6

.,aill

Slavoj Zizek Social Lillks

Although Lacan's notion of "university discourse" circulates widely 00­

day, it is seidom used in its precise meaning (designating a specific "dis­
course," sociallink). As a rule, it functions as a vague notion of some
speech being part of the academic interpretive machinery. In contrast to
this use, one should always bear in mind that, for Lacan, university dis­
course is not directly linked to the university as a social institution-für
example, he states that the Soviet Union was the pure reign of univer­
sity discourse. Consequently, not only does the fact of being turned into
an object of the university interpretive machinery prove nothing about
one's discursive status-names like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or Benja­
min, all three great antiuniversitarians whose presence in the academy
is today all-pervasive-demonstrate that the "excluded" or "damned"
authors are the IDEAL feeding stuff for the academic machine. Can the
upper level of Lacan's formula of the university discourse-S2 directed
toward a-not also be read as standing für the university knowledge
endeavoring to integrate, domesticate, and appropriate the excess that
resists and rejects it?
Lurking behind the reproach of belonging to university discourse is, of
course, the question of the relationship between psychoanalysis and cul­
tural studies. The first fact to note here is that what is missing in cultural
studies is precisely psychoanalysis as a social link, structured around
the desire of the analyst. Today, one often mentions how the reference
to psychoanalYlil in cultural studics and the psychoanalytic clinic sup­

~* 'tbtJ+
ra8 Zizek Objet a in Social Links 109

plement each other: cultural studies lack the real of clinical experience, tered world." How, precisely, do these two aspects relate to each other?
while the clinic lacks the broader critico-historical perspective (say, of We should not succumb to the temptation of reducing capitalism to a
the historie specificity of the categories of psychoanalysis, Oedipal com­ mere form of appearance of the more fundamental ontological attitude
plex, castration, or paternal authority). The answer to this should be of technological domination; we should ratherinsist, in the Marxian
that each of the approaches should work on its limitation from within mode, that the capitalist logic of integrati~g the surplus into the func­
its horizon-not by relying on the other to fill up its lack. If cultural tioning of the system is the fundamental fact. Stalinist "totalitarianism"
studies cannot account for the real of the clinical experience, this signals was the capitalist logic of self-propelling productivity liberated from
the insufficiency of its theoretical framework itself; if the clinic cannot its capitalist form, which is why it failed: Stalinism was the symptom
refleet its historical presuppositions, it is a bad clinic. One should add to of capitalism. Stalinism involved the matrix of general intellect, of the
this standard Hegelian dialectical paradox (in fighting the foreign or ex­ planned transparency of social life, of total productive mobilization­
ternal opposite, one fights one's own essence) its inherent supplement: and its violent' purges and paranoia were a kind of a "return of the re­
in impeding oneself, one truly impedes one's external opposite. When pressed," the "irratiQnality" inherent to the project of a totally organized
cultural studies ignore the real of clinical experience, the ultimate vic­ "administered society." This means the two levels, precisely insofar as
tim is not cultural studies itself but the clinic, which remains caught in they are two sides of the same coin, are ultimately incompatible: there is
pretheoretical empiricism. And, vice versa, when the clinic fails (to take no metalanguage enabling us to translate the logic of domination back
into account its historical presuppositions), the ultimate victim is theory into the capitalist reproduction-through-excess, or vice versa.
itself, which, cut off from clinical experience, remains an empty ideo­ The key question here concerns the relationship between the two ex­
logical exercise. The ultimate horizon is here not the reconciliation of cesses: the economic excess/surplus integrated into the capitalist ma­
theory and clinic: their very gap is the positive condition of psychoanaly­ chine as the force that drives it into permanent self-revolutionizing and
sis. Freud already wrote that, in the conditions in which it would finally the political excess of power-exercise inherent to modern power (the
be possible, psychoanalysis would no longer be needed. Psychoanalytic constitutive excess of representation over the represented: the legitimate
theory is ultimately the theory of why its clinical practice is doomed to state power responsible to its subjects is supplemented by the obscene
fail. message of unconditional exercise of Power-laws do not really bind
One of the teIltale signs of university discourse is that the opponent is me, I can do to you whatever I want, I can treat you as guilty if I decide
accused of being "dogmatic" and "sectarian." University discourse can­ to, I can destroy you if I say so).
not tolerate an engaged subjective stance. Should not our first gesture be, Perhaps the key to this problem is provided by the historicity inscribed
as Lacanians, to heroically assurne this designation of being "sectarian" in Lacan's matrix of the four discourses, the historicity of modern Euro­
and engage in a "sectarian" polemic? pean development. The master's discourse stands not for the premodern
master, but for the absolute monarchy, this first figure of modernity that
effectively undermined the articulate network of feudal relations and
The Historicity of the Four Discourses
interdependences, transforming fidelity to flattery: it is the "Sun-King"
University discourse as the hegemonie discourse of modernity has two Louis XIV with his L'üat, c'est moi who is the master par excellence.
forms of existence in which its inner tension ("contradiction") is exter­ Hysterical discourse and university discourse then deploy two outcomes
nalized: capitalism, its logic of thejntegrated excess, of the system re­ of the vacillation of the direct reign of the master: the expert-rule of
producing itself through constant self-revolutionizing, 8nd thc bureau­ hureaucracy that culminates in the biopolitics of reducing the popula­
cratic "totalitarianism" conceptualil.ed in different luillC:II RS the rulc tion to a collectlon of homo sacer (what Heidegger called "enframing,"
of technology, of instrumental renson, of biopolltlcl, AI rhe "ndminis' Adorno "the admlnlltored world," Poucault the society of "discipline

