Hook 18 (Derek Hook, Associate Professor in Psychology at Duquesne University, “Six Moments in Lacan: Communication and identification in psychology and psychoanalysis,” pgs. 48-49)//JRD

We have all had the experience of watching two people talking, despite that both are effectively really only talking about – and listening to – themselves. Lacan confronts of substance-less speech , with his notion of ‘empty speech’. This ego-led type of interpersonal communication is like a comedic parody of a dialogue: their respective narratives hardly connect; they speak over one another, paying little if any attention to what the other is saying; any break in the other’s speech becomes the opportunity for their counterpart to rehearse something about themselves. We have the situation, where two speakers, seemingly involved in a dialogue, are actually involved in two self-enclosed monologues, each using the other as a communicative vehicle for a story they are telling themselves about themselves. this tendency to reduce everything to the perspective of me: ‘mihilism’. each participant is locked into a narcissistic closed-circuit of ego speech in which the only thing that matters is how this communicative content rebounds off their own imaginary sense of self. one misleads oneself with, attempting thereby to secure or comfort one’s self, to reduce one’s anxiety, to make one’s self feel whole. such an ego-centred or ‘imaginary’ dimension of communication is not merely an anomaly, an irritating aspect of everyday speech that blocks true dialogue. empty speech should be viewed rather as a constant tendency within communicative exchange between people, an impasse of dialogue that is inherent to inter-subjective dialogue itself. while not all narrative forms can be limited to the function of empty speech, it is also the case that soliciting narratives typically elicits the story an ego wants to tell about itself, which is for the most part a defensive and/or idealized formation, an index of the ego’s fundamental imaginary alienation. Personal narratives often exemplify the imaginary functioning of empty speech: much narrative form typically works to create wholeness, cohesion, to provide the continuity of a storyline, the closure of a narrative arc along with the basis of a viable imaginary identification The imaginary dimension to speech is not only a problem; it is also absolutely necessary to communication, it is a precondition for dialogue to occur at all. empty speech affords a means of connecting with others, it calls out for the recognition that they can provide, it contains the prospects of a type of imaginary mediation – that one might be understood, loved – but it is, in itself, insufficient for transformation, for symbolic forms of truth.

Starting dialogue from the position of a personal narrative is nothing more than a cover up for the chasm at the heart of subjectivity, a meager forwarding of narcissism and a self-absorbed empty speech act as a comedic parody of dialogue.

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Kritiks

2022

In his rhetorical construction of the self as racial, Du Bois subjects himself to a domination by the signifiers of race in ways that can be understood in relation to Lacan’s reading of the mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy as central to subjective activity. Lacan’s work “links metaphor to the question of being and metonymy to its lack.”46 Metonymy expresses what Lacan identifies as the “properly signifying function” of language, the root effort of language to compensate for lack by routing the subject’s desire along a signifying chain in which desire is “eternally extending toward the desire for something else.”47 This something else is the plenitude of being that the subject seeks continually to find through the metonymical movement of language, through both the “transfer of signification” from one word to another within a signifying chain and the transfer of desire from one object to another as value and meaning are cast upon them by the signifier.48 It is this metonymical revaluing of race so as to retain it as a means of compensating for lack that we see in Du Bois. Born in what he defines as “the century when the walls of race were clear and straight” and “there was no question of exact definition and understanding of the word,” Du Bois eventually comes to question “the concept of race” because it “has so changed and presented so much contradiction.”49 Insofar as Du Bois reaches toward race as that which promises to fill lack, he struggles with these contradictions, shifting metonymically from the biological to the sociohistorical and eventually coming full circle through the signifier slavery to ground his identity in this very contradiction. However, the nature of this contradiction is such that it allows Du Bois a restrictive understanding of both his historical and his psychic self. In pinning his identity to slavery, Du Bois moves from the operations of metonymy to a metaphorical process whereby slavery is substituted as the dominating signifier for his (racial) identity. Where metaphor involves the substitution of the signifier for that which it names, the function of metaphor is to remanifest being, to give presence, through language, to absence. Most notable through the subject’s self-representation in the signifier of his or her proper name, metaphor allows for the emergence of the lost being in the only form through which it may manifest itself, as what Lacan refers to as “the being of signifierness.”50 This lost being is thus the signified implied in the signifier of the subject’s proper name. But what we see in Du Bois is how the signifier of slavery restructures his subjective relation to being. In Du Bois’ narrative, slavery functions as a dominating master signifier that delineates the meaning of Du Bois’ racial identity. Not only does it substitute itself for Du Bois’ proper name as the signifier that will structure Symbolic representation of his (racial) being, but it also conflates this being with the injury, insult, and discrimination both he and the nonwhite world suffer today and have suffered in the past, thus bonding them in a common identity. This substitution of identity and conflation of feelings is explained by a Lacanian understanding of metaphor as that which brings to a halt the metonymical sliding of desire and meaning through manifestation of a more lasting substitution, a “conjunction of two signifiers” for which there is “the greatest disparity of the images signified.”51 Such disparity of the signified is what we see in Du Bois when slavery, the new master signifier of his identity, structures Du Bois’ personal feelings and sense of being, in what he calls a “later reaction” to racism, around racial feelings that belong to all nonwhites. Slavery is able to produce this disparity that organizes his sliding feelings because metaphor does not involve juxtaposition of two equally actualized signifiers but is instead a process in which one signifier has “replaced the other” in “the signifying chain.”52 In such juxtaposition, the substituting signifier of slavery suppresses other signifiers of identity, so that they remain present only “by virtue of [their] (metonymic) connection to the rest of the chain,” while it simultaneously delimits and occludes the signifieds that emerge as an expression of this identity’s psychic and emotional reality.53 In Du  Bois’ discussion of his feelings toward Negroes and Africa, these personal feelings are themselves the signifieds that will express and further elide his being, articulating this being around the substitute signifier slavery that displaces the multiple signifiers of Du Bois’ personal identity with its dominating historical context. As signifieds Du  Bois’ personal feelings begin as what Lacan calls after Saussure an “amorphous” and “sentimental mass of the current of discourse,” but they become increasingly structured into “racial feelings” through the agency of the signifier slavery.54 It is this sentimental mass of the signified that Du  Bois experiences as “contradictory forces, facts and tendencies” that shuttle him through the changing currents of the discourse on race. These currents lead Du  Bois to question skeptically “what is Africa to me,” while they simultaneously ensure his affections for Africa, despite his rational rejection of biologically inflected notions of Africa as the “motherland.”55 The flow of this discourse is so determinative of Du Bois’ objects of desire that, though aware of the mixture of his own racial heritage and cultural background, Du Bois is driven at one point by what he terms an “ultra ‘race’ loyalty” to give “up courtship with one ‘colored’ girl because she looked quite white” and because, guided by racial allegiance, he “resented” the potential “inference on the street that [he] had married outside [his] race.”56 Du Bois’ self-admitted subjection to surrounding discourses on race exemplifies the sentimental mass of the signified as a “continuum,” as what Lacan terms a “confused mass” ever open, through domination by the signifier, to the “immeasurable power of ideological warfare.”57 Du Bois’ subjective feelings, in their amorphous metonymic shifting from skepticism and love to allegiance and resentment, along with his individual identity itself, become the grounds upon which this warfare is waged. In such warfare, it is the dominating substitute signifier that coheres and grants structure to the sentimental mass of the signified. Slavery as signifier comes to organize both desire and identity for Du Bois because slavery “crystallizes” his feelings and sense of self in what Lacan calls a “dialectic that has as its centre a bad encounter.”58 In psychoanalysis, the bad encounter is a “traumatizing” confrontation in the life of the subject that assumes an “organizing function for development” because it produces an awareness of lack.59 In Du Bois’ case, however, the bad encounter of slavery that organizes his personal biography is external to his biographical experiences. Slavery allows for the historicizing and, thus, depersonalizing of both being and lack for Du  Bois. This historicizing becomes possible because the racism of slavery that attempted to elide the being of slaves by pinning subjective lack exclusively to them also produced slavery as a central historical representative of subjective lack for later generations of African Americans. Racial identity itself, whether imposed by racism or willfully embraced by contemporary African Americans as the historical context for self-understanding and being, not only crystallizes for African Americans the indisputable link between slavery and the racism they continue to suffer but also may collapse their personal sense of being with the historical lack emerging from slavery. Racism is key to this conflation. In repeating a process whereby the African American subject’s relation to being is again questioned, as it was in slavery, racism grounds the African American subject’s psychic sense of lack not in the split self but in the racial past. This crystallization of identity through the bad encounter of slavery is therefore what redefines Du Bois’ own desires by obfuscating lack. Du Bois models the process by which slavery and racial identity may displace African Americans’ relation to both lack and being. Lacan ties the subject’s loss of being to the exclusion from the Symbolic of those aspects of the subject that defy linguistic circumscription, the drives and desires of the subject that evade representation even in the very process of the subject’s articulation of his or her demands. The root of these core drives and desires is the libido as “an internal” tension, a “constant force” that registers what the “sexed being loses in sexuality” upon entrance into the Symbolic.60 Initially “polymorphous, aberrant,” the emerging subject is able to attain pleasure through multiple sources, but sexuality and the signifier both step in to define the regions of the body and the objects of the Symbolic through which the sexed subject may attain pleasure.61 As a result, the constant force of the libido achieves Symbolic expression only as “partial drives,” emerging with only “that part of sexuality that passes into the networks of the constitution of the subject, into the networks of the signifier.”62 As “the most profound lost object,” the libido, manifested as an aphanisis of being, fuels desire and sexuality such that it is through pursuit of a mate that the subject attempts typically to compensate for lack, seeking out in love the person who possesses the illusory lost object that will fulfill [them]him or her and make [them]him or her, fantastically, whole again.63 However, African Americans like Du Bois, who ground their identity primarily in race, relate to this fantasy of wholeness on a grander scale. As we see above, when he reaches the point of “ultra ‘race’ loyalty,” what compensates for lack in Du Bois is not a connection with a mate but membership in a larger race. In this moment, desire is most directly grounded in the substitute signifier slavery that organizes the sentimental continuum away from personal lack and toward an external bad encounter that presents itself as a fixing manifestation of loss for all members of the race. Because slavery has so bound loss to race, race itself becomes the illusory object upon “which the drive closes” in its pursuit of wholeness.64 Beyond love of a mate, love of the race becomes the primary means of curing whatever ails the subject and fulfilling all of Du Bois’ desires as he begins to define all lack and all suffering as racial. Here we see how the amorphous continuum of an African American’s subjective feelings and desires may be reshaped by existent discourses of race and a privileging of one’s relation to the history of slavery. Lacan explains that the continuum of the signified is part of the “double flow of discourse,” in which the chain of the signified can be envisioned as positioned below the chain of the signifier so as to form “two planes” that are each “indefinitely subdivided within themselves.”65 This amorphous mass of feelings slides continually “under the signifier,” oscillating metonymically across the plane of the signified until through metaphor a “quilting point” is achieved, a knitting together of the tangential planes such that the signifier, in purporting to embody the signified, “stops the otherwise indefinite sliding of signification.”66 For Du  Bois, slavery becomes the displacing metaphorical signifier of personal identity, centering a reticulated network of signifiers in which what are substitutionally displaced are those signifiers that mark the self as nonracial, multiracial, or more than racial. On the second plane of discourse, slavery’s signifieds—insult, discrimination, disaster—grant linguistic and cognitive structure to the amorphous feelings of desire and lack Du Bois experiences, forming the “lines of force” that organize this plane of the signified in its convergence with the signifier slavery.67 The end result is a knitting together of the planes so that self-identity is pinned to the master signifier slavery as a linguistic quilting point that names Du Bois’ feelings as racial, defines the proper (i.e., racial) objects of his desire, and, finally, binds his being and his lack to the suffering of all nonwhites.

George 16 (Sheldon George, Professor of English at Simmons University, 2016 , "Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity", pp 48-53)//guyB

Du Bois subjects himself to a domination by the signifiers of race in ways that can be understood in relation to Lacan’s reading of the mechanisms of metaphor and metonymy as central to subjective activity Lacan’s work “links metaphor to the question of being and metonymy to its lack. Metonymy expresses what Lacan identifies as the “properly signifying function” of language, the root effort of language to compensate for lack by routing the subject’s desire along a signifying chain in which desire is “eternally extending toward the desire for something else Du Bois eventually comes to question “the concept of race” because it “has so changed and presented so much contradiction 49 Insofar as Du Bois reaches toward race as that which promises to fill lack, he struggles with these contradictions, shifting metonymically from the biological to the sociohistorical and eventually coming full circle through the signifier slavery to ground his identity in this very contradiction this contradiction allows Du Bois a restrictive understanding of both his historical and his psychic self In pinning his identity to slavery, Du Bois moves from the operations of metonymy to a metaphorical process whereby slavery is substituted as the dominating signifier for his (racial) identity metaphor involves the substitution of the signifier for that which it names, the function of metaphor is to remanifest being, to give presence, through language, to absence Most notable through the subject’s self-representation in the signifier of his or her proper name, metaphor allows for the emergence of the lost being in the only form through which it may manifest itself, as what Lacan refers to as “the being of signifierness This lost being is thus the signified implied in the signifier of the subject’s proper name what we see in Du Bois is how the signifier of slavery restructures his subjective relation to being , slavery functions as a dominating master signifier that delineates the meaning of Du Bois’ racial identity it substitute itself for Du Bois’ proper name as the signifier that will structure Symbolic representation of his (racial) being conflates this being with the injury, insult, and discrimination both he and the nonwhite world suffer today and have suffered in the past, thus bonding them in a common identity. This substitution of identity and conflation of feelings is explained by a Lacanian understanding of metaphor as that which brings to a halt the metonymical sliding of desire and meaning through manifestation of a more lasting substitution, a “conjunction of two signifiers” for which there is “the greatest disparity of the images signified.” Such disparity of the signified is what we see in Du Bois when slavery, the new master signifier of his identity, structures Du Bois’ personal feelings and sense of being, in what he calls a “later reaction” to racism, around racial feelings that belong to all nonwhites Slavery is able to produce this disparity that organizes his sliding feelings because metaphor does not involve juxtaposition of two equally actualized signifiers but is instead a process in which one signifier has “replaced the other” in “the signifying chain the substituting signifier of slavery suppresses other signifiers of identity, so that they remain present only “by virtue of [their] (metonymic) connection to the rest of the chain, it simultaneously delimits and occludes the signifieds that emerge as an expression of this identity’s psychic and emotional reality these personal feelings are themselves the signifieds that will express and further elide his being, articulating this being around the substitute signifier slavery that displaces the multiple signifiers of Du Bois’ personal identity with its dominating historical context Du  Bois’ personal feelings begin as what Lacan calls after Saussure an “amorphous” and “sentimental mass of the current of discourse,” but they become increasingly structured into “racial feelings” through the agency of the signifier slavery It is this sentimental mass of the signified that Du  Bois experiences as “contradictory forces, facts and tendencies” The flow of this discourse is so determinative of Du Bois’ objects of desire that, though aware of the mixture of his own racial heritage and cultural background, Du Bois is driven at one point by what he terms an “ultra ‘race’ loyalty” to give “up courtship with one ‘colored’ girl because she looked quite white” and because, guided by racial allegiance, he “resented” the potential “inference on the street that [he] had married outside [his] race self-admitted subjection to surrounding discourses on race exemplifies the sentimental mass of the signified as a “continuum,” as what Lacan terms a “confused mass” ever open, through domination by the signifier, to the “immeasurable power of ideological warfare Bois’ subjective feelings, in their amorphous metonymic shifting from skepticism and love to allegiance and resentment, along with his individual identity itself, become the grounds upon which this warfare is waged , it is the dominating substitute signifier that coheres and grants structure to the sentimental mass of the signified Slavery as signifier comes to organize both desire and identity for Du Bois because slavery “crystallizes” his feelings and sense of self in what Lacan calls a “dialectic that has as its centre a bad encounter the bad encounter is a “traumatizing” confrontation in the life of the subject that assumes an “organizing function for development” because it produces an awareness of lack the bad encounter of slavery that organizes his personal biography is external to his biographical experiences Slavery allows for the historicizing and, thus, depersonalizing of both being and lack for Du  Bois the racism of slavery that attempted to elide the being of slaves by pinning subjective lack exclusively to them also produced slavery as a central historical representative of subjective lack for later generations of African Americans Racial identity itself, whether imposed by racism or willfully embraced by contemporary African Americans as the historical context for self-understanding and being, not only crystallizes for African Americans the indisputable link between slavery and the racism they continue to suffer but also may collapse their personal sense of being with the historical lack emerging from slavery. Racism is key to this conflation racism grounds the African American subject’s psychic sense of lack not in the split self but in the racial past slavery and racial identity may displace African Americans’ relation to both lack and being ties the subject’s loss of being to the exclusion from the Symbolic of those aspects of the subject that defy linguistic circumscription The root of these core drives and desires is the libido as “an internal” tension, a “constant force” that registers what the “sexed being loses in sexuality” upon entrance into the Symbolic sexuality and the signifier both step in to define the regions of the body and the objects of the Symbolic through which the sexed subject may attain pleasure the constant force of the libido achieves Symbolic expression only as “partial drives,” emerging with only “that part of sexuality that passes into the networks of the constitution of the subject, into the networks of the signifier the libido fuels desire and sexuality such that it is through pursuit of a mate that the subject attempts typically to compensate for lack, seeking out in love the person who possesses the illusory lost object that will fulfill [them]him or her and make [them]him or her, fantastically, whole again African Americans like Du Bois, who ground their identity primarily in race, relate to this fantasy of wholeness on a grander scale , when he reaches the point of “ultra ‘race’ loyalty,” what compensates for lack in Du Bois is not a connection with a mate but membership in a larger race desire is most directly grounded in the substitute signifier slavery that organizes the sentimental continuum away from personal lack and toward an external bad encounter that presents itself as a fixing manifestation of loss for all members of the race race itself becomes the illusory object upon “which the drive closes” in its pursuit of wholeness love of the race becomes the primary means of curing whatever ails the subject and fulfilling all of Du Bois’ desires as he begins to define all lack and all suffering as racial the continuum of the signified is part of the “double flow of discourse,” in which the chain of the signified can be envisioned as positioned below the chain of the signifier so as to form “two planes” that are each “indefinitely subdivided within themselves. slides continually “under the signifier,” oscillating metonymically across the plane of the signified until through metaphor a “quilting point” is achieved, a knitting together of the tangential planes such that the signifier, in purporting to embody the signified, “stops the otherwise indefinite sliding of signification. slavery becomes the displacing metaphorical signifier of personal identity, centering a reticulated network of signifiers in which what are substitutionally displaced are those signifiers that mark the self as nonracial, multiracial, or more than racial slavery’s signifieds—insult, discrimination, disaster—grant linguistic and cognitive structure to the amorphous feelings of desire and lack Du Bois experiences, forming the “lines of force” that organize this plane of the signified in its convergence with the signifier slavery a knitting together of the planes so that self-identity is pinned to the master signifier slavery as a linguistic quilting point that names Du Bois’ feelings as racial, defines the proper objects of his desire, and, finally, binds his being and his lack to the suffering of all nonwhites.

They place racial alliance as the object of desire which both incentivizes incentivizes authenticity testing and defines personal being via the trauma of slavery

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Kritiks

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This is the limitation of pseudo-Hegelian political projects oriented around garnering recognition. They necessarily remain within the confines of the order that they challenge, and even success will never provide the satisfaction that the project promises. Full recognition would bring with it not the sense of finally penetrating into the secret enclave of the social authority but instead the disappointment of seeing that this secret does not exist. The widespread acceptance of gay marriage in the United States, for instance, would not provide a heretofore missing satisfaction, because the social authority that would provide the recognition is not a substantial entity fully consistent with itself. Even though institutional authority can grant a marriage certificate to gay couples and the majority of the population can recognize the validity of the marriage, there is no agency that can authorize such a marriage that is itself authorized. Social authority, in other words, is always unauthorized or groundless, and this is the ultimate reason why the pursuit of recognition leads to frustration.

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 88-91, 1 July 2013, MG)

This is the limitation of political projects oriented around garnering recognition. They necessarily remain within the confines of the order that they challenge, and even success will never provide the satisfaction that the project promises. Full recognition would bring with it not the sense of finally penetrating into the secret enclave of the social authority but instead the disappointment of seeing that this secret does not exist the pursuit of recognition leads to frustration.

Their politics of recognition play right into the hands of the social order – they’ll never be satisfied through their infinite struggle causing frustration, and will only be more subjected to the social authority

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It is this excess that motivates the philosophy of Georges Bataille, perhaps the foremost thinker of sacrifice. Of all those who confront this mysterious phenomenon, Bataille is the one who does not try to reduce sacrifice to some form of interest. Instead, he accepts sacrifice as an act performed for its own sake. Societies sacrifice, according to Bataille, because sacrifice is essential to their functioning and because they enjoy it. He claims: “There is generally no growth but only a luxurious squandering of energy in every form! The history of life on earth is mainly the effect of a wild exuberance; the dominant event is the development of luxury, the production of increasingly burdensome forms of life.”8 Divesting itself of excess is the fundamental social operation, and this occurs most often through sacrifice. As society advances, it becomes more luxurious, sacrificing more and more, and this sacrifice is always its own reward, providing an enjoyment that derives from a process of unburdening.9

McGowan 13 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have”, University of Nebraska Press, Pages 148-150, 1 July 2013, MG)

Bataille is the one who does not try to reduce sacrifice to some form of interest. Instead, he accepts sacrifice as an act performed for its own sake. Societies sacrifice, according to Bataille, because sacrifice is essential to their functioning and because they enjoy it

The desire to sacrifice is one that masks the loss underneath that is imposed onto bodies to endure – it ends up reenacting the state

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The problem with Bataille, however, is that his theory of sacrifice is grounded in an ontology of excess energy. We enjoy sacrifice because we are burdened with too much energy: there is enjoyment in the diminution of this burden. But Bataille never explains how this excess arises and how we obtain it. In this way, he misses the creative power of sacrifice, its capacity to form something out of nothing. We don’t begin with too much but with undifferentiated being, and sacrifice enables us to differentiate, to create a value where none otherwise exists. It is the creative power of sacrifice that generates its appeal.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 131-133, 20 September 2016, MG)

The problem with Bataille is that his theory of sacrifice is grounded in an ontology of excess energy. We enjoy sacrifice because we are burdened with too much energy: there is enjoyment in the diminution of this burden. But Bataille never explains how this excess arises and how we obtain it. In this way, he misses the creative power of sacrifice, its capacity to form something out of nothing It is the creative power of sacrifice that generates its appeal.

