I'm working on an outline of a position paper regarding the work of Ernesto Laclau, and in part, its relation to the work of Jacques Lacan. Here's my premise: Laclau's notion of the political either presupposes an ethics not entirely unlike that of Levinas, or it should presuppose that ethics if it is to remain conceptually relevant in an age when politics is increasingly and exclusively governed my mass media.
By way of explanation, here are four points:
- Laclau expressly breaks from a deconstruction that finds itself associated with or motivated by an ethical injunction that flows from the other (an injunction present in Derrida, Critchley, and Caputo, to name a few), arguing that such an ethical injunction sneaks a universal rule through the back door of what would otherwise be, properly speaking, an attention to the moment or the decision as a singularity, i.e., as a moment predicated on a radical sense of contingency. Instead, Laclau contends that what is political about the space of the decision is precisely that the act of the decision articulates the subject as such, and in so doing provides the possibility for an agency that any universality, no matter how unintentional its purchase, ultimately would thwart. This agency is possible precisely because the subject articulates him/herself in the decision because of a constitutive lack, a structural and constitutive incompleteness at the heart of identification. This incompleteness means that no external social construction or hegemonic attribution can properly enclose the subject, and so the process of identification (which is always an articulation), whereby a decision is made regarding the "institution of the social," is what deconstruction reveals at the heart of the political.
- This claim has one of its most compelling demonstrations in Laclau's critique of representation, wherein he challenges the conventional assumption that a good representation is marked by a transparent transfer of will - politically speaking, a transfer from the will of the represented to the will/act of the representative. This presupposes, according to Laclau, that something like a full identification is possible, something he argues strenuously against, citing the same dynamic of decidability and incompleteness outlined above. As such, there must be something in representation that operates beyond the level of identification or transparency; this something is of course what Laclau terms "articulation" and it implies that the relationship between represented and representative cannot be simply neutral or unidirectional. One might be tempted to view this lack of neutrality as a structural deficit, and to rationalize it as natural or given or necessary, but this is precisely what deconstruction undoes by untying the presumption of unity at work in the logic of representation. By opening up the space between the structure that determines the decision and the act of the decision itself, deconstruction enriches the possibility of agency, antagonizing the discourses that produce the structure itself.
- The problem is that this process of antagonism, the very exploration that explodes the more sedimented and rigid conventions of something like (political) re-presentation is itself devoid of contingency, as it lacks both context and motivation. Assuming that lack is constitutive of the social precisely because of the requisite failure of identity (which Laclau does), it does not follow that this lack is self-evident, and in fact, hegemony is at its best when it is assumed to be natural, which is to say, when it thwarts its own apperception. Hence the reason why an antagonism is politically necessary or warranted, since antagonisms problematize the presumed self-sufficiency and closure of one's subject-position and the concomitant institution of the social. But why antagonize, and before whom and to whom does this antagonism address itself? Derrida's response, which is not his alone, is that this deconstruction always already begins with the assumption of responsibility for and before the other. Lacan may not be entirely comfortable with this formulation, but one cannot entirely divorce the constitutive lack from Lacan's repeated proclamation that the unconscious is the language of the other, and indeed, it may be productive to do the work necessary to make the connections between these two Lacanian formulations more explicit, at least so far as in thinking the political. Why think the political otherwise, if not, in other words, because the other calls for it?
- This call is particularly acute for a separate reason. The critique of representation referenced above prefigures a certain political formation - that of liberal democracy. Today, thanks in no small part to our contemporary "technologies of circulation," representation has itself been refigured, and the political representative is as much a figure of mass communication, teletechnologies, and mediation as he/she is a synecdoche or producer of the represented. Unlike the classical political schema by which the represented and the representative can claim purchase as some sort of ontological figure, today representation is increasingly spectral, its modalities - and thus its resistances to antagonism - fundamentally different. We have seen this shift in recent additions to rhetorical theory, most notably with Michael Warner's sustained case for a sense of the public no longer defined by access to a particular argumentative space and instead demarcated by a public constituted by the shared circulation of texts. This circulation, governed by political economies that are painfully limited in obvious and essential ways, and influenced by the production values of media - values and aesthetics of which most consumers are critically unaware - further distances the represented, and further displaces those figures posited as outsides to a social formation that has none (Arabs being the obvious example). These different rhythms demand, more than ever, that political engagement be grounded in an openness to the call of the other, and if this call does indeed sneak a universal through the back door, it is a universal whose spectral presence can only help advance the radical democracy that Laclau - and many of us - hold so dear.