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IIO Zizek Objet a in 50cial Links III

and punish"); the explosion of the hysterical capitalist subjectivity that However, is it not that the fundamental operation of the psychoana­
reproduces itself through permanent self-revolutionizing, through the lytic treatment is not synthesis, bringing elements into a link, but, pre­
integration of the excess into the "normal" functioning of the sociallink cisely, analysis, separating what in a social link appears to belong to­
(the true "permanent revolution" is already capitalism itself). gether? This path, opposed to that of Miller, is indicated by Giorgio
Lacan's formula of the four discourses thus enables us to deploy the Agamben, who, in the last pages of The State ofException, imagines two
two faces of modernity (total administration and capitalist-individualist utopian options of how to break out of the vicious cyde of law and vio­
dynamics) as two ways to undermine the master's discourse: doubt lence, of the rule of law sustained by violence. 2 One is the Benjaminian
about the efficiency of the master-figure (what Eric 5antner called the vision of "pure" revolutionary violence with no relationship to the law.
"crisis of investiture") can be supplemented by the direct rule of the The other is the relationship to the law without regard to its (violent) en­
experts legitimized by their knowledge, or the excess of doubt, of per­ forcement, such as Jewish scholars do in their endless (re)interpretation
manent questioning, can be directly integrated into social reproduction. of the Law. Agamben starts from the right insight that the task today
Finally, the analyst's discourse stands for the emergence of revolution­ is not synthesis but separation, distinction: not bringing law and vio­
ary-emancipatory subjectivity that resolves the split of university and lence together (so that right will have might and the exercise of might
hysteria. In it, the revolutionary agent (a) addresses the subject from the will be fully legitimized), but thoroughly separating them, untying their
position of knowledge that occupies the place of truth (i.e., which inter­ knot. Although Agamben confers on this formulation an anti-Hegelian
venes at the "symptomal torsion" of the subject's constellation), and the twist, a more proper reading of Hegel makes it dear that such a gesture
goal is to isolate, get rid of, the master signifier that structured the sub­ of separation is what the Hegelian "synthesis" is effectively about. In it,
ject's (ideologico-political) unconscious. the opposites are not reconciled in a "higher synthesis"; it is rather that
Or does it? Jacques-Alain Miller has recently proposed that today the their difference is posited "as such."
master's discourse is no longer the "obverse" of the analyst's discourse. 1 The example of Paul may help us to darify this logic of Hegelian rec­
Today, on the contrary, our "civilization" itself-its hegemonic sym­ onciliation: the radical gap that he posits between life and death, be­
bolic matrix, as it were-fits the formula of the analyst's discourse. The tween life in Christ and life in sin, is in no need of a further synthesis; it
agent of the social link is today a, surplus enjoyment, the superego in­ is itself the resolution of the "absolute contradiction" of Law and sin, of
junction to enjoy that permeates our discourse; this injunction addresses the vicious cyde of their mutual implication. In other words, once the
$ (the divided subject) who is put to work in order to live up to this in­ distinction is drawn, once the subject becomes aware of the very exis­
junction. The truth of this sociallink is 52, scientific-expert knowledge tence of this other dimension beyond the vicious cyde of law and its
in its different guises, and the goal is to generate 51, the self-mastery of transgression, the batde is formally already won. 50, with regard to the
the subject, that is, to enable the subject to cope with the stress of the old question of the passage from Kant to Hegel, Hegcl's move is not to
call to enjoyment (through self-help manuals, etc.). Provocative as this overcome the Kantian division, but, rather, to assert it as such, to drop
notion is, it raises aseries of questions. If it is true, in what, then, re­ the need for its overcoming, for the additional reconciliation of the oppo­
sides the difference between the discursive functioning of civilization as sites, that is, to gain insight-through a purcly formal parallax shift­
such and the psychoanalytic sociallink? Miller resorts here to a suspi­ into how positing the distinction as such already is the looked-for rec­
cious solution: in our civilization, the four terms are kept apart, isolated; onciliation. The limitation of Kant is not in his remaining within the
each operates on its own, while only in psychoanalysis are they brought confines of finite oppositions, in his inability to reach the Infinite, but,
together into a coherent link: "in civilization, each of the four terms re­ on the contrary. in hili very scarch for a transcendent domain beyond
mains disjoined ... it is only in psychoanalysis, in pure psychonllnlysis, the realm of finite oppulitionN. Kant is not unable to reach the Infinite­
that these elements are nrranged into a discourse." what he il unabluo ... I, huw hc already has what he is lookinK fur.

crs'oe, .,,#~ttr· ...

