Egocracy - Marx, Freud and Lacan 3037340681, 9783037340684

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Marx's Trajectory; or, Three Ways of Splitting the Subject
1. The Imaginary and the Real (Part One): the "Early Writings"
2. The Imaginary and the Real (Part Two): from the "Theses on Feuerbach" to the 1859 "Preface"
3. The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real: Das Kapital
II. From Freud to Lacan... and Back to Marx; or, How Psychoanalysis Slowly Discovers the Social
1. "The Nucleus of the Ego is Unconscious": the Trauma of the Social in Freud's Two Topographies
2. From the Transcendental Symbolic to the Historicity of Discourse: Lacan's "Return to Marx"
2.1 Two Contradictory Trends in the "Early" Lacan
2.2 Egocracy and the "Discourse of Capitalism"; or, Rethinking the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real in Seminar XVII
Abbreviations
Bibliography

Citation preview

SUBJEKTILE

Edited by Marcus Coelen and Felix Ensslin

Howard Rouse/Sonia Arribas Egocracy Marx, Freud and Lacan

diaphanes

Printed with kind support of Comença Aid, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

1. Auflage / First edition ISBN 978-3-03734-068-4 © diaphanes, Zürich 2011 www.diaphanes.net Alle Rechte vorbehalten / All rights reserved Layout: 2edit, Zürich Druck / Printing: Pustet, Regensburg

Contents

Acknowledgments

7

Introduction

11

I. Marx’s Trajectory; or, Three Ways of Splitting the Subject

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1. The Imaginary and the Real (Part One): the »Early Writings«

33

2. The Imaginary and the Real (Part Two): from the »Theses on Feuerbach« to the 1859 »Preface«

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3. The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real: Das Kapital

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II. From Freud to Lacan… and Back to Marx; or, How Psychoanalysis Slowly Discovers the Social

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1. »The Nucleus of the Ego is Unconscious«: the Trauma of the Social in Freud’s Two Topographies

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2. From the Transcendental Symbolic to the Historicity of Discourse: Lacan’s »Return to Marx«

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2.1 Two Contradictory Trends in the »Early« Lacan

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2.2 Egocracy and the »Discourse of Capitalism«; or,

Rethinking the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real



in Seminar XVII

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Abbreviations

273

Bibliography

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Acknowledgments Howard Rouse and Sonia Arribas would like to thank Marcus Coelen and Felix Ensslin for understanding that, if there certainly is a moment to conclude, it is not always so easy to come by; Michael Heitz and Sabine Schulz for allowing this project to finally come to fruition; and Ellen Blumenstein, Germán Cano, Irene Domínguez, José Enrique Ema, Felix Ensslin, Mario Espinoza, Florencia Fassi, Erick González-Guzmán, Neil Greenwood, Matthew Kenny, Maribel López, Kathrin Meyer, Júlia Morell, Jordi Mir, Alex Needham, Andrew Poyner, Daria Saccone, Alejandro Velázquez and – last but not least – Sascha Wolters for keeping on a tight track the train of the everyday. Sonia Arribas would like to thank her colleagues from the CSIC and UPF seminars »Mínima Política« and »Movimientos Sociales«, especially Paco Fernández Buey, Antonio Gimeno and José Antonio Zamora; and also, for the invaluable support that they have provided at the CSIC, José María González, Reyes Mate and Concha Roldán. The book is dedicated to Rosa María Calvet and Carmen Cuñat, both of whom are supposed to know why.

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The character of the bourgeois, like that of every decadent class, is individualistic, egoistic; once it has attained its aims, the bourgeoisie can understand only one thing: enjoyment! […] The worker’s nature, on the contrary, inclines him to group, to the Association. Karl Marx, »Paris Section of Workers’ Rights to the members of the Hague Congress« The desire for a powerful, uninhibited ego may seem to us intelligible; but, as we are taught by the times we live in, it is in the profoundest sense hostile to civilization. Sigmund Freud, »An Outline of Psycho-Analysis« And they succeed. They make good employees. That’s what the strong ego is. You obviously have to have a resistant ego to be a good employee […] Even so, you have to ask yourself if the ideal end of the psychoanalytic cure really is to get some gentleman to earn a bit more money than before and, when it comes to his sex life, to supplement the moderate help he gets from his conjugal partner with the help he gets from his secretary. Jacques Lacan, »The Place, Origin and End of My Teaching«

Introduction This book, as its title makes clear, tries to bring together the work of Marx, Freud and Lacan. It does this not by enumerating what might stereotypically be considered to be the central theses of these authors and then proceeding to combine them – a method that is inevitably doomed to failure  – but instead by confronting each one of their œuvres with what might best be described, as long as the arguments that we make here are accepted, as its extimate1 core. (This confrontation not only allows us to avoid an enumeration of these stereotypical theses, but also, in a number of cases at least, effectively compels us to engage in their thoroughgoing rethinking or rejection.) In chapter 1, the whole development of Marx’s thought is reconstructed from the perspective of the problematic of the splitting, dividing or doubling of the subject or, more precisely, from the perspective of the problematic of the splitting, dividing or doubling of the subject between and across the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the real.2 (This problematic is certainly, as will later become clear, immanent to Marx’s thought. At the same time, however, it never receives there an explicit formulation, perhaps because this formulation can only be achieved when Marx is read through the lenses of that inherent fracturing of the subject that Freudian and – even more so – Lacanian psychoanalysis has so consistently brought to light.)

1 It was Lacan himself, of course – as we will later see – who first invented this neologistic concept. 2 The reader will no doubt notice that, as the argument of this book progresses, this splitting, dividing or doubling of the subject increasingly comes to be comprehended in the terms of a folding or knotting. As these two sets of terms are by no means directly equivalent, it is perhaps worth emphasizing the precise nature of our argument from the very beginning. The splitting, dividing or doubling of the subject can only be coherently conceived, we want to claim, as a folding or knotting. For it is precisely when Marx, Freud and Lacan  – at least at certain points of their development  – erect a separation between two terms (the imaginary and the real, for instance (Marx and Freud), or the imaginary and the symbolic (Lacan)), without relating them to a fundamental third (in accordance with the previous examples, the symbolic or the real), that they run into a whole series of insurmountable obstacles. The book essentially unfolds, then, as a fleshing out of the bare bones of this basic conceptual argument.

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Marx first encounters this problematic in his early writings; but he unconvincingly attempts to articulate it there in terms of a logic of alienation. Either the (imaginary) political state, and the subject that it produces, is seen to alienate the (real) economic fundament of civil society – even if modern civil society is itself contradictorily viewed as the cause of this alienation – or, in a later and gradually effected displacement, (imaginary) civil society, and the subject that it produces, is seen to alienate the (real of the) human essence (famously identified, of course, with the coming into being of the proletariat). In Marx’s middle period these terms receive another rather inadequate inflection. The subject is either split, doubled or divided between its (imaginary) ideological consciousness and its (real) social and economic conditions of existence or, in a probable attempt to escape from the inexorability of this rupture (in the case of the proletarian, at least), it is split, doubled or divided between the (imaginary) social relations of production and the (real) ever-expanding forces of production that revolutionarily underlie them. It is only the late Marx, then – or, more specifically, the Marx of Das Kapital – who can succeed in compellingly elucidating the division of the subject between the two registers of the imaginary and the real. And he can only do this by effectively introducing a third register, one that – once it has been conceived in accordance with the historical particularity that is appropriate to it – serves to combine the other two. For the mature Marx, capitalism – or the capitalist mode of production – is nothing more than a social or symbolic order that constitutes, and continues to reconstitute itself by effecting a separation, within the subject (the proletarian subject!), between the (tendentially imaginary) commodity of its labor-power and its (real) labor proper. Capitalism is nothing more, in its essence, than a particular subjective combination, a particular subjective imbrication, of the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. (The stereotypical theses that our reading of Marx enables us to do away with, then, are far from being inconsiderable. For what disappears from Marx’s work when one judges it according to its ability to coherently come to terms with the problematic of the divided subject is nothing less than the whole theory of alienation, the whole theory of ideology  – along with that whole metaphoric of base and superstructure upon which it relies – and the whole theory of an inescapably revolutionary conflict between relations of production and forces of production. It is only

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the purging of these theories that allows us to properly conceptualize the nature of proletarian subjectivity; and to overcome in this way what is perhaps, despite the numerous pointers that he gives in this direction, the fundamental blind spot of Marx’s theoretical production. Finally, the conception of this subjectivity as divided between its labor and its labor-power also allows us to correct an idea that is nowhere to be found in Marx, but that is endlessly repeated when reference to his work is made (even by supposed »Marxists« themselves): the idea that commodities are only and exclusively objects. For the late Marx, as we will see – at least when he is talking specifically about capitalism – the commodity is first and foremost a subject, even if this definition, in accordance with that logic of splitting, doubling or dividing that we are here seeking to delineate, does nothing to exhaust the very term that it describes.) In chapter 2 (part 1), the development of Freud’s thinking or, more precisely speaking, of his metapsychology, is deconstructed from within on the basis of his own absolutely revolutionary recognition of the fact that »the nucleus of the ego is unconscious« (and from without on the basis of what we have already said about Marx in chapter 1, which itself anticipates what we will say about Lacan in chapter 2 (part 2)). Freud attempts to present his metapsychology as developing according to a simple narrative of progression. We advance, he tells us, from a first, essentially inadequate and dualistic topography (which opposes the conscious and the unconscious) to a second, much more adequate and essentially ternary topography (which opposes the coherent ego and the unconscious repressed and then, on the basis of this, the ego, the super-ego and the id), precisely by passing through the registration of the ego’s undeniable unconsciousness. This latter registration, however, is much more radical than it seems to be. For, in addition to undermining Freud’s first topography, as he himself is willing to admit, it also undermines his second  – which would certainly come as much more of a surprise to him. And, in addition to undermining Freud’s second topography, it also undermines that whole attempt to think the social or, more exactly, the impossible transition from the pre-social to the social, that is so problematically grounded upon it (and upon the equally problematic and coterminous idea of an absolutely transcendent »beyond« of the pleasure principle). The only way to rescue Freud’s metapsychology, and the ternary opposition between the ego, the super-ego and the id that