Bataille fell for the capitalist trap – sacrifice is a tool out of capitalism’s pocket to justify itself and forces dissatisfaction onto subjects

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Silva’s account of a transition to adulthood marked not by “entry into social groups and institutions but rather the explicit rejection of them” provides a poignant rejoinder to Sennett.19 One man tells Silva that “the hardest part about being an adult is finding a real fucking job.”20 People aren’t lacking a narrative for adulthood. Capitalism presents adulthood as an individual project. For the young working people Silva interviewed, individualism equals dignity. They tell heroic tales of self-sufficiency, turning inward as they manage feelings of betrayal, accept flexibility and flux, and buttress their sense of being utterly alone. Although the dependencies of the welfare state and corporate bureaucracy that Lasch associates with the therapeutic sensibility have been dismantled and replaced by a harsher, more competitive capitalism, therapeutic language remains the vocabulary through which to account for individual success and failure.

Dean 16 [Jodi, Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Erasmus Professor of the Humanities in the Faculty of Philosophy at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Crowds and Party, Verso (Brookyn, NY): 2016, p. 33-35]

Capitalism presents adulthood as an individual project They tell heroic tales of self-sufficiency, turning inward as they manage feelings of betrayal, accept flexibility and flux, and buttress their sense of being utterly alone therapeutic language remains the vocabulary through which to account for individual success and failure

***K of survival strategies:

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Every society makes use of sublimity. The sublime serves as the engine for social organization and for individual activity within that organization. Without some indication of the sublime, a society would become idle and cease even to reproduce itself. The sublime gives the subject the capacity for enjoyment by convincing it that its life is not simply a series of empty physical processes. The subject’s capacity for satisfaction emerges along with the idea of the sublime and can’t endure without this idea. The end of the sublime would mark the end of subjectivity itself in addition to the social order in which the subject exists. As subjects of the signifier, we need a reason to go on, and sublimity provides that reason for us.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 242-244, 20 September 2016, MG)

Every society makes use of sublimity. The sublime serves as the engine for social organization and for individual activity within that organization. Without some indication of the sublime, a society would become idle and cease even to reproduce The subject’s capacity for satisfaction emerges along with the idea of the sublime and can’t endure without this idea. The end of the sublime would mark the end of subjectivity itself in addition to the social order in which the subject exists. As subjects of the signifier, we need a reason to go on, and sublimity provides that reason for us.

Sublimity is capitalism’s pet – their endorsement of it exposes subjectivities and desecrates them by leaving them terminally dissatisfied as well as recreating the system

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In a number of works dedicated to potentiality, Giorgio Agamben has advocated just this type of change in perspective. He identifies potentiality not with the capacity to realize one’s desire but with the satisfaction that comes from the failure to realize it. As he argues in the essay “On Potentiality,” “To be potential means: to be one’s own lack, to be in relation to one’s own incapacity. Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become potential. They can be because they are in relation to their own non-Being.”16 Potentiality implies impotentiality and failure, an ability to identify with one’s own inability to realize a desire.17 Potentiality is an immanent alternative that exists within the capitalist system. Despite its insistence on all potentiality realizing itself in actuality, capitalism relies on impotentiality or the interruption of productivity to create new values and to sustain the functioning of the system.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 190-192, 20 September 2016, MG)

Beings that exist in the mode of potentiality are capable of their own impotentiality; and only in this way do they become potential. They can be because they are in relation to their own non-Being.”16 Potentiality implies impotentiality and failure, an ability to identify with one’s own inability to realize a desire. Despite its insistence on all potentiality realizing itself in actuality, capitalism relies on impotentiality or the interruption of productivity to create new values and to sustain the functioning of the system.

Their radical act of unproductivity gets commodified and used for new surplus value for the system – they’ve provided the same potentiality to the system as Donald Trump and Bill Gates

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Capitalism’s reliance on the outburst of nonproductivity that is politically opposed to the system is manifest in the response to the student movement of the 1960s. For many leftists, the 1960s—and especially May 1968—represent a highpoint in recent political history. 22 In contrast with the apolitical years of the 1980s and 1990s when university students around the world seemed more focused on finding a place within the capitalist economy than on asserting themselves politically, the 1960s were a time of dissatisfaction with this economy, a time when many tried to “turn on, tune in, and drop out.”23 The student radicals took up a position of nonproductivity and refused to comply with capitalist society’s demand that they become productive members of this society. They were a group who preferred not to contribute to capitalist relations of production.

McGowan 16 (Todd McGowan PhD - Professor of English at the University of Vermont, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Costs of Free Markets”, Columbia University Press, Pages 193-196, 20 September 2016, MG)

Capitalism’s reliance on the outburst of nonproductivity that is politically opposed to the system is manifest in the response to the student movement of the 1960s student radicals took up a position of nonproductivity and refused to comply with capitalist society’s demand that they become productive members of this society. They were a group who preferred not to contribute to capitalist relations of production.

Student movements, Vietnam, university reform, sexual liberty, civil rights, and the sexual revolution all prove that their ethic of unproductivity gets captured to fuel the regime, only the alt can solve

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Michigan (7-week)

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2022

Racial identification and the subversion of race Having foregrounded the centrality of fantasy and enjoyment to racism, and even fantasy’s centrality in previous psychoanalytic engagement with racialized others, we might ask: how are we to be liberated from such fantasies of race? Lacanian perspectives on race and racism would be of limited value to us, surely, if they did not broach this difficult question. Jennifer Friedlander’s chapter, “In medium race: traversing the fantasy of post-race discourse,” provides a prospective answer to how such a liberation might occur. Drawing on contemporary scholarship that recognizes race as an illusion, Friedlander highlights how identification with the illusory object of race is tied to race’s promise to serve as a “medium” through which to decipher the truths of the racist social reality this illusion itself helps generate. Friedlander questions the knowledge we seem to arrive at through this illusory medium. She urges “disavowal” of race through a Lacanian process of separation from the signifiers of race, which, she argues, secure formidable bonds of racial identification within post-racial discourse precisely through the fantasy of having seen past race and its illusions. The Lacanian concepts of the objet a and the Act may, she hopes, be harnessed to disrupt the binding structure of race, destabilizing race’s grip by pressing on—and identifying with—precisely its negativity. Friedlander argues that we should expose the incompleteness of the Symbolic order—the signifier’s inability to generate any finalized metatruth about our racial reality—alongside its inability to ever fully ground any subjective identity. To subvert such attempted grounding of identity, however, our contributors suggest that one must work from a clear understanding of the mechanisms at play in racial identification. This latter task is embraced most directly by the chapters of this section. One of the most egregious historical sites of global white supremacy was apartheid South Africa, a site of mass identification with the myth of racial whiteness. Derek Hook’s chapter “The object of apartheid desire: A Lacanian approach to racism and ideology” returns us to this site, drawing on the novelist J.M. Coetzee’s conceptualization of “the mind of apartheid” as a means of foregrounding a series of paradoxes underlying the racist ideology of this political system. How, for example, might we separate historical from subjective agency when accounting for the persistence of apartheid? Who, moreover, might be said to be the author of such racist ideologies when apartheid’s ideologues seem themselves subject to its parasitic spread of ideas? Taking as his starting point Coetzee’s suggestion that apartheid ideology was sustained by the promise of various “phantasmatic rewards,” Hook goes on to deploy a set of Lacanian concepts (the desire of the Other, objet petit a, the processes of alienation and separation) to advance a fulsome account of racist fantasy. Without an appreciation of racism as an ongoing transaction between the perceived desire of the Other and the subject’s own fantasmatic response to that desire (in the form of object a), says Hook, we fail to grasp how racism is simultaneously a subjective and a social formation; and, moreover, we fail to account for the insistent momentum and gratifications of racism and racial identification. Molly Rothenberg’s chapter “Raced Group Pathologies and Cultural Sublimation” is likewise concerned with the pathological dimension of raced group identification. Rothenberg focuses her analysis of identification on the production of a fantasm, that is, the embodiment of a common attribute of identification that overwrites the values of a given cultural egoideal and obstructs the development of individual desires. She explores desire and racial group identification in light of Lacanian structures of perversion and neurosis. Nella Larsen’s novel Quicksand serves as a crucial point of reference for Rothenberg, dramatizing as it does the effects on desire of fantasmatic raced identifications. It is in Lacan’s theorization of Atè, the ultimate object of desire veiling the death drive, that Rothenberg finds a prospective answer to what might counter and disrupt such pathologically perverse and neurotic raced identifications. Lacan regards Atè within the context of Sophocles’ Antigone, designating Antigone herself as Atè, as a new kind of imaged signifier (Un seul) that, drained of jouissance, stands for difference as such. For Rothenberg, the cathartic effect of Sophocles’ play depends on its production of just such a new kind of signifier that offers a model of cultural sublimation that could subvert pathological raced identifications. Race and the clinic A crucial factor enabling us to move beyond the parameters of much contemporary theorizing about race and racism concerns the clinic, and, more directly, the vocabulary that emerges from the realm of Lacanian clinical practice. One of Lacan’s most important contributions in this respect takes the form of his structural categories of diagnosis, namely, neurosis, psychosis, and perversion. Sheila Cavanagh makes figurative reference to the last of these in her chapter, “Race, perversion and jouissance in Portrait of Jason.” She explores Shirley Clarke’s (1967) documentary film on Jason Holliday—the first gay African American man to appear solo on screen—in which Holliday presents himself as a provocative and loquacious hustler. The film, for Cavanagh, resembles an unorthodox psychoanalytic scene where the intention is not to cure, but rather to expose a perverse truth about Holliday. His stories of anti-black racism are, she says, as erotic and titillating as they are harrowing and unbelievable, inviting uncertainty with respect to the difference between fact and fiction, reality and the Real. Holliday becomes the object cause of the Other’s (Clarke’s) jouissance in the tradition of the Lacanian pervert, his perverse performative discourse foregrounding the psychic traumatism of racism in an utterly distinct way. At the heart of clinical vocabulary is, of course, the term psychoanalysis itself. Patricia Gherovici’s contribution, “The lost souls of the barrio: Lacanian psychoanalysis in the Ghetto,” reminds us that in promoting this term, psychoanalysis, Freud put the accent on the first of its two conjoined parts, with “psyche” being the Greek word for soul. This is important, says Gherovici, inasmuch as nearly all of Freud’s references to the soul (die Seele) have been removed from English translations and replaced with “mind.” Gherovici links Freud’s emphasis on the soul to the legacy of Bartolomé de las Casas, a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and theologian who denounced the atrocities committed against Indigenous Peoples considered to be soulless animals. For de las Casas, to emphasize that Indigenous Peoples had souls was a way of advocating for a more humane policy of colonization. This historical juxtaposition frames Gherovici’s meditation on contemporary forms of racism, which she bases on her ongoing clinical work with inner-city Latinx analysands living in Philadelphia’s barrios. Gherovici’s Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective aims at establishing the right of barrio patients to own their “souls.” This means, she says, that they have the right to be considered as appropriate candidates for a psychoanalytic treatment, and to avail themselves of the emancipatory potential of the unconscious. Gherovici’s chapter stresses a need for both redefinitions of psychoanalysis and reconceptualization of its curative impact upon subjects of race. As Kareen Malone and Tiara Jackson similarly assert in their chapter, “Dereliction: Afropessimism, anti-Blackness and Lacanian psychoanalysis,” the work of the clinic itself must be reenvisioned to account for race. For such accounting, in the clinic and beyond, Malone and Jackson turn to Afropessimism, one of the most formidable and challenging critical perspectives on white supremacy and global racism to have emerged in recent years. They stage a conversation between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Afropessimism to think through anti-blackness and its relationship to the Lacanian registers of the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary. Moving between the fields of psychoanalysis and Afropessimism—both of which, significantly, are invested in questions of subjective formation or the lack thereof—Malone and Jackson invite us to consider the liminal space between being and nonbeing as a paradigm for thinking antiblack racism and violence. Taking up the effects of the history of enslavement and blackness as a category of nonbeing, they examine Black being/nonbeing in the “afterlives” of this history so as to situate black subjects in the context of both Lacan’s clinical frame and that of black social life. Their chapter closes with an examination of Christina Sharpe’s “wake work” as a modality of sublimation for blacks living within the perils of anti-blackness. While Malone and Jackson reconsider the relation of Lacanian theory specifically to anti-blackness, it remains important to explore, especially from a clinical perspective, how Lacanian theory might illuminate issues of cultural and racial identification that exist beyond blackness as a, perhaps, dominant frame of reference. Kazushige Shingu’s chapter, “Japanese intersignifier subjects: jouissance in the locus of the character,” expands this frame by engaging head-on Lacan’s scandalous suggestion in the preface to the Japanese translation of his Écrits that psychoanalysis is neither necessary nor possible for Japanese subjects. Shingu notes how the Japanese writing system allows most characters (kanji) to be read in two ways, a fact which, for Lacan, grants the Japanese subject a fundamentally different relation to the signifier. Although this subject—like any other— remains divided by the signifier, Lacan suggests that there is no masking the repressed for the Japanese subject because the repressed can find expression in the shifting significations of the letter in kanji. But kanji, for Shingu, more properly expresses a Lacanian notion of the littoral, or the boundary space that positions the Japanese subject between on-yomi and kun-yomi, that is, between China and Japan, the two cultural sources that coalesce in Japanese writing as kanji. This littoral is expressed in Japanese culture through folktales, origin myths, and stories that emphasize oppositions— including the opposition of life and death—and that situate the unconscious of the Japanese subject at the littoral between such extremes. Through case studies from his own practice, Shingu demonstrates that this unconscious mediates the cultural and personal fantasies that establish a patient’s relation to life and death. Residing in the littoral between polysemic meanings, it does not reveal but mask itself in the signifiers of kanji. Theorizing the racialized Lacanian subject While many of Lacan’s early contributions to psychoanalysis have by now become standard reference points in critical and cultural theory—such as the Imaginary, the mirror-stage, the role of the signifier in unconscious life, the Symbolic Order, the big Other, and even, increasingly, ideas pertaining to jouissance—Lacanian scholars in this collection are exploring facets of Lacan’s work that have hitherto been only inadequately utilized in reference to race and racism. This new theorizing insists upon recontextualizing Lacanian concepts in ways that allow for new readings of the Lacanian subject as a racialized subject. Sheldon George’s contribution, for example, “The Lacanian subject of race: sexuation, the drive and racial subjectivity,” presents Lacanian theory as an exploration of human subjectivity that is left incomplete by its inability to account for race. Where this theory highlights the agency of the Symbolic in providing answers to the subject’s existential questions about sex and being, George argues that race too, surely, lies at the core of such queries. George’s chapter takes up the concepts of drive and sexuation that have proved foundational to psychoanalysis, but he rethinks them for their relation to contemporary formations of race. Given subjectivity’s constitution through lack—wherein both the signifier and physical embodiment strike being and sexual libido from the subject—race emerges, says George, precisely as a promised recuperation of loss. Through analyses of the lasting legacy of slavery and Jim Crow era racism, George’s chapter presents race as a fantasy object a, an illusory object that fuels racial desire while also agitating the drive in its pursuit of jouissance. Through a reading of Lacan’s graph of sexuation, the chapter presents race as a signifier that aids in the process of structuring the unconscious around jouissance. Race, George argues, is an object of the drive that helps sexuate and racialize the body around gapped zones of enjoyment, tying enjoyment by the body and the psyche to histories of racism. It is not only core Lacanian concepts like sexuation that may allow redefinition of the Lacanian subject. In the decades-long process of refining his theories of the subject, Lacan introduced and abandoned multiple concepts that the authors of this section suggest are useful to the theorizing of race that Lacan himself did not conduct. Consider Lacan’s puzzling notion of the lamella, presented in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis as a mythical organ of the body, one that gives substance to Freud’s concept of libido and provides a means of thinking the operations of the libido in the subject’s formation. In her chapter, “Skin-things, fleshy matters and phantasies of race: Lacan’s myth of the lamella,” Michelle Stephens takes up this intriguing mythical notion to suggest that the drive, and the lamella specifically, become sites for the appearance of corporeality as psychic phenomenon in Lacan’s work. For Stephens, Lacan’s myth of the lamella is the catalyst for imagining—alongside our common tropes of skin as signifier—an alternative gesture to a fleshy libido-body that exceeds the remit of language and social construction. Highlighting how racialized skin might itself operate as lamella, Stephens shows that fantasies of race cannot be reduced to the idea of skin as the desired object of difference. It is instead the case that fantasies of the flesh of the racialized body point to disavowed aspects of corporeality that exceed current discursive constructions and social meanings of blackness. One of the most challenging and yet also most analytically promising concepts in Lacanian psychoanalysis is the notion of the Real. This domain, which exceeds containment by both the Symbolic order (of language and law) and the Imaginary order (of imaged representation), provides a crucial means of understanding racism’s effective “de-ontologization” of racialized subjects. Gautum Basu Thakur’s “Fanon’s ‘zone of nonbeing’: Blackness and thepolitics of the Real” develops this idea. By embracing a postcolonial strategy of rereading texts for their foreclosed signifiers and disavowed meanings, Basu Thakur reconvenes a dialogue between Fanon and Lacanian theory, reading Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks against the grain to theoretically explicate Fanon’s concepts of “zone of nonbeing” and “Blackness” precisely in relation to Lacan’s theory of the Real. For Basu Thakur, a focused examination of Black Skin, White Masks unravels Fanon’s most important contribution to the study of colonialism, namely that colonialism may be conceived less in terms of social justice—as a question of economic and/or political inequality—and more in relation to ontology. Properly revived, the idea of the zone of nonbeing posits blackness as negativity, highlighting the need for a shift in focus from conceiving colonialism in terms of Symbolic politics (the rehabilitation of stifled voices and identities) to an understanding of colonialism in terms of ontological absence and the Real. But it is precisely through its negativity that Basu Thakur imagines a new possible agency for the colonial subject. What Basu Thakur finds in Fanon is, ultimately, the theory of a new subject. Fanon imagines, says Basu Thakur, a “New Man” able to achieve his own disalienation from the identities generated by racism in the colonial Symbolic, paradoxically, through dwelling within the negativity of his own lack: this new subject, most radically, abandons identity for lack.

George and Hook 22 (Sheldon George, Professor and Chair of the Department of Literature & Writing at Simmons University, Derek Hook, Associate Professor in Psychology at Duquesne University, “Introduction: Theorizing Race, Racism, and Racial Identification,” Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, pgs. 6-11)//JRD

we might ask: how are we to be liberated from such fantasies of race? identification with the illusory object of race is tied to race’s promise to serve as a “medium” through which to decipher the truths of the racist social reality this illusion itself helps generate. Friedlander urges “disavowal” of race through a Lacanian process of separation from the signifiers of race, which, she argues, secure formidable bonds of racial identification within post-racial discourse precisely through the fantasy of having seen past race and its illusions. The Lacanian concepts of the objet a and the Act may, she hopes, be harnessed to disrupt the binding structure of race, destabilizing race’s grip by pressing on—and identifying with—precisely its negativity. we should expose the incompleteness of the Symbolic order—the signifier’s inability to generate any finalized metatruth about our racial reality—alongside its inability to ever fully ground any subjective identity. one must work from a clear understanding of the mechanisms at play in racial identification. How, for example, might we separate historical from subjective agency when accounting for the persistence of apartheid? Without an appreciation of racism as an ongoing transaction between the perceived desire of the Other and the subject’s own fantasmatic response to that desire we fail to grasp how racism is simultaneously a subjective and a social formation; and, moreover, we fail to account for the insistent momentum and gratifications of racism and racial identification. Atè, might counter and disrupt such pathologically perverse and neurotic raced identifications. Lacan regards Atè as a new kind of imaged signifier that, drained of jouissance, stands for difference as such. A crucial factor enabling us to move beyond the parameters of much contemporary theorizing about race and racism concerns the clinic Holliday becomes the object cause of the Other’s jouissance his perverse performative discourse foregrounding the psychic traumatism of racism in an utterly distinct way. Gherovici’s Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective aims at establishing the right of barrio patients to own their “souls.” This means that they have the right to be considered as appropriate candidates for a psychoanalytic treatment, and to avail themselves of the emancipatory potential of the unconscious. They stage a conversation between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Afropessimism to think through anti-blackness and its relationship to the Lacanian registers of the Symbolic, the Real and the Imaginary. Moving between the fields of psychoanalysis and Afropessimism Malone and Jackson invite us to consider the liminal space between being and nonbeing as a paradigm for thinking antiblack racism and violence. Taking up the effects of the history of enslavement and blackness as a category of nonbeing, they examine Black being/nonbeing in the “afterlives” of this history so as to situate black subjects in the context of both Lacan’s clinical frame and that of black social life. it remains important to explore, especially from a clinical perspective, how Lacanian theory might illuminate issues of cultural and racial identification that exist beyond blackness as a, perhaps, dominant frame of reference this unconscious mediates the cultural and personal fantasies that establish a patient’s relation to life and death. This new theorizing insists upon recontextualizing Lacanian concepts in ways that allow for new readings of the Lacanian subject as a racialized subject. George argues that race too, surely, lies at the core of such queries. Given subjectivity’s constitution through lack—wherein both the signifier and physical embodiment strike being and sexual libido from the subject—race emerges precisely as a promised recuperation of loss. Through analyses of the lasting legacy of slavery and Jim Crow era racism, George presents race as a fantasy object a an illusory object that fuels racial desire while also agitating the drive in its pursuit of jouissance. Through a reading of Lacan’s graph of sexuation, the chapter presents race as a signifier that aids in the process of structuring the unconscious around jouissance. Race , is an object of the drive that helps sexuate and racialize the body around gapped zones of enjoyment, tying enjoyment by the body and the psyche to histories of racism. Lacan’s myth of the lamella is the catalyst for imagining—alongside our common tropes of skin as signifier—an alternative gesture to a fleshy libido-body that exceeds the remit of language and social construction. Highlighting how racialized skin might itself operate as lamella, Stephens shows that fantasies of race cannot be reduced to the idea of skin as the desired object of difference. It is instead the case that fantasies of the flesh of the racialized body point to disavowed aspects of corporeality that exceed current discursive constructions and social meanings of blackness. the Real which exceeds containment by both the Symbolic order and the Imaginary order provides a crucial means of understanding racism’s effective “de-ontologization” of racialized subjects. By embracing a postcolonial strategy of rereading texts for their foreclosed signifiers and disavowed meanings Thakur reconvenes a dialogue between Fanon and Lacan , the idea of the zone of nonbeing posits blackness as negativity, highlighting the need for a shift in focus from conceiving colonialism in terms of Symbolic politics to an understanding of colonialism in terms of ontological absence and the Real. it is precisely through its negativity that Basu Thakur imagines a new possible agency for the colonial subject. Thakur finds in Fanon a “New Man” able to achieve his own disalienation from the identities generated by racism in the colonial Symbolic, paradoxically, through dwelling within the negativity of his own lack: this new subject, most radically, abandons identity for lack.