II2 Zizek Objet a in Soeial Links II3

However, is this vision not again the ease of our late eapitalist reality ian, and so on, interpretations of the symptoms, but symptoms them­
going further than our dreams? Are we not already eneountering in our selves that are Jungian, Kleinian, Laeanian, and so on, that is, whose
soeial reality what Agamben envisages as a utopian vision? Isn't the reality involves implieit referenee to some psyehoanalytie theory. The
Hegelian lesson of the global reflexivization-mediatization of our lives unfortunate result of this global reflexivization of interpretation (every­
that it generates its own brutal immediaey? This has best been eaptured thing beeomes interpretation, the uneonseious interprets itself) is that
by Etienne Balibar's nation of exeessive, nonfunetional eruelty as a fea­ the analyst's interpretation itself loses its performative "symbolie effi­
ture of eontemporary life, a eruelty whose figures range from "funda­ eieney" and leaves the symptom intaet in the immediaey of its idiotie
mentalist" raeist and/or religious slaughter to the "senseless" outbursts jouissanee.
of violenee performed by adoleseents and the homeless in our megalopo­ What happens in psyehoanalytie treatment is strietly homologous to
lises, a violenee one is tempted to eall Id-Evil, a violenee grounded in no the response of the neo-Nazi skinhead who, when really pressed for the
utilitarian or ideologieal reasons. All the talk about foreigners stealing reasons for his violence, suddenly starts to talk like soeial workers, soei­
work from us or about the threat they represent to our Western values ologists, and soeial pSYl;;hologists, quoting diminished soeial mobility,
should not deeeive us: under doser examination, it soon beeomes dear rising inseeurity, the disintegration of paternal authority, the lack of ma­
that this talk provides a rather superfieial seeondary rationalization. The ternallove in his early ehildhood-the unity of praetiee and its inherent
answer we ultimately obtain from a skinhead is that it makes hirn feel ideologieallegitimization disintegrates into raw violenee and its impo­
good to beat foreigners, that their presenee disturbs hirn. What we en­ tent, ineffieient interpretation. This impotenee of interpretation is also
counter here is indeed Id-Evil, that is, the Evil struetured and motivated one of the neeessary obverses of the universalized reflexivity hailed by
by the most elementary imbalanee in the relationship between the ego the risk-soeiety-theorists: it is as if our reflexive power ean flourish only
and jouissanee, by the tension between pleasure and the foreign body of insofar as it draws its strength and relies on some minimal "prereflex­
jouissanee in the very heart of it. Id-Evil thus stages the most elemen­ ive" substantial support that eludes its grasp, so that its universaliza­
tary short eireuit in the relationship of the subjeet to the primordially tion comes at the priee of its ineffieieney, that is, by the paradoxieal re­
missing objeet eause of his desire. What bothers us in the other (Jew, emergenee of the brute real of "irrational" violence, impermeable and
Japanese, Afriean, Turk) is that he appears to entertain a privileged re­ insensitive to reflexive interpretation. So the more today's soeial theory
lationship to the objeet-the other either possesses the objeet treasure, proclaims the end of nature or tradition and the rise of the "risk so­
having snatehed it away from us (which is why we don't have it), or he eiety," the more the implieit referenee to "nature" pervades our daily
poses a threat to our possession of the objeet. discourse: even when we do not speak of the "end of history," do we
What one should propose here is the Hegelian "infinite judgment," not put forward the same message when we claim that we are entering a
asserting the speeulative identity of these "useless" and "exeessive" out­ "postideologieal" pragmatie era, whieh is another way of daiming that
bursts of violent immediaey, whieh display nothing but a pure and naked we are entering a postpolitieal order in whieh the only legitimate con­
("non-sublimated") hatred of the Otherness, with the global reflexiv­ fliets are ethnie/eultural eonfliets? Typieally, in today's eritieal and po­
ization of soeiety. Perhaps the ultimate example of this eoineidenee is litieal discourse, the term worker has disappeared from the voeabulary,
the fate of psyehoanalytie interpretation. Today, the formations of the substituted or obliterated by immigrants or immigrant workers: Aigeri­
uneonseious (from dreams to hysterieal symptoms) have definitely lost ans in France, Turks in Germany, Mexieans in the United States. In this
their innoeenee and are thoroughly reflexivized: the "free assoeiations" way, the dass prnblematie of workers' exploitation is transformed into
of a typieal edueated analysand consist foe the most part of attempts to the multiculturalillt prnblematic of "intoleranee of otherness," and the
provide a psyehoanalytie explanation of their disturbance!i, so that one is excessive inveltmcnt uf thc multiculturalist liberals in proteeting im­
quite justified in saying that we have not only .Jungian, Kleinhm, I.llenn­ migrant.' ethnh: rlahcl c:lcnrly drllws its energy from the "repressed"

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II4 Zizek Objet a in Social Links II5

class dimension. Although Francis Fukuyama's thesis on the "end of perversion. That is to say, the fact that the upper level of Lacan's for­
history" quickly fell into disrepute, we still silently presume that the mula of the analyst's discourse is the same as his formula of perversion
liberal-democratic capitalist global order is somehow the finally found (a_$) opens up a possibility of reading the entire formula of the ana­
"natural" social regime, we still implicitly conceive conflicts in the Third lyst's discourse also as a formula of the perverse sociallink: its agent,
World countries as a subspecies of natural catastrophes, as outbursts of the masochist pervert (the pervert par excellence), occupies the position
quasi-natural violent passions, or as conflicts based on the fanatic iden­ of the object instrument of the other's desire, and, in this way, through
tification to one's ethnic roots (and what is "the ethnic" here if not again serving his (feminine) victim, he posits her as the hystericized/divided
a code word for "nature"?). And, again, the key point is that this all­ subject who "doesn't know what she wants." Rather, the pervert knows
pervasive renaturalization is strictly correlative to the global reflexiviza­ it for her, that is, he pretends to speak from the position of knowledge
tion of our daily lives. (about the other's desire) that enables hirn to serve the other; and, finally,
What this means, with regard to Agamben's utopian vision of untying the product of this sociallink is the master signifier, that is, the hysteri­
the knot of the Law and violence is that, in our postpolitical societies, cal subject elevated into the role of the master (dominatrix) whom the
this knot is already untied: we encounter, on the one hand, the global­ pervert masochist serves.
ized interpretation whose globalization is paid for by its impotence, its In contrast to hysteria, the pervert knows perfectly what he is for the
failure to enforce itself, to generate effects in the real, and, on the other Other: a knowledge supports his position as the object of his Other's
hand, explosions of the raw real of a violence that cannot be affected by (divided subject's) jouissance. The difference between the sociallink of
its symbolic interpretation. Where, then, is the solution here, between perversion and that of analysis is grounded in the radical ambiguity of
the claim that, in today's hegemonic constellation, the elements of the objet a in Lacan, which stands simultaneously for the imaginary fan­
sociallink are separated and as such to be brought together by psycho­ tasmatic lure/screen and for that which this lure is obfuscating, for the
analysis (Miller), and the knot between Law and violence to be untied, void behind the lure. Consequently, when we pass from perversion to
their separation to be enacted (Agamben)? What if these two separa­ the analytic sociallink, the agent (analyst) reduces hirnself to the void,
tions are not symmetrical? What if the gap between the symbolic and which provokes the subject into confronting the truth of his desire.
the raw real epitomized by the figure of the skinhead is a false one, since Knowledge in the position of "truth" below the bar under the "agent,"
this real of the outbursts of the "irrational" violence is generated by the of course, refers to the supposed knowledge of the analyst, and, simul­
globalization of the symbolic? taneously, signals that the knowledge gained here will not be the neu­
When, exactly, does the objet a function as the superego injunction tral objective knowledge of scientific adequacy, but the knowledge that
to enjoy? When it occupies the place of the master signifier, that is, as concerns the subject (analysand) in the truth of his subjective position.
Lacan formulated it in the last pages of his Seminar XI, when the short Recall, again, Lacan's outrageous statements that, even if what a jeal­
circuit between S1 and a occurs. The key move to be accomplished in ous husband claims about his wife (that she sleeps around with other
order to break the vicious cycle of the superego injunction is thus to men) is all true, his jealousy is still pathological. Along the same lines,
enact the separation between S1 and a. Consequently, would it not be one could say that, even if most of the Nazi claims about the Jews
more productive to follow a different path, that is, to start with the dif­ were true (they exploit Germans, they seduce German girls), their anti­
ferent modus operandi of l'objet a, which in psychoanalysis no longer Semitism would still be (and was) pathological-because it represses
functions as the agent of the super~go injunction-as it does in the dis­ the true reason the Nazis needed anti-Semitism in order to sustain their
course of perversion? This is how Miller's claim of the identity of the ideological position. So, in thc case of anti-Semitism, knowledge about
analyst's discourse and the discourse of today's civilizntion shollid bc what the .lew! 'Ire.Uy .re" illn fnke, irrelevant, while the only knowledge
read: as an indication that this latter discourse (sOI:ial link) iN thnt of at the place of cruch ,. eh. knClwledKe about why a Na2'.i needs anglIre of