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it ultimately wants to introduce, is by directly socializing its fundamental insight into the ego’s essential unconsciousness. It is here that the work of Marx and Lacan can be of indispensable assistance. (The stereotypical theses that our reading of Freud does away with hardly need to be, then, explicitly spelt out. For what disappears from Freud’s work when one judges it according to its own most radical standards is nothing less than its first topography, its second topography and that entire inadequate conception of the social that seeks to erect itself upon this latter support.) Finally, in chapter 2 (part 2), the development of Lacan’s thought is internally interrogated according to its own adumbration of an essential interweaving, interlocking and imbrication of the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real (and is externally brought into line with what we have already seen Marx to reveal about the coexistence of these three registers in the capitalist mode of production, and with what we have already seen Freud to reveal, consistently with this coexistence, about the nucleus of the ego being unconscious). Lacan’s »early« work  – by which we mean here all of that work that precedes the for us absolutely seminal Seminar XVII – can be seen to divide itself into two very different, conflicting and contradictory, strands. According to the »classical« strand, the (imaginary) ego is constituted in the »mirror stage«, and the (symbolic) subject is constituted by its integration into a fundamentally structuralist and transcendental »symbolic order« of language. The problem with this conception – and with all of the apparently more subtle distinctions that effectively derive from it, especially, as we will see, Lacan’s differentiation between the (imaginary) ideal-ego and the (symbolic) ego-ideal – is that it allows for no real interplay between its two terms. For either, in a radically implausible manner, the »mirror stage« is seen to entirely predate the later setting in place of the »symbolic order« or, this time much more plausibly, it is seen to be essentially defined and determined by this »order« itself; the difficulty still being, of course, that there is nothing inherent in a structuralist and transcendental »symbolic order« of language that can itself serve to explain the irreducible specificity of the emergence of the imaginary ego. This emergence can only be explained when the »symbolic order«  – which now has to be seen to dissolve into a number of symbolic orders  – is thoroughly destructuralized and detranscendentalized, that is, in positive terms, when it is thoroughly

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socialized and historicized. And the »symbolic order« can only be socialized and historicized when it is itself brought into relation with the third register of the real; a real that is no longer conceived, as in the »classically early« Lacan, as the mere external and transcendent limit of the symbolic, but instead as that which ineradicably informs and deforms it from within. This is precisely the path that is opened up, then, by the second – and certainly less well-known – strand of Lacan’s »early« work. For what happens in this strand is that modernity – despite the persistent vagueness of this concept, and despite a few false moves along the way – comes to be comprehended in terms of a socially and historically specific rupturing and co-implication, within the very heart of the subject, of the three opposing registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. This understanding of modernity reaches its final consummation in Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. For what Lacan sees here, even if only implicitly – and in accordance with what Marx has said before him, and with the implications of Freud’s most fundamental insight – is that the source of this rupturing and co-implication is none other than the capitalist mode of production itself; or what he at times calls, not without entering into a whole series of ambiguities, the »discourse of capitalism«. Capitalism is a social or symbolic order that produces the imaginary ego  – hence the title of this book  – by continually combining and recombining it with its own inherent excess, the real of its labor or work (this is the real social and historical significance, then, of Lacan’s third, and undoubtedly most important, theoretical register). And the strength of Lacan’s œuvre as a whole, to put it mildly, is that it shows this combination not to be without certain extremely serious consequences. (The stereotypical theses that our reading of Lacan allows us to do away with are once again, then, of some moment. For what disappears from Lacan’s work when one judges it according to its own immanent criterion of the thoroughgoing intermixing of the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real, is nothing less than the whole theory of the »mirror stage«, at least as it is classically formulated, the whole theory of the »symbolic order«  – and of the coterminous idea that the subject is simply the subject of the signifier – and the whole theory of an externally limiting and transcendent real. We might also suggest that what disappears from Lacan’s work is the famous and virtually omnipresent affirmation that the subject of psychoanalysis is none other than

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the subject of science. For what we ultimately want to argue here, of course, is that the subject of psychoanalysis or, in other words, the subject of the unconscious – at least in its most acute form – is none other than the subject of capitalism. The subject of psychoanalysis is only the subject of science, then, to the extent that science receives its ultimate determination from within a capitalist framework.)

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I. Marx’s Trajectory; or, Three Ways of Splitting the Subject

It is well known that the most striking interpretations of the development of Marx’s thought have tended to divide themselves into two broad theoretical camps. On the one hand, there are those who have conceived this development in the terms of a more or less linear and continuous evolution. And, on the other hand, there are those who have construed it as the subject of a single and decisive revolutionary break.1 Our aim in this chapter is to articulate and defend a very different view. For Marx’s development will be reconstructed here as the product of a recurrent but also ever-changing confrontation with a single problematic: that of the division, splitting or doubling of the subject or, more precisely, of its division, splitting or doubling between and across the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the real. Whereas in his early and middle periods, we will argue, Marx twice fails to comprehend this division, in his later works, and especially Das Kapital, he finally succeeds in precisely and concretely articulating the characteristics of its symbolic or, in Marx’s own less arcane terms, social production. Capitalism is essentially defined by Marx, in these later works, as the symbolic or social production and reproduction of a (proletarian) subjectivity divided or, more precisely, knotted along its imaginary and real registers. And, as the rest of this book will try to make clear, this is certainly not something that can be considered to be a matter of small consequence. For a lot of people, however, the mere suggestion of such an interpretation will undoubtedly be the cause of severe consternation. For surely what we are attempting here is not an interpretation of Marx’s work at all, but instead something like its forced confinement within the pre-established and, in fact, highly artificial parameters of a Lacanian schema; the notion of a subject split across the three registers of

1 As we will see shortly, the paradigmatic representative of the first tendency is Lukács, and of the second Althusser; although it would also be appropriate to include under the former heading a whole host of other names: Korsch, ­Lefebvre, Sartre, Goldmann, Colletti, Debord and Jameson; certainly, and also, on occasion, Adorno and Horkheimer and Benjamin.

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the imaginary, the symbolic and the real being one of – or perhaps, as we will later want to suggest, the – fundamental tenet of Lacan’s own reconstruction of the central terms of Freudian psychoanalysis? For two overriding reasons, however, this suspicion cannot be said to be justified; even if our ultimate intention in this book – one obviously inspired by the later work of Lacan himself, which explicitly and increasingly takes up Marxian themes – is clearly to emphasize the potentially enormous productivity of a sustained confrontation between the respective anti-philosophies of these two thinkers. Firstly, then, even the most cursory of glances at Marx’s writings, especially in their early and middle periods, will reveal that the terms »imaginary« and »real« – and their various cognates: »illusory« and »actual«, »formal« and »contentful«, and so on and so forth – proliferate there to an almost incredible extent, and almost always in explicit or implicit connection with the problematic of a »split«, »divided« or »doubled« subject (playing with the variations of the prefix »Doppel« was undoubtedly, as we later come to see, one of Marx’s most favored occupations). And if the actual use of the concepts of the imaginary and the real certainly becomes less frequent in Marx’s more mature work, then this should in no way be taken to mean that they have simply ceased to function there. For, instead, what we will discover is that their location within the presentation of the capitalist mode of production has come to lend them a much more concrete and specific valence. In Das Kapital, to anticipate the core of this chapter’s most important argument, the place of the »imaginary« has been taken over by the concept of the commodity of labor-power; and the place of the »real« by that of the (proletarian) subject’s actual labor. The capitalist mode of production, once again  – and as the phrase itself can be détourned in order to suggest – is nothing more than a particular social or symbolic order or, better perhaps, process of ordering that has to be seen to continually produce and reproduce the (proletarian) subject by dividing, doubling or knotting it across these two registers. Capitalism, as will become clear at the end of this chapter, and even more so at the end of the second part of chapter 2, is a Borromean knot. Secondly, an equally cursory glance at the history of Western Marxism  – the only significant body of Marxian thinking to have seriously grappled with the two interrelated questions of the nature of the development of Marx’s thought and of the philosophical con-

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ception of subjectivity implicit in it;2 the classical tradition having been more concerned to fathom its consequences, whether political or economic, in the concrete confrontation with a concrete situation3 – can leave little doubt that a lot of the weaknesses of this tradition ultimately derived from an absolutely inadequate theoretical approach to the problematic of the subject. Or, more exactly, and moving the analysis in the direction of our own reconstruction, we might say that many of the representatives of this tradition failed to produce a coherent conception of the subject precisely because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they erected a false and un­breachable divide between its imaginary and real registers. A brief discussion of the cases of Lukács and Althusser – both of them paradigmatic in their own specific way – will hopefully now make this clear.

Lukács and his Lacunae Now, Lukács does not have, of course – as Althusser will so clearly have after him – an explicit account of the development of Marx’s thought. It is not unfair to say, however, that his major work, History and Class Consciousness, is the first and best representative of what we might call »continuity theory« (the theory that there is an essential continuity between the propositions of the early Marx and the supposedly entirely homogeneous propositions of his later instantiations). Lukács is a »continuity theorist«, then, because the whole of his work rests upon a fundamental equation between the commodity-fetishism of the late Marx and the alienation  – or what Lukács famously re-terms the reification – of the early Marx. This equation, we want to suggest here, is the source of all of Lukács’ problems. For what it effectively allows him to do is divide – 2 As our brief discussion of Lukács and Althusser will shortly make clear, one of the main problems with Western Marxism is precisely that it considers Marx’s conception of subjectivity to be philosophical. Or, more precisely, that it supplements what Marx has to say with a philosophical theory of subjectivity. This theory is Hegelian in the line that follows from Lukács; Spinozist in the case of Althusser. 3 For the best discussion of the distinction between the classical tradition of Marxism and the tradition of Western Marxism, see Anderson (1979).

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or, as we will see, only apparently divide – the proletarian subject between the two absolutely inadequately comprehended spheres of the imaginary and the real.4 The proletarian subject is divided, for Lukács, between two forms of consciousness; or between what he himself sometimes confusingly refers to – thus giving the game away, we might suspect – as the »unconscious« and the »conscious«. On the first, imaginary and »unconscious«, side – and simply repeating here that long list of terms that Lukács himself so consistently employs5 – we have the proletarian subject’s tendentially bourgeois consciousness, the consciousness that belongs to it as a product of capital. This consciousness is immediate or false, psychological or mass psychological, depersonalized or dehumanized, fragmented, reified, commodified and contemplative. On the second, real and »conscious«, side, we have the proletarian subject’s authentically proletarian consciousness, the consciousness that belongs to it as the result of its inherent capacity to transcend the limitations of the capitalist mode of production. This consciousness, as one would expect, is mediated or true, imputed (zugerechnet) as an objective possibility, personalized and humanized, totalizing, un-reifying, un-commodifying and indisputably active or practical. The question that Lukács is confronted with in History and Class Consciousness, then, is how the proletarian subject gets from one form of consciousness to another (how it gets from the »unconscious« to the »conscious«, or from the imaginary to the real). In his own words, everything »depends on closing the gap between the psychological consciousness and the imputed (zugerechnete) one« (HCC: 74). The answer that Lukács provides to this question – the account that he gives of the closing of this gap – could not be any clearer: for the more the first form of consciousness develops and unfolds, he claims, the more does the second. Or, once again making use of his own terms, the more that imaginary and »unconscious« reification, commodification and dehumanization develop  – all of which are at their most extreme, of course, in the limit-case of the

4 Lukács himself does not, of course, employ these terms. But it will hopefully become apparent that our introduction of them is far from unfair. 5 For Lukács’ use of these terms, see the two central texts of History and Class Consciousness, »Class Consciousness« and »Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat«, 46–82 and 83–222, respectively.