Our alternative is to adopt the analytic of the Lacanian subject as a means to decipher the truths of the racially hierarchized social order. We must disavow the very fantasy of race in and of itself and move towards a new kind of imaged signifier that, drained of jouissance, stands for difference as such.

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The alternative — the ethical path that psychoanalysis identifies — demands an embrace of the anxiety that stems from the encounter with the enjoying other. If there is a certain ethical dimension to anxiety, it lies in the relationship that exists between anxiety and enjoyment. Contra Heidegger, the ethics of anxiety does not stem from anxiety's relation to absence but from its relation to presence - to the overwhelming presence of the other's enjoyment. In some sense, the encounter with absence or nothing is easier than the encounter with presence. Even though it traumatizes us, absence allows us to constitute ourselves as desiring subjects. Rather than producing anxiety, absence leads the subject out of anxiety into desire. Confronted with the lost object as a structuring absence, the subject is able to embark on the pursuit of the enjoyment embodied by this object, and this pursuit provides the subject with a clear sense of direction and even meaning. This is precisely what the subject lacks when it does not encounter a lack in the symbolic structure. When the subject encounters enjoyment at the point where it should encounter the absence of enjoyment, anxiety overwhelms the subject.

McGowan 13 [Todd, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, Enjoying What We Don’t Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis, Symploke, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE): 2013, p. 112-120]

The alternative ethical path that psychoanalysis identifies demands an embrace of the anxiety that stems from the encounter with the enjoying other If there is a certain ethical dimension to anxiety, it lies in the relationship that exists between anxiety and enjoyment the ethics of anxiety does not stem from anxiety's relation to absence but from its relation to presence - to the overwhelming presence of the other's enjoyment Even though it traumatizes us, absence allows us to constitute ourselves as desiring subjects. Rather than producing anxiety, absence leads the subject out of anxiety into desire This is precisely what the subject lacks when it does not encounter a lack in the symbolic structure. When the subject encounters enjoyment at the point where it should encounter the absence of enjoyment, anxiety overwhelms the subject.

Embracing the anxiety of the other’s enjoyment --- the death drive itself --- offers the only possibility of ethical encounter

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Written nine years after BSWM and from within the context of segregated French Algeria, the stakes in WOE are very different. French Algeria is a military occupation where the colonized live as bare lives and in a continuous state of siege. Therefore, the demolition of the blatant structural and material divisions between the colonized and the colonizer must be accomplished before the subject-(un)making process of the decolonized masses can be possible. But this second step is essential for the “substantive liberation of the colony from economic and psychic neocolonialism” (Ciccariello-Maher 2010: 14). It is only through both these two stages of violence, one external and the other internal, it is possible to create a society where the conundrum of nonrelationality can be ethically addressed and a politics of social relation formulated around, and not in spite of, the antagonism. The goal is to free society from all fantasies of sovereign identity and destroy all bogus social and cultural institutions responsible for sustaining a reality of identity politics. Violence, in this sense, is a “detoxifying and destructive, creative and reinventive” force (Marriott 2018: 72). Akin to Coleridgean daemonic imagination, Fanonian violence is a magical and synthetic force which recreates men and society by bringing the discordant inherent to the social into focus. Fanonian violence seeks “the veritable creation of new men”—free from desire, identity, and Symbolic belonging (Fanon 1968: 35). The New Man: a cut instead of a conclusion The notion of the New Man is yet another theoretical experiment on the part of Fanon—an exercise in abstraction, another effort trying to define the asignificative (negativity) for a politics of the Real. Conceptually, it is related to and an expansion on the notions of nonbeing and Blackness. Like these, the New Man, too, is an impossibility that is positively unrealizable at the level of the Symbolic, since it is impossible to conceive man sans desire. Also akin to these, the New Man disrupts the principle of exchange that is foundational to the colonial regime. Insofar as both the creation of social relations around the exploitation of the colonized as labor and the constitution of the colonized as subjects desiring Whiteness are grounded in the logic of exchange, the New Man, theoretically speaking, has the potential to challenge the colonial script. An in-depth discussion of the concept will require an entire chapter, so here I will restrict my observations to the relation between the New Man, violence, and the Real, and to how the concept of the New Man aligns with the concept of nonbeing in Fanon. The New Man emerges by being violently unmade or stripped from delusions of being, desire, and sovereignty—the “colonized becom[ing] a man during the same process by which it frees itself ” (Fanon 1968: 36). But this is not a freedom that sets up the colonized for a socially equal life, that is, a freedom premised on the notion of justice or equal rights for every human in society. Rather, Fanon indulges here in thinking about freedom that is philosophical but with consequences for real politics. It is a thinking about equality before real material conditions for living equally can be accomplished. In the philosophical sense of being free, therefore, the idea of the New Man attempts to reinstate the body as pure negativity back into the Symbolic. Hence, the New Man in the Symbolic is nothing but a potential corpse. Or, a corpse that speaks! But, importantly, neither can this body be marked by the Signifier nor can its speech be recognized in terms of articulating desire. The New Man is both present in and absent from the Symbolic. Unregimented by desire, the New Man is not “of-lack,” not “in-the-lack” but just “lack”—the insupportable not-all existing in but gesturing to a beyond of the Symbolic order. Disrobed of epidermal (in)security, this New Man is truly disalienated from the flesh—it is a body devoid of the skin as dress of the Symbolic; as such, it is the drive incarnate. It is a speaking subject without a misrecognized body, therefore, a Thing, or, a voice, and nothing more. The New Man is, consequently, a paradox: Signifier of a non-significative vacuity, it is the deathdrive sticking to and ticking through the Symbolic. The colonized’s transition from a pre-revolutionary to a post-revolutionary subject(ivity) involves shifting from desiring (to become White) to becoming the negativity (that eviscerates the fictions of Whiteness): that is, from being crossed out in the Symbolic to reappearing in the Symbolic as the apparition of the Real. As the Real, the New Man returns, remains, but cannot be (un) seen. But this is not the “I” becoming the “We” of the Third World oppressed; rather, this “I” expresses the radical particularity (en moi) standing in for the Universal and, thereby, demonstrates true Universality not in a common positive but in a shared excluded, i.e. the lack as foundational to being. It is by passing through the subject eviscerating “real hell”—the zone of nonbeing—that a new Man can come to “exist absolutely” without confinement in History or desire. And with the “density of History determin[ing] none of [its] acts,” this New Man is not trapped in the dialectic of becoming, but, rather, by remaining in “permanent tension” with the (im)possibility of achieving freedom outside the dialectic, the New Man is a unique possibility for imagining a social politics for a universal of negated subjects (Fanon 2008: 205–6). But this is a dangerous freedom. It requires being without the support of desire and the guarantees of a (big) Other. What’s worse is that this notion of freedom is irreconcilable with our habitual understanding of politics, and, therefore, questions might arise regarding whether it is at all possible to conceive politics without wholesome ideas, defined identities, and clearcut horizons of action demarcated by desire? Indeed, can ontology-based politics replace the grind of the politics of representation? Does the impossibility of living as persistent, determinate negativity—without desire and without identity—not problematize or capsize politics altogether? Sadly, Fanon does not address these issues; in fact, he seems only to bring them up in the gaps or interstices of his writing. Unfortunately, I too cannot expand upon this without moving beyond Fanon and lengthening this chapter considerably. Therefore, in lieu of a conclusion, I will end this essay abruptly, at this point, raising more questions than answers. My hope is that a cut here will only encourage further conversations about Fanon’s ontology-based politics of social (non-)relation. Continuing these conversations are crucial not only for a serious reevaluation of Fanon but also for understanding how Fanon shows the way for non-Europeans to occupy psychoanalysis.

Thakur 22 (Gautam Basu Thakur, Associate Professor and Director of Critical Theory at Boise State University, “Fanon’s ‘zone of non-being’: Blackness and the Politics of the Real,” Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, pgs. 293-296)//JRD

the demolition of the blatant structural and material divisions between the colonized and the colonizer must be accomplished before the subject-(un)making process of the decolonized masses can be possible. this is essential for the “substantive liberation of the colony from psychic neocolonialism” The goal is to free society from all fantasies of sovereign identity and destroy all bogus social and cultural institutions responsible for sustaining a reality of identity politics. Violence, in this sense, is a “detoxifying and destructive, creative and reinventive” force Fanonian violence is a magical and synthetic force which recreates men and society by bringing the discordant inherent to the social into focus. Fanonian violence seeks “the veritable creation of new men”—free from desire, identity, and Symbolic belonging The notion of the New Man is yet another theoretical experiment on the part of Fanon an exercise in abstraction, another effort trying to define the asignificative for a politics of the Real. Conceptually, it is related to and an expansion on the notions of nonbeing and Blackness. the New Man is an impossibility that is positively unrealizable at the level of the Symbolic, since it is impossible to conceive man sans desire. Also akin to these the New Man disrupts the principle of exchange that is foundational to the colonial regime. Insofar as both the creation of social relations around the exploitation of the colonized as labor and the constitution of the colonized as subjects desiring Whiteness are grounded in the logic of exchange, the New Man, theoretically speaking, has the potential to challenge the colonial script. The New Man emerges by being violently unmade or stripped from delusions of being, desire, and sovereignty—the “colonized becom[ing] a man during the same process by which it frees itself ” But this is not a freedom that sets up the colonized for a socially equal life, that is, a freedom premised on the notion of justice or equal rights for every human in society. Rather, Fanon indulges here in thinking about freedom that is philosophical but with consequences for real politics. It is a thinking about equality before real material conditions for living equally can be accomplished. In the philosophical sense of being free, therefore, the idea of the New Man attempts to reinstate the body as pure negativity back into the Symbolic. importantly, neither can this body be marked by the Signifier nor can its speech be recognized in terms of articulating desire. The New Man is both present in and absent from the Symbolic. Unregimented by desire, the New Man is not “of-lack,” not “in-the-lack” but just “lack”—the insupportable not-all existing in but gesturing to a beyond of the Symbolic order. Disrobed of epidermal (in)security, this New Man is truly disalienated from the flesh—it is a body devoid of the skin as dress of the Symbolic; as such, it is the drive incarnate. It is a speaking subject without a misrecognized body, therefore, a Thing, or, a voice, and nothing more. The New Man is, consequently, a paradox: Signifier of a non-significative vacuity, it is the deathdrive sticking to and ticking through the Symbolic. The colonized’s transition from a pre-revolutionary to a post-revolutionary subject(ivity) involves shifting from desiring to becoming the negativity that is, from being crossed out in the Symbolic to reappearing in the Symbolic as the apparition of the Real. As the Real, the New Man returns, remains, but cannot be (un) seen. But this is not the “I” becoming the “We” of the Third World oppressed; rather, this “I” expresses the radical particularity standing in for the Universal and, thereby, demonstrates true Universality not in a common positive but in a shared excluded, i.e. the lack as foundational to being. It is by passing through the subject eviscerating “real hell”—the zone of nonbeing—that a new Man can come to “exist absolutely” without confinement in History or desire. this New Man is not trapped in the dialectic of becoming, but, rather, by remaining in “permanent tension” with the (im)possibility of achieving freedom outside the dialectic the New Man is a unique possibility for imagining a social politics for a universal of negated subjects this is a dangerous freedom. It requires being without the support of desire and the guarantees of a (big) Other. What’s worse is that this notion of freedom is irreconcilable with our habitual understanding of politics Does the impossibility of living as persistent, determinate negativity—without desire and without identity—not problematize or capsize politics altogether?

Our alternative is to cultivate the Fanonian New Man, the subject neither of-lack, nor in-the-lack, but just “lack” in and of itself – the drive incarnate. We must break ourselves apart from our toxic attachments to racial structures of psychic oppression and move towards a decolonized subjectivity beyond the western fantasy of racial identity.

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Centering this study is the recognition that race functions not only at the social level but also at the psychic. We can more precisely say that the staying power of race, the inability to discard it despite our awareness of its illusory groundings, is founded in race’s capacity to structure a relation to jouissance for the subject of race. Beyond its Symbolic value, race grounds the fantasies and transgressions through which both African Americans and white Americans access a semblance of being. With race thus conflated with being by the historical trauma of slavery, with it functioning as the central apparatus through which raced subjects define their own and the racial other’s relation to the jouissance of being, contending against race means contending against the fundamental fantasy of the desiring subject, the aspiration toward wholeness that founds subjectivity itself. But what I would like to suggest here is that the alienation of especially the African American subject, which has been emphatically displayed in the racist Symbolic that justifies oppression through disregard for African American fantasies of being, has produced in many African Americans a cynicism toward the Symbolic that is an essential defense against psychic alienation. I have shown that Lacan defines alienation as the effect constituted upon the subject by language. “Man,” Lacan says, “is ravaged by Word,” experiencing through the signifier the “death” that “brings life.”1 In ascending toward subjectivity through language, the subject sacrifices an essential part of the self in order to conform to the definitions of self that are imposed by the Symbolic. The subject is constrained by the limits of the signifier and thus “designates his being only by barring everything” of the self that escapes linguistic signification.2 But, Lacan maintains, the signifier is also “the cause of jouissance,” the means of articulating an illusory recovery of the lost being.3 I have shown how the master signifier of whiteness seeks to recover this being for the white subject but more often denies it to blacks. As Lacan elaborates, “Every dimension of being is produced in the wake of the master’s discourse—the discourse of he who, proffering the signifier, expects therefrom one of its link effects.”4 African Americans struggle against the effects of the master signifier of race originally proffered by whites through seeking to resignify its value and reaffirm a fantasy of being. But this struggle at the level of the Symbolic is both necessary and insufficient. The necessity involved here is determined by the fact that the exaltation of whiteness as master signifier and the structuring of desire within the Symbolic around the white phallus impair the ability of African Americans to identify with the Symbolic itself and to establish the fantasies of being that facilitate a psychic sense of contentment. Thus, it would seem, what is needed in race relations is access by both African Americans and white Americans to vivifying fantasies of being. This need is supported by the fact that the limitations placed upon jouissance by the Symbolic through its shaping of fantasies of being enable a possible mediation of aggression toward the other. Where the subject “cannot recognize himself” except “by alienating himself” in the desire and image of the Other, what the subject most naturally aims at in his or her “aggressiveness” toward the racial other is an effort to “refind” him or herself “by abolishing the ego’s alter ego.”5 This alter self, experienced in the “extremity of [an] intimacy that is at the same time excluded” internally, is what the racial other comes to personify for the raced subject, such that the racial other stands as “the locus of the decoy in the form of a,” in the form of the object that embodies a fantasy manifestation of what is essentially lost to the subject.6 It is for this reason that Lacan contends, “A solid hatred is addressed to being.”7 Thus it is at the level of fantasy, through the operations of the fantasy object a that designates a relation to being, that this aggressivity must be mediated. Through a redefinition of the Symbolic and its signifiers, language may attain a mediating function in which “it allows two men to transcend the fundamental aggressive relation to the mirage of their semblable.”8 Making a place for African Americans in the Symbolic therefore means the destruction of old fantasies of race, but, I contend, it does not mean the creation of new ones. This study ultimately refutes the concept of race, designating it as a primary source of subjective alienation. We may say that with race the master signifier structures identity in such a fashion that between the raced subject’s “proper name,” as the signifier of his or her identity, and the signifiers of race, a “poetic spark is produced” that “metaphorically abolishes” this identity, transforming the subject into his or her race.9 Race thus perfectly exemplifies the process through which the subject, as Lacan states, is transformed into a signifier and deprived of being. Yet the paradox I have shown is that raced subjects remain bound to race because through it they dangerously recover a fantasy sense of being. Race, emerging from a traumatic past that eruptively manifested jouissance through sanctioned acts of transgression, perilously exacerbates illicit desires for jouissance by fixing jouissance to the racial other. Through positioning the other as a source of jouissance, race co-opts the function of the phallus by defining desirability in the Symbolic, and what it defines as desirable is the Real of an exultant bliss to which not only the Symbolic but also the self and other that occupy it are subordinated. Bound through race to the jouissance of the traumatic past, the subject of race remains alienated by the desire of the Other, by the racist Symbolic that “proffered” the terms of race that African Americans ascribe to even in their efforts to redefine them. What is needed, therefore, is a “separation” from the Symbolic and the master signifier of the Other that grounds it in the jouissance of race.10 This separation must be founded, first of all, on a recognition of the interdependence of the subjectivities of the self and the racial other. The fact of the extimacy of this racial other, who is internal to each American’s subjective sense of self, is exemplified in the racial fantasies that structure both subjective and national identity for Americans. In the first chapter of this book I showed how the identity of the slave master depended on that of the slave, and I suggested in chapter 2 how slave songs and jazz music became integral to American identity. The implication here is the need to conceive of individuals in terms of broader cultural identities that transcend racial differences and acknowledge interconnectivity across groups. This is the solution I pointed to in my reading of Ellison’s Juneteenth, which presents the figure of Abraham Lincoln as a paternal authority that transcends race. Present in Ellison’s work is an urgency guiding us toward recognizing the vast diversity in American identity and the disparately intermingled racial lineages that root America in cultural hybridity, not racial separation. This hybridity, what Du Bois conceives of as the problem of the “two warring souls in one dark body” that characterizes African American double consciousness, is the very extimacy that Ellison rightly celebrates in his own life.11 Usefully modeling for us his own relation to the Symbolic in his essay “The World and the Jug,” Ellison speaks of ancestral figures that shape his role as artist. Where Ellison admits that an African American author such as Richard Wright may be seen as a “relative” of his, it is white writers like Hemingway and Faulkner that he counts as his “ancestors.”12 The title of Ellison’s essay stems from his rejection of the notion that the traumatic experiences of African Americans have cornered them into a place of “unrelieved suffering,” as though they are trapped in an “opaque steel jug.”13 Ellison asserts that “if we are in a jug it is transparent, not opaque, and one is allowed not only to see outside but to read what is going on out there.”14 It is this ability to see outside the limitations imposed by race that enables Ellison to claim Hemingway and Faulkner as ancestors. Ellison explains that “one can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives,” but “one can, as artist, choose one’s ‘ancestors.’ ”15 In choosing his ancestors, however, Ellison attempts not to discard his relatives but rather to foreground the urgencies of his own desires and drives. Privileging an understanding of the self in the active choice he makes in his identification with the other, Ellison explains, “Hemingway was more important to me than Wright . . . not because he was white” but “because he appreciated the things of this earth which I love and which Wright” didn’t “know,” and because “all that he wrote” was “imbued with a spirit beyond the tragic with which I could feel at home.”16 Seeking after that with which the self is most at home, Ellison extends beyond race toward a hybridized cultural identification with Hemingway precisely because the spirit of Hemingway’s writing is “very close to the feeling of the blues” that also speaks to Ellison’s sense of self.17 Forestalling an identity grounded singularly in the metaphor of race, Ellison pursues this sense of self through its accumulation in the metonymic movement of self-identifications that are driven by an individualized artistic desire to explore the homely spirit of tragedy. What Ellison ultimately models is a desire grounded in cynicism toward notions of race and racial lineage. This cynicism, I suggest, establishes a liberating distance mutually from the alienating desire of the Symbolic Other and from the avenging desire of the racial ancestor. Lacan makes clear that “desire is a defense” against alienation, a defense that “reverses the unconditionality” in which “the subject remains subjected to the Other” who, in this case, binds him or her [them] to a psychic relation to race.18 Lacan argues that “what the subject has to free him[them]self of is the aphanisic [or fading] effect” to which the subject is submitted by the signifiers of the Symbolic, and the way that the subject does this is through “scepticism” as what Lacan calls “a mode of sustaining man in life.”19 Where “man’s desire is the Other’s desire,” granted to the subject and structured for him or her by the Symbolic Other, a “cynic[ism]” by which the subject questions the desire of the Other is the stance that “best leads the subject to the path of his own desire.”20 Along this path, the subject must articulate what Lacan calls the Chè vuoi?, the simple question, “What does he want of me?”21 This question creates distance between the conflated desires of the subject and the Other, allowing for the emergence of something more properly subjective and personal to the subject. As Lacan argues, “if there is a position that one can essentially qualify as subjective,” it is “clearly” the position of “doubt.”22 This position is one uniquely available to the African American subject, as a subject who is continually urged toward an antagonistic relation to the Symbolic Other. In his reading of James Joyce, Lacan shows how this antagonism can lead to an exploration of one’s own desires. Like African Americans in their relation to the ancestor, Joyce is a figure who has been confronted with the belief, Lacan states, that “his father was lacking, radically lacking.”23 This confrontation complicates Joyce’s relation to the Symbolic. Unable to identify with the Symbolic, Joyce takes to an extreme the sense that the Symbolic and language are imposed upon the subject, the feeling, I argue, that is also experienced by African Americans submitted to the Symbolic’s racist signifiers; Joyce comes to sense that “language” is a parasite, a “veneer,” a “cancer which afflicts the human being,” and he therefore moves to embrace “equivocation” as his “only weapon” against the Symbolic.24 This equivocation leads to not only a restructuring of Joyce’s desires but also their resituation in direct relation to his own Real. Joyce develops what Lacan calls his own sinthome, as a substitute for the function of the father. Where subjectivity is comprised of the three registers of the psyche—the Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real—it is the father that functions metaphorically as sinthome, as the knot that ties together the registers into a unified subjective self.25 The sinthome is the root of the ego, which is, at the decline of the oedipal complex, modeled after the agency of the paternal metaphor as ego ideal. It is this modeling of the self after the Symbolic Other that leads to alienation in the Symbolic. But as “heir” to a father found lacking, Joyce is able to assume through equivocation the position of the “heir-etic” who questions both the father and the Symbolic.26 This equivocation occurs at the level of the emergence of the “personal” as the “support of the subject,” at the level where “personality” comes to stand as not a link to the Other but a “link between [this] sinthome and the unconscious, and between the imaginary and the real.”27 Though the unconscious, “structured like a language,” incorporates within it the signifiers of the Other that make complete liberation impossible, this linking occurs through Joyce’s embrace of the individual lack that centers his personal, unconscious relation to being.28 It starts with a recognition not only that the ancestor lacks but that so too does the Symbolic itself. It acknowledges a “lack inherent in the [Symbolic] Other’s very function as the treasure trove of signifiers,” an incapacity in its purported function of defining the subject’s identity, desire, and lack.29 Insofar as “the Other is called upon (chè vuoi) to answer for the value of this treasure,” insofar as the heir-etic child of the Symbolic puts the Symbolic Other to the impossible task of naming the lack personal to his or her subjectivity, this cynical subject begins the process of making a name for [themselves]him- or herself.30 Instead of paying homage to the dead ancestor or bowing to the definitions imposed by the paternal authority of the Other, what is availed the subject is the capacity to valorize [their]his or her own “proper name,” designating it as the only signifier to be paid the deference he or she bequeathed to the Other.31 It is this signifier that must come to stand for the lack, the absence, that is [their]his or her being. Radically altering one’s psychic relation to the Other, the process of self-naming I here advocate both redirects the urge to grieve the ancestor and repudiates the racialized designations through which the Other seeks to confine the subject in the steel jug of the Symbolic. What is ultimately entailed in this self-naming is the subject recognizing [their]his or her “own image” as “a mortal cause, and griev[ing] this object” as a loss, as an emptiness around which the subject’s own personality must be built as an incrementally expansive structure to contain this internal absence.32 In establishing such personality, the goal is not to escape lack but rather to ground the self within it, to, more precisely, build the self around its sustained void. Lacanian theory shows that the only way “to found wisdom [is] on lack,” which presents the single viable source of self-recognition afforded the subject.33 The absent image, as container, as personality, must be cultivated and built up “ex-nihilo,” from nothingness, as psychic defense against the alluring phallus and objects a that act as the decoys for desire within the confining ambit of the Symbolic.34 By recognizing this absence as the true pathway to desire, and by coming to travel this discovered path, the subject of race may not only attain the means of expressing the multiplicity of an identity and desire unhinged from the fantasy a of race, but also potentially direct [themselves]him- or herself toward a goal that centers the very practice of psychoanalysis: not just a transcendence of race but a transcendence of the fundamental fantasy of recoverable loss that drives subjective and racial desire. What Lacanian theory posits is the possibility that, after the experience of actively mapping one’s own relation to the fantasy object is undertaken by the subject, this “experience of the fundamental phantasy” can become “the drive” by which desire is then “agitated”; unveiled by the theory is the potential that, in cynically questioning the fantasy of race, the subject may confront the very lack that fuels all fantasy and all desire, the lack that must be subjectified as the empty core of a newly adumbrated self.35 Lacan importantly cautions that the “loop” of the subject’s fantasy often must be “run through several times” before the subject abandons it. I propose, however, that because of the cynicism already central to their relation to the Symbolic, African Americans are uniquely positioned to embrace this very daunting task of transcending both race and the fundamental fantasy it supports.36