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II6 Zizek Objet a in Social Links II?

the Jew to sustain his ideological edifice. In this precise sense, the ana­ sire-the true object cause of desire is the void filled in by its fantasmatic
lyst's discourse produces the master signifier, the swerve of the patient's incarnations. While, as Lacan emphasizes, objet a is also the object of
knowledge, the surplus element that situates the patient's knowledge at thedrive, the relationship is here thoroughly different. Although in both
the level of truth: after the master signifier is produced, even if nothing cases, the link between object and loss is crucial, in the case of objet a
changes at the level of knowledge, the same knowledge as before starts as the object cause of desire, we have an object which is originally lost,
to function in a different mode. The master signifier is the unconscious which coincides with its own loss, which emerges as lost, while, in the
sinthome, the cipher of enjoyment, to which the subject was unknow­ case of objet a as the object of the drive, the "object" is directly the loss
ingly subjected. itself. In the shift from desire to drive, we pass from the lost object to loss
The crucial point not to be missed here is how the late Lacan's iden­ itself as an object. That is to say, the weird movement called "drive" is
tification of the subjective position of the analyst as that of objet petit a not driven by the "impossible" quest for the lost object, but bya push
presents an act of radical self-criticism. Earlier, in the 1950s, Lacan con­ to directly enact the "Ioss" -the gap, cut, distance-itself. There is thus
ceived the analyst not as the small other (a), but, on the contrary, as a a double distinction to be drawn here: not only between objet a in its
kind of stand-in for the big Other (A, the anonymous symbolic order). fantasmatic and postfantasmatic status, but also, within this postfantas­
At this level, the function of the analyst was to frustrate the subject's matic domain itself, between the lost object cause of desire and the ob­
imaginary misrecognitions and to make them accept their proper sym­ ject loss of the drive. Far from concerning an abstract scholastic debate,
bolic place within the circuit of symbolic exchange, the place that effec­ this distinction has crucial ideologico-political consequences: it enables
tively (and unbeknownst to them) determines their symbolic identity. us to articulate the libidinal dynamics of capitalism.
Later, however, the analyst stands precisely for the ultimate inconsis­ Following Miller hirnself, a distinction has to be introduced here be­
tency and failure of the big Other, Ehat is, for the symbolic order's in­ tween lack and hole. Lack is spatial, designating a void within aspace,
ability to guarantee the subject's symbolic identity. while the hole is more radical-it designates the point at which this spa­
One should thus always bear in mind the thoroughly ambiguous status tial order itself breaks down (as in the "black hole" in physics). Therein
of objet a in Lacan. Miller recently proposed a Benjaminian distinction resides the difference between desire and drive: desire is grounded in
between "constituted anxiety" and "constituent anxiety": while the first its constitutive lack, while drive circulates around a hole, a gap in the
designates the standard notion of the terrifying and fascinating abyss of order of being. In other words, the circular movement of drive obeys the
anxiety that haunts us, its infernal circle that threatens to draws us in, weird logic of the curved space in which the shortest distance between
the second stands for the "pure" confrontation with objet a as consti­ two points is not a straight line, but a curve: the drive "knows" that the
tuted in its very IOSS.3 Miller is right to emphasize here two features: the shortest way to attain its aim is to circulate around its goal-object. At
difference that separates constituted from constituent anxiety concerns the immediate level of addressing individuals, capitalism of course in­
the status of the object with regard to fantasy. In a case of constituted terpellates them as consumers, as subjects of desires, soliciting in them
anxiety, the object dweils within the confines of a fantasy, while we get ever new perverse and excessive desires (for which it offers products to
the constituent fantasy only when the subject "traverses the fantasy" and satisfy them); furthermore, it obviously also manipulates the "desire to
confronts the void, the gap, filled up by the fantasmatic object. Clear and desire," celebrating the very desire to desire ever new objects and modes
convincing as it is, Miller's formula misses the true paradox or, rather, of pleasure. However, even if it already manipulates desire in a way that
ambiguity of objet a: when he defines objet a as the objcct that overlaps takes into account the fact that the most elementary desire is the desire
with its loss, that emerges at the very moment of its IO!iN (so that all its to reproduce itself as desirc (and not to find satisfaction), at this level, we
fantasmatic incarnations, from brcasts to voiee nnd 8R~e, lire mctonymie do not yet rellch rhe drive. Thc drive inheres to capitalism at a more fun­
figurations of the void of nothinH), he remainl withln th" hori7,ofl of de- damental, sysre.rnc Ilvoh drive prupds the entire capitalist machinery;