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economic crisis – the more does the real and »conscious« humanity that this reification and commodification only serves to alienate in its essentially totalizing tendencies. This supposed shift of consciousnesses might already appear, then, to be more than a little implausible. But what we want to do here is try to put our finger on the precise cause of this implausibility by suggesting that, in order even to put forward such an account, Lukács needs to turn what is intended as a theory of the division of the subject into nothing more than a theory of the division between the subject and the object (one of the central »antinomies of bourgeois thought«6 returns with a vengeance, we might say, in that very conception of proletarian subjectivity that is conceived to be their quite definitive overcoming). In order to tease out this cause it suffices to advance a very quick critical commentary of what are undoubtedly, from the perspective being defended here, the most important pages of History and Class Consciousness, the final pages of the second part of the third section of its landmark essay, »Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat« (HCC: 164–72). These pages revolve around a central opposition: if »the bourgeoisie always perceives the subject and object of the historical process and of social reality in a double form«, then »[f]or the proletariat social reality does not exist in this [same] double form«. What does this mean? It means that if the bourgeois is effectively merely the object of the processes of capitalist production, he nonetheless perceives himself to be their determining subject; a perception that is precisely denied to the proletarian in his reduction to the status of the »pure object of societal events«. Because the proletarian is »cut […] off from his labour-power«, forced »to sell it on the market as a commodity, belonging to him« (a description that, as we will shortly see, tendentiously transforms what actually occurs in the capitalist mode of production7), he is nothing more than the »cipher« of a »specialised«, »rationalised« and »mechanised« development.

6 This is the title of section II of »Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat«. One of the central antinomies that Lukács identifies here is a rigid and insuperable opposition between the spheres of the subjective and the objective. 7 To anticipate, Lukács is confusing here – at best – the concepts of labor and labor-power. It simply makes no sense to say that, in the capitalist mode

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It is fairly apparent what Lukács wants to achieve by erecting this strict distinction between the bourgeois or capitalist and the proletarian or worker. For as he himself says: »It is true: for the capitalist also there is the same doubling of personality, the same splitting up of man into an element of the movement of commodities and an (objective and impotent) observer of that movement. But for his consciousness it necessarily appears as an activity (albeit this activity is an objectively an illusion), in which effects emanate from himself. This illusion blinds him to the true state of affairs, whereas the worker, who is denied the scope for such illusory activity, perceives the split in his being preserved in the brutal form of what is in its whole tendency a slavery without limits. He is therefore forced into becoming the object of the process by which he is turned into a commodity and reduced to a mere quantity.«

If both the bourgeois and the proletarian are divided as subjects – if both of them experience a »doubling of their personalities«, a »splitting of their humanities«, a »split of their beings« – then it is only the proletarian, once again as a result of his denigration to the level of a mere objectivity, who is capable of »perceiving« this division in a disillusioned form. It is precisely because the proletarian becomes an object that he is compelled to »surpass the immediacy of his condition«, that he possesses – in Lukács simple re-inscription of the logic of Hegelian dialectic  – the immanent capacity to »transform quantity into quality«. It soon becomes apparent, however  – if it is not apparent already – that if the proletarian can so easily carry out this supersession and transmogrification, this is only ultimately because his division as a subject is not really a division of the subject at all, but instead a mere division between its subjective and its objective

of production, the proletarian is »cut off from his labour-power«, because it is precisely this mode of production that first counts the proletarian’s labor as the commodity of labor-power. It would make a little more sense, then, to say that the proletarian is »cut off« from his labor, insofar as this labor is counted as and, as we will see, tends to disappear into the commodity of labor-power. But, in contradistinction to what Lukács is saying here, this »cutting off« in no way reduces the proletarian to the status of a mere object. Instead, it precisely constitutes him as a divided subject.

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aspects (with each of these being comprehended in a hugely unsatisfactory manner). »[A]s far as labour-time is concerned«, Lukács tells us, »it becomes abundantly clear that quantification is a reified and reifying cloak spread over the true essence of the objects«. And the »true essence of the objects« is nothing more, in the end, than the subject in its pure humanity, in its pure and unified personality: »for the worker labourtime is not merely the objective form of the commodity he has sold, i.e. his labour-power (for in that form the problem for him, too, is one of the exchange of equivalents, i.e. a quantitative matter). But in addition it is the determining form of his existence as subject, as human being«; »the worker is forced to objectify his labour-power over against his total personality and to sell it as a commodity. But because of the split between subjectivity and objectivity induced in man by the compulsion to objectify himself as a commodity, the situation becomes one that can be made conscious«. Consciousness is the terminus ad quem of Lukács’ whole construction because the proletarian is nothing more than the »self-consciousness of the commodity«; »[i]n this consciousness and through it the special objective character of labour as a commodity, its ›use-value‹ (i.e. its ability to yield surplus produce) which like every use-value is submerged without a trace in the quantitative exchange categories of capitalism, awakens and becomes social reality«. Lukács can only distinguish between the two forms of consciousness of the proletarian subject  – between its »consciousness« and its »unconsciousness« or, in our own critically introduced terms, between its real and imaginary registers  – because this distinction itself depends upon a more fundamental, and more fundamentally inadequate, differentiation between the subjective and objective characteristics of precisely this subject. And it is certainly not a coincidence that in drawing out these supposed characteristics Lukács is compelled to engage  – as the above quotations reveal  – in a very tendentious reading of Marx’s comments on the commodity of laborpower, in its relationship, of course, to the labor that it tendentially conceals. For it is here that we can draw the strictest of dividing lines between what Lukács wants to say and what we will have to say in the whole chapter on Marx that follows. For Lukács, in nuce, the division between labor and the commodity of labor-power is a division between the subject and the object, between the »conscious« and the

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»unconscious« and, once again accepting our importation, between the spheres of the real and the imaginary so conceived. For us – and obviously only sketching out here the central terms of our analysis – the division between labor and the commodity of labor-power is a division of the subject proper, in which the symbolic combination of its real and imaginary registers does nothing less than constitute the experience of the »unconscious« itself (as the experience of a strictly non-substantial and strictly non-localizable domain that undoubtedly does away with any simple reference to »consciousness«).

The Aporias of Althusser For two main reasons, it is much easier to talk about Althusser – in the context of the discussion that we are beginning to advance here – than it is to talk about Lukács. In the first place, then, Althusser undoubtedly does have an explicit theory of the development of Marx’s thought. And, in the second place, both in the articulation of this supposed development and in the articulation of the terms that are supposed to be developed within it, Althusser undoubtedly does take literal recourse to the critical categories of the imaginary and the real (one might suppose that this is the result of the influence of Lacan; but we will see that this influence is itself more imaginary than real, and that, in any case, it is trumped by the much more fundamental influence of Spinoza, and especially of his absolutely rigid opposition between the two entirely separate spheres of the ratio and the imaginatio8). Althusser makes use of these two categories  – and of Gaston Bachelard’s notion of an »epistemological break« – in order to distinguish between the imaginary or »ideological« problematic of the early Marx (the problematic of Feuerbachian humanism and Hegelian dialectic) and the real or »scientific« problematic of the late or later Marx (the specifically Marxian problematic of the mode of production and its distinct and different determinations). And, in exclusive relation to this latter problematic, he also employs the concepts of the imaginary and the real in order to introduce a number of basic

8

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See Spinoza (1992).

dividing lines and definitions. Two of these stand out (and the second can in fact be understood as a more specific application of the first). On the one hand, then – and in direct opposition to the Hegelian idea of an »expressive« totality – Althusser develops, by borrowing from Freud,9 of course, the contrary conception of an »overdetermined« totality in which the real »last instance« of the economy (and here we hear the echo of Engels10) relates in a putatively complex manner with the »relatively autonomous« or »specifically effective« imaginary and »ideological« instances that apparently arise above it. On the other hand  – and once again particularizing these more general delineations  – he develops a real or »scientific« account of the imaginary or »ideological« constitution or »interpellation« of the subject by means of the »ideological state apparatuses«, an account that is intended to explain how »ideology«, and the subject that it produces, »represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence« (LAP: 109). We can deal  – very briefly  – with each of these articulations in turn. Primarily by showing the problems that ensue from Althusser’s inflexibly Spinozist counterposition of the two realms of the imaginary and the real. And secondarily by showing in anticipation how our own analysis of Marx will be able to overcome these, in fact, quite severe limitations. Firstly, then, it really needs to be said – as opposed to Lukács, for instance, who, as we have seen, attempts to posit a simple theoretical identity between these two periods – that there is an indisputable element of truth in Althusser’s unremitting emphasis on the incommensurability between the early Marx and the late or later Marx. It would have been better, however  – we would like to suggest  – if Althusser had not couched this incommensurability in the terms of a fundamental opposition between the imaginary or »ideological« and the real or »scientific«. In the first place, because he would not

9 For a useful overview of the Freudian concept of »over-determination«, a concept that informs virtually the whole of his work, see the relevant entry in Laplanche and Pontalis (1973). 10 Althusser is referring, of course, to the famous letters that Engels wrote to Joseph Bloch, Conrad Schmidt and Borgius, on, respectively, the 21st September 1890, the 27th October 1890 and the 25th January 1894. All of them can be found at www.marxists.org.