George 16 (Sheldon George, Professor of English at Simmons University, 2016 , "Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity", pp 135-141)//guyB

race functions not only at the social level but also at the psychic the staying power of race, the inability to discard it despite our awareness of its illusory groundings, is founded in race’s capacity to structure a relation to jouissance for the subject of race , race grounds the fantasies and transgressions through which both African Americans and white Americans access a semblance of being contending against race means contending against the fundamental fantasy of the desiring subject, the aspiration toward wholeness that founds subjectivity itself the alienation of especially the African American subject, which has been emphatically displayed in the racist Symbolic that justifies oppression through disregard for African American fantasies of being, has produced in many African Americans a cynicism toward the Symbolic that is an essential defense against psychic alienation alienation as the effect constituted upon the subject by language Man is ravaged by Word experiencing through the signifier the “death” that “brings life the subject sacrifices an essential part of the self in order to conform to the definitions of self that are imposed by the Symbolic The subject is constrained by the limits of the signifier thus “designates his being only by barring everything the signifier is also “the cause of jouissance,” the means of articulating an illusory recovery of the lost being Every dimension of being is produced in the wake of the master’s discourse African Americans struggle against the effects of the master signifier of race originally proffered by whites through seeking to resignify its value and reaffirm a fantasy of being this struggle at the level of the Symbolic is both necessary and insufficient The necessity involved here is determined by the fact that the exaltation of whiteness as master signifier and the structuring of desire within the Symbolic around the white phallus impair the ability of African Americans to identify with the Symbolic itself and to establish the fantasies of being that facilitate a psychic sense of contentment it would seem, what is needed in race relations is access by both African Americans and white Americans to vivifying fantasies of being the limitations placed upon jouissance by the Symbolic through its shaping of fantasies of being enable a possible mediation of aggression toward the other Where the subject “cannot recognize himself” except “by alienating himself” in the desire and image of the Other, what the subject most naturally aims at in his or her “aggressiveness” toward the racial other is an effort to “refind” him or herself “by abolishing the ego’s alter ego.” the racial other stands as “the locus of the decoy in the form of a, it is at the level of fantasy, through the operations of the fantasy object a that designates a relation to being, that this aggressivity must be mediated. Through a redefinition of the Symbolic and its signifiers, language may attain a mediating function in which “it allows two men to transcend the fundamental aggressive relation to the mirage of their semblable Making a place for African Americans in the Symbolic therefore means the destruction of old fantasies of race it does not mean the creation of new ones This study ultimately refutes the concept of race, designating it as a primary source of subjective alienation with race the master signifier structures identity in such a fashion that between the raced subject’s “proper name,” as the signifier of his or her identity, and the signifiers of race, a “poetic spark is produced” that “metaphorically abolishes” this identity, transforming the subject into his or her race Race thus perfectly exemplifies the process through which the subject is transformed into a signifier and deprived of being raced subjects remain bound to race because through it they dangerously recover a fantasy sense of being Race, emerging from a traumatic past that eruptively manifested jouissance through sanctioned acts of transgression, perilously exacerbates illicit desires for jouissance by fixing jouissance to the racial other rough positioning the other as a source of jouissance, race co-opts the function of the phallus by defining desirability in the Symbolic, and what it defines as desirable is the Real of an exultant bliss to which not only the Symbolic but also the self and other that occupy it are subordinated Bound through race to the jouissance of the traumatic past, the subject of race remains alienated by the desire of the Other, by the racist Symbolic that “proffered” the terms of race that African Americans ascribe to even in their efforts to redefine them What is needed, therefore, is a “separation” from the Symbolic and the master signifier of the Other that grounds it in the jouissance of race. This separation must be founded on a recognition of the interdependence of the subjectivities of the self and the racial other the identity of the slave master depended on that of the slave slave songs and jazz music became integral to American identity the need to conceive of individuals in terms of broader cultural identities that transcend racial differences and acknowledge interconnectivity across groups an urgency guiding us toward recognizing the vast diversity in American identity and the disparately intermingled racial lineages that root America in cultural hybridity, not racial separation Where Ellison admits that an African American author such as Richard Wright may be seen as a “relative” of his, it is white writers like Hemingway and Faulkner that he counts as his “ancestors rejection of the notion that the traumatic experiences of African Americans have cornered them into a place of “unrelieved suffering,” as though they are trapped in an “opaque steel jug.” if we are in a jug it is transparent, not opaque, and one is allowed not only to see outside but to read what is going on out there It is this ability to see outside the limitations imposed by race that enables Ellison to claim Hemingway and Faulkner as ancestors one can do nothing about choosing one’s relatives,” but “one can, as artist, choose one’s ‘ancestors.’ Ellison attempts not to discard his relatives but rather to foreground the urgencies of his own desires and drives. Privileging an understanding of the self in the active choice he makes in his identification with the other Ellison extends beyond race toward a hybridized cultural identification with Hemingway precisely because the spirit of Hemingway’s writing is “very close to the feeling of the blues” that also speaks to Ellison’s sense of self a desire grounded in cynicism toward notions of race and racial lineage This cynicism establishes a liberating distance mutually from the alienating desire of the Symbolic Other and from the avenging desire of the racial ancestor desire is a defense” against alienation, a defense that “reverses the unconditionality” in which “the subject remains subjected to the Other” who binds him or her [them] to a psychic relation to race what the subject has to free him[them]self of is the aphanisic [or fading] effect” to which the subject is submitted by the signifiers of the Symbolic, and the way that the subject does this is through “scepticism” as what Lacan calls “a mode of sustaining man in life.” , a “cynic[ism]” by which the subject questions the desire of the Other is the stance that “best leads the subject to the path of his own desire the subject must articulate what Lacan calls the Chè vuoi “What does he want of me?” , “if there is a position that one can essentially qualify as subjective,” it is “clearly” the position of “doubt This position is one uniquely available to the African American subject, as a subject who is continually urged toward an antagonistic relation to the Symbolic Other this antagonism can lead to an exploration of one’s own desires This confrontation complicates Joyce’s relation to the Symbolic Unable to identify with the Symbolic, Joyce takes to an extreme the sense that the Symbolic and language are imposed upon the subject, the feeling, I argue, that is also experienced by African Americans submitted to the Symbolic’s racist signifiers “language” is a parasite, a “veneer,” a “cancer which afflicts the human being,” he therefore moves to embrace “equivocation” as his “only weapon” against the Symbolic leads to not only a restructuring of Joyce’s desires but also their resituation in direct relation to his own Real. as “heir” to a father found lacking, Joyce is able to assume through equivocation the position of the “heir-etic” who questions both the father and the Symbolic Though the unconscious, “structured like a language,” incorporates within it the signifiers of the Other that make complete liberation impossible, this linking occurs through Joyce’s embrace of the individual lack that centers his personal, unconscious relation to being 28 It starts with a recognition not only that the ancestor lacks but that so too does the Symbolic itself It acknowledges a “lack inherent in the [Symbolic] Other’s very function as the treasure trove of signifiers,” an incapacity in its purported function of defining the subject’s identity, desire, and lack this cynical subject begins the process of making a name for [themselves]him- or herself. Instead of paying homage to the dead ancestor or bowing to the definitions imposed by the paternal authority of the Other, what is availed the subject is the capacity to valorize [their]his or her own “proper name,” designating it as the only signifier to be paid the deference he or she bequeathed to the Other It is this signifier that must come to stand for the lack, the absence, that is [their]his or her being Radically altering one’s psychic relation to the Other, the process of self-naming both redirects the urge to grieve the ancestor and repudiates the racialized designations through which the Other seeks to confine the subject in the steel jug of the Symbolic the subject recognizing [their]his or her “own image” as “a mortal cause, and griev[ing] this object” as a loss, as an emptiness around which the subject’s own personality must be built as an incrementally expansive structure to contain this internal absence the goal is not to escape lack but rather to ground the self within it, to, more precisely, build the self around its sustained void the only way “to found wisdom [is] on lack,” presents the single viable source of self-recognition afforded the subject The absent image, as container, as personality, must be cultivated and built up “ex-nihilo,” from nothingness, as psychic defense against the alluring phallus and objects a that act as the decoys for desire within the confining ambit of the Symbolic By recognizing this absence as the true pathway to desire, and by coming to travel this discovered path, the subject of race may not only attain the means of expressing the multiplicity of an identity and desire unhinged from the fantasy a of race, but also potentially direct [themselves]him- or herself toward a goal that centers the very practice of psychoanalysis: not just a transcendence of race but a transcendence of the fundamental fantasy of recoverable loss that drives subjective and racial desire after the experience of actively mapping one’s own relation to the fantasy object is undertaken by the subject, this “experience of the fundamental phantasy” can become “the drive” by which desire is then “agitated , in cynically questioning the fantasy of race, the subject may confront the very lack that fuels all fantasy and all desire, the lack that must be subjectified as the empty core of a newly adumbrated self. because of the cynicism already central to their relation to the Symbolic, African Americans are uniquely positioned to embrace this very daunting task of transcending both race and the fundamental fantasy it supports.36

The alternative endorses a process of self-naming—rather than attempting to fill or escape the Lack we ground ourselves within it and embrace the multiplicity of personal identity

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2022

Guattari's critique of psychoanalysis makes clear the myths which underlie it.  'Psychoanalysis transforms and deforms the unconscious by forcing it to pass through the grid of its system of inscription and representation.  For psychoanalysis, the unconscious is always already there, genetically programmed, structured, and finalized on objectives of conformity to social norms'104.  Similarly, Reich has already exposed a predecessor of the idea of "constitutive lack" - the Freudian "death instinct" - as a denial that "I don't know".  It is, he says, a metaphysical attempt to explain as yet inexplicable phenomena, an attempt which gets in the way of fact-finding about these phenomena105.  He provides a detailed clinical rebuttal of the idea of the "death instinct" which is equally apt as an attack on Lacanians (who seem unaware of Reich's intervention).  In Reich's view, the masochistic tendencies Freud associates with the "death instinct" are secondary drives arising from anxiety, and are attributable to 'the disastrous effect of social conditions on the biopsychic apparatus.  This entailed the necessity of criticizing the social conditions which created the neuroses - a necessity which the hypothesis of a biological will to suffer had circumvented'106.  The idea of the "death instinct" leads to a cultural philosophy in which suffering is assumed to be inevitable, whereas Reich's alternative - to attribute neurosis to frustrations with origins in the social system - leads to a critical sociological stance107.  The relevance of Reich's critique to the political theory of constitutive lack is striking.  The "death instinct" is connected to an idea of primordial masochism which, in the form of "aphanisis" or "subjective destitution", recurs throughout Lacanian political theory.  Zizek in particular advocates masochism, in the guise of "shooting at" or "beating" oneself, as a radical gesture which reveals the essence of the self and breaks the constraints of an oppressive reality108, although the masochistic gesture is present in all Lacanian theorists.  The death instinct is typified by Zizek as a pathological (in the Kantian sense), contingent attitude which finds satisfaction in the process of self-blockage109.  It is identical with the Lacanian concept of jouissance or enjoyment.  For him, 'enjoyment (jouissance) is not to be equated with pleasure: enjoyment is precisely "pleasure in unpleasure"; it designates the paradoxical satisfaction procured by a painful encounter with a Thing that perturbs the equilibrium of the pleasure principle.  In other words, enjoyment is located "beyond the pleasure principle"'110.  It is also the core of the self, since enjoyment is 'the only "substance" acknowledged by psychoanalysis', and 'the subject fully "exists" only through enjoyment'111.  Primordial masochism is therefore central to the Lacanian concept of the Real, which depends on there being a universal moment at which active desire - sometimes given the slightly misleading name of the "pleasure principle" - is suspended, not for a greater or delayed pleasure, but out of a direct desire for unpleasure (i.e. a primary reactive desire).  Furthermore, this reactive desire is supposed to be ontologically prior to active desire.  Dominick LaCapra offers a similar but distinct critique to my own, claiming that Lacanian and similar theories induce a post-traumatic compulsion repetition or an 'endless, quasi-transcendental grieving that may be indistinguishable from interminable melancholy'112. Reich has already provided a rebuttal of "primordial masochism", which, paradoxically given Zizek's claims to radicalism, was denounced by orthodox Freudians as communist propaganda.  In Reich's view, masochism operates as a relief at a lesser pain which operates as armouring against anxiety about an underlying trauma113.  Regardless of what one thinks of Reich's specific account of the origins of masochism, what is crucial is his critique of the idea of a death drive.  'Such hypotheses as are criticised here are often only a sign of therapeutic failure.  For if one explains masochism by a death instinct, one confirms to the patient his [sic] alleged will to suffer'114.  Thus, Lacanian metaphysics conceal Lacanians' encouragement of a variety of neurosis complicit with oppressive social realities.  Politically, the thesis of primordial masochism provides a mystifying cover for the social forces which cause and benefit from the contingent emergence of masochistic attachments (i.e. sadistic power apparatuses).  One could compare this remark to Butler's claim that Zizek 'defends the trauma of the real... over and against a different kind of threat'115.

Robinson 5 [Andrew, PhD in political theory at the University of Nottingham, Theory and Event, 8/1, “The Political Theory of Constitutive Lack: A Critique”, projectmuse]

R The idea of the "death instinct" leads to a cultural philosophy in which suffering is assumed to be inevitable, The "death instinct" is connected to an idea of primordial masochism Zizek in particular advocates masochism, in the guise of "shooting at" or "beating" oneself, as a radical gesture which reveals the essence of the self and breaks the constraints of an oppressive reality what is crucial is his critique of the idea of a death drive.  if one explains masochism by a death instinct, one confirms to the patient his [sic] alleged will to suffer' Thus, Lacanian metaphysics conceal Lacanians' encouragement of a variety of neurosis complicit with oppressive social realities.  Politically, the thesis of primordial masochism provides a mystifying cover for the social forces which cause and benefit from the contingent emergence of masochistic attachments (i.e. sadistic power apparatuses).  One could compare this remark to Butler's claim that Zizek 'defends the trauma of the real... over and against a different kind of threat'

There’s no utility in embracing the death drive—it just reinforces things that already suck

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2022

Perhaps, then, what distant consumers express when they sit glued to the television watching a disaster replayed over and over, when they buy t-shirts or snow globes, when they mail teddy bears to a memorial, or when they tour a disaster site, is a deep, maybe subconscious, longing for those age-old forms of community and real human compassion that emerge in a place when disaster has struck. It is a longing in some ways so alien to the world we currently live in that it requires catastrophe to call it forth, even in our imaginations. Nevertheless, the actions of unadulterated goodwill that become commonplace in harrowing conditions represent the truly authentic form of humanity that all of us, to one degree or another, chase after in contemporary consumer culture every day. And while it is certainly a bit foolhardy to seek authentic humanity through disaster-related media and culture, the sheer strength of that desire has been evident in the public’s response to all the disasters, crises and catastrophes to hit the United States in the past decade. The millions of television viewers who cried on September 11, or during Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech shootings, and the thousands upon thousands who volunteered their time, labor, money, and even their blood, as well as the countless others who created art, contributed to memorials, or adorned their cars or bodies with disaster-related paraphernalia— despite the fact that many knew no one who had been personally affected by any of these disasters—all attest to a desire for real human community and compassion that is woefully unfulfilled by American life under normal conditions today. ¶ In the end, the consumption of disaster doesn’t make us unable or unwilling to engage with disasters on a communal level, or towards progressive political ends—it makes us feel as if we already have, simply by consuming. It is ultimately less a form of political anesthesia than a simulation of politics, a Potemkin village of communal sentiment, that fills our longing for a more just and humane world with disparate acts of cathartic consumption. Still, the positive political potential underlying such consumption—the desire for real forms of connection and community—remains the most redeeming feature of disaster consumerism. Though that desire is frequently warped when various media lenses refract it, diffuse it, or reframe it to fit a political agenda, its overwhelming strength should nonetheless serve notice that people want a different world than the one in which we currently live, with a different way of understanding and responding to disasters. They want a world where risk is not leveraged for profit or political gain, but sensibly planned for with the needs of all socio-economic groups in mind. They want a world where preemptive strategies are used to anticipate the real threats posed by global climate change and global inequality, rather than to invent fears of ethnic others and justify unnecessary wars. They want a world where people can come together not simply as a market, but as a public, to exert real agency over the policies made in the name of their safety and security. And, when disaster does strike, they want a world where the goodwill and compassion shown by their neighbors, by strangers in their communities, and even by distant spectators and consumers, will be matched by their own government. Though this vision of the world is utopian, it is not unreasonable, and if contemporary American culture is ever to give us more than just an illusion of safety, or empathy, or authenticity, then it is this vision that we must advocate on a daily basis, not only when disaster strikes.

Recuber 11 Timothy Recuber is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the Graduate Center of the City. University of New York. He has taught at Hunter College in Manhattan "CONSUMING CATASTROPHE: AUTHENTICITY AND EMOTION IN MASS-MEDIATED DISASTER" gradworks.umi.com/3477831.pd

what consumers express when they sit glued watching a disaster is subconscious, longing for those age-old forms of community and real human compassion that emerge in a place when disaster has struck. It is a longing in some ways so alien to the world we currently live in that it requires catastrophe to call it forth the actions of unadulterated goodwill that become commonplace represent the truly authentic form of humanity that all of us chase after And while it is certainly a bit foolhardy to seek authentic humanity through disaster-related media culture, the sheer strength of that desire has been evident in the public’s response to all the disasters, . The millions of television viewers who cried on September 11, or during Hurricane Katrina and the Virginia Tech shootings, and the thousands upon thousands who volunteered their time, labor, money, and even their blood, as well as the countless others who created art, contributed to memorials, or adorned their cars or bodies with disaster-related paraphernalia all attest to a desire for real human community and compassion that is woefully unfulfilled by American life under normal conditions today the consumption of disaster doesn’t make us unable or unwilling to engage with disasters on a communal level, or towards progressive political ends It is ultimately less a form of political anesthesia than a simulation of politics the positive political potential underlying such consumption—the desire for real forms of connection and community—remains the most redeeming feature of disaster consumerism. its overwhelming strength should nonetheless serve notice that people want a different world than the one in which we currently live, with a different way of understanding and responding to disasters They want a world where preemptive strategies are used to anticipate the real threats posed by global climate change and global inequality, rather than to invent fears of ethnic others and justify unnecessary wars They want a world where people can come together not simply as a market, but as a public to exert real agency over the policies made when disaster does strike, they want a world where the goodwill and compassion shown by their neighbors and even by distant spectators and consumers, will be matched by their own government Though this vision of the world is utopian, it is not unreasonable then it is this vision that we must advocate on a daily basis, not only when disaster strikes.