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II8 Ziiek Objet a in Social Links II9

it is the impersonal compulsion to engage in the endless circular move­ becomes possible only when "the multitude is finally able to rule itself"
ment of expanded self-reproduction. The capitalist drive thus belongs (340).
to no definite individual- it is rather that those individuals who act as For Marx, highly organized corporate capitalism already was "social­
direct "agents" of capital (capitalists themselves, top managers) have to ism within capitalism" (a kind of socialization of capitalism, with the
practice it. We enter the mode of the drive when (as Marx put it) the absent owners becoming more and more superfluous), so that one needs
circulation of money as capital becomes "an end in itself, for the expan­ only to cut off the nominal head to get socialism. For Hardt and Negri,
sion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement. however, the limitation of Marx was that he was historically constrained
The circulation of capital has therefore no limits." One should bear in to centralized and hierarchically organized, machinical, automatized in­
mind here Lacan's we11-known distinction between the aim and the goal dustrial labor, which is why his vision of "general intellect" was that
of drive: while the goal is the object around which drive circulates, its of a central planning agency; only today, with the rise of "immaterial
(true) aim is the endless continuation of this circulation as such. labor" to the hegemonie role, does the revolutionary reversal become
"objectively possible." This immateriallabor extends between the two
poles of intellectual (symbolic) labor (production of ideas, codes, texts,
Objet a as the Inherent Limit of Capitalism
programs, the figures of writers and programmers) and affective labor
This capitalist dynamics is the central reference of Michael Hardt's and (those who deal with our bodily affects, from doctors to baby-sitters and
\
Toni Negri's Empire and Multitude, arguably the ultimate exercises in flight attendants). Today, immateriallabor is "hegemonie" in the pre­
Deleuzian politics. These two books are such refreshing reading because eise sense in which Marx proclaimed that, in nineteenth-century capi­
they refer to and function as the moment of theoretical reflection of talism, large industrial production is hegemonie as the specific color
-one is almost tempted to say "are embedded in"-an actual global giving its tone to the totality-not quantitatively, but playing the key,
movement of anticapitalist resistance. One can sense, behind the written emblematic structural role: "What the multitude produces is not just
lines, the sme11s and sounds of Seattle, Genoa, and Zapatistas. So their goods or services; the multitude also and most importantly produces co­
limitation is simultaneously the limitation of the actual movement. operation, communication, forms oflife, and social relationships" (339).
Hardt's and Negri's basic move, an act by no means ideologica11y What thereby emerges is a new vast domain of the "common": shared
neutral-and, incidenta11y, one tota11y foreign to their philosophical knowledge, forms of cooperation and communication, and so on, which
paradigm, Deleuze! -is to identify (name) "democracy" as the common can no longer be contained by the form of private property. Far from
denominator of a11 today's emancipatory movements: "The common posing amortal threat to democracy (as conservative cultural critics
currency that runs throughout so many struggles and movements for lib­ want us to believe), this opens up a unique chance of "absolute democ­
eration across the world today-at local, regional, and global levels­ racy." In immaterial production, the products are no longer material ob­
is the desire for democracy."4 Far from standing for a utopian dream, jects, but new social (interpersonal) relations themselves-in short, im­
democrac'y is "the only answer to the vexing questions of our day.... material production is directly biopolitical, the production of sociallife.
the only way out of our state of perpetual conflict and war" (xviii). Not Marx emphasized how material production is always also the (re)pro­
only is democracy inscribed into the present antagonisms as an imma­ duction of the social relations within which it occurs; with today's capi­
nent telos of their resolution; even more, today, the rise ()f thc multitude talism, however, the production of social relations is the immediate goal
in the heart of capitalism "makes democracy possihle for thc first time" of production: "Such new forms of labor ... present new possibilities
(340). Until now, democracy was consrrnincd hy rhe form of the One, of for economic self-manIlKcment, since the mechanisms of cooperation
the sovereign state power; "ahsulutc dcmncrac.:y" ("che rille of everyone necessary fur produc.:tion Ire conrained in the labor itself" (336). The
by everyone, a dcmocrncy wirhour qUIIIA.I'I, wlrhuut Ifll or hutH" 11371) waKcr of Hardt .nd Nt.rll. thor this dircctly socialized, immaterial pro-

c"""'~'-'-E'c,
 ...
120 Zizek Objet a in Social Links 121

duction not only renders owners progressively superfluous (who needs Hardt and Negri continuously oscillate between their fascination for
them when production is directly social, formallyand as to its content? ); global capitalism's "deterritorializing" power and the rhetoric of the
the producers also master the regulation of social space, since social re­ struggle of the multitude against the One of capitalist power. Finan­
lations (politics) is the stuff of their work: economic production directly cial capital, with its wild speculations detached from the reality of ma­
becomes political production, the production of society itself. The way teriallabor, this standard bete noire of the traditional Left, is celebrated
is thus open for "absolute democracy," for the producers directly regu­ as the germ of the future, capitalism's most dynamic and nomadic as­
lating their social relations without even the detour of democratic rep­ pect. The organizational forms of today's capitalism-decentralization
resentation. of decision making, radical mobility and flexibility, interaction of mul­
This vision gives rise to a whole series of concrete questions. Can one tiple agents-are perceived as pointing toward the oncoming reign of the
really interpret this move toward the hegemonie role of immateriallabor multitude. It is as if everything is already here, in "postmodern" capital­
as the move from production to communication, to social interaction ­ ism, or, in Hegelese, the passage from In-itself to For-itself-all that is
in Aristotelian terms, from techne as poiesis to praxis, as the overcoming needed is just an act of purely formal conversion, like the one developed
of the Arendtian distinction between production and vis aetiva, or of the by Hegel apropos the struggle between Enlightenment and Faith, where
Habermasian distinction between instrumental and communicational he describes how the "silent, ceaseless weaving of the Spirit ... infil­
reason? How does this "politicization" of production, where produc­ trates the noble parts through and through and soon has taken complete
tion directly produces (new) social relations, affect the very notion of possession of all the vitals and members of the unconscious idol; then
politics? Is such an "administration of people" (subordinated to the logic 'one fine morning it gives its comrade a shove with the elbow, and bang!
of profit) still politics, or is it the most radical sort of depoliticization, crash! the idol lies on the floor.' On 'one fine morning' whose noon is
the entry into postpolitics? Last but not least, is democracy by neces­ bloodless if the infection has penetrated to every organ of spirituallife."5
sity, with regard to its very notion, nonabsolute? There is no democ­ Even the fashionable parallel with the new cognitivist notion of the
racy without a hidden, presupposed elitism. Democracy is, by defini­ human psyche is not missing here: in the same way brain sciences teach
tion, not "global"; it has to be based on values and/or truths that one us there is no central Self in the brain, how our decisions emerge out of
cannot select "democratically." In democracy, one can fight for truth, the interaction of a pandemonium of local agents, how our psychic life
but not decide what IS truth. As Claude Lefort and others have amply is an "autopoietic" process without any imposed centralizing agency (a
demonstrated, democracy is never simply representative in the sense of model, incidentally, explicitly based on the parallel with today's "decen­
adequately re-presenting (expressing) a preexisting set of interests and tralized" capitalism). So the new society of the multitude that rules itself
opinions, since these interests and opinions are constituted only through will be like today's cognitivist notion of the ego as a pandemonium of
such representation. In other words, the democratic articulation of an interacting agents with no central deciding Self running the show. How­
interest is always minimally performative: through their democratic rep­ ever, although Hardt and Negri see today's capitalism as the main site of
resentatives, people establish what their interests and opinions are. As the proliferating multitudes, they continue to rely on the rhetorics of the
Hegel already knew, "absolute democracy" could actualize itself only in One, the sovereign Power, against the multitude. How they bring these
the guise of its "oppositional determination," as terror. There is, thus, a two aspects together is dear: while capitalism generates multitudes, it
choice to be made here: do we accept democracy's structural, not just contains them in the capitalist form, thereby unleashing adernon it is
accidental, imperfeetion, or do we also endorse its terrorist dimension? unable to contro!. The question to be asked here is if Hardt and Negri
However, much more pertinent is another critical point that concerns do not commit amistake homologous to that of Marx: is their notion
Hardt and Negri's neglect of the form in the strict dialectical sense of of the pure multitude ruling itself not the ultimate capitalist fantasy, the
the term. fantasy of capitalism's se1f-rcvolutionizing perpetual motion freely ex­