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then have been compelled to engage in the eminently futile and fruitless task of defining Marxism as a »science« (a task that, as we will later see, it is simply impossible to fulfill). And, in the second place, because he would not then have been compelled to ignore the way in which Marx actually uses the concepts of the imaginary and the real. For rather than defining two entirely different problematics that can be said to impose an essential rupture upon the evolution of Marx’s thinking, these concepts are in fact internal to a problematic that traverses this thinking as a whole, but which it resolves in different – and differently compelling – ways. Both the early Marx and the late Marx – and also, as we will see, the middle period Marx, the originator of distinct theoretical developments that Althusser quite simply subsumes into the undifferentiated mass of his second, »scientific« paradigm – are concerned with the problematic of a subject divided between the two registers of the imaginary and the real. (The late Marx essentially resolves this problematic, by effectively introducing the third register of the social or symbolic; and the early or middle period Marx’, precisely as a consequence of the effective absence of this register, essentially fail to resolve it.) Marx’s development is even more nuanced, then, than Althusser is capable of giving him credit for. For what disappears from the late Marx are not only the problematics of Feuerbachian humanism and Hegelian dialectic (as Althusser himself so clearly recognizes), but also that whole host of problematics that are associated with his middle period, problematics that can fundamentally be defined in terms of the opposition between the economic base and the ideological superstructure and the forces and relations of production (and which Althusser mistakenly conceives as being integral to the insights of the later Marx himself). Secondly, it also needs to be stated that Althusser’s conception of an »overdetermined« totality – in spite of its quite illustrious terminological descent  – is little more than a pseudo-sophisticated form of theoretical or, more precisely (as many people have recognized, Althusser himself included11), theoreticist rhetoric. This rhetoric is designed, whether consciously or not, as nothing other than a 11 In his later works, especially »Marx in his Limits«, Althusser subjects to substantial criticism his own earlier »theoreticist« tendencies. See Althusser (2006), 7–162.

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compromise formation. For if, on the one hand, Althusser wants to acknowledge the tendency that Marx’s metaphor of base and superstructure has towards simplicity, reductiveness and downright vulgarity, then, on the other hand, he also wants to escape from these restrictions by perpetually pointing out that this metaphor in fact operates according to a logic of irreducible complexity. The pure postulation of complexity can prove, however, to be rather tiring; because, when all is said and done, it serves to elucidate and explain exactly nothing. And a lot of Althusser’s most famous conceptual innovations seem to function as nothing more than catchwords for this fundamental deficit of explanation (an explanation that, as we will now start to see, cannot be provided in any case). »Relative autonomy« and »specific effectivity«: what do these two terms mean if not that there is a relationship between the base and the superstructure, the real and the imaginary, that it is in no way possible to concretely determine; hence the inescapably abstract appeal to »relativity« and »specificity« (an abstraction that is only compounded when we recognize that both of these qualities are still somehow to be linked to the »last instance« of the economy)? In admitting that this »›last instance‹ never comes« (FM: 113), Althusser undoubtedly does acknowledge – even if only unwillingly – the real stakes of the difficulties that he is faced with. Unfortunately for him, however, this admittance will fatefully direct both the internal and the external evolution of his own theoretical elaborations. For if the real »last instance« of the economy simply cannot be structurally defined, then why not give up on this definition completely and embrace instead the celebration of an absolute randomness (as Althusser himself will do in his later formulation of an »aleatory materialism«12)? And if the »relative autonomy« or »specific effectivity« of the imaginary or »ideological« instances of society simply cannot be precisely delineated, then why not do away with the very characteristics that are supposed to define this »autonomy« and »effectivity«, and allow it to acquire instead an absolutely unrestricted scope that has nothing at all to do with the economy itself, which can effectively be seen to vanish from the theoretical picture (this, of course, is the path that 12 On this conception of »aleatory materialism«, see Althusser (1996). And, for a fuller critique of this conception that is in accordance with the arguments advanced here, see Rouse (2010).

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will be followed by a lot of the post-Althusserians13)? Althusser’s constructions would have benefited considerably then, we can conclude – and emphasizing this point once again – not from a further »complexification« of the base-superstructure metaphor, but from its rejection and repudiation tout court. If Althusser had carried out this rejection, he would perhaps have been able to see – as we ourselves will later be arguing – that the real and the imaginary do not necessarily span out in the later Marx across the axes that he assumes; but that instead they are categories that are immanent to the sphere of the economic per se (which is never merely »economic«, as Althusser himself seems to assume, and which can never be coherently conceived, in fundamental consistency with this assumption, as an everreceding and ever-retreating »last instance«). Thirdly and finally, it has to be pointed out that the basic problem with Althusser’s theory of »interpellation« is that it reduces the subject to a purely imaginary or »ideological« status; »the category of the subject«, Althusser says, »is the constitutive category of all ideology« (LAP: 115–6).14 Coterminously, the history that is supposed to envelop this subject is reduced to the status of an undiluted real; »history«, Althusser rather implausibly informs us, »is a process without a subject« (LAP: 61, 81; OI: 83).15 A fundamental breach is established, in other words, between the real processes of historical development and the imaginary or »ideological« subjective representation of them. Althusser might be thought to substantially step across this breach in the properly Marxian recourse that he takes to the conceptualization of class struggle (class struggle, 13 We are thinking most pointedly here of the work of Poulantzas, Laclau and Mouffe and Hirst and Hindess; although an effective exclusion of the economic from the sphere of political discussion – and especially from the discussion of the sphere of political subjectivity – is also at work in the œuvres of Badiou, Balibar and Rancière. For a sample of the work of all these thinkers see Poulantzas (2008), Laclau and Mouffe (1985), Hirst and Hindess (2009), Badiou (2006), Balibar (1994) and Rancière (1999). For a devastating critique of the former set see Meiksins Wood (1986). 14 Althusser, of course, can only understand the subject as the supposedly free, supposedly autonomous and supposedly self-identical individual of bourgeois ideology. In Lacanian terms, he can only succeed in conflating the concepts of the subject and the ego. 15 On Althusser’s definition of the subject this is naturally not an implausible claim. But the problem, of course, is this definition itself.

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he contends, is the real motor force of history, as opposed to those imaginary or »ideological« representations that construe this force in the form of »man« (OI: 79)). But this appeal to the primacy of class struggle  – at least in the way in which Althusser articulates it – only succeeds in displacing the problem to a different level. For the question that Althusser has to address is the following: if class struggle is the motor of history, then what kind of subject is doing the struggling? His answer can only reinforce his original series of oppositions. For the subject of class struggle can only be divided, on Althusser’s own account, between the real economic conditions of its existence and its imaginary or »ideological« representation of its relationship to them. The division of the subject is absolute; which calls into question – as we have already seen in the case of Lukács – the very idea that it is divided at all.16 Althusser would have done better, we would like to claim, if he had comprehended this division in a very different manner; that is, if he had comprehended it, once again, not as a division between the base and the superstructure, but instead as a division that is at work in the very core of the economy itself. In order to do this, however, Althusser would have to have expanded the significance of what lives on as perhaps his most important analysis, the analysis of Marx’s procedure of »symptomatic reading« (RC: 13–34). For, as Althusser himself acknowledges, this procedure revolves around the distinction between labor and the commodity of labor-power. The symptom that Marx discerns in the classical political economists (Smith, Ricardo, etc.) is that when they should be talking about the commodity of labor-power – a concept that is beyond them, and that Marx himself will have to invent, by filling in their absences – they are in fact talking about nothing more than labor per se. Althusser’s extrapolations here are elegant and indisputable; but they are extrapolations that are confined to an investigation of the real »economy«, in contradistinction, that is, to the imaginary or »ideological« subjective representations of it. And the whole significance of Marx’s account – as we will see in what follows – is that it overturns these very easy oppositions. The divi16 That is, although Althusser might be thought to make an advance upon Lukács in claiming that the subject of ideology is irredeemably unconscious (FM: 232–3), he can in no way coherently theorize that division of the subject that itself gives rise to an experience of the unconscious.

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sion between labor and the commodity of labor-power, an eminently »economic« division (which can also be couched in the terms of the real and the imaginary), is at the same time nothing more than a division of the subject. Althusser’s insights, in this sphere at least, should have exploded the whole basis of those theoretical elucubrations that otherwise so sadly dominate his work. We have seen, then, that both Lukács’ attempt to construct a single Marx and Althusser’s attempt, as against Lukács, to construct a double Marx must be considered to run into a whole series of more or less insurmountable obstacles. And it is against this background that we can now begin to reconstruct our own critical conception of an essentially threefold Marx.

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1. The Imaginary and the Real (Part One): the »Early Writings« Any serious reader of Marx’s early writings must surely recognize today that – even if their popularity was perhaps once understandable as an exaggerated reaction to the innumerable ossifications of a putatively »Marxist« theory – they nevertheless constitute a headily irreconcilable mix of nascent, if radically incomplete, originality and flatly incoherent derivativeness. The originality concerns the decisive critical turn towards »material interests« and »economic questions« (CCPE: 424), with the concomitant emergence of an embryonic critique of political economy and the infamous, if – as we will see – still hugely problematical, discovery of the proletariat. These are wellworn themes, and they will not concern us here directly, or at least not yet. For the moment, we will be taking a much greater interest in the derivativeness, because it is precisely through this that Marx first comes to grapple with the problematic of a subject divided between the spheres of the real and the imaginary. This derivativeness stems, of course, from two major sources: Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right, the central terminological and conceptual oppositions of which Marx preserves throughout his early work even after having subjected this text to a sustained critical commentary;17 and Feuerbach’s humanist critique of religion and philosophy, the perspectives of which Marx adopts both negatively in criticizing Hegel and later positively in articulating his own new economic conception of the supposed alienation of the human essence.18 Although it is clearly impossible, then, to strictly divide the early writings between these two sets of inherited motifs, each one being present to some degree in almost every text, it is nonetheless fair to say that the Hegelian influence is predominant in the »Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State« and the »Critical Notes on the Article ›the King of Prussia and Social Reforms«. For Marx’s central concern here is to correct the inverted logic of the Hegelian couple of state