Death reps cause an empathic shift---this is especially crucial in the context of policy advocacy simulations

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2022

This article pointed out that psychoanalysis — not only on its classic, but also with its contemporary version — ends up checking all of the seven items in Hansson’s multicriteria list. It also fits the eighth item that was introduced in this work. So, in this way, psychoanalysis checks eight out of eight demarcation of pseudoscience’s items. The evidence presented in this article suggests that with both Popper and Hansson’s demarcation proposals, and taking into account its traditional and contemporary versions, psychoanalysis is indeed a pseudoscience. Even if the impression that it represents the most reliable human psychological theory is created by its proponents, that is not the case, because it considerably deviates from scientific standards of quality.

Ferreira 21 (Clarice de Madeiros Chaves Ferreira - Vice-President of the Brazilian Association of Evidence-Based Psychology and holds a degree in psychology from FUMEC University and Scientific Initiation at the Clinical Neuroscience Investigation Laboratory of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, “Is psychoanalysis a pseudoscience? Reevalutating the doctrine using a multicriteria list”, Brazilian Psychiatric Association, September 2021, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355493559_Is_psychoanalysis_a_pseudoscience_Reevaluating_the_doctrine_using_a_multicriteria_list#:~:text=Karl%20Popper%20was%20one%20of,address%20the%20issue%20are%20available., MG)

psychoanalysis — not only on its classic, but also with its contemporary version checks eight out of eight demarcation of pseudoscience’s items psychoanalysis is indeed a pseudoscience. Even if the impression that it represents the most reliable human psychological theory is created by its proponents, that is not the case, because it considerably deviates from scientific standards of quality

Falsifiability matters – treating psychoanalysis like it’s not a pseudoscience is a dogmatic move that leads to scientific stagnation and prevents discipline development

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2022

The key to moving beyond both positivism and the deconstruction of meaning is the foundation of questioning and the concept of the problematological answer. Politics is surely the sphere of debate over the meaning of public problems and how to solve them. If we disagree on a question, we argue about it, add to it with other questions, weaken it, and debate the pro and con of the possible answers. A plurality of meanings means a plurality of answers, which indicates contingency, but it is not an aporia (an impassable obstruction to knowledge) (see Derrida 1993). It simply entails that meaning is in question.74 This establishes rhetoric as a legitimate dimension of discourse because problematological answers have an equal status, as answers, to apocritical answers. Some questions cannot be solved beyond dispute but they can be expressed and then debated. In fact, as I pointed out in Chapter Four, there is no argumentation in poststructuralism, because if signification were a free play of meaning it would be impossible to indicate one answer to a question over another (Meyer 1995: 238). Similarly, while Foucault depicts a figurative picture of discourse (see Foucault 1970) he has no argumentation, which perhaps accounts for the feeling that agency is absent in his work. But while we are ‘prisoners’ of language, defined by it in important ways, we can reflect upon our boundaries as well, through questioning, even if this is difficult. Knowledge has its own inertia because we operate on the basis of presumed answers and so reality appears continuous (Meyer 2000; see also Chapter Seven). Nonetheless, it is also open to question and therefore we are not always powerless. Even those working within an established discourse have to continually reinforce its legitimating power, and therefore can escape responsibility only by rhetorical means. Hence powerful elites have a strategic interest in arguing for particular ways of framing problems. Agency and structure are in reason, and we can understand both in terms of questioning. Rationality is still possible, so our task should be to reverse the fragmentary reductionism of science and the internal fragmentation of radical poststructuralism but without reimposing the problem solving model upon reality as the sole, unjustified criterion of resolution. By drawing on Meyer’s concept of problematological answers, we can establish what is rational and what is irrational about politics without judging it in scientific terms. This is essential if we are to understand policymaking, which is multidisciplinary.

Turnbull 05 (Nick Turnbull PhD – Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, “Policy in question: from problem solving to problematology”, University of New South Wales, February 2005, https://www.academia.edu/download/66798539/SOURCE02.pdf, MG)

The key to moving beyond the deconstruction of meaning is the problematological answer. Politics is surely the sphere of debate over the meaning of public problems and how to solve them. If we disagree on a question, we argue about it, add to it with other questions and debate the pro and con of the possible answers. A plurality of meanings means a plurality of answers, which indicates contingency, but it is not an aporia It simply entails that meaning is in question.74 This establishes rhetoric as a legitimate dimension of discourse because problematological answers have an equal status, as answers, to apocritical answers. Some questions cannot be solved beyond dispute but they can be expressed and then debated But while we are ‘prisoners’ of language, defined by it in important ways, we can reflect upon our boundaries as well, through questioning, even if this is difficult. Knowledge has its own inertia because we operate on the basis of presumed answers and so reality appears continuous

Debating about policy is good, it’s the only way to reflect upon personal boundaries and engage with contingency – their model excludes that and causes dissatisfaction through thematizing politics

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Michigan (7-week)

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2022

If poststructuralism has a critical value it is because it questions established theory and therefore has at least questioning as a fundamental property (even if it does not affirm this, because it affirms nothing), which indicates that it is possible to answer. Policymaking involves posing questions and settling upon answers. Hence, we cannot understand it without a philosophical framework that accounts for both questioning and answering. Dewey’s practical orientation is something to hold on to because policymaking does seek practical solutions. Political reasoning is not necessarily irrational, even if it can be when people employ irrational discourse to their own political advantage.

Turnbull 05 (Nick Turnbull PhD – Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, “Policy in question: from problem solving to problematology”, University of New South Wales, February 2005, https://www.academia.edu/download/66798539/SOURCE02.pdf, MG)

If poststructuralism has a critical value it is because it questions established theory (even if it does not affirm this, because it affirms nothing), which indicates that it is possible to answer. Policymaking involves posing questions and settling upon answers policymaking does seek practical solutions. Political reasoning is not necessarily irrational, even if it can be when people employ irrational discourse to their own political advantage.

Problem solving is good, it’s the only way to express identity and establish a foundation for knowledge – their theory is reductionist, paradoxically replicates the shortcomings of ontology, and crowds out politics

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2022

DT. It seems to me that a frequent critique of psychoanalysis and politics is that in its inability, and perhaps unwillingness to propose concrete policy reforms or political projects, it falls back on a notion that everyone should just undergo analysis. Do you think that a political project that is informed by psychoanalytic teachings implies that we should all undergo analysis? You write in your book for instance that fantasy is a crucial point for facilitating a sort of un-bonding process from the larger capitalist mode of subjectivity. What do you see as the role of analysis and political emancipatory work?¶ TM. I will alienate many of my analyst friends with this response, but I have no political investment at all in psychoanalytic practice. I’ve undergone some analysis myself. However, I don’t believe that everyone undergoing psychoanalysis would change much at all politically. What is important about psychoanalysis to me is its theoretical intervention, its discovery of the death drive and the role that fantasy plays in our psyche. This is the great advance. And political struggle can integrate these theoretical insights without any help from actual psychoanalysis. What allows one to disinvest in the capitalist mode of subjectivity is not, in my view, the psychoanalytic session. Instead it is the confrontation with a mode of enjoyment that ceases to provide the satisfaction that it promises. This prompts one to think about alternatives. Obviously, not everyone can become a theorist, but in a sense, everyone already is a theorist. We theorize our enjoyment when we think through our day and plan out where we’re going to do. Even watching a television show requires an elaborate theoretical exercise. Making this theorizing evident and thus arousing an interest in theory is to me much more important than having a lot of people undergo psychoanalysis. In response to your question about the universalization of psychoanalytic practice, I have more faith in a universalization of psychoanalytic theory.

Daniel Tutt 13, Interviewing Todd McGowan, October 27, “Enjoying What We Don’t Have: Interview with Philosopher Todd McGowan”, http://danieltutt.com/2013/10/27/enjoying-what-we-dont-have-interview-with-philosopher-todd-mcgowan/

It seems to me that a frequent critique of psychoanalysis and politics is that in its inability to propose concrete policy reforms it falls back on a notion that everyone should just undergo analysis What do you see as the role of analysis and political emancipatory work TM. I will alienate many of my analyst friends with this response, but I have no political investment at all in psychoanalytic practice I don’t believe that everyone undergoing psychoanalysis would change much at all politically What is important about psychoanalysis to me is its theoretical intervention, its discovery of the death drive and the role that fantasy plays in our psyche And political struggle can integrate these theoretical insights without any help from actual psychoanalysis. What allows one to disinvest in the capitalist mode of subjectivity is not the psychoanalytic session. Instead it is the confrontation with a mode of enjoyment This prompts one to think about alternatives everyone already is a theorist. We theorize our enjoyment when we think through our day and plan out where we’re going to do. Even watching a television show requires an elaborate theoretical exercise. Making this theorizing evident is to me much more important than having a lot of people undergo psychoanalysis

McGowan votes for the perm---can integrate K’s insights and the 1AC

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2022

Most former freeze activists retain at least some faith in the democratic process. According to Solo, the freeze campaign at least began a long process of “educating” the public, and for a time it successfully transformed “the issues and the language used by politicians” to facilitate discussion of nuclear issues, breaking from “the dominant discourse of arms control and the cold war.” But just as this “war of ideas” was beginning to bear fruit, according to Solo, “the movement narrowed its agenda, which in turn constrained its educational program and confined its politics.” Concerned with answering its right-wing critics and remaining “respectable” among “political and arms control elites,” freeze advocates began defending the initiative on “technical grounds,” thereby straying from their “original goal of breaking out of arms control ‘negotiations as usual’ and challenging the new militarism.” For Solo, the lesson is clear: that in order “to develop a mass base” with “potential to develop political power without being co-opted,” peace activists must “promote political literacy with a dynamic education strategy that recognizes the peculiarities of our culture and language and does not overlook the continuing impact of television on our political life as a nation.”

Hogan 94 [J. Michael Hogan, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, The Nuclear Freeze Campaign: Rhetoric and Foreign Policy in the Telepolitical Age, p. 6-7]

the freeze campaign began educating” the public, and successfully transformed “the issues and the language used by politicians” to facilitate discussion of nuclear issues, breaking from “the dominant discourse of arms control “the movement narrowed its agenda, which in turn constrained its educational program and confined its politics.” Concerned with answering its right-wing critics and remaining “respectable” among “political and arms control elites,” freeze advocates began defending the initiative on “technical grounds,” thereby straying from their “original goal of breaking out of arms control ‘negotiations as usual’ the lesson is clear: that in order “to develop a mass base” with “potential to develop political power without being co-opted,” peace activists must “promote political literacy with a dynamic education strategy that recognizes the peculiarities of our culture and language

We need to use the language of nuclear experts to challenge them --- solves co-option

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2022

Now this contrasts with the argument of those who would "reinvent government" by putting up bureaucratic roadblocks to maintaining the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal through research and testing. They reason that if the reliability of everyone's nuclear arsenals declines, everyone will be less likely to try using them. The problem is that some "adventurer-conqueror" may arise and use everyone's doubt about their arsenals to risk massive conventional war instead. An expansionist dictatorship might even risk nuclear war with weapons that are simpler, cruder, less powerful, much riskier (in terms of the possibility of accidental detonation) but much more reliable than our own may eventually become without adequate "stockpile stewardship."[14] But the inhibitory effect of reliable nuclear weapons goes deeper than Shirer's deterrence of adventurer-conquerors. It changes the way we think individually and culturally, preparing us for a future we cannot now imagine. Jungian psychiatrist Anthony J. Stevens states, [15] "History would indicate that people cannot rise above their narrow sectarian concerns without some overwhelming paroxysm. It took the War of Independence and the Civil War to forge the United States, World War I to create the League of Nations, World War II to create the United Nations Organization and the European Economic Community. Only catastrophe, it seems, forces people to take the wider view. Or what about fear? Can the horror which we all experience when we contemplate the possibility of nuclear extinction mobilize in us sufficient libidinal energy to resist the archetypes of war? Certainly, the moment we become blasé about the possibility of holocaust we are lost. As long as horror of nuclear exchange remains uppermost we can recognize that nothing is worth it. War becomes the impossible option. Perhaps horror, the experience of horror, the consciousness of horror, is our only hope. Perhaps horror alone will enable us to overcome the otherwise invincible attraction of war." Thus I also continue engaging in nuclear weapons work to help fire that world-historical warning shot I mentioned above, namely, that as our beneficial technologies become more powerful, so will our weapons technologies, unless genuine peace precludes it. We must build a future more peaceful than our past, if we are to have a future at all, with or without nuclear weapons — a fact we had better learn before worse things than nuclear weapons are invented. If you're a philosopher, this means that I regard the nature of humankind as mutable rather than fixed, but that I think most people welcome change in their personalities and cultures with all the enthusiasm that they welcome death — thus, the fear of nuclear annihilation of ourselves and all our values may be what we require in order to become peaceful enough to survive our future technological breakthroughs.[16]

Futterman 94. J.A.H. Futterman, Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin and Physicist at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, “Obscenity and Peace: Meditations on the Bomb,” http://web.archive.org/web/20060106211941/http://www.dogchurch.org/scriptorium/nuke.html

this contrasts with the argument of those who would "reinvent government" by putting up bureaucratic roadblocks to maintaining the reliability of the US nuclear arsenal through research and testing They reason that if the reliability of everyone's nuclear arsenals declines, everyone will be less likely to try using them n expansionist dictatorship might even risk nuclear war with weapons that are simpler, cruder, less powerful, much riskier (in terms of the possibility of accidental detonation) but much more reliable than our own may eventually become without adequate "stockpile stewardship."[ the inhibitory effect of reliable nuclear weapons goes deeper than Shirer's deterrence of adventurer-conquerors It changes the way we think individually and culturally, preparing us for a future we cannot now imagine istory would indicate that people cannot rise above their narrow sectarian concerns without some overwhelming paroxysm. It took the War of Independence and the Civil War to forge the United States, World War I to create the League of Nations, World War II to create the United Nations Organization and the European Economic Community. Only catastrophe, it seems, forces people to take the wider view what about fear Can the horror which we all experience when we contemplate the possibility of nuclear extinction mobilize in us sufficient libidinal energy to resist the archetypes of war Certainly, the moment we become blasé about the possibility of holocaust we are lost As long as horror of nuclear exchange remains uppermost we can recognize that nothing is worth it War becomes the impossible option horror, the experience of horror, the consciousness of horror, is our only hope horror alone will enable us to overcome the otherwise invincible attraction of war I also continue engaging in nuclear weapons work to help fire that world-historical warning shot I mentioned above, namely, that as our beneficial technologies become more powerful, so will our weapons technologies, unless genuine peace precludes it We must build a future more peaceful than our past if we are to have a future at all If you're a philosopher, this means that I regard the nature of humankind as mutable rather than fixed, but that I think most people welcome change in their personalities and cultures with all the enthusiasm that they welcome death the fear of nuclear annihilation of ourselves and all our values may be what we require in order to become peaceful enough to survive our future technological breakthroughs

Only effective discursive stewardship and technological power prevents the rogue usage of nuclear weapons – this turns and outweighs the K and proves the permutation is possible and desirable.

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From the nuclear critic's perspective, nuclear opponents unnecessarily constrain themselves when they adopt a first political assumption that is misleading and has not been subjected to the same reflection reserved for the other terms of the debate. The claim that nukes are "unspeakable" appears as an intolerable oppression, a paternalistic admonition to "be quiet" that outdistances (and silences) all such preceding calls. In carry- ing as well the injunction that we not speak about that which can only be spoken, this presumption deepens the paradoxes of nukes. There must be a reason we "cannot speak," and there is. To speak is to reveal a paradox nuclear politics must repress. We can begin to see the awkward, reversed influence of this repression when we consider the one activity by which nuclear opponents have been attentive to language—their focus on interpretations of "nukespeak."53 Nukespeak actually stands for a simple critique of euphemism; the problem is that this simplicity leads away from the rest of the critique offered by opponents —it is inverted. The nukespeak argument imagines a world, just before this one, which had no technocratic euphemisms and no evasive verbs and nouns. Somehow, this was a world without language games, without genres of political speech, where words "meant" some- thing explicit. That world —presumably the one that Einstein argued the nuke inalterably changed —sits invitingly just outside our grasp, recover- able if only we would resolutely call things by their real names. The nukespeak argument conforms to Baudrillard's "nostalgia for the real." There can be no reconstructive politics based on eradicating euphemism. The artifacts and practices of nuclearism have no honest, real meanings. There is no straightforward name for a protective reaction strike. To call it a bombing run trivializes it. To call it genocide (or eco- cide) conflates it with phenomena —such as the Holocaust —that we would rather keep separate, for good reasons. And so on. The activities of nuclearism are encased in a context so thoroughly bound to its discourse —technologized, simulated, and then turned into spectacle — that any attempt to speak simple truth could only be another part of the simulation. This is where nuclear criticism draws the line between itself and the liberal critics of modern society, from Orwell on to the present. Either Einstein was right and the world was irretrievably changed, or he was wrong and it can be returned to a prior condition of innocence, where things had "real" names. While the nukespeak argument suggests that these things are nameable, the nuclear critic responds that the nuke has already been actively reshaping situations. Indeed, that insight on the activism of nukespeak has been available for some time now. It was Marcuse who showed how contemporary nuclear discourse is not simple misleading, but is a manip- ulation that has its own syntax and grammar. Nuclear criticism might disagree with Marcuse's (and, later and more explicitly, Habermas's) pre- sumption that a clearer language game would be closer to truth. Still, we can note that Marcuse identified the discursive component of nuclear- ism's authority. The forms Marcuse finds all share a pattern, constructing an inverted universe in which absurdity and danger serve security and trust. In one important example, Marcuse deconstructs Edward Teller's oft- repeated, unofficial title, "the father of the H-Bomb," showing how this highly improbable combination is powerfully useful for discipline: Terms designating quite different spheres or qualities are forced together into a solid, overpowering whole. The effect is ... a magical and hypnotic one —the projection of images which convey irresistible unity, harmony of contradictions. Thus the loved and feared Father, the spender of life, generates the H-bomb for the annihilation of life.54 The cleverness (or, for Marcuse, the cunning) of such formulations belies the hope that clarity could solve matters. The simplest nukespeak commentaries ask the wrong question when they argue that matters would be more obvious if terminology were less euphemistic. At a certain point—in Utopian remove from the realm of knowledge and power —that would be the case. But the better question is slightly different. We could ask, What sort of an authoritative logic would behave this way? Founding strength on deterrence, then announcing the unspeakability of its topic, then pro- ducing a discourse that flaunts contradiction and turns it into unity and safety, nukespeak is more than euphemism. It turns ecstatic. An oppositional politics, fully capable of problematizing this (hyper-) exuberant nuclearism, is possible on bases other than such suspect cate- gories as euphemism, survival, unspeakability, and numbing. Through- out this book, I am trying to reposition antinuclearism within such a defensible political practice. At the very least, this implies an intellectual project; to paraphrase Foucault, there is a struggle over issues of knowledge, set off by nuclear criticism. The political mood of the language-and-politics position is well framed by nuclear criticism. More precisely, a political mood could yet form, one that would contrast sharply with an existing nuclear opposition that, in the United States, has adopted a paradoxical structure, as if driven to mirror the paradoxes of nukes themselves. Antinuke talk has been ponderous —so responsible and serious that it just obviously defeats itself, and must invent the defense that "people really don't like to talk about nuclear war very much." Paradoxically, opponents then test that humorlessness by asking citizens to become independent entrepreneurs of risk, weighing the likelihood and amplitude of possible disasters. It should not be surprising that such a politics works only intermittently, if at all.

Chaloupka 92. William Chaloupka, professor of political science at Colorado State University, Knowing Nukes: The Politics and Culture of the Atom, University of Minnesota Press, 1992, 20-23

The claim that nukes are "unspeakable" appears as an intolerable oppression, a paternalistic admonition to "be quiet" that outdistances (and silences) all such preceding calls To speak is to reveal a paradox nuclear politics must repress We can begin to see the awkward, reversed influence of this repression when we consider the one activity by which nuclear opponents have been attentive to language—their focus on interpretations of "nukespeak." Nukespeak actually stands for a simple critique of euphemism the problem is that this simplicity leads away from the rest of the critique offered by opponents —it is inverted The nukespeak argument imagines a world, just before this one, which had no technocratic euphemisms and no evasive verbs and nouns Somehow, this was a world without language games, without genres of political speech, where words "meant" some- thing explicit That world —presumably the one that Einstein argued the nuke inalterably changed —sits invitingly just outside our grasp, recover- able if only we would resolutely call things by their real names The nukespeak argument conforms to nostalgia for the real There can be no reconstructive politics based on eradicating euphemism The artifacts and practices of nuclearism have no honest, real meanings There is no straightforward name for a protective reaction strike To call it a bombing run trivializes it To call it genocide (or eco- cide) conflates it with phenomena —such as the Holocaust —that we would rather keep separate, for good reasons And so on The activities of nuclearism are encased in a context so thoroughly bound to its discourse —technologized, simulated, and then turned into spectacle — that any attempt to speak simple truth could only be another part of the simulation The simplest nukespeak commentaries ask the wrong question when they argue that matters would be more obvious if terminology were less euphemistic At a certain point—in Utopian remove from the realm of knowledge and power —that would be the case the better question is slightly different. We could ask, What sort of an authoritative logic would behave this way Founding strength on deterrence, then announcing the unspeakability of its topic, then pro- ducing a discourse that flaunts contradiction and turns it into unity and safety, nukespeak is more than euphemism It turns ecstatic there is a struggle over issues of knowledge, set off by nuclear criticism a political mood could yet form, one that would contrast sharply with an existing nuclear opposition that, in the United States, has adopted a paradoxical structure, as if driven to mirror the paradoxes of nukes themselves Antinuke talk has been ponderous —so responsible and serious that it just obviously defeats itself, and must invent the defense that "people really don't like to talk about nuclear war very much Paradoxically, opponents then test that humorlessness by asking citizens to become independent entrepreneurs of risk, weighing the likelihood and amplitude of possible disasters. It should not be surprising that such a politics works only intermittently, if at all.