Thoughts?
Comments (6)
Geez--you're workin' on this already! Keep posting ideas cause I'm trying to learn about Laclau--about whom I know almost nothing. I hope the seminar will teach me something more than whose feather has the bigger eye.
Anyhoo, though, #1 about Laclau's break with decon at the implied ethics is very helpful to me and, if this marks his point of departure, I'm disheartened because I find your #2-4s compelling. Your going at representation is (not surprisingly) a brilliant angle, and your final remarks about representation-gone-ghost is, shall we say, dead-on. I think you have an EXCELLENT basic argument here for an article (not necessarily for your position paper), and detailing how spectrality implicates the critique of representation, and then, how this effects the push toward the radical democratic imaginary would be very helpful for those of us wrestling with Hariman's desire to import Laclau Lacanianism into this new politico-rhetorical scientism.
My own path TO Derrida as of late has been via Lacan's insistance on the Other/Symbolic and the ethic of humility (or hospitality if you want). So my reaction to your worry (which I now share, again, having not read Laclau but planning to in the next month) then is what is the Other for Laclau, and how does it figure in his theories of political effectivity (or whatever he would call this)?
I mean, if we can assume Derrida takes after Levinas, then we at least _treat_ the Other as radical alterity and, to the degree that we can, err on the side of radical passivity (or at least answering the call, even though it may be an obscene caller on the other end of things). If we cannot "fix" the Other because that subjects it to an identitarian regime and on down the line, then its the alterior form or thing or outside that we open ourselves to--better yet, its a posture. Is that posture or orientation "a universal" or simply built into self-awareness (a basic Hegelianism we should just own up to)? What's the universal getting snuck in (except that before the law there is posture before the law)--is it the spectre of Hegel? I worry that's all this is.
It's late, I'm rambling, and ROCK STAR INXS is coming on but, I just am so down with your argument that "rhythms" or social reality "demand . . that political engagement be grounded in an openness to the call of the other," even if it sneaks in a universal (I'm wondering what Laclau said in the book he did with Zizek and Bulter on this issue; haven't read that one yet neither . . . ). Isn't the posture of answering, as well as the knee-jerk "who is it?" or "hello?" already built into _demos_?
Well, my thoughts are that you're raising what is perhaps the most important issue to discuss in the seminar--this jettisoning or "exploding" of Other-orientedness. My worry is that our elders will be so enamored of this heavy weight that the critical questions will be coming from folks like you--or worse, ignorant "I don't get it" guys like me. Both are a good thing, though.
KEEP POSTIN' I"M GETTIN' MEH LERN ON!
Posted by Joshie-Wishy-Washy | August 30, 2005 9:35 PM
Posted on August 30, 2005 21:35
phew, that is one dense post!
a couple of points. ( haven't read Laclau recently, and your post only once, so if my comments make no sense, that's my excuse!)
- #4 on "technologies" would be a good reason to revisit Derrida/Lacan debate on the letter (not )arriving at its destination. it could also be related to the question of whether "the subject" ( agency ?) is determined by ("one") constitutive lack? Derrida, as you know, doesn't quite buy that.
- it seems to me, "openess to the other" is often taken a bit too easily, don't you think? Is it a matter of autonomous subjects deciding to be open to the call? if, as you say, deconstruction undoes the logic/structure of representation, then it must undo that of the subject as well, as the two are inseperable, no?
i'll stop here, rather than indulge in further overly hasty comments!
Posted by amie | August 31, 2005 4:10 PM
Posted on August 31, 2005 16:10
Amie and Josh, thank you kindly for your comments.