17 See Hegel (1991). 18 See Feuerbach (1989).

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(the political) and civil society (the economic). Rather than the former being the truth of the latter, as it is in Hegel’s work, Marx will show – or at least attempt to show (for one of the central arguments of this section is that he fails) – the exact reverse. Feuerbach only plays a role in this critique of Hegel as a lender of strategic devices: Marx draws a number of parallels between the logics of religious and political alienation, and constantly uncovers and objects to Hegel’s idealistic twisting of the proper relationship between subject and predicate. In other texts, however, Feuerbach clearly acquires for himself the predominant influence. These are the »Letters from the Franco-German Yearbooks«, the »Introduction« to »A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right«, the »Excerpts from James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy« and the »Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts«. For here Marx is mainly preoccupied with the idea of the economic – rather than religious or philosophical, as in Feuerbach – alienation of a supposed human essence, its nature, species-being or intrinsic sociality. »On the Jewish Question« is the one early writing that fairly evenly combines both the Hegelian and the Feuerbachian influences. It therefore provides the most immediately compelling evidence of a transition between the two moments. Now, it is the nature of this transition, its implicit and unconscious motive forces, that this section seeks to analyze. When Marx, in the first moment, inverts the logic of Hegel’s split between the state (the political) and civil society (the economic), but still follows Hegel in comprehending the subject as essentially divided across these two domains, he encounters, we will argue, a for the moment insurmountable problem. If, as he claims, the state is the mere imaginary or formal (political) alienation of the real and material (economic) content of civil society then how, as he also contends, can the very fact of this alienation be explained as a consequence of the specifically modern character of civil society itself? An explanatory gap opens up here between the spheres of the real (economic civil society) and the imaginary (the political state). And it is precisely because Marx cannot fill this gap – something that only the further development of his work will allow him to do, by coming to compre-

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hend the subject as divided within the very sphere of the »social« or »economic« itself – that he chooses instead either to simply ignore the difficulty, by continuing to treat the state as the simple alienation of a potentially transparent civil society or, more importantly, through the positive recourse to Feuerbach’s humanism, to actively displace its central terms. In the early Marx’s second, positively Feuerbachian incarnation, that which was previously real (civil society, now understood according to the not yet properly articulated concepts of wage-labor and money) comes instead to be comprehended as the source of imaginary alienation. The real that it is supposed to alienate is now conceived as the human essence, true, human sociality or species-being, which communism will free from its imaginary fetters. The subject is split between its false social form and its true social content; sociality will save society from itself. The inadequacy of this conception should already be quite apparent. But before we condemn it let us turn to the details.

Marx’s Critique of Hegel: the (Real) Inversion of the Imaginary and the Real The general tenor of Marx’s critique of Hegel, if little adhered to in practice, is fairly well known in theory, and does not need to be dwelt on here to any great extent. It perhaps suffices to say that, rather than simply inveighing against the undoubted political conservatism of Hegel’s text, as did the so-called Left-Hegelians and the vast majority of its original reviewers,19 Marx goes deeper by looking to comprehend the ineluctable causes of this conservatism in the distinctive method of Hegel’s approach to his object. The chief characteristic of this method, Marx famously claims  – already opening up with this that problematic of the real and the imaginary that will concern us here – is its idealism. But what does it mean to define Hegel’s method as idealistic? It means that when Hegel attempts to describe the modern political state, he does not 19 For the views of the Left-Hegelians see Lawrence S. Stepelevich ed. (1999). For a summary of the first reviews of Hegel’s text see Allen W. Wood’s introduction to Hegel (1991), viii-ix.

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begin with the real relationship of differences inherent in it as a social object, but instead with a certain imaginary conception of the nature of this relationship, and thus of the differences that it is seen to determine. Whereas in reality, Marx claims, the relationship between these social differences is irreconcilably conflictual, in Hegel’s imaginary conception, such differences only exist in the first place in such a way that they can come to be harmonized by the abstract principle of the political state. Hegel’s idealism, then, is not merely false. Instead, Marx argues, its falsity is ultimately the product of a (conscious or unconscious?) harmonizing intention (which Marx, in a striking anticipation of psychoanalytic vocabulary, sometimes even designates as »fantasy« (CHDS: 142; CHPR: 244)). As Marx himself says, referring to the real differences inherent in the political state, »[t]he different powers each have a different principle. Each moreover is a definite reality. To flee from the genuine conflict between them by taking refuge in an imaginary ›organic unity‹, instead of proving them to be the various moments of an organic unity, is therefore an empty, mystical evasion« (CHDS: 121). This is why the putatively »radical« critique of Hegel is inadequate. For in too quickly drawing attention to the conservatism of Hegel’s constructions, it fails to recognize that at their very motivational heart there lies a profound (unconscious?) awareness of the real social antagonisms and contradictions that they are (consciously?) supposed to overcome. It is this genetic critique of idealism that explains the two more concrete arguments that Marx repeats, in his long essay on Hegel, again and again. Firstly, he contends, Hegel’s doctrine of the state cannot be viewed as an independent work, because the method by which its conception of the state dissolves and falsely reconciles the real, antagonistic differences of civil society is nothing other than a faithful reproduction of the movement of his Science of Logic.20 Just as the absolute idea must sunder itself into its distinct moments in order to ultimately recoup them under its wing, so must the state develop its own differences in the concept of civil society in order then to subject them to its finally pacificatory influence.

20 See Hegel (1969).

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Secondly, Marx claims, Hegel consistently enacts an imaginary inversion of the real and proper relationship between subject and predicate. Whereas any adequate concept of the state should be the product of the real subject of the differences of civil society that it contains, Hegel imaginarily turns these differences into the mere appendages of a reconciliatory state-subject: »the Idea is made into the subject, the distinct members and their reality are understood as its development, its result, whereas the reverse holds good, viz. that the Idea must be developed from the real differences. The organic is precisely the Idea of the differences, their ideal determination« (CHDS: 66). In Hegel’s work, then, the state is not the real state of civil society; instead, and conversely, civil society is transmogrified into the imaginary society of an imaginary state. Marx’s detailed analyses of Hegel’s argument are typically no more than mere elaborations of these two fundamental claims. And we only need to take a single example here in order to make it even more clear that what is at stake here – in any number of different senses – is the thematization of the relationship between the imaginary and the real. Discussing Hegel’s infamous justification of monarchical sovereignty, Marx tells us that: »Hegel regards the family, society etc. and the ›artificial person‹ in general not as the realization of the real, empirical person but as the real person in whom, however, the moment of personality figures only abstractly. His account, therefore, does not proceed from the real person to the state, but from the state to the real person. Hence, instead of representing the state as the highest reality of the person, as the highest social reality of man, the highest reality of the state is said to be found in the empirical person, and a single empirical man at that. Hegel’s purpose is to narrate the life-history of abstract substance, of the Idea, and in such a history human activity etc. necessarily appears as the activity and product of something other than itself; he therefore represents the essence of man as an imaginary detail instead of allowing it to function in terms of its real human existence.« (CHDS: 98)

The delegation of the ultimate sovereignty of the state to a single individual (albeit one who does nothing more, in Hegel’s description, than dot the i’s and cross the t’s) is to tendentiously direct the real, conflictual complexity of civil society towards the imaginary apex

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of an arbitrary detail. The problem, however – and here Marx’s critique takes a crucial turn – is that this imaginary and arbitrary detail really and actually exists, as does that whole abstract mechanism of the state that Hegel’s normativizing descriptions more or less slavishly repeat and reproduce. Hegel’s doctrine of the state is not just an imaginarization of a real state of affairs because this real state of affairs  – in its erection of a separation between the state and civil society – is in fact guilty of imaginarizing itself: »the German conception of the modern state, which abstracts from real man, was only possible because and in so far as the modern state itself abstracts from real man or satisfies the whole man in a purely imaginary way« (CHPR: 250).

Marx’s Discovery of the Division of the Subject; and the Difficulties of its Discernment Now, it is precisely here, in the supposed separation between an imaginary state and a real civil society, that Marx for the first time – and in quite explicit terms  – locates the problematic of a split, divided or doubled subject. His words, at a number of points in the early writings, could not be any clearer. It is perhaps best, then, to let them speak fully for themselves: »[t]he bureaucracy«, Marx informs us, »is the imaginary state alongside the real state; it is the spiritualism of the state. Hence everything acquires a double meaning [eine doppelte Bedeutung]: a real meaning and a bureaucratic one; in like fashion, there is both real knowledge and bureaucratic knowledge […] Real knowledge appears lacking in content, just as real life appears dead, for this imaginary knowledge and imaginary life pass for the substance« (CHDS: 108); the »opportunity to join the class of civil servants, available to every citizen, is the second bond established between civil society and the state; it is the second identity. It is highly superficial and dualistic in nature. Every Catholic has the opportunity of becoming a priest (i.e. of turning his back on the laity and the world). Does this mean that the priesthood ceases to be a power remote from Catholics? The fact that everyone has the opportunity of acquiring the right to another sphere merely proves that his own sphere does not embody that right in reality […] The identity […] established between civil society and the state

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is the identity of two hostile armies in which every soldier has the ›opportunity‹ to ›desert‹ and join the ›hostile‹ army« (CHDS: 112); even more explicitly, »[c]ivil society is separated from the state. It follows, therefore, that the citizen of the state is separated from the citizen as a member of civil society. He must therefore divide up his own essence. As a real citizen he finds himself in a double organization [einer doppelten Organisation] […] The separation of civil and political society appears necessarily as the separation of the political citizen, the citizen of the state, from civil society and from his own real empirical reality; for as an ideal political entity [Staatsidealist] he is a quite different being, wholly distinct from and opposed to his actual reality« (CHDS: 143–4); »[t]here is here an apparent identity, the same subject, but it has essentially different determinations, i.e. in reality there is a double subject [ein doppeltes Subjekt]« (CHDS: 149); »[h]ere the separation of the political person from the real one, the formal from the material, the universal from the particular, of man from social man, is expressed in its most contradictory form« (CHDS: 178); and finally, regarding the »splitting of man into his public and his private self« (JQ: 222), Marx claims that »[w]here the political state has attained its full degree of development man leads a double life [ein doppeltes Leben], a life in heaven and a life on earth, not only in his mind, in his consciousness, but in reality […] Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real individual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary member of a fictitious sovereignty, he is divested of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality« (JQ: 220). Everything, then, appears to be simple. The subject is split, divided or doubled between the spheres of its real (economic) existence in civil society and the abstraction and alienation of this existence in its imaginary inhabitation of the (political) state. As even this brief formulation suggests, however, it is the very simplicity of this division that gives rise to a problem, one that resonates throughout Marx’s early writings. For in attempting to define the nature of the relationship between the two spheres – the real and the imaginary; civil society and the state; the economic and the political – Marx is compelled to make two absolutely contradictory claims.