Their criticism of nukespeak fails – its nostalgia for a utopian world beyond language with authentic relationships to nuclear weapons merely feeds the fantasy of nuclear control they claim to resolve. Instead, a subtle struggle over the power of the meaning of nuclear weapons through our Foucaultien approach solves better.

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The pragmatist feminist perspective that I develop in this chapter is deeply indebted to and affirms in many respects the antiwar feminist approach outlined by Carol Cohn and Sara Ruddick in the preceding chapter, but with some marked differences. These differences, I argue, reveal more completely both the promise and the limitations of antiwar feminism. At the outset, it is important to note that there is neither a single "feminism" nor a single "pragmatism" with which it might be aligned. Instead, there are multiple feminisms, just as there are multiple pragmatisms. The "pragmatist feminism" developed in this essay draws on several elements from American Pragmatism, a philosophical school developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most prominently by Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. Despite the many differences among the pragmatists, they tend to share several features. Perhaps most salient to the subject of this volume is their presumption "that human agency in all of its higher manifestations has evolved from ... concrete circumstances in which a vulnerable organism is confronted, often (if not usually) in concert with other organisms of the same species, with possibilities of both injury and fulfillment."' It is the continuous reminder of "human fallibility and finitude"' that constrains pragmatists from positions such as foundationalism and dogmatism and thus against ideologies that encourage the use of armed force, and especially of WMD, in all but the most extreme circumstances. It is also a reminder that armed conflicts are composed of embodied human beings, each of whom has the capacity for suffering as well as happiness, a point stressed by feminist analyses of armed conflicts. There are several significant points of commonality or intersection between pragmatism and feminism.3 Perhaps most important for thinking about the ethics of weapons of mass destruction is that both are actively engaged in attempting to solve social problems. The early pragmatists viewed the purpose of philosophical reflection to be "the intelligent overcoming of oppressive conditions." Dewey, for example, recommended the criticism of beliefs underlying society that have led to "unsatisfactory conditions in order to radically reconstruct our society according to non-oppressive and cooperative standards."5 Feminist goals of liberating women from oppression thus echo pragmatist ones. While most often feminist movements have been focused specifically on ending the male domination and oppression of women, a more inclusive feminist vision has as its object the elimination of all hierarchical and oppressive relationships, including the oppression of so-called third world or developing nations (especially of the Global South) by those of the so-called first world or industrialized nations (especially of the Global North), of ethnic, cultural, racial, or religious minorities by majorities, homosexuals by heterosexuals, the poor by the wealthy, children by adults, and so on. In addition, pragmatists advocate the elimination of sharp divisions between theory and practice, reason and experience, and knowing and doing.8 Pragmatists focus much more on consequences rather than on a priori abstract conceptualizing, captured in the phrase that pragmatists assign value on the basis of "what works" or what provides "emotional satisfaction."9 From a pragmatist perspective, the most important questions are practical ones. Pragmatists consider moral agents to be actors within a concrete particular context that both influences what is experienced and is influenced by those experiences. The inextricability of the perceiver from what is perceived means that action, whether in the context of armed conflict and the use of WMD or otherwise, must be situated within the larger context of which it is a part. Since every decision to enter or engage in an armed conflict and every decision to deploy WMD, of whatever type, must be considered within the full context of other relevant actors, agencies, and term strategies or results,12 a pragmatist perspective is unlikely to result in the kind of abstract thinking that antiwar feminism criticizes in dominant just war and realist approaches.13 Feminism also shares pragmatism's rejection of traditional rationalist and empiricist approaches and its commitment to the inseparability of theory and practice.14 Both believe that reason must be grounded in experience and requires being supplemented, at least in particular circumstances, by emotion.15 In this respect, feminists also favor a posteriori rather than a priori forms of knowledge, those that develop on the basis of experience rather than those that are posited prior to it.16 In sum, both pragmatism and feminism accord a central place to the particular, the concrete, and the factual elements of experience, as opposed to the universal, the generalizable, and the abstract.17 This opposition to abstraction is apparent, for example, in feminist understandings of women's "different voice" and Dewey's views about the importance of the qualitative background of situations. In contrast to mainstream philosophy, both feminist and pragmatist perspectives focus on everyday life and emphasize respect for others and the constitutiveness of community. The pragmatists' sensitivity to the social embeddedness of persons led them to understand the "I" "only in relation to other selves, so that the autonomy of individual agents needed to be integrated with their status as social beings" existing in community. 18 This common conception of the "relational self" suggests that both pragmatists and feminists will resist turning others into "the Other," who can then be demonized and made into "the enemy," suitable to be killed. The feminist commitment to the well-being of others, in both the local and the global community, is well illustrated by Carol Cohn's and Sara Ruddick's contribution to this volume. However, this commitment also provides the basis for the pragmatist feminist position articulated here that refuses to categorically rule out the moral legitimacy of any resort to armed force or war, since such resort may be morally imperative to protect innocent others. In addition to these marked similarities, it is also important to acknowledge how a pragmatist feminism differs significantly from American Pragmatism. Perhaps most important is pragmatist feminism's attention to the gendered character of the social world and gender's impact on the formation and maintenance of male and female identities. These subjects largely were ignored by the American Pragmatists19 but influence the analysis of the ethics of WMD outlined here. In addition, feminists tend to give greater import to the cognitive aspects of affect than pragmatists, even though, as already discussed, pragmatists recognize the importance of emotions to agency and cognition. Despite its differences from more mainstream strands of feminism, pragmatist feminism shares the goals of many strands of feminism to make gender a central consideration of the analysis (here of armed force and WMD)20 and to eradicate (patriarchal) oppression and domination. These goals result in a strong presumption against the use of any weapons, not only WMD, since they are in their very inception designed as tools for domination and suppression of others designated as "the enemy." This opposition to the use of armed force is related to feminist observations of the patriarchal and hierarchical, male-dominated and -controlled character of the military and the oppressive effects of war and militarism around the world, especially on women and children. In addition, the pragmatist feminist view described here affirms much in the "constitutive positions" of antiwar feminism articulated by Cohn and Ruddick,21 especially its observation of the gendered character of war and militarism, its suspicion of masculinist approaches to war and conflict resolution, and its critique of the dominant tradition for its focus on the physical, military, and strategic effects of these weapons separate from their embeddedness in the rest of social and political life. With this brief overview in mind, in the following section, I describe how a pragmatist feminist perspective compares with the antiwar feminist position outlined by Cohn and Ruddick in Chapter 21 with respect to the specific issues addressed by this volume. SOURCES AND PRINCIPLES Although pragmatist feminism itself does not directly provide general norms governing the use of weapons in war, it does so indirectly through its affirmation of elements of justwar theory, as described below. Pragmatist feminism does not categorically rule out the use of armed force or engagement in war. Its pragmatist perspective steers in a different direction from the antiwar feminists' "practical" opposition to war. Whereas the realist tradition has been unduly pessimistic in its assumption that war and armed conflict are necessary, certain, and inevitable, on a pragmatist feminist view, antiwar feminist thinking tends to be unduly optimistic about the human capacity to transcend the use of violent methods of resolving disputes, given the consistent and continual resort to such means throughout most of human history. From a pragmatist feminist perspective, the historical and contemporary experience of the repeated resort to violence and the inability of humanity thus far to develop alternative mechanisms for resolving large-scale disputes suggests the likelihood of future wars and armed conflicts. In light of this history, overcoming the "war culture" that antiwar feminists view so unfavorably can be possible only outside the immediate situation of armed conflict. Once the aggressor has struck or threatens to do so imminently, it is too late to change our societies and ourselves in order to avoid war. Rather, it is then necessary to act in order to avoid annihilation in one form or another. Given its view that some wars and some opposition to war and armed conflicts are morally necessary to protect ourselves and others from harm, pragmatist feminists seek to impose moral limits on the harm and suffering to the minimum necessary. Despite an awareness of its limitations,22 a pragmatist feminist perspective considers just war theory to provide a flexible and modifiable set of criteria for attempting to act morally and in accordance with principles of justice, both in entering into an armed conflict (jus ad bellum) and in the actual engagement of that conflict (jus in bello). In particular, pragmatist feminism shares just war's starting premise of a strong presumption against the legitimacy of the use of armed force and violence to resolve conflicts. A pragmatist feminist perspective thus rejects Cohn's and Ruddick's contention that justwar theorists "implicitly accept war as a practice even when condemning particular wars."23 Recognizing the historical and global reality of war making and armed force as means of resolving conflicts and adopting strategies to maximize justice and minimize immorality when such means are adopted is not the same as "implicitly accepting the practices of war," at least in the absence of demonstrably effective means of eliminating such conflicts. To ignore the reality of the continuing resort to war and armed force is itself to revert to abstraction rather than offering a practical method for eliminating the human suffering and incalculable damage caused by war and armed conflict. Here Colin and Ruddick reveal (intentionally or otherwise) their situatedness as citizens of a war-making state, one that has had the choice in many, if not all, instances since the mid-twentieth century, at least, of deciding whether or not to go to war. Just as Cohn and Ruddick criticize just war theory for failing to explore nonviolent alternatives once a just cause is determined or war has begun, their antiwar feminist approach fails to offer concrete suggestions for avoiding armed conflict when a nation or people is confronted with armed aggression or assault by others, the situation where the options boil down to "fight or die." This perspective fails to look at war from the point of view of the aggressed-against, when armed conflict becomes a necessity in order to retain national and/or cultural and/or ethnic identity from subjugation by the aggressor(s). In such circumstances, the moral necessity of armed force looks quite different. And in such circumstances, the threatened use of WMD can be seen as less evil than the alternatives, such as doing nothing and being conquered or fighting a conventional war and faring poorly. Rather than reverting to abstract thinking about war, pragmatist feminism affirms just war theory's casuistic approach to particular armed conflicts as well as its position that such means are sometimes morally justifiable or even morally obligator)' in order to protect oneself (individual or nation) or innocent third parties. Further, pragmatist feminism affirms just war thinking's attention to particular conflicts rather than war in the abstract and its stance of moderation and of imposing the minimal suffering necessary to accomplish the objective of restoring the peace.24 Thus, with respect to the military response of the United States to the September 11 terrorist attacks, a pragmatist feminist application of just war criteria yields the conclusion that the jus ad bellum principles of "last resort" and "proportionality," as well as the in hello principles of "proportionality" and "discrimination," were not satisfied. A second difference in the two feminist perspectives emerges out of the antiwar feminist observation that war and militarism are not separate from everyday life but integral aspects of it.25 While this is an extremely important insight into the underlying conditions of war and militarism, it needs to be joined with alternative proposals for addressing the "large-scale military conflict." There has been scant attention to this issue in antiwar feminist scholarship. Even if one assumes, as antiwar feminists do, that war is a "presence" in everyday life and not merely a discrete "event" that occasionally "erupts,"26 it is nonetheless the case that "war" is more damaging and harmful, and creates greater suffering in a multiplicity of ways, than the absence of war. Pragmatist feminist thinking about the ethics of WMD is attentive to how such differences in consequences differentiate war from “everyday life.” A third significant area of difference between the two types of feminist theories concerns responses to the causes of war. Whereas pragmatist feminists agree with antiwar feminists that wars are partially a mutual construction, they also insist that some wars have much more to do with unjust aggression for which opposing sides do not share equal responsibility. Antiwar feminism fails to accept that some wars are not only necessary as a matter of prudence, but also morally justifiable on feminist grounds, for example, humanitarian intervention to end the severe oppression of innocent victims. For a pragmatist feminist, the current state of international affairs unfortunately requires consideration of the circumstances in which the threatened or actual use of such weapons for defensive or deterrent purposes may be morally allowable or even morally necessary. Given these circumstances, pragmatist feminism considers the just war tradition to provide a morally useful source of norms relating to the use of weapons in war.

Peach 4 [Lucinda Joy, Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University, 2004, “A Pragmatist Feminist Approach to the Ethics of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Hashmi, p. 436-441]

The pragmatist feminist perspective affirms in many respects the antiwar feminist approach by Cohn and Ruddick but with some marked differences. These differences reveal the limitations of antiwar feminism The "pragmatist feminism" developed in this essay draws on several elements from American Pragmatism they share several features most salient is their presumption "that human agency has evolved from ... concrete circumstances in which a vulnerable organism is confronted with possibilities of both injury and fulfillment the continuous reminder of "human fallibility and finitude constrains pragmatists against ideologies that encourage the use of armed force in all but the most extreme circumstances. It is also a reminder that armed conflicts are composed of embodied human beings each of whom has the capacity for suffering Feminist goals of liberating women from oppression echo pragmatist ones a more inclusive feminist vision has as its object the elimination of all hierarchical and oppressive relationships pragmatists advocate the elimination of sharp divisions between theory and practice, reason and experience, and knowing and doing Pragmatists focus much more on consequences rather than on a priori abstract conceptualizing Pragmatists consider moral agents to be actors within a concrete particular context that both influences what is experienced and is influenced by those experiences action, whether in the context of armed conflict and the use of WMD or otherwise, must be situated within the larger context of which it is a part Since every decision to enter or engage in an armed conflict must be considered within the full context of other relevant actors, agencies, and term strategies or results a pragmatist perspective is unlikely to result in the kind of abstract thinking that antiwar feminism criticizes in dominant just war and realist approaches both pragmatism and feminism accord a central place to the particular, the concrete, and the factual elements of experience, as opposed to the universal, the generalizable, and the abstract The pragmatists' sensitivity to the social embeddedness of persons led them to understand the "I" "only in relation to other selves, so that the autonomy of individual agents needed to be integrated with their status as social beings" existing in community This common conception of the "relational self" suggests that both pragmatists and feminists will resist turning others into "the Other," who can then be demonized and made into "the enemy," suitable to be killed The feminist commitment to the well-being of others, in both the local and the global community, is illustrated by Cohn's and Ruddick's contribution this commitment also provides the basis for the pragmatist feminist position articulated here that refuses to categorically rule out the moral legitimacy of any resort to armed force or war, since such resort may be morally imperative to protect innocent others pragmatist feminism shares the goals of many strands of feminism to make gender a central consideration of the analysis and to eradicate (patriarchal) oppression and domination These goals result in a strong presumption against the use of any weapons since they are in their very inception designed as tools for domination and suppression of others designated as "the enemy This opposition to the use of armed force is related to feminist observations of the patriarchal and hierarchical, male-dominated and -controlled character of the military and the oppressive effects of war and militarism especially on women Pragmatist feminism does not categorically rule out the use of armed force or engagement in war Its pragmatist perspective steers in a different direction from the antiwar feminists' "practical" opposition to war antiwar feminist thinking tends to be unduly optimistic about the human capacity to transcend the use of violent methods of resolving disputes From a pragmatist feminist perspective historical and contemporary experience of the repeated resort to violence and the inability of humanity to develop alternative mechanisms for resolving large-scale disputes suggests the likelihood of future armed conflicts overcoming the "war culture" that antiwar feminists view so unfavorably can be possible only outside the immediate situation of armed conflict. Once the aggressor has struck or threatens to do so imminently it is too late to change our societies and ourselves in order to avoid war it is then necessary to act in order to avoid annihilation A pragmatist feminist perspective rejects Cohn's and Ruddick's contention that justwar theorists accept war as a practice even when condemning particular wars Recognizing the historical and global reality of war as means of resolving conflicts and adopting strategies to maximize justice and minimize immorality when such means are adopted is not the same as "implicitly accepting the practices of war in the absence of demonstrably effective means of eliminating such conflicts. To ignore the reality of the continuing resort to war is itself to revert to abstraction rather than offering a practical method for eliminating human suffering caused by war Colin and Ruddick reveal their situatedness as citizens of a war-making state Just as Cohn and Ruddick criticize just war theory their antiwar feminist approach fails to offer concrete suggestions for avoiding armed conflict when a nation is confronted with armed aggression or assault by others where the options boil down to "fight or die." This perspective fails to look at war from the point of view of the aggressed-against when armed conflict becomes a necessity In such circumstances, the moral necessity of armed force looks quite different the threatened use of WMD can be seen as less evil than the alternatives, such as doing nothing or fighting a conventional war and faring poorly pragmatist feminism affirms attention to particular conflicts rather than war in the abstract and its stance of moderation and of imposing the minimal suffering A second difference emerges out of the antiwar feminist observation that war and militarism are not separate from everyday life While this is important it needs to be joined with alternative proposals for addressing the "large-scale military conflict." There has been scant attention to this issue in antiwar feminist scholarship Even if one assumes that war is a "presence" in everyday life and not merely a discrete "event" it is nonetheless the case that "war" is more damaging and harmful, and creates greater suffering in a multiplicity of ways, than the absence of war. Pragmatist feminist thinking is attentive to how such differences in consequences differentiate war from “everyday life For a pragmatist feminist, the current state of international affairs requires consideration of the circumstances in which the threatened use of such weapons for defensive or deterrent purposes may be morally necessary

Every central premise in their criticism of deterrence is wrong---retaining military force as a deterrent against highly destructive conflict is compatible with and key to long-term anti-imperialist goals of eliminating militarism and oppression. Even if violence exists on a continuum, the difference between war and its absence is still highly salient. And their approach utterly fails to provide a strategy for dealing with the possibility of conflict, which makes it complicit if we win our impact

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Kritiks

2022

While classical liberals focused on political structures, socialists analyzed the socioeconomic system of states as the primary factor in determining the propensity of states to engage in war. Socialists such as Karl Marx attributed war to the class structure of society; Marx believed that war resulted from a clash of social forces created by a capitalist mode of production that develops two antagonistic classes, rather than being an instrument of state policy. Thus capitalist states would engage in war because of their growing needs for raw materials, markets, and cheap labor. Socialists believed replacing capitalism with socialism could prevent war, but world events have proven socialists wrong as well. 32 These two schools of thought—war is caused by innate biological drives or social institutions—do not demonstrate any meaningful correlation with the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war. There are many variables not considered by these two schools: for example, the influence of national special interest groups such as the military or defense contractors that may seek glory through victory, greater resources, greater domestic political power, or justification for their existence. Legal scholar Quincy Wright has conducted one of the “most thorough studies of the nature of war” 33 and concludes that there “is no single cause of war.” 34 In A Study of War, he concludes that peace is an equilibrium of four complex factors: military and industrial technology, international law governing the resort to war, social and political organization at the domestic and international level, and the distribution of attitudes and opinions concerning basic values. War is likely when controls on any one level are disturbed or changed. 35 Similarly, the 1997 US National Military Strategy identifies the root causes of conflict as political, economic, social, and legal conditions. 36 Moore has compiled the following list of conventional explanations for war: specific disputes; absence of dispute settlement mechanisms; ideological disputes; ethnic and religious differences; communication failures; proliferation of weapons and arms races; social and economic injustice; imbalance of power; competition for resources; incidents, accidents, and miscalculation; violence in the nature of man; aggressive national leaders; and economic determination. He has concluded, however, that these causes or motives for war explain specific conflicts but fail to serve as a central paradigm for explaining the cause of war. 37 In the final analysis, Wright is unequivocally correct—there is no single cause or explanation for war. However, there is one clear consistency in all wars: wars always begin through the calculated decisions of men or women, regardless of any cause, motive, or explanation. As the UNESCO constitution asserts, “wars begin in the minds of men.” 38 People—national leaders— are always at the core of any decision to wage war, and any strategy for preventing war must address these individuals.

Sharp 8 [Gary, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, “Democracy and Deterrence. Foundations for an Enduring World Peace,” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA493031&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf]

While classical liberals focused on political structures, socialists analyzed the socioeconomic system of states as the primary factor in determining the propensity of states to engage in war. These two schools of thought—war is caused by innate biological drives or social institutions—do not demonstrate any meaningful correlation with the occurrence or nonoccurrence of war. There are many variables not considered for example, the influence of national special interest groups such as the military or defense contractors that may seek glory through victory, greater resources, greater domestic political power, or justification for their existence. Wright has conducted one of the “most thorough studies of the nature of war and concludes that there “is no single cause of war. e concludes that peace is an equilibrium of four complex factors: military and industrial technology, international law governing the resort to war, social and political organization at the domestic and international level, and the distribution of attitudes and opinions concerning basic values Moore has compiled the following list of conventional explanations for war: specific disputes; absence of dispute settlement mechanisms; ideological disputes; ethnic and religious differences; communication failures; proliferation of weapons and arms races; social and economic injustice; imbalance of power; competition for resources; incidents, accidents, and miscalculation; violence in the nature of man; aggressive national leaders; and economic determination Wright is unequivocally correct—there is no single cause or explanation for war. However, there is one clear consistency in all wars: wars always begin through the calculated decisions of men or women People—national leaders— are always at the core of any decision to wage war, and any strategy for preventing war must address these individuals

Zero empirical correlation between innate drives or social institutions and war – the only way to prevent conflict empirically is to look at the specific decision calculus of national leaders

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Wars are not simply accidents. Nor, contrary to our ordinary language, are they made by nations. Wars are made by people; more specifically they are decided on by the leaders of nation states—and other nonnational groups in the case of terrorism—who make the decision to commit aggression or otherwise use the military instrument. These leaders make that decision based on the totality of incentives affecting them at the time of the decision. . . . Incentive theory] tells us that we simply have a better chance of] . . . predicting war, and fashioning forms of intervention to control it, if we focus squarely on the effect of variables from all levels of analysis in generating incentives affecting the actual decisions made by those with the power to decide on war. 42 Incentive theory focuses on the individual decisions that lead to war and explains the synergistic relationship between the absence of effective deterrence and the absence of democracy. Together these three factors—the decisions of leaders made without the restraining effects of deterrence and democracy— are the cause of war: War is not strictly caused by an absence of democracy or effective deterrence or both together. Rather war is caused by the human leadership decision to employ the military instrument. The absence of democracy, the absence of effective deterrence, and most importantly, the synergy of an absence of both are conditions or factors that predispose to war. An absence of democracy likely predisposes by [its] effect on leadership and leadership incentives, and an absence of effective deterrence likely predisposes by its effect on incentives from factors other than the individual or governmental levels of analysis. To understand the cause of war is to understand the human decision for war; that is, major war and democide . . . are the consequence of individual decisions responding to a totality of incentives. 43

Sharp 8 [Gary, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, “Democracy and Deterrence. Foundations for an Enduring World Peace,” http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA493031&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf]

Wars are decided on by the leaders of nation states who make the decision to commit aggression or otherwise use the military instrument These leaders make that decision based on the totality of incentives affecting them at the time of the decision Incentive theory focuses on the individual decisions that lead to war and explains the synergistic relationship between the absence of effective deterrence and the absence of democracy these three factors—the decisions of leaders made without the restraining effects of deterrence and democracy— are the cause of war: The absence of democracy, the absence of effective deterrence, and most importantly, the synergy of an absence of both are conditions or factors that predispose to war To understand the cause of war is to understand the human decision for war; that is, major war and democide . . . are the consequence of individual decisions responding to a totality of incentives.