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122 Zizek Objet a in Social Links 123

ploding when freed of its inherent obstacle? In other words, is the capi­ formal frame of the power structure and aims merely at replacing one
talist form (the form of the appropriation of surplus value) not the neces­ bearer of power ("them") with another ("us"). As it was fully clear to
sary form, formal frame and condition, of the self-propelling productive Lenin in his State and Revolution, the true revolutionary aim is not to
movement? "take power," but to undermine, disintegrate, the very apparatuses of
Consequently, when Hardt and Negri repeatedly emphasize how Mul­ state power. Therein resides the ambiguity of the "postmodern" Left­
titude "is a philosophical book" and warn the reader "do not expect our ist calls to abandon the program of "taking power": do they imply that
book to answer the question, What is to be done? or propose a concrete one should ignore the existing power structure, or, rather, limit oneself
program of action" (xvi), this constraint is not as neutral as it may ap­ to resisting it by way of constructing alternative spaces outside the state
pear: it points toward a fundamental theoretical flaw. After describing power network (the Zapatista strategy in Mexico); or do they imply that
multiple forms of resistance to the Empire, Multitude ends on a mes­ one should disintegrate, pull the ground from, the state power, so that
sianic note, pointing toward the great Rupture, the moment of Deci­ the state power will simply collapse, implode? In the second case, the
sion when the movement of multitudes will be transubstantiated into poetic formulas about the multitude immediately ruling itself do not suf­
the sudden birth of a new world: "After this long season of violence fice.
and contradictions, global civil war, corruption of imperial biopower, Hardt and Negri form here a kind of triad whose other two terms are
and infinite toil of the biopolitical multitudes, the extraordinary accu­ Ernesto Laclau and Giorgio Agamben. The ultimate difIerence between
mulations of grievances and reform proposals must at some point be Laclau and Agamben concerns the structural inconsistency of power:
transformed bya strong event, a radical insurrectional demand" (358). while they both insist on this inconsistency, their position toward it is
However, at this point, when one expects a minimum theoretical deter­ exactly opposite. Agamben's focusing on the vicious circle of the link
mination of this rupture, what we get is again withdrawal into philoso­ between legal power (the rule of Law) and violence is sustained by the
phy: "A philosophical book like this, however, is not the place for us messianic utopian hope that it is possible to radically break this circle
to evaluate whether the time for revolutionary political decision is im­ and step out of it (in an act of the Benjaminian "divine violence"). In his
minent" (357). Hardt and Negri perform here an all-too-quick jump: Coming Community, he refers to Saint Thomas's answer to the difficult
of course one cannot ask them to provide a detailed empirical descrip­ theological question: What happens to the souls of unbaptized babies
tion of the Decision, of the passage to the globalized "absolute democ­ who have died in ignorance of both sin and God? They committed no
racy," to the multitude that rules itself; however, what if this justified sin, so their punishment
refusal to engage in pseudo-concrete futuristic predictions masks an in­
cannot be an affiictive punishment, like that of hell, but only a pun­
herent notional deadlock/impossibility? That is to say, what one does
ishment of privation that consists in the perpetuallack of the vision
and should expect is a description of the notional structure of this quali­
of God. The inhabitants of limbo, in contrast to the damned, do
tative jump, of the passage from the multitudes resisting the One of
not fee! pain from this lack they do not know that they are de­
sovereign Power to the multitudes directly ruling themselves. Leaving
prived of the supreme good The greatest punishment-the lack
the notional structure of this passage in a darkness elucidated only by
of the vision of God-thus turns into a natural joy: irremediably
vague homologies and examples from the movements of resistance can­
lost, they persist without pain in divine abandon.?
not but raise the anxious suspicion that this self-transparent direct rule
of everyone over everyone, this democracy tout court, will coincide with Their fate is for Agamben the model of redemption: they "have left the
its opposite. 6 world of guilt and justice behind them: the light that rains down on
Hardt and Negri are right in renderin~ problcmaric the standard Lcft­ them is that irreparahle light of the dawn following the nov;ss;ma dies of
ist revolutionary notion of "taking power": Nu~h 11 srrnrcgy acccpts thc judgment. But thc life thllt he~ins on earth after the last day is simply