Josh: for me, as someone who clearly finds Levinas very sympathetic, and who finds him compelling, at least in terms of the problem he sees at work in more ontological accounts of human existence, I'm concerned that Laclau misses out on this. I'd be curious to see your thoughts on humility at some point, so if you'd like to try a cross-pollinated blog conversation about that, I'd love to give it a go. I know that Matt Christie, possible Amie too, and I are going to do some reading of Derrida's Gift of Death this week and the weeks that follow, so feel free to join in on that as well, since I think you're perspective would be very interesting, to say the leat.
Amie: Thank you so much - your comment reminded me of a theme (the letter) and a comment by J. Hillis Miller in Others:
"As opposed to Lacan, for example, for whom, in spite of the fact that the unconscious is the discourse of the other, the letter always reaches its destination, for Derrida, as he says, the letter never gets to its destination. This is true even when, as in a postcard, the letter is exposed where all can read it, including even the one to whom it is apparently addressed. The letter, for Derrida, is condemned to wander interminable in 'destinnnerance,' not so much in its plurisignificance as in its aporetic indeterminacy of meaning and addressee. For Derrida, as he says, 'Tout autre est tout autre,' one meaning of which is 'Every other is completely other,' This means, among other things, that the lines of communication are down between me and the other."
This will be an interesting summary to think about/against in light of the Derrida/Stiegler conversation in Echographies.
I'm going to think about that openness to the other, and the problem of its ease, a bit longer, but for now, I can say I find Michael Hyde's book on this subject, The Call of Conscience: Heidegger, Levinas, and the Euthanasia Debate, to be invaluable in negotiating the excesses of Levinasian alterity.
Posted by Kenneth Rufo | August 31, 2005 8:37 PM
Posted on August 31, 2005 20:37
Heeeey ... well, readin' the exchangin' I'm a feelin' a bit of a lack of background to be readin' the Gift of Death with you seasoned students of decon. But I play catch-up well and so will look on and comment when I can (if y'all are posting--please do!), but not try to slow you down with newbie questions. I recognize my injections are partly interesting because I bring the angle of ignorance, so I'll mull and watch and read and learn and, one day, engage. Right now I gotta pick me up some Hyde . . .
Posted by DJ Joshie Juice | August 31, 2005 9:37 PM
Posted on August 31, 2005 21:37
I meant interesting more in that you love your Freud and well, I could probably take or leave him, except for about 30 pages of Civilization and its Discontents. I suspect that a more solidly psychoanalytic perspective would have a very different reaction to Gift of Death, whereas I kind of got schooled in Derrida through an initial exposure to Heidegger, Baudrillard, and a small bit of Levinas, and didn't even encounter Lacan until I was well into my doctoral classes.
Posted by Kenneth Rufo | August 31, 2005 10:31 PM
Posted on August 31, 2005 22:31
thanks for responding. if i may add a bit, somewhat "telegraphically"!
i'm not sure what Laclau means by 'sneaking in the universal with respect to singularity'? isn't even speaking of singularity, that is to say, articulating it --"in" -- language, "sneaking in" universality?
to return to Derrida's "post-card", since i mentioned it in the previous post: the "question" posed throughout Envois is that of a singular idiom, a letter, that would arrive at it's singular addressee, while of course being sent though the "post" ( technology,language, etc. ) and thereby exposed and "readable" to anyone/anything along the way. or, if you will, a singular 'secret' that has to be shared, exposed while remaining a secret. ( it wouldn't even be a secret or singular without the possibility of exposure and sharing/sending.)
this raises all kinds of "questions" regarding technology, "information" networks, and translation, which in a sense are eminently "political" and yet singular ( private?). like a letter -- or a poem! ( and i'm thinking of Derrida's readings of Celan...)
but best stop this telegram before speaking of that. to end somewhat provacatively, since this might touch on some of your concerns regarding the media, information networks and 'politics': as you know, Derrida suggests that a politics that has no place for secrets is totalitarian. or, a politics that has no place for (un)readable, (un)tranlatable letters and poems is totalitarian...
Posted by amie | September 1, 2005 12:14 AM
Posted on September 1, 2005 00:14