The lack of deterrence is the most reliable predictor of war – instead of focusing on root causes, we should look to variables that directly affect decision-making, and deterrence is the most important factor

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

By his own admission, Stavrakakis does not provide blueprints (which is unsurprising), nor does he provide prescriptions, political direction or policy proposals (pp. 13-14, 30). This leaves the work of dubious relevance to people doing politics whether as activists, politicians or administrators. The aim is rather to argue for radical democracy as 'the institutionalization of a mechanism which enables the continuous re-articulation of the symbolic field constituting society' (p. 129). The author makes very broad claims about this function of democracy, which is 'the most pressing task' of politics (p. 60), the only way to ensure permanent creation of the new (p. 60) and the only legitimate form of hegemony (p. 256). The argumentation backing up these claims mostly amounts to assertion and exegesis. However, this is not simply a case for existing liberal democracies. Radical democracy is contrasted with existing democracies (pp. 255-256) and is taken to imply a change in the arrangement of jouissance . Instead of the fantasies pervasive today, typified by their blaming of the other for the incompleteness of the self, Stavrakakis proposes a passage to feminine jouissance that encircles the lack (pp. 22-23, 111, 144, 268, 278-279). Present democracies have been hit by an assault on the two pillars of modern democracy -- equality and liberty -- by the neoliberals and neoconservatives, respectively, leading to a 'post-political' world in which conflict is avoided and thus returns as social problems, and in which a new, almost pre-democratic despotism is taking shape (pp. 263-264). Despite this, democracy can still function as 'the mobilising force, the common denominator, for a politics of alternatives' (p. 258).

Robinson 8 [Andrew, political theorist and activist based in the UK Contemporary Political Theory. Avenel: Aug 2008. Vol. 7, Iss. 3; pg. 351, 7 pgs]

Stavrakakis does not provide blueprints nor does he provide political direction This leaves the work of dubious relevance to people doing politics The argumentation backing up these claims mostly amounts to assertion and exegesis

Psychoanalysis has zero logical or empirical basis, can’t be scaled up, and totalizes the existence of the human condition in pseudoscientific terms

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

Given that racism works at an unconscious level, it follows, in Cohen's¶ view, that strategies to challenge it at a conscious level are doomed to¶ failure. They are bound to fail precisely because they are rational and¶ fail to appreciate that the power of racism lies in the fact that it is¶ unconscious. To deinstitutionalise racism `will not in itself abolish¶ the power of the racist imagination' which will continue to flourish¶ through the media of popular culture long after its state forms have¶ withered away.42 `All the evidence to date', Cohen writes elsewhere,¶ `shows that the racist imagination is not accessible to rationalist¶ pedagogies, and almost effortlessly resists their impact'. What is all¶ this evidence? Certainly it is neither presented nor cited.43 Rustin,¶ too, claims that classroom teaching can have the effect of `increasing¶ kinds of defensive organisation'. But he cites no evidence - other¶ than referring to Cohen's work - and seems to believe that all `antiracism'¶ in education is a matter of seeking to change attitudes, rather¶ than opening up new ways of looking at the world.44¶ In Cohen's schema, then, racism is taken out of society and material¶ reality and lodged very firmly in the minds, the unconscious minds, of¶ individual subjects. Although in his 1988 article, `The perversions of¶ inheritance', he distanced himself from a position that afforded¶ absolute autonomy to the ideological, and thus ran the risk, as he¶ acknowledged, of `substituting changes in personal attitude or societal¶ values for structural reforms', this is, in fact, where he has ended up.¶ As his work has developed, there is less and less sense of any¶ political project of anti-racism and an almost exclusive concentration¶ on dealing with the beliefs and attitudes of racists. Ideology has¶ become all.¶ In placing racism in the unconscious, Cohen is very much in line¶ with the most orthodox of psychoanalysis which claims to find¶ `inside' individuals (whatever that might mean - the notion of an `internal¶ world' is always taken for granted and never really put into question)¶ what actually belongs in society, in what psychoanalysis calls¶ `the external world'. Indeed, one of the earliest Marxist critiques of¶ Freud's theories made precisely this point, accusing Freud of rendering¶ individual what was irredeemably social.45 In the same vein, and particularly¶ germane to the present discussion, the refusal of psychoanalysis¶ to acknowledge social and political reality, to see what is in front of it, is¶ exemplified in the following story.¶ Like many analysts of her time, Melanie Klein, in whose tradition¶ Cohen writes, engaged in the quite unethical and inappropriate practice¶ of analysing her own children. She began her son Erich's analysis in¶ Budapest in 1920 when he was 5 and continued it when she separated¶ from her husband and moved to Berlin. There, Erich developed a¶ phobia about going outside. Klein `explained' to Erich that his anxiety¶ was due to his fantasies about having sexual intercourse with his¶ mother. Erich told his mother of a street that was particularly frightening¶ to him because it was filled with young `toughs' who tormented him.¶ Klein ignored this and, recalling that the street was filled with large¶ trees, interpreted these as phalluses and evidence of his continued¶ desire for his mother and of his fear of castration as a punishment.¶ Years later, Erich's elder brother Hans, also an analysand of his¶ mother, told Erich that the youths had, in fact, been an anti-Semitic¶ gang that routinely attacked Jewish children. Erich had never been¶ told by his mother that he was Jewish. As the historian of psychotherapy¶ Philip Cushman comments: `It is difficult to know what is¶ more remarkable in this incident with Erich: Klein's dismissal of, her¶ almost phobic denial of, the ``external'' social realm, or her remarkable¶ self-centredness.' 46 Klein, in other words, placed in the mind of her son¶ that which fully belonged in the material world. Objective reality¶ became a `state of mind'. Exactly the same criticism can be levelled¶ at Cohen's placing of racism inside the unconscious minds of individuals.¶ It is indeed ironic that, with postmodernists such as Cohen,¶ we should be witnessing a return to a past - albeit at a more sophisticated¶ level of `discourse' - when, according to the liberal race relations¶ paradigm, racism did not really exist, only racial prejudice, something¶ that was individual and psychological.¶ The question of method¶ Cohen's work unavoidably raises the question of the status of psychoanalysis¶ as a social or political theory, as distinct from a clinical one.¶ Can psychoanalysis, in other words, apply to the social world of groups, institutions, nations, states and cultures in the way that it does,¶ or at least may do, to individuals? Certainly there is now a considerable¶ body of literature and a plethora of academic courses, and so on, claiming¶ that psychoanalysis is a social theory. And, of course, in popular¶ discourse, it is now a commonplace to hear of nations and societies¶ spoken of in personalised ways. Thus `truth commissions' and the¶ like, which have become so common in the past decade in countries¶ which have undergone turbulent change, are seen as forms of national¶ therapy or catharsis, even if this is far from being their purpose. Nevertheless,¶ the question remains: does it make sense, as Michael Ignatieff¶ puts it, to speak of nations having psyches the way that individuals do?¶ `Can a nation's past make people ill as we know repressed memories¶ sometimes make individuals ill? . . . Can we speak of nations ``working¶ through'' a civil war or an atrocity as we speak of individuals working¶ through a traumatic memory or event?' 47¶ The problem with the application of psychoanalysis to social institutions¶ is that there can be no testing of the claims made. If someone says,¶ for instance, that nationalism is a form of looking for and seeking to¶ replace the body of the mother one has lost, or that the popular¶ appeal of a particular kind of story echoes the pattern of our earliest¶ relationship to the maternal breast, how can this be proved? The¶ pioneers of psychoanalysis, from Freud onwards, all derived their¶ ideas in the context of their work with individual patients and their¶ ideas can be examined in the everyday laboratory of the therapeutic¶ encounter where the validity of an interpretation, for example, is a¶ matter for dialogue between therapist and patient. Outside of the consulting¶ room, there can be no such verification process, and the further¶ one moves from the individual patient, the less purchase psychoanalytic¶ ideas can have. Outside the therapeutic encounter, anything¶ and everything can be true, psychoanalytically speaking. But if everything¶ is true, then nothing can be false and therefore nothing can be¶ true.¶ An example of Cohen's method is to be found in his 1993 working¶ paper, `Home rules', subtitled `Some reflections on racism and nationalism¶ in everyday life'. Here Cohen talks about taking a `particular line¶ of thought for a walk'. While there is nothing wrong with taking a line¶ of thought for a walk, such an exercise is not necessarily the same as¶ thinking. One of the problems with Cohen's approach is that a kind¶ of free association, mixed with deconstruction, leads not to analysis,¶ not even to psychoanalysis, but to... well, just more free association,¶ an endless, indeed one might say pointless, play on words. This¶ approach may well throw up some interesting associations along the¶ way, connections one had never thought of but it is not to be confused¶ with political analysis. In `Home rules', anything and everything to do¶ with `home' can and does find a place here and, as I indicated above, even the popular film Home Alone is pressed into service as a story¶ about `racial' invasion.¶ Cohen's method also relies to no little extent on various caricatures.¶ There is the parody of an undifferentiated anti-racism which is always¶ crude and simplistic in its explanations, always dogmatic and authoritarian¶ in its prescriptions. `It is no longer possible', Cohen claims at one¶ point, `to call a spade a spade . . . because the level of connotations,¶ which is always open to multiple associations, including racist ones,¶ has been shut down ``By Order''.' 48 No one would deny that much¶ that is called anti-racism has been ill-considered or counter-productive¶ or simple-minded, but to suggest that this is the whole story - and this is¶ the picture one gets from Cohen's account - appears simply bad faith.¶ Nor does one get any sense from his account that some forms of antiracism¶ have been subjected to the most rigorous critique - from other¶ anti-racists, notably in this journal. So, too, there is the distorted depiction¶ of teachers bearing the anti-racist message. In Cohen's world, they¶ are always middle class, relying on a `deficit model' of working-class¶ culture, and engaged in a `civilising mission', believing themselves to¶ be `the bringers of reason and tolerance to those gripped by unreason,¶ prejudice and ignorance'.49 Doubtless such attitudes exist, but Cohen's¶ depiction is so one-dimensional; it has no room for complexity or¶ difference. If it did, he could not take up the position that he does, of¶ the one who really knows. It is also a position that takes Cohen on¶ to dangerous ground in which, at times at least, it seems as though¶ all authority is bad (in the language of Foucault, it is tutelary and¶ constitutes surveillance) and all resistance to authority good, or at¶ least understandable.50¶ Racism without history¶ Not only is racism psychologised and individualised. It also becomes¶ something that is universal. Cohen's colleague Rustin makes this¶ clear in the article cited earlier,51 while Cohen himself states that¶ `Every language and culture, in so far as it is able, privileges its own¶ practices, using them to define its own origins, and defend its own¶ boundaries. Every form of ethnicity, if it has the means, is ethnocentric.¶ The key word is if.'52 (There is a dangerous slippage here in that¶ `ethnocentrism' is not the same as racism and, while it may turn into¶ it, it need not and frequently does not.) What is not explained by¶ either Cohen or Rustin is why some individuals or some groups are¶ `more' racist or less racist than others. Racism is thus completely¶ removed from history, but what is also not explained in this regard is¶ why it is more or less virulent at particular times and in particular¶ places. A psychoanalytic account like Cohen's simply cannot account¶ for such twentieth-century events as the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in 1914 or the destruction of the Jews, or indeed anything¶ else. `To deny racism its history', Cohen had written in 1988, `is to¶ surrender to a kind of fatalism.'53 Yet that is precisely the position¶ he has come to occupy.¶ The question is not whether or not racism operates at an unconscious¶ level. There is clearly too much evidence to deny this. The question¶ is, rather, how important is this unconscious working? Should it¶ be, can it be, the focus of anti-racist strategy? For Cohen, however,¶ the unconscious has become all; nothing else really matters. Here we¶ have reached the site of a psychoanalytic determinism - a curious inversion¶ of the crude materialism that Cohen would rightly distance himself¶ from. It is a determinism which holds that we are not at all rational¶ thinking beings, but that we are driven all the time by forces beyond¶ our control. Our attachment to a belief or an ideal, our cultural preferences,¶ all these are to be explained by some supposed psychoanalytic¶ interpretation. There is no hope, then, except in the form of psychoanalytic¶ or psychotherapeutic treatment and it is this which Cohen¶ seeks to offer through his cultural studies approach.

Gordon 1—psychotherapist living and working in London (Paul, Psychoanalysis and Racism: The politics of defeat Race & Class v. 42, n. 4)

Given that racism works at an unconscious level, it follows that strategies to challenge it at a conscious level are doomed to failure. What is all this evidence? Certainly it is neither presented nor cited racism is taken out of society and material reality and lodged very firmly in the minds, the unconscious minds, of individual subjects there is less and less sense of any political project of anti-racism In placing racism in the unconscious Cohen is in line with the most orthodox of psychoanalysis which claims to find inside' individuals what actually belongs in society, in what psychoanalysis calls the external world Klein placed in the mind of her son that which fully belonged in the material world. Objective reality became a `state of mind'. Exactly the same criticism can be levelled at placing racism inside the unconscious minds of individuals does it make sense to speak of nations having psyches the way that individuals do? The problem with the application of psychoanalysis to social institutions is that there can be no testing of the claims made how can this be proved? Outside of the consulting room, there can be no such verification process, and the further one moves from the individual patient, the less purchase psychoanalytic ideas can have. Outside the therapeutic encounter, anything and everything can be true, psychoanalytically speaking. But if everything is true, then nothing can be false and therefore nothing can be true. No one would deny that much that is called anti-racism has been ill-considered or counter-productive but to suggest that this is the whole story Not only is racism psychologised and individualised It also becomes something that is universal. What is not explained is why some individuals or some groups are more' racist or less racist than others Racism is thus completely removed from history, but what is also not explained in this regard is why it is more or less virulent at particular times and in particular places A psychoanalytic account cannot account for such twentieth-century events as the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks in 1914 or the destruction of the Jews, or indeed anything else To deny racism its history' is to surrender to a kind of fatalism Yet that is precisely the position he has come to occupy The question is not whether or not racism operates at an unconscious level. There is clearly too much evidence to deny this. The question is, rather, how important is this unconscious working? Should it be, can it be, the focus of anti-racist strategy? Here we have reached the site of a psychoanalytic determinism - a curious inversion of crude materialism Our attachment to a belief or an ideal, our cultural preferences all these are to be explained by some supposed psychoanalytic interpretation There is no hope, then

Psychoanalytic explanations of racism are reductionist, non-falsifiable and anti-political

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

The rejection of positivism which is a central element of recent critiques of mainstream IR has tended to extend to rejection of the notion and possibility of science itself. Science, often written in quotation marks ‘science’, is seen as inherently part of the project of Enlightenment-modernity, a mode of technical instrumental knowledge which is necessarily a means of control and domination of both society and nature 22 . An important component of the critique of the positivist orthodoxy is exposure of its coincidence with the interests of the powerful. Dominant ideas and methods which rest on claims of value-free scientificity and neutrality are shown to mask or legitimise the interests of the powerful and the exercise of power and domination. The very claim to be able to produce value-free, neutral scientific truth is rejected in a world of inherently conflicting interests. Instead, the ‘illusion of objectivism must be replaced with the recognition that knowledge is always constituted in reflection of interests’ (Ashley 1981: 207).

Jones 04 – (August 2004, Branwen Gruffydd, PhD in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy at Goldsmiths University of London, “From Eurocentrism to Epistemological Internationalism: power, knowledge and objectivity in International Relations,” Paper presented at Theorising Ontology, Annual Conference of the International Association for Critical Realism, University of Cambridge, http://www.csog.group.cam.ac.uk/iacr/papers/Jones.pdf)

The rejection of positivism has tended to extend to rejection of the possibility of science itself seen as inherently part of the project of Enlightenment-modernity a mode of technical instrumental knowledge which is necessarily a means of control and domination An important component of the critique is its coincidence with the interests of the powerful Dominant ideas are shown to mask or legitimise the exercise of power and domination

Valid, descriptive theories of the world are an essential prerequisite to emancipatory critique – epistemic shifts from Eurocentric thought are impossible without reclaiming the concept of objectivity.

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

The postmodernists' problem is that they cannot live with disappointment. All the tragedies of the political project of emancipation ± the evils of Stalinism in particular ± are seen as the inevitable product of men and women trying to create a better society. But, rather than engage in a critical assessment of how, for instance, radical political movements go wrong, they discard the emancipatory project and impulse itself. The postmodernists, as Sivanandan puts it, blame modernity for having failed them: `the intellectuals and academics have fled into discourse and deconstruction and representation ± as though to interpret the world is more important than to change it, as though changing the interpretation is all we could do in a changing world'.58 To justify their flight from a politics holding out the prospect of radical change through self-activity, the disappointed intellectuals and abundant 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 non- sense, 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 slavery exist or did it not, and 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 firrm action against them (or anyone else transgressing agreed social or legal norms) precluded `understand- ing' 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 psycho- analysis, 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.

Gordon 1—psychotherapist living and working in London (Paul, Psychoanalysis and Racism: The politics of defeat Race & Class v. 42, n. 4)

postmodernists' cannot live with disappointment the tragedies of the political project of emancipation are seen as the inevitable product of trying to create a better society. rather than engage in a critical assessment of how radical political movements go wrong, they discard the emancipatory project academics have fled into discourse as though to interpret the world is more important than to change it, as though changing the interpretation is all we could do in a changing world' To justify their flight from politics the disappointed intellectuals alibis champion psychoanalysis psychoanalysis offers `a world-historical alibi' for the passivity and helplessness 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, we are nothing but prisoners There is no point in trying to resist oppressions 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 political defeatism of psychoanalysis lead him to be dismissive of any attempt at political solidarity or collective action. For him, `communities' are always `imagined' based on fantasy In this scenario, the idea that people might come 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: history is always false this is dangerous nonsense Cohen reveals himself to be deeply ambivalent about punitive action against racists In their move from politics to the academy and the world of `discourse', the postmodernists may have simply exchanged one grand narrative for psychoanalysis psychoanalysis recognises few limits on its explanatory potential the claimed radicalism of psycho- analysis is 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.

Psychoanalysis cannot be the foundation for ethics or the political---it’s negativity denies any chance of emancipation while reproducing the logic of the squo

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Michigan (7-week)

Kritiks

2022

NATO’s new strategic concept will incorporate the threat from China in a way that seeks to learn from failures to counter Russia’s influence, security analysts told the Washington Examiner, noting China is watching Russia’s techniques to drive wedges and weaken the alliance. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters Tuesday that a 2010 alliance strategy document that spoke of Russia in terms of a “strategic partnership” needs to be scrapped as Russia continues hybrid warfare on the eastern flank. Likewise, the new framework must address how the 30 countries should view an emerging threat posed by China. “We need to engage with China, but we also need to take into account the challenges Russia or China poses to our alliance,” Stoltenberg told reporters on a Zoom call after the NATO ministerial wrapped up Monday. The warning is especially vital, considering how the alliance failed to fend off Russian aggression that created protracted conflicts in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Armenia, some of whom aspired to greater proximity with Europe and membership in the defense alliance. Russia’s resulting military and intelligence creep positioned assets within 200 miles of NATO shores. Security experts say China is watching to see how, or if, allies will take a firmer stance. Meanwhile, China uses its economic power to better position itself militarily in Europe.

Mahashie 21’ (Abraham, Defense Writer Washington Examiner, 06/15) https://news.yahoo.com/nato-pivots-toward-china-seeks-181700482.html?fr=yhssrp_catchall

NATO’s new strategic concept seeks to learn from failures to counter Russia’s influence the new framework must address an emerging threat posed by China. We need to take into account the challenges China poses to our alliance The warning is especially vital, considering how the alliance failed to fend off Russian aggression China is watching to see how, or if, allies will take a firmer stance Meanwhile China uses its economic power to better position itself militarily

Uniqueness – NATO’s learning from its mistakes with Russia, shifting resources to focus on China in the newest strategy

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NAUDL

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According to the theory of international relations, the world is constantly in a state of anarchy and countries always seek a balance of power to maintain their own security. With China’s rise, the US and its allies fear losing the equilibrium that supports American domination of the global order. Considering China a “revisionist state,” they have raised concerns about Beijing’s unchecked attempt to change the status quo, to pursue military expansionism and follow a path toward hegemony. From geo-strategic flashpoints in the South China Sea to Taiwan, to trade wars and technological wars, the likelihood of confrontations seems inevitable. That raises a simple question. Will war between the US and China result from the current tension? If so, what form of war will that be? If history is any indication, three speculations can be made for war between the US and China: World War III, Cold War 2.0, and regional proxy wars. World War III would be the most extreme. When China is considered a security threat and that seeks hegemony through military expansionism, should one consider it as equivalent to Germany and Japan during the two World Wars? Has China invaded and occupied any countries? Has China pursued imperialist colonialism? Has it committed a mass atrocity, or is it a terrorist state? Similarly, if war is to happen between the two superpowers, then what might trigger the United States’ involvement? Events like the attack on Pearl Harbor? The second form of war is Cold War 2.0, which is being hotly debated as the closest to the current realities. But this time it is not about ideologies, space war or nuclear brinkmanship. It is more about a trade war, currency war, technological war, cyber war or even hybrid war that combines elements of some or all of these. Competition for the domination of multilateral frameworks is one of the possible fronts of Cold War 2.0, which has gradually divided nations along this polarity if it truly exists – for instance, the competition between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Indo-Pacific Strategy. But if Cold War 2.0 does exist, it would be a limited version of Cold War 1.0 with fewer fronts and features owing to China’s reluctance to take global leadership on every front as the former Soviet Union tried to do vis-à-vis the US. Using the word “competition” on multilateral frameworks is not totally right either, because while China is increasing its contribution to the multilateral system, the share is still low compared with the US. It would not constitute a competition either if the US is withdrawing from every multilateral system that it helped build after World War II. Modern China in fact has benefited from the system created by the domination of the US, and it has yet to create any global governance system, either politically or economically. China has not tried or at least has not been seen as attempting to impose or spread its own system. Thus far, no country has proclaimed that it is adopting China’s governance system. The next possible type of war is a regional proxy war in the Asia-Pacific, which is the main platform of competition between the US and China. Like in Cold War 1.0, the US-China rivalry could result in “hot wars” between peripheral states. Regional flashpoints such as the South China Sea and Taiwan could ignite such hot wars. For the Mekong region, the likelihood of Vietnam War 2.0 cannot be ruled out while China and Vietnam keep confronting each other in the South China Sea. Cambodia used to be a sideshow of Vietnam War 1.0.