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On the one hand, as we have already seen, he conceives the state as the merely imaginary or illusory abstraction and alienation of the deeper, more authentic reality of civil society. On the other hand – and this is where the problems really begin – he construes the alienation and abstraction carried out by the modern, political state to be itself a product of the existence of modern, economic civil society. According to the first claim, the imaginary is the simple alienation of the real; according to the second, it is the very product of it, or as Marx himself puts it: »It is self-evident that the political constitution as such is only developed when the private spheres have achieved an independent existence. Where commerce and landed property are unfree, where they have not yet asserted their independence, there can be no political constitution […] The abstraction of the state as such was not born until the modern world because the abstraction of private life was not created until modern times. The abstraction of the political state is a modern product.« (CHDS: 90)

Marx poses here a problem that, for the moment, he does not possess the conceptual resources to resolve. If the imaginary abstraction of the modern state is the product of the real abstraction of modern civil society, then how precisely does this production of abstraction occur (what, we might ask, slightly modifying the meaning of one of Marx’s own later terms, is its »mode of production«)? How exactly does the real give rise to its own imaginarization? Or, in Marx’s own understated words, if »the relationship of industry and the world of wealth in general to the political world is one of the main problems of the modern age« (CHPR: 248), what are the analytical terms of this relationship? Because Marx temporarily lacks the resources to answer these questions, he oscillates in the early writings between the provision of false solutions and the skeletally proleptic outlining of true ones. The false solutions, for those with even a slight awareness of Marx’s later development, are truly bizarre. On several occasions, as we will see in more detail a little further on, Marx completely inverts the terms of any possible explanation by describing the emergence of modern civil society as the consequence of the modern political

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revolution (CHDS: 146; JQ: 232).21 On this view, the economic real would be the product of the political imaginary. On other occasions, Marx identifies an abstract and ethereal Christianity as the cause of the completion of modern civil society, which is then supposed to revert, in its need for a more practical instantiation, to Judaism (JQ: 240). Again, the real here just obediently follows the, this time religious, imaginary, when in other places Marx had set himself the much more reasonable task of using the former to explain the emergence of the latter. Marx only comes close to suggesting such an explanation when he twice intuits that the real problem confronting him is not ultimately the split between the state and civil society, but the split within civil society itself, and hence, of course within the subject of this society (CHDS: 183; CHPR: 252). Why, however, does this suggestion of a split within the very subject of civil society open up the possibility of a solution to the problem that Marx is confronting here  – even if he remains incapable, for the moment, of properly articulating its terms? What we want to argue here – in anticipation of our reconstruction of the first parts of Marx’s Capital in section 3 of this chapter – is that it is only by means of the postulation of such a split that it is possible to account for the modern (capitalist) separation and interaction between the spheres of the economic (in Marx’s Hegelian terms, civil society) and the political (the state). The capitalist split between the economic and the political has to be understood, that is, as the simultaneous supplement and reinforcement of a more fundamental split at the level of the »social« or »economic« itself. The tortured development of Marx’s thought  – which, to repeat, it is the aim of this chapter to give an awareness of – illustrates by itself the difficulty of arriving at such a conception. In order that we can begin to suggest an outline of its terms here, we want to do three things. Firstly, look a little more closely at Marx’s still inadequate 21 This modern political revolution is, of course, the French Revolution, and the inversion that we are ascribing to Marx here is closely related to the centrality that this revolution assumes in all of his early thinking. It is an inversion that is gradually overcome, that is, as Marx increasingly, in his later works, starts to shift his attention to the distinctively and specifically English origins of capitalism. For a brilliant discussion of this whole question, in both Marx and Engel’s own work and a broad series of more contemporary accounts of capitalist development, see Meiksins Wood (1991).

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account of the modern separation of the economic and the political in the early writings. Secondly, cast a glance at a more coherent account of this separation – one itself derived from Marx’s own later writings – in the work of Ellen Meiksins Wood. And thirdly, suggest that even this more adequate account runs into problems by failing to explicitly comprehend this separation as both the supplement and reinforcement of a separation already existing in the »social« or »economic« sphere itself.

The Failed Articulation of the Separation between the Economic and the Political Marx’s early account of the modern split between the economic and the political, between civil society and the state, crucially depends upon an analysis of the historical transition from feudalism to modernity (as we will see, all of the weaknesses of this account stem from the fact that it is not yet an analysis of the transition from feudalism to capitalism). Under feudalism Marx claims, there simply was no separation between the economic and the political. Every aspect of the feudal economy was bathed in a political light or, as he himself says: »[w]hat was the character of the old society? It can be characterized in one word: feudalism. The old civil society had a directly political character, i.e. the elements of civil life such as property, family, and the mode and manner of work were elevated in the form of seignory, estate and guild to the level of elements of political life« (JQ: 232). Modernity, by contrast, is defined by the existence of this separation: »this separation really does exist in the modern state. The identity of the civil and political classes in the Middle Ages was the expression of the identity of civil and political society. This identity has disappeared« (CHDS: 137). Or again, in the terms that most interest us here, the problematic of a divided class subject is one that is specific to modernity: »At a time when the structure of civil society was political and when the political state was civil society, this separation and duplication [Verdopplung] of the significance of the classes did not exist. They did not mean one thing in civil society and another in the world of politics. They did not take on new mean-

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ing in the world of politics, they retained what meaning they had« (CHDS: 148). So far, then, so good. In feudalism there was no separation between the economic and the political; in modernity this separation comes to the fore. The problem is that when Marx tries to explain the transition from one period to the other, he gets caught up in precisely those difficulties that we have here been analyzing. For in the absence of a »social« or »economic« explanation of this transition  – which is what Marx demands of himself when he claims that the imaginary abstraction of the modern state is the product of the real abstraction of modern civil society – he can only oscillate, once again, between two contradictory positions. On the one hand, he understands the modern separation of the economic and the political to be the consequence of political (or, more precisely, French) revolution: »[n]ot until the French Revolution was the process completed in which the Estates were transformed into social classes, i.e. the class distinctions in civil society became merely social differences in private life of no significance in political life. This accomplished the separation of political life and civil society« (CHDS: 146); »[t]he political revolution thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It shattered civil society into its simple components« (JQ: 232). On the other hand, Marx conceives the political as an abstract alienation of precisely that civil society that the political revolution is supposed to have produced: »the individual members of the people became equal in the heaven of their political world, though unequal in their earthly existence in society« (CHDS: 147). It is perhaps because Marx cannot comprehend civil society in its own terms, but only as either the product of the political or as that which it alienates, that, in first attempting to articulate its class-based characteristics, he is forced to resort to an obviously unsatisfactory language of undivided immediacy: »[t]he principle underlying civil society […] is a fluid division of masses whose various formations are arbitrary and without organization […] The only noteworthy feature is that the absence of property and the class of immediate labour, of concrete labour, do not so much constitute a class of civil society as provide the ground on which the circles of civil society move and have their being« (CHDS: 146–7). In Marx’s early writings, then, the modern separation between the spheres of the economic and the political is contradictorily viewed

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either as the immediate result of the political (in the form of revolution) or in the terms of the political alienation of an immediate and undivided economic reality. Marx could only have avoided this contradiction, we want to suggest  – as he later does  – by calling into question precisely this immediacy of the economic, that is; by comprehending the modern (or, more specifically, capitalist) separation of the economic and the political as the product of a modern (capitalist) separation or split within the »social« or »economic« sphere itself.

A Better Account of this Separation… It is here that the work of Meiksins Wood can be of some assistance to us, because one of its overriding aims – following the later Marx of the Grundrisse and Das Kapital – has been to emphasize the specifically or, indeed, uniquely capitalist character of this first separation.22 Every pre-capitalist social formation, Meiksins Wood contends, essentially relied upon extra-economic processes of surplus extraction. Under such formations, surplus labor was forced out of the direct producers by means of political, legal or military coercion, traditionally reinforced by the traditional bonds or duties between masters and servants. In nuce, it is impossible to meaningfully speak here of a separation between the economic and political spheres. »Economic« functions can only be carried out by directly »political« means. In capitalism, by contrast, a gap does open up between these two domains. On the one hand, surplus extraction substantially divests itself of its former, extra-economic appendages, and is instead enforced according to a purely economic logic (although Marx’s ultimate point, of course, which Meiksins Wood reiterates, is that this »economy« is thoroughly saturated by the »political« logic of class struggle). Because the workers in capitalism are shorn of their ownership of the means of production, their labor can be extorted by the compulsions of economic necessity alone. Forms of direct coer-

22 We refer especially here to »The Separation of the ›Economic‹ and the ›Political‹ in Capitalism«, the first chapter of Meiksins Wood (1995), 19–48.

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cion, political, legal and military etc., are no longer required. Surplus labor and surplus value are compelled and created by the politically unadorned logic of commodity exchange. On the other hand, however, this does not mean that the political simply disappears from the capitalist mode of production, for, as Meiksins Wood continues, »a coercive power and a structure of domination remain essential« (DAC: 29–30). This is the role that is allocated to the »autonomous« capitalist state: the economic logic of commodity exchange cannot continue to reproduce itself in the absence of legal forms, a coercive apparatus and police controls and interventions. The capitalist state serves as the guarantor of the order and stability that is so much required by the capitalist economy. The economic and the political ultimately function in capitalism according to a neat division of labor between private capitalist appropriation and public state coercion. Now, this account of the specifically capitalist separation between the economic and the political, no doubt because it is itself derived from the work of the later Marx, clearly makes an advance upon the contradictory claims of the early writings. The separation between the two spheres is no longer explained here as the simple consequence of political revolution, nor is the political conceived as the mere abstract alienation of an immediate economic reality. Instead, this economic reality is understood in its specificity, that is, according to the indivisible logics of commodity exchange and class struggle, and the role of the political located in relation to it.