'-' tiM tWjtt t ...,,(r=!;r·

124 Zizek Objet a in Social Links 125

human life."8 (One cannot but recall here the crowd of humans who Are, however, these two approaches really as radically opposed as it
remain on stage at the end of Wagner's Twilight of Gods, silently wit­ may appear? Does Laclau and Mouffe's edifice not also imply its own
nessing the self-destruction of gods-what if they are the happy ones?) utopian point, the point at which political battles would be fought with­
And, mutatis mutandis, the same goes for Hardt and Negri, who per­ out remainders of "essentialism," all sides fully accepting the radically
ceive resistance to power as preparing the ground for a miraculous Leap contingent character of their endeavors and the irreducible character of
into "absolute democracy" in which multitude will directly rule itself­ social antagonisms? On the other hand, Agamben's position is also not
at this point, the tension will be resolved, freedom will explode into eter­ without its secret advantages: since, with today's biopolitics, the space
nal self-proliferation. The difference between Agamben and Hardt and of political struggle is closed and any democratic-emancipatory move­
Negri could be best apprehended by means of the good old Hegelian ments are meaningless, we cannot do anything but comfortably wait for
distinction between abstract and determinate negation: although Hardt the miraculous explosion of the "divine violence." As for Hardt and Ne­
and Negri are even more anti-Hegelian than Agamben, their revolution­ gri, they bring us back to the Marxist confidence that "history is on our
ary Leap remains an act of "determinate negation," the gestute of formal side," that historical development is already generating the form of the
reversal, of merely setting free the potentials developed in global capital­ Communist future.
ism, which already is a kind of "Communism-in-itself"; in contrast to If anything, the problem with Hardt and Negri is that they are too
them, Agamben - and, again, paradoxically, in spite of his animosity to much Marxists, taking over the underlying Marxist scheme of histori­
Adorno-outlines the contours of something much closer to the utopian cal progress: like Marx, they celebrate the "deterritorializing" revolu­
longing for the ganz Andere (wholly Other) in late Adorno, Horkheimer, tionary potential of capitalism; like Marx, they locate the contradietion
and Marcuse, to a redemptive leap into a nonmediated Otherness. within capitalism, in the gap between this potential and the form of
Laclau and Mouffe, on the contrary, propose a new version of the old capital, of the private-property appropriation of the surplus. In short,
Edouard Bernstein's archrevisionist motto "goal is nothing, movement they rehabilitate the old Marxist notion of the tension between produc­
is all": the true danger, the temptation to be resisted, is the very notion tive forces and the relations of production: capitalism already generates
of a radical cut by means of which the basic social antagonism will be the "germs of the future new form of life," it incessantly produces the
dissolved and the new era of a self-transparent, nonalienated society will new "common," so that, in a revolutionary explosion, this New should
arrive. For Laclau and Mouffe, such a notion disavows not only the po­ just be liberated from the old social form. However, precisely as Marx­
litical as such, the space of antagonisms and struggle for hegemony, but ists, on behalf of our fidelity to Marx's work, we should discern the mis­
the fundamental ontological finitude of the human condition as such­ take of Marx. On the one hand, he perceived how capitalism unleashed
which is why, any attempt to actualize such a leap has to end up in a the breathtaking dynamics of self-enhancing productivity-see his fasci­
totalitarian disaster. This means the only way to elaborate and practice nated descriptions of how, in capitalism, "all that is solid melts into air,"
livable particular political solutions is to admit the global apriori dead­ of how capitalism is the greatest revolutionizing force in the entire his­
lock: we can solve particular problems only against the background of tory of humanity. On the other hand, he also clearly perceived how this
the irreducible global deadlock. Of course, this in no way entails that capitalist dynamic is propelled by its own inner obstacle or antagonism,
political agents should limit themselves to solving particular problems, so that the ultimate limit ofcapitalism (of the capitalist self-propelling
abandoning the topic of universality: for Laclau and Mouffe, univer­ productivity) is capital itself. The incessant development and revolution­
sality is impossible and at the sarpe time necessary. Thcre is no direct izing of capitalism's own material conditions, the mad dance of its un­
"true" universality; every universality is always already Cilught into the conditional spiral of productivity, is ultimately nothing but adesperate
hegemonie struggle. it is an empty form hegemonized (fillcd in) by somc flight forward to escape its own dehilitating inherent contradiction.
particular contcnt that. at a givcn moment "nd In , "iven conjul1cturc. Marx's fundamental miNtnkc was to conclude. from these insights.
fUl1ctionN UN its Ntllnd-in. that a ncw, hiKhcr loe:I,1 order (communism) is possihle. an ordcr that
't~1 + "rtT'7
126 Ziiek Objet a in Soeial Links 127

would not only maintain, but even raise to a higher degree and effee­ mistake was also to assume that the objeet of desire (uneonstrained ex­
tively fully release the potential of the self-inereasing spiral of produe­ panding produetivity) would remain even when deprived of the eause
tivity whieh, in eapitalism, on aeeount of its inherent obstacle ("eontra­ that propels it (surplus value)? The same holds even more for Deleuze,
dietion"), is again and again thwarted by soeially destruetive eeonomie sinee he develops his theory of desire in direet opposition to the Laean­
erises. In short, what Marx overlooked is that, to put it in the standard ian one. Deleuze asserts the priority of desire over its objeets: desire is
Derridean terms, this inherent obstacle/antagonism as the "eondition of a positive produetive foree that exeeeds its objeets, a living flow prolif­
impossibility" of the full deployment of the produetive forees is simul­ erating through the multitude of objeets, penetrating them and passing
taneously its "eondition of possibility": if we abolish the obstacle, the through them, with no need for any fundamentallaek or "eastration"
inherent eontradietion of eapitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed that would serve as its foundation. For Laean, however, desire has to be
drive to produetivity finally delivered of its impediment, but we lose pre­ sustained by an objeet eause: not some primordial ineestuous lost ob­
eisely this produetivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously jeet on whieh desire remains forever transfixed and whose unsatisfying
/