Veriek 20’ (Sim, 06/15, https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/three-pathways-to-war-between-the-us-and-china/)

With China’s rise, the US and its allies fear losing the equilibrium that supports American domination of the global order. Considering China a “revisionist state,” they have raised concerns about Beijing’s unchecked attempt to change the status quo, to pursue military expansionism and follow a path toward hegemony. Will war between the US and China result from the current tension? World War III, Cold War 2.0, and regional proxy wars. World War III would be the most extreme. The second form of war is Cold War 2.0, which is being hotly debated as the closest to the current realities. It is more about a trade war, currency war, technological war, cyber war or even hybrid war that combines elements of some or all of these. for instance, the competition between the Belt and Road Initiative and the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Modern China in fact has benefited from the system created by the domination of the US, and it has yet to create any global governance system, either politically or economically. The next possible type of war is a regional proxy war in the Asia-Pacific, which is the main platform of competition between the US and China.

Impact- China expansionism creates World War III, Cold War 2.0, and proxy wars

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In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Stoltenberg said that countering the security threat from the rise of China will be an important part of NATO’s future rationale. “NATO is an alliance of North America and Europe. But this region faces global challenges: terrorism, cyber, but also the rise of China. So when it comes to strengthening our collective defense, that’s also about how to address the rise of China,” Stoltenberg told the Financial Times. “What we can predict is that the rise of China will impact our security. It already has.” He pointed out that China has had an impact on European security through its cyber capabilities, new technologies and long-range missiles. Bruce Jones, director and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said Stoltenberg’s remarks revealed an important shift of the military alliance. “It's an important shift of NATO inside NATO,” he told VOA Mandarin in a phone interview. “There's been a debate about whether NATO should concentrate on Russia, Europe, or whether it should be part of a wider American reorientation towards China.” He added that the statement from the secretary-general is “a signal about the direction that he is going to go and that he has some support for changing the orientation.” Stoltenberg said NATO will adopt a new strategic concept next summer, which will outline the group’s strategies for the next 10 years. The current 2010 version does not mention China. In an interview with Politico earlier this month, Stoltenberg also stressed that NATO needs to strengthen its engagement with China. “We don't regard China as an adversary or an enemy,” he said. “We need to engage with China on important issues such as climate change — there's no way to reduce emissions enough in the world without also including China.”

Xi 21’ ( Jie, Reporter for VOA News 10/22) https://www.voanews.com/a/nato-s-new-focus-reflects-china-s-rise-/6282496.html

countering the security threat from the rise of China will be an important part of NATO’s future rationale China has had an impact on European security through its cyber capabilities, new technologies and long-range missiles. NATO will adopt a new strategic concept , which wil strengthen its engagement with China.

NATO pivot focus on China is vital to security for the future

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During the March 23-24 meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) council, Anthony Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, encouraged NATO members to join the U.S. in viewing China as an economic and security threat to the U.S. as well as to NATO countries, thereby expanding NATO’s areas of focus to include the Pacific. This is a dangerous move that must be challenged. To gain insight into what transpired at the March NATO meeting, we can look to a roadmap for NATO’s future, which was released last fall. The report, entitled “NATO 2030: United for a New Era,” is intended to be a guide for the military alliance in meeting the challenges it will face in the next decade. This new proposed roadmap for NATO reflects an alarming expansion: It is as much about China and the Asia/Pacific region as it is about NATO’s traditional area of operations and concern, Europe and Russia. Although the group identified the No. 1 threat to NATO as Russia, China was named as threat number 2. Secretary of State Blinken, in his address on March 24 to NATO members, strongly rebuked China and urged NATO allies to join with the U.S. in this adversarial position. Blinken said the U.S. wouldn’t force its European allies into an “us-or-them choice,” but he then implied the opposite, emphasizing that Washington views China as an economic and security threat, particularly in technology, to NATO allies in Europe. “When one of us is coerced, we should respond as allies and work together to reduce our vulnerability by ensuring our economies are more integrated with each other,” Blinken said. Stoltenberg nevertheless continued to spell out specific reasons NATO agrees with the U.S.: “The rise of China has direct consequences to our security…. So, one of the challenges we face as we now have this forward looking process with NATO 2030 is how to strengthen and how to work more closely together as allies, responding to the rise of China.” NATO’s concerns about Chinese military expansion include the construction of nine naval bases on atolls in the South China Sea and an increasing number of ships: China now has the largest navy in the world, with 350 ships and submarines, including over 130 ships. In comparison, the U.S. Navy has 293 ships as of early 2020, but U.S. naval ships have substantially more firepower than Chinese Navy ships. At the March meeting, NATO members spoke frequently about China’s increasingly global military footprint, including the development of an overseas base in Djibouti, which now “hosts” military bases of the United States, France, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Japan and China. China also has several smaller bases around the world, including in the province of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina, on land loaned to the Chinese government during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency. China claims the land is for space exploration and intelligence services. The Chinese government also has a naval electronic intelligence facility on the Great Coco Island of Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal and a small military post in south-eastern Tajikistan. China has a total of 13 military bases worldwide, including the nine on atolls in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, NATO is also raising alarm about China’s economic Belt and Road Initiative, which includes a “belt” of overland road and rail corridors and a maritime “road” of shipping lanes and ports.

Wright 21’ (Ann, 03/29,https://truthout.org/articles/in-alarmist-turn-nato-is-increasingly-positioning-itself-in-opposition-to-china/)

encouraged NATO members to join the U.S. in viewing China as an economic and security threat to the U.S. as well as to NATO countries, thereby expanding NATO’s areas of focus to include the Pacific. “ It is as much about China and the Asia/Pacific region as it is about NATO’s traditional area of operations and concern, Europe and Russia. March 24 to NATO members, strongly rebuked China and urged NATO allies to join with the U.S. in this adversarial position. emphasizing that Washington views China as an economic and security threat, particularly in technology, to NATO allies in Europe. “The rise of China has direct consequences to our security…. So, one of the challenges we face as we now have this forward looking process with NATO 2030 is how to strengthen and how to work more closely together as allies, responding to the rise of China.” nine naval bases an increasing number of ships: China now has the largest navy in the world, with 350 ships and submarines, including over 130 ships. In comparison, the U.S. Navy has 293 ships as of early 2020, but U.S. naval ships have substantially more firepower than Chinese Navy ships. “ ” military bases in the province of Neuquén, Patagonia, Argentina, on land loaned to the Chinese government during Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency China claims the land is for space exploration . naval electronic intelligence facility on the Great Coco Island of Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal and a small military post in south-eastern Tajikistan. 13 military bases worldwide , NATO is also raising alarm about China’s economic Belt and Road Initiative, which includes a “ ” of overland road and rail corridors and a maritime “ ” of shipping lanes and ports.

NATO Expanding its Technology With China in its Sights

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Big differences over how to treat autonomous weapons could undermine NATO’s drive. On paper, NATO is the ideal organization to go about setting standards for military applications of artificial intelligence. But the widely divergent priorities and budgets of its 30 members could get in the way. The Western military alliance has identified artificial intelligence as a key technology needed to maintain an edge over adversaries, and it wants to lead the way in establishing common ground rules for its use. "I'm ... not sure that they're having the same debates on principles of responsible use or they're definitely not applying our democratic values to these technologies,” he said. Meanwhile, the EU — which has pledged to roll out the world's first binding rules on AI in coming weeks — is seeking closer collaboration with Washington to oversee emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. The alliance's own AI strategy, to be released before the summer, will identify ways to operate AI systems responsibly, identify military applications for the technology, and provide a “platform for allies to test their AI to see whether it's up to NATO standards,” van Weel said. “If an adversary would use autonomous AI powered systems in a way that is not compatible with our values and morals, it would still have defense implications because we would need to defend and deter against those systems,” Van Weel said. The problem is that NATO's members are at very different stages when it comes to thinking about AI in the military context. The U.S., the world's biggest military spender, has prioritized the use of AI in the defense realm. But in Europe, most countries — France and the Netherlands excepting — barely mention the technology’s defense and military implications in their national AI strategies. The U.S., which tends to be light on regulation and keen on defense, sees things differently. There are also divergences over what technologies the alliance ought to develop, including lethal autonomous weapons systems — often dubbed “killer robots” — programmed to identify and destroy targets without human control. These weapons systems have also faced fierce public opposition from civil society and human rights groups, including from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who in 2018 called for a ban. "I think there’s a certain danger that if NATO doesn’t take this on as a real challenge, that it may be marginalized by other such efforts,” Franke said. She pointed to the U.S.-led AI Partnership for Defense, which consists of 13 countries from Europe and Asia to collaborate on AI use in the military context — a forum which could supplant NATO as the standard-setting body. That could have consequences for human rights, too.

HEIKKILÄ 21’ (Melissa, 03/29, https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-ai-artificial-intelligence-standards-priorities/)

Big differences over how to treat autonomous weapons could undermine NATO’s drive. The Western military alliance has identified artificial intelligence as a key technology needed to maintain an edge over adversaries, and it wants to lead the way in establishing common ground rules for its use. "I'm ... not sure that they're having the same debates on principles of responsible use or they're definitely not applying our democratic values to these technologies,” he said. The alliance's own AI strategy, to be released before the summer, will identify ways to operate AI systems responsibly, identify military applications for the technology, and provide a “platform for allies to test their AI to see whether it's up to NATO standards,” “If an adversary would use autonomous AI powered systems in a way that is not compatible with our values and morals, it would still have defense implications because we would need to defend and deter against those systems,” "I think there’s a certain danger that if NATO doesn’t take this on as a real challenge, that it may be marginalized by other such efforts,” That could have consequences for human rights, too.

NATO wants to set AI standards. If only its members agreed on the basics.

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Converging technologies also pose fundamental human security challenges. As Francis Fukuyama once argued in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, converging technologies could inequitably transform the world we live in and, in the process, undermine the very foundations that underpin liberal democracies. Whether or not such a future unfolds, it is clear that their application raises serious ethical and moral issues that are proving divisive for allies and enemies alike (eg: the debates over armed drones and cyber espionage). If NATO member states want to sustain “the traditional transatlantic compact [European political support in return for US military guarantees]”, they must change the way NATO approaches cooperative security around emerging technologies. And, they need to do it now. First and foremost, NATO needs to substantially increase its investment in its Emerging Security Challenges Division (ESCD). This division should be provided the resources necessary to properly investigate the net security implications of converging technologies. It also must be granted the agency to pursue independent assessments of the security impacts posed by emerging technologies. This requires a mandate to conduct its research at arm’s length from NATO member states to ensure that its reports are not subject to their political meddling. If this cannot be achieved within the institution, then NATO should consider transforming ESCD into an independent institution (eg: the role that UNIDIR plays in the United Nations). NATO also needs to ensure that all member states possess equal agency to call upon the ESCD to prepare reports on particular emerging technology issues of concern. This would be similar to the agency provided to US Congress members to call upon Congressional Research Services. Separately, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly needs to be held accountable for failing in its duty to address the serious threat posed by emerging technologies. To date, there have been far too few committee reports designed to create awareness and common understanding of the key security challenges posed by individual emerging technologies. And, there have been no substantive reports that have tackled the overarching implications of the NBRIC revolution. Moving forward, all of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Committees should place emerging technologies on their annual agenda. By doing so, they could remedy some of the challenges raised by the inability of individual member states to develop the legislation and regulations to manage the downside risks of converging technologies. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly might even consider convening a major conference open to all national politicians from the NATO Community on the security implications of converging technologies. Finally, NATO must do a better job of partnering with non-NATO states and Track II actors to address the security implications of emerging technologies.

Walsh 13’ (Eddie, 9/16, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/danger-of-emerging-technologies-dividing-nato/)

Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution . serious ethical and moral issues “the traditional transatlantic compact [European political support in return for US military guarantees]”, they must change the way NATO approaches cooperative security around emerging technologies. And, they need to do it now. substantially increase its investment in its Emerging Security Challenges Division (ESCD). This requires a mandate to conduct its research at arm’s length from NATO member states to ensure that its reports are not subject to their political meddling. NATO also needs to ensure that all member states possess equal agency to call upon the ESCD to prepare reports on particular emerging technology issues of concern. This would be similar to the agency provided to US Congress members to call upon Congressional Research Services. all of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Committees should place emerging technologies on their annual agenda. By doing so, they could remedy some of the challenges raised by the inability of individual member states to develop the legislation and regulations to manage the downside risks of converging technologies non-NATO states and Track II actors to address the security implications of emerging technologies.

Danger of Emerging Technologies Dividing NATO

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The bombing was said to be one of the major triggers of the consolidation of the Khmer Rouge’s power and the genocide that followed. While other parts of Southeast Asia remained peaceful, half of the Mekong region experienced prolonged bloodshed during the Cold War until the late 1990s when the civil war finally came to an end in Cambodia in 1998. It is true that China and the US do not want to confront each other in any direct war. As for China and Vietnam, even if they constantly confront each other in the South China Sea, they do not want direct war either owing to the strong ties between the two Communist parties and enormous trade relations. However, one cannot ignore the fact that these two countries did experience multiple wars between each other after World War II, including a brief and bloody battle in 1974 over the Paracel Islands. Even if the US and China themselves do not want direct war, proxy wars could re-emerge, and small states would pay the price, as was the case during the Vietnam War. These are the three speculations of possible types of wars between China and the US. Onlookers like Cambodia and other peripheral states can divide themselves in the new polarity at their own risk. Like in the previous Cold War, silence and neutrality would not be an option. Few policy options would be left for small states. Like it or not, these few options often present risks to their sovereignty and independence. Countries can stay safe and secure only if they can learn from history, which can be horrifying, cruel and bloody, at least in the case of Cambodia, because Cold Wars are only cold for the superpowers.

Veriek 20’ (Sim, 06/15, https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/three-pathways-to-war-between-the-us-and-china/)

one cannot ignore the fact that these two countries did experience multiple wars between each other after World War II, including a brief and bloody battle in 1974 over the Paracel Islands. Even if the US and China themselves do not want direct war, proxy wars could re-emerge, and small states would pay the price, as was the case during the Vietnam War. Like in the previous Cold War, silence and neutrality would not be an option. Few policy options would be left for small states. Like it or not, these few options often present risks to their sovereignty and independence.

War spirals into Proxy wars

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China participated in the 2014 RIMPAC with four ships and in 2016 but was disinvited in 2018 due to its military activities in the South China Sea. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Light Amphibious Warship, a proposed new class of Navy vessel, will be between 200 and 400 feet long and cost $100 million. The Navy wants to have 28 to 30 of these amphibious ships, which will have the capability to pull up onto beaches. How many ships would be based in Hawaii, Guam and Okinawa remains unclear, as is where they would practice beach landings in the islands, which will be watched closely by local environmental activists. The U.S. Marines are also adding weaponized drones to their war-fighting equipment. Beginning in 2023, 18 Predator drones will come into the Pacific region, 6 in Hawaii and the others going to Guam and Okinawa. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is building new bases in the Pacific. In 2020, the president of Palau, a small Pacific island nation of a population of only 17,000, offered his country as a new base of operations for the U.S. military in the Pacific. The U.S. has already constructed a runway and has increased the number of U.S. Navy ships using Palau’s ports. The Chinese military has responded with its own naval drills in the South China Sea and air armadas of 18 aircraft flying to the edge of Taiwan’s air defense zone during the Trump administration’s increased diplomatic engagement and military sales to Taiwan, an island the People’s Republic of China (PRC) considers as a renegade province of the PRC. The level of air and sea confrontation in the Western Pacific between the U.S. and NATO forces and China has increased dangerously over the past two years, and it’s only a matter of time until an accident or purposeful event presents a potential war incident that can lead to horrific consequences. As NATO advisers name China as the No. 2 threat to the organization after Russia, the U.S. top diplomat echoes their rallying call as the U.S. military ramps up its forces in the Pacific region. These worrisome developments suggest the U.S. will continue to play a leading role in pushing NATO to train its sights on China, which will heighten the dangerous confrontation in the Western Pacific.

Wright 21 (Ann, 3/31, Truthout Reporter https://truthout.org/articles/in-alarmist-turn-nato-is-increasingly-positioning-itself-in-opposition-to-china/)

China participated in the 2014 RIMPAC with four ships and in 2016 but was disinvited in 2018 due to its military activities in the South China Sea. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Light Amphibious Warship, a proposed new class of Navy vessel, will be between 200 and 400 feet long and cost $100 million. The Navy wants to have 28 to 30 of these amphibious ships, which will have the capability to pull up onto beaches. The U.S. Marines are also adding weaponized drones to their war-fighting equipment. Beginning in 2023, 18 Predator drones will come into the Pacific region, 6 in Hawaii and the others going to Guam and Okinawa. offered his country as a new base of operations has increased the number of U.S. Navy ships using Palau’s ports The Chinese military has responded with its own naval drills in the South China Sea and air armadas of 18 aircraft flying to the edge of Taiwan’s air defense zone during the Trump administration’s increased diplomatic engagement and military sales to Taiwan, an island the People’s Republic of China (PRC) considers as a renegade province of the PRC. U.S. will continue to play a leading role in pushing NATO to train its sights on China, which will heighten the dangerous confrontation in the Western Pacific.

Countering ‘Threat’ From China

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Some suggest communist China is a greater challenge to U.S. supremacy. China’s rise is a story of rags to riches. Today, the country draws its strength from its new status as a manufacturing superpower, making it the only rival to the economic supremacy of the United States. There is no doubting the connection between economic strength and the power to influence world events. After all, it was a head start in the industrial revolution which enabled the British empire to thrive, and a similar leap in U.S. manufacturing which helped the United States to win out in the twentieth century. But the challenge from both China and Russia is not primarily economic. It is to the system of rules and international norms, carefully developed over several decades, under U.S. leadership, which underpins peace and prosperity in the world. Through their illegal annexation of Crimea, their shameless assassinations on the streets of Berlin and Salisbury, and their mischievous efforts to sow discord through disinformation, Moscow is challenging that system. And China undermines it too—by creating artificial islands to make artificial claims of sovereignty, by stealing intellectual property, and through coercive economic measures.

King 19’ (Ian, 11/27, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-nato-stronger-ever-100482)

Some suggest communist China is a greater challenge to U.S. supremacy. China’s rise is a story of rags to riches. Today, the country draws its strength from its new status as a manufacturing superpower, making it the only rival to the economic supremacy of the United States.

No Alt Cause – NATO is strong and united right now, China is the only thing that can cause a rift but standing together against them in the squo will draw NATO closer, the aff tears them apart

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The key to this model of deterrence is the maintenance of secure second-strike capabilities—the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating counterattack. Recently analysts have begun to worry, however, that new strategic military technologies may make it possible for a state to conduct a successful first strike on an enemy. For example, Chinese colleagues have complained to me in Track II dialogues that the United States may decide to launch a sophisticated cyberattack against Chinese nuclear command and control, essentially turning off China’s nuclear forces. Then, Washington will follow up with a massive strike with conventional cruise and hypersonic missiles to destroy China’s nuclear weapons. Finally, if any Chinese forces happen to survive, the United States can simply mop up China’s ragged retaliatory strike with advanced missile defenses. Would any US president truly decide to launch a massive, bolt-out-of-the-blue nuclear attack because he or she thought s/he could get away with it? And why does it make sense for the country in the inferior position, in this case China, to intentionally start a nuclear war that it will almost certainly lose? More importantly, this conceptualization of how new technology affects stability is too narrow, focused exclusively on how new military technologies might be used against nuclear forces directly.

Gopalaswamy 2018 (Kroenig, 11, 12 https://thebulletin.org/2018/11/will-disruptive-technology-cause-nuclear-war/)

The key to this model of deterrence is the maintenance of secure second-strike capabilities—the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating counterattack. Recently analysts have begun to worry, however, that new strategic military technologies may make it possible for a state to conduct a successful first strike on an enemy. Then, Washington will follow up with a massive strike with conventional cruise and hypersonic missiles to destroy China’s nuclear weapons. Finally, if any Chinese forces happen to survive, the United States can simply mop up China’s ragged retaliatory strike with advanced missile defenses. More importantly, this conceptualization of how new technology affects stability is too narrow, focused exclusively on how new military technologies might be used against nuclear forces directly.

--- Yes impact, US would overreact and exasperate a war along with China, ropes everyone else in and causes nuclear escalation Disrupting the balance between maintaining relations and new technology leads to nuke war

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Cyberattacks against NATO countries originating from Chinese IP addresses have increased 116% since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, new research shows. Cyberattacks from Chinese IPs have also risen 72% worldwide, according to trends analyzed before and after Russia's invasion of Ukraine by cybersecurity firm Check Point Research.

Conklin 22’ (Audrey, 03/26 https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/chinese-cyberattacks-nato-increase-ukraine)

Cyberattacks against NATO countries originating from Chinese IP addresses have increased 116% since Russia invaded Ukraine Cyberattacks from Chinese IPs have also risen 72% worldwide

-- Extend Harr 2018’ – Any further attempts to balance tech advancements with relations and international disputes will give China an opening to further creep in the shadows

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