…and the Difficulties it Encounters The problem is that, in conceiving this role as essentially and exclusively coercive, Meiksins Wood once again – like the early Marx – seems to drive an explanatory wedge between the two spheres whose simultaneous separation and interconnection she is seeking to understand. For a crucial question immediately arises here: if the functions of the capitalist state are purely coercive, why is this not spontaneously perceived to be the case, that is, if this state constitutes nothing more than the coercive arm of capitalist appropriation, where does it derive its »legitimacy« from (for surely no one can deny that this »legitimacy« poses a very severe problem for any putatively Marxist analysis)? Meiksins Wood’s account seems to come danger-

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ously close to ignoring this question by implying that the political state serves as the merely coercive supplement to an economic logic of commodity exchange which functions, more or less happily, on its own terms. This account, we want to suggest, is much too simple. Not because the state does not ultimately fulfill a series of coercive functions, for it certainly does this, but instead because  – in order for this coercion, and the purely economic coercion that it supplements, even to be accepted by those it coerces  – it must also serve a series of legitimating or hegemonic functions. These functions can only be properly comprehended, we would claim, when the political state is conceived not only as the coercive supplement of the economy, but also as the doubled political reinforcement of an economic logic, and as an economic subject, that is doubled or divided within itself. What does this mean? Once again, this is not an easy question to answer. For a full and precise response we will have to wait until section 3 below. For the moment, it suffices to say that the economic logic of capitalism is doubled or divided because the principal subject of this economy, the proletarian worker, is split between the commodity of his labor-power, which he »freely« and »equally« sells to the capitalist for a wage, and the real or actual labor which he performs, and which produces surplus-value for the capitalist by creating more value than was paid for it in its form as a commodity. It is precisely this division of the economic subject, of the proletarian laborer, that the political state reinforces, in two main ways. Firstly, this state derives a great deal of its hegemony and legitimacy from those »ideas« of »Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham« (C1: 280) that are inherent in the economic reality of commodity exchange itself, and that inescapably determine the activity of the subjects of this reality. Secondly, it reinforces the »formal« or »abstract« legitimacy of these conceptions by framing its own activities within the »pseudo-concrete« context of nationality and its various appurtenances (we use inverted commas here because it should be obvious that formal legitimacy is the product of very real processes of economic abstraction, and pseudo-concreteness of very real, historical processes of identity formation; if this were not the case, the capitalist division of the subject, the major theme of this book, could not even be said to pose a real problem).

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What we have here, then, are the beginnings of the outlines of an adequate account of the capitalist separation between the political and the economic, between the two spheres that we have seen Marx define in his early writings as the imaginary state and real civil society. This separation can only be properly understood, we have claimed – in anticipation of one of the central arguments of section 3 of this chapter  – as the supplement and, more importantly, the reinforcement of a separation, split or division already existing in the subject of economic reality itself. In other words, it is only possible to coherently comprehend the interrelationship between the »spheres« of the imaginary and the real  – at least in its modern, post-feudal form, which is exactly what Marx is concerned with  – when both are located within the functioning of the capitalist »economy« itself, as the respective concepts of labor-power (the imaginary) and labor (the real). One of the fundamental consequences of this, moreover, as we will see in section 3, is that it becomes impossible to think of the imaginary and the real as two separate spheres  – with the former being construed as the simple alienation (as in this section) or ideological misrepresentation (as in section 2 below) of the latter – or of the economy as a simple economy. Capitalism cannot be defined in purely economic terms  – and this is the whole point of Marx’s critique of political economy – because it is a social or symbolic order, or mode of production, that produces and reproduces itself by combining and recombining, knotting and re-knotting, the imaginary commodity of labor-power with the real labor of the proletarian subject, and hence by perpetually dividing and doubling this subject along these very lines.

A Series of Evasions We will be hearing much more of all this a little later on. All that we need to do now, however, is return to our reconstruction of the early Marx in order to see that, in the absence of such an account of the social or symbolic combination and knotting of the imaginary and the real, his attempt at an articulation of the relationship between these last two concepts continues to falter. We have already seen how, having recognized the necessity of an explanatory link between the real of modern civil society and the imaginary of the modern

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political state, Marx consistently fails to establish its terms. We can conclude this section by quickly showing the two ways  – more or less chronologically successive in the early writings – in which Marx symptomatically responds to this failure. In the »Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State«, Marx retains Hegel’s central distinction between the state and civil society, conceives the former as imaginary and the latter as real, as we have been emphasizing throughout, and somehow seems to think the real is capable of liberating itself from its imaginary alienation in order to simply emerge in an entirely lucid and self-transparent form. This is the way in which the very early Marx conceives of both democracy and a new conception of representation that he believes will be brought to fruition by universal suffrage. Democracy, we learn, »is the solution to the riddle of every constitution. In it we find the constitution founded on its true ground: real human beings and the real people; not merely implicitly and in essence, but in existence and in reality. The constitution is thus posited as the people’s own creation. The constitution is in appearance what it is in reality: the free creation of man« (CHDS: 87). Under a universal suffrage that Marx still eagerly awaits »civil society is the real political society« and »the legislature entirely ceases to be important as a representative body. The legislature is representative only as in the sense that every function is representative. For example, a cobbler is my representative in so far as he satisfies a social need, just as every definite form of social activity, because it is a species activity, represents only the species. That is to say, it represents a determination of my own being just as every man is representative of other men. In this sense he is a representative not by virtue of another thing which he represents but by virtue of what he is and does« (CHDS: 189–90). It only needs to be said here that the passage of history has not been too kind on either of these quotations. In the rest of the early writings, there occurs a progressive Feuerbachian displacement of the location of the terms of the imaginary and the real. Rather than these terms continuing to designate the Hegelian couple of state and civil society, civil society itself increasingly comes to be comprehended as imaginary, and the real is increasingly posited as a putative human essence or species-being that this imaginary society is somehow supposed to have alienated. We can only mark here a few of the many signposts along this way.

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In the »Letters from the Franco-German Yearbooks« and, even more clearly, »On the Jewish Question«, the idea that the state imaginarily alienates the real of civil society is still present, but this is now conceived as the higher-level expression or complication of civil society’s more fundamental alienation of true humanity. In the first texts, where Marx first really begins to use a language of humanism, we are told that the distinction between a system of Estates and a system of universal representation »only expresses at the political level the distinction between the rule of man and the rule of private property« (LFGY: 208). In the second, Marx claims simultaneously that »human emancipation [will] be completed« only »when real, individual man resumes the abstract citizen into himself,« when »social force is no longer separated from him in the form of political force« (JQ: 234), and that »[a]s soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – the market and the conditions which give rise to it – the Jew […] will have become humanized and the conflict between man’s individual sensuous existence and his species-existence will have been superseded« (JQ: 241). In the »Introduction« to »A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right«, the conflict between state and society gradually exits the picture, in order that battle can be joined instead between man and human society (and what, we might ask, is the essential difference between them?): »[t]he role of emancipator therefore passes in a dramatic movement from one class of the French people to the next, until it finally reaches that class which no longer realizes social freedom by assuming certain conditions external to man and yet created by human society, but rather by organizing all the conditions of human existence on the basis of social freedom« (CHPR: 255–6). In Germany, things are even clearer, or so Marx thinks when he famously discovers the proletariat there as that »sphere of society which can no longer lay claim to a historical title, but merely to a human one«, »which is, in a word, the total loss of humanity and which can therefore redeem itself only through the total redemption of humanity« (CHPR: 256). Finally, in the »Excerpts from James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy« and the »Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts«, it becomes absolutely apparent that this real proletarian man (and we can only wonder at the supposed compatibility of these last two terms!) is being imaginarily alienated by an inhuman society of

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wage-labor, money, credit and exchange. Marx’s descriptions and diagnoses of this alienation, and his poetic tirades against its dehumanizing effects, are so well known that they do not need to be quoted here again. In their place, we can just cite a couple of examples of the contradictory formulations that Marx’s construction compels him to engage in. »[J]ust as society itself produces man as man«, he claims, »so it is produced by him« (EPM: 349); or, a little later, »[m]y universal consciousness is only the theoretical form of that whose living form is the real community, society, whereas at present universal consciousness is an abstraction from real life and as such in hostile opposition to it« (EPM: 350). But how can society both produce »man« and, at the same time, be preceded and determined in its productions by nothing other than »man« himself? And, similarly, how can »universal consciousness« simply express »real community and society« if, at the same time, it serves to function, at least for the moment, as nothing more than the »abstraction from« and »hostile opposition to« this »real life«? Marx’s formulations seem to presuppose the abstract opposition between two forms of society: an imaginary or inessential form, which determines »man« accidentally and inauthentically (this form corresponds, of course, to the society of wage-labor, money, credit and exchange), and a real or essential form which, paradoxically, both underlies these determinations and always escapes from them in its indefatigable readiness to emerge as an unadulterated sociality per se. When the early Marx defines communism (EPM: 348–58)  – and the purely »human« production that is supposed to be coterminous with it (EJME: 277–8) – in the very terms of this sociality, the undeniable beauty of his descriptions should not be allowed to blind us to their fundamental theoretical nor, of course, practical-political inadequacy.

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2. The Imaginary and the Real (Part Two): from the »Theses on Feuerbach« to the 1859 »Preface« In the preceding section, we saw how Marx’s first confrontation with the problematic of a subject divided between the spheres of the imaginary and the real resulted in a double impasse. In his early writings, Marx either conceives the political state as the simple imaginary alienation of the real of civil society, thus frustrating his own demand for a compelling explanatory link between the two domains, or – in a complete displacement of the designated location of the imaginary and the real – he conceives civil society itself as the imaginary alienation of a supposedly real human essence or sociality, with all the theoretical inconsistency that this inevitably entails. What we want to do in this section is examine the nature of Marx’s second confrontation with this same problematic. Once again, we will be the witnesses to a crucial and symptomatic displacement. The middle period Marx, we will claim, consistently veers between two fundamental, and fundamentally incoherent, positions. On the one hand, the subject is understood to be split between the real, economic and material, conditions of its existence and its imaginary, or, in Marx’s new terms, »ideological« (mis)representation of them. On the other hand, it is construed to be divided between the real forces of production that represent it and the, at times, imaginary fettering of these forces by existent relations of production. In fact, as we will see, it is somewhat misleading even to talk here of a splitting or division of the subject. In Marx’s early writings, the terms of such a splitting are clear and explicit, even if ultimately inconsistent. Marx himself states, on a number of occasions, that the subject lives a double life, an imaginary one in the state, and a real one in civil society. In his middle period, however, things become a little more complicated because the subject only ever really appears, and this alternately, on a single side of each of the divisions that are supposed to determine it. In the opposition between real conditions of existence and their imaginary (mis)representation, the subject takes its place, as the seat of ideological consciousness, on the side of the latter. In the opposition between forces of production and relations of production, the subject is subsumed by the former, their

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exponential growth serving as the putative guarantee of the unfolding of its own historical powers. In the combination of the two fundamental tenets of Marx’s middle period, then, the subject does not so much appear as split, divided or doubled, but instead as the somewhat schizophrenic bearer of a perpetual sliding between the two contrasting poles of the pure imaginary  – of ideological consciousness  – and the pure real  – of the forces of production. And it is of course not a coincidence that, in Marx’s view, all non-proletarian forms of subjectivity find themselves attracted to the imaginary pole, against which the supposedly pure real of the proletariat is seen to exert its necessary pull.