thwarted byeapitalism. If we take away the obstacle, the very potential substitutes all other objeets are, but a purely formal objeet that eauses
thwarted by this obstacle dissipates. (Therein would reside a possible us to desire objeets that we eneounter in reality. This objeet eause of
Laeanian eritique of Marx, foeusing on the ambiguous overlapping be­ desire is thus not transeendent, an inaeeessible exeess forever eluding
tween surplus value and surplus enjoyment.) So the erities of eommu­ our grasp, but behind the subjeet's baek, something that direets desiring
nism were in a way right when they claimed that Marxian eommunism from within. As is the ease with Marx, Deleuze's failure to take into
is an impossible fantasy-what they did not pereeive is that Marxian aeeount this objeet eause sustains the illusory vision of uneonstrained
eommunism, this notion of a soeiety of pure unleashed produetivity out­ produetivity of desire-or, in the ease of Hardt and Negri, the illusory
side the frame of eapital, was a fantasy inherent to eapitalism itself, the vision of multitude ruling itself, no longer eonstrained by any totalizing
eapitalist inherent transgression at its purest, a strietly ideologieal fan­ One. We ean observe here the eatastrophie politieal eonsequenees of the
tasy of maintaining the thrust to produetivity generated by eapitalism, failure to develop what may appear a purely "aeademie," philosophieal,
while getting rid of the "obstacles" and antagonisms that were-as the notional distinetion.
sad experienee of "really existing eapitalism" demonstrates-the only
possible framework of the effeetive material existenee of a soeiety of per- .
Notes
manent self-enhaneing produetivity.
So where, preeisely, did Marx go wrong with regard to surplus value? I See ]acques-Alain Miller, "La passe: Conference de ]acques-Alain Miller," paper pre­
sented at the fourth Congres de l'AMP, Comandatuba-Bahia, Brazil, August 9-12,
One is tempted to seareh for an answer in the key Laeanian distinetion
200 4.
between the objeet of desire and the surplus enjoyment as its eause. Re­
2 See Giorgio Agamben, The State vf Exceptivn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
eall the eurl of the blond hair, this fatal detail of Madeleine in Alfred 200 4).
Hiteheoek's Vertigo. When, in the love seene in the barn toward the end See ]acques-Alain Miller, "Le nom-du-pere, s'en passer, s'en servir," available at www
of the film, Seottie passionately embraees Judy (who has been refash­ .lacan.com. It is interesting to note how, in his very polemies against the Hegelian Auf­
ioned into the dead Madeleine) during their famous 36o-degree kiss, he hebung, Miller repeats its operation. That is to say, when Miller deploys the concept of
anxiety as the affect which signals the proximity of the Real, he opposes it to the cen­
stops kissing her and withdraws just long enough to steal a look at her
tral role of the Namc-of-the-Father, of the paternal Law, in Lacan's previous thought:
newly blond hair, as if to reassure himself that thc partkular feature that
thc paternal Law flln<.:tions os the operator of Aufhebung, of the "significantization,"
makes her into the objeet of desire is still there. So thcrc is always a gap symholic mcdiatinn/intt'Krntiol1, of the real, while anxiety enters as a remainder of the
between the objeet of desire itself and it. CdUIC, thc mcdiatinv, feature Real thot rt'Ni.tM ih Mymhulk AlIfu"hung. Ilowever, when Miller asks thc question of
or element that makes this objeet delir.blll. Back w MArx: what if his what hoppenM wlth ,h. rllll!rnni I.IlW Ilftt'r this introclu<.:tion of anxicty os thc sil\llol of

__ ..cr"",'-n_'::ii... '$ 'rf''STt't ;

128 Zizek

the Real, he strangely reproduces the very terms of Aufhebung. Of course, the Name­
of-the-Father continues to playa function, bur a subordinate function within a new
theoretical context.ln shart, the Name-of-the-Father is maintained, negated, and ele­
vated to a higher level-the very three features of the Hegelian Aufhebung.
4 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York: Penguin, Z004), xvi. All
parenthetical citations refer to this edition. 7
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, with analysis and fore­
word by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 33z. Hegel as tlle
6 This is also why Hardt and Negri's reference to Bakhtin's notion of carnival as the
model for the protest movement of the multitude-they are carnivalesque not only Otller SIele GI
in their form and atmosphere (theatrical performances, chants, humorous songs), but
also in their noncentralized organization (z08-n)-is deeply problematic.ls late capi­ Mladen Dolar Psvclloanalnis
talist social reality itself not already carnivalesque? Furthermore, is "carnival': not also
the name for the obscene underside of power-from gang rapes to mass lynchings?
Let us not forget that Mikhail Bakhtin developed the notion of carnival in his book on
Rabelais written in the 1930S, as a direct reply to the carnival of the Stalinist purges.
7 Giorgio Agamben, The Coming Community, trans. M. Hardt (Minneapolis: University It is obvious at first sight that wherever one opens Lacan's Seminar XVII,
of Minnesota Press, 1993), 5-6.
The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, one finds HegeI. He is one of the prin­
8 Ibid.,6-7'
cipal interlocutors, one of the reference points, on equal footing with
Freud and Marx, with whom he forms astrange tripod on which the
whole argument is based. It is clear that the very notion of the master's
discourse, the basic type of discourse as a social bond, the discourse that
is actually the hero of the tide, that is, what constitutes the reverse side
of psychoanalysis, l sterns from a certain reading of Hegel's dialectic of
lord and bondsman-or master and slave in the old parlance, which T
will retain here for the sake of simplicity, despite its inaccuracy, since
this is an inaccuracy constandy committed by Lacan hirnself, following
Alexandre Kojeve. On the one hand, for Hegel this dialectic inaugu­
rates the realm of self-consciousness, which he emphatically describes
as "the native realm of truth" where "being-in-itself and being-for-an­
other are one and the same."2 On the other hand, it presents in the same
gesture Hegel's own theory of a minimal social bond: there is no self­
consciousness, no self-reflexivity of consciousness, without at the same
time the establishment of a social structure in a nutshell, the establish­
ment of an" 'I' that is 'We' and 'We' that is 'I''' (no), the minimal con­
stitution of a "We" that will be the subject of what Hegel calls spirit (and
will get its full deploymcnt in a subsequent chapter 150 pages later).
The social bond that undcrlies self-consciousness implies as its con­
scquencc a cerrain dlvilion of labor, or rather a division into labor and

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