The »Theses on Feuerbach«: »the Human Essence is the Ensemble of the Social Relations« Before we enter any further, however, into the intricacies of this oscillation between the imaginary and the real, it is important to briefly emphasize here that, in any attempted overview of the development of Marx’s thought, what we are referring to as its middle period undoubtedly has to be understood as something of a theoretical relapse. For in 1845, just after the completion of the last of his early writings, and just prior to the composition of The German Ideology – the first text of Marx in which the subject is simultaneously defined as both ideological consciousness and force of production  – Marx had jotted down a series of elliptical but fundamental fragments that would somewhat inappropriately come to be known, following Engels’ description, as the »Theses on Feuerbach.« With one short but devastating formulation, the culmination of all the fragmentary arguments surrounding it, Marx both lays waste here to the inconsistencies of his former theoretical humanism and, more importantly, sets out the criteria by which to judge the theoretical consistency of all of his future research – criteria which, as we will very shortly see, he immediately begins to depart from: »[i]n its reality«, Marx says, »[the human essence] is the ensemble of the social relations« (TF: 423). The negative effects of this statement are obvious. Marx can no longer oppose real human essence and sociality to the imaginary social forms of its alienation, because this essence is now seen to

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consist of nothing more than the social structure of its own determinations. Its positive influence is even more momentous. For what Marx achieves with this formulation, as a number of other commentators have definitively shown,23 is a thoroughgoing destitution and replacement of every traditional philosophical opposition between subject and object, or between the respective representation of these two poles by idealism and materialism. The subjective can no longer be separated from the objective because its very core is objectively or socially constituted. And correspondingly, the objective can no longer be separated from the subjective because according to its very definition it includes and constitutes subjects. It is precisely this revolutionary insight, however, that Marx ignores in his middle period. For what he effectively does here is re-erect a simple, and all too philosophical, division between the subjective and the objective, with the important, and hugely paradoxical, proviso that the subject itself is seen to hover between both poles. The subjective proper, at least in its non-proletarian manifestations, is redefined as imaginary or ideological consciousness. The objective is redefined as the real movement of the forces of production, which is implicitly seen to determine the evolution of a proletarian subjectivity supposedly free of all imaginary or ideological constraints. What could have compelled Marx to enact such an astonishing theoretical regression? The »Theses« provide the hint of an answer. Feuerbach, Marx tells us, »starts out from the fact of religious selfalienation, of the duplication [Verdopplung] of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis detaches itself from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the cleavages and self-contradictions within this secular basis« (TF: 422). If the human essence is nothing other than the ensemble of social relations, this is nonetheless not the whole story, because this ensemble is split, doubled and divided within itself. Whereas Feuerbach presupposes the simple self-identity of the »secular basis«, and thus thinks it easy to collapse the »religious world« back into it, Marx poses a new and different set of questions: how is it that the secular basis becomes non-identi-

23 See Labica (1980) and Balibar (1995).

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cal with itself, and how does this non-identity, this »cleavage« and »contradiction«, give rise to an apparently »independent realm in the clouds«? In what follows, we want to suggest that the theoretical retreat of Marx’s middle period, its thematization of a series of ruptures and breaks between imaginary or »ideological« consciousness and real conditions of existence, between real forces of production and their occasionally imaginary relational fetters, constitutes the failed attempt at an answer.

The 1859 »Preface« and the Double Occlusion of the Subject It is perhaps best, then, to begin at the end. Writing in 1859, and summarizing his view of the interaction between the two conceptual couples that dominate his middle period  – economic base and the superstructure of ideological consciousness; forces and relations of production – Marx very famously tells us that: »In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or  – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms  – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal,

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political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.« (CCPE: 20–1)

Now, any reasonably careful reading and interrogation of this passage – which, from the later Engels to Stalin, to give only two of the most notable examples, has been unfairly taken to encapsulate the hard methodological kernel of the Marxian worldview24 – will reveal that it gives rise to a whole host of insoluble problems. As we obviously cannot consider all of them here, their scope being enormous, we will confine ourselves instead to a single question, the one that most clearly concerns us. In this grand scheme of historical development and transformation – with its three central terms (ideological consciousness, relations of production and forces of production) allocated according to two central conceptual oppositions between the imaginary and the real (ideological consciousness versus relations of production; relations of production versus forces of production; with the relations of production appearing first as real and then as imaginary) – where is it possible to locate the subject? There are two conceivable answers to this question, one of them explicitly stated in Marx’s text, the other only necessarily implied.

24 Marx himself undoubtedly contributed to this encapsulation. Firstly, of course, by writing the passage. But, secondly, by referring to it as a summation of his views in a footnote of Das Kapital (C1: 175). As will hopefully become clear in the following section, the text is entirely inappropriate in this latter context.

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The first answer, then, is that the subject – or, at the risk of parody, the true subjectivity of the subject – belongs, as consciousness, to the ideological superstructure of society. The evidence for this is overwhelming: the relations of production are »independent of [the] will« of men; the different forms of social consciousness »correspond« to the legal and political superstructure that arises out of the real economic foundation of society; the »consciousness« of men is determined by their social existence, with the strange implication, retained from the idealism that it is supposed to invert, that the two belong to entirely different spheres; and finally, in revolutionary transformations of society economic conditions advance according to their own logic, »which can be determined with the precision of natural science«, while men become »conscious« of it in an »ideological« form. Weighing against this evidence, however, and especially against the very last claim, is another, diametrically opposed implication. If social revolutions happen in the way in which Marx describes them here – with the fundamental development of the material forces of production gradually overturning both extant relations of production and the ideological superstructure accompanying them – and if these revolutions have to possess an agent, or, at the very least, a subjective bearer, something which Marx would surely not want to dispute, then this agent or bearer must be equal to the development of the forces of production themselves. In revolutionary transformations of society a short circuit must occur between the subject, elsewhere confined to the imaginary or ideological consciousness of this transformation, and the pure unfolding real of the forces of production. The subject appears here, then, in a double mode, once as imaginary – in the form of a superstructural ideological consciousness that is seen to correspond to the real economic basis of the relations of production – and once as real – in a form equivalent to that development of the forces of production that is ultimately seen to dissolve all those relations of production, and their corresponding ideological superstructures, that have themselves now become imaginary fetters. But the problem is that in neither case does Marx take the subject seriously as a subject. The metaphor that he uses is enormously significant: »[j]ust as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge […] a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness

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must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.« The first half of this sentence erects an absolute separation between the reality of an individual and what he thinks about himself, between the real movement of transformation of a society and the consciousness that its members have of it. Ideological consciousness (accepting for the moment this hugely problematical term) is reduced here, in a radically implausible manner, to the status of a meaningless epiphenomenon. Are our judgments of a person really indifferent to this person’s opinion of himself? If an imbecile is convinced of his genius, is this conviction not likely to confirm us in our verdict of imbecility? Or, in a slightly different register, just imagine a psychoanalysis in which the analysand’s take on himself can be said to count for absolutely nothing. Similarly (and once again accepting the distinction between the two levels only for the sake of argument), is it really possible to cleanly separate the »reality« of a period of transformation from the »ideas« that people have of it? What, for example, was the »reality« of German fascism? The sentence’s second half demands that a consciousness already effectively condemned as irrelevant be explained as a consequence of the »contradiction« and »conflict« between forces and relations of production. Essentially, however, even if there is a contradiction, there is no real conflict. The real forces of production, and the revolutionary subjectivity implicitly associated with them, just exponentially increase until a point is reached when the now imaginary relations of production can no longer support their pressure. In this loaded contest between the imaginary and the real, social revolution occurs no matter what. In the 1859 »Preface« Marx explicitly treats the subject as purely imaginary, and implicitly as purely real – in both cases reducing it to a condition of complete superfluousness. In the remainder of this section, we want to make clear that this oscillation of the subject between the two contrasting spheres of the imaginary and the real is entirely typical of Marx’s whole middle period. We will proceed in two main stages. Firstly, we will consider the coherence of Marx and Engel’s The German Ideology, the first Marxist text that attempts to relate and oppose the real economic basis of society to the imaginary or ideological superstructural consciousness of it. And, sec-

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ondly, we will briefly discuss The Communist Manifesto and two of Marx’s historical writings, The Class Struggles in France, 1848–50 and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In these texts, it will become especially apparent how Marx opposes to the imaginary and ideological forms of non-proletarian consciousness a revolutionary proletarian subjectivity implicitly conceived as the incarnation of the undiluted real of the forces of production.

The German Ideology and the Irresolvable Problematic of Economic Base and Ideological Superstructure Let us begin, then, with The German Ideology. Étienne Balibar has claimed that the problematic of ideology articulated in this text cannot properly be comprehended in terms of any supposed derivation of the imaginary or ideological superstructure of society from its real economic, material and productive base. The order in which the text is presented, he contends, is extremely misleading. Because its polemical part, a lengthy critique of Stirner, appears last (although it was in fact written first), and because its account of the genesis of ideology appears first (although it was in fact written last), the false impression is created that the metaphor of base and superstructure is the book’s centrally organizing motif. What this ignores is that Marx and Engels are much more concerned with two problems that Stirner’s radically nominalistic critique of conceptual domination, albeit itself ultimately indefensible, had forced them to confront: the problems, following Balibar’s terminology, of the »power of ideas« and the »power of abstraction«, which come to include, for Marx and Engels, the more concrete questions of the state, the dominant ideology and the division between manual and intellectual labor (PM: 33–56). Now, the problem with this understanding of The German Ideology, we want to suggest, is that it simply begs the most fundamental questions. For, as Balibar himself freely admits (PM: 35–6; 42–53), the animating intention of the text remains that of providing an account of the real – material, economic or productive – genesis of both the power of ideas and the power of abstraction, or, if you like, of the imaginary, and everything depends upon the nature and coherence of this account. That is, although Balibar is certainly cor-

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rect in his assertion that The German Ideology does not just baldly state the supposedly explanatory metaphor of economic base and ideological superstructure, but also takes up a whole series of more concrete and specific questions, he is wrong to simply detach the asking of these questions from the problematic of base and superstructure, because it is ultimately according to this metaphor that Marx and Engels attempt, and finally fail, to answer them. Marx and Engels cannot provide any compelling account of the real genesis of imaginary ideas and abstractions because, in their ultimate dependence upon the metaphor of base and superstructure, they allocate the real and the imaginary to two entirely separate levels, the interrelationship of which must as a consequence remain mysterious. In precisely this sense, Balibar’s interpretation of the text is nothing more than a faithful reproduction, in microcosm, of its own insoluble contradictions. Balibar’s descriptions of the state, the dominant ideology and the division between material and mental labor consistently rely upon exactly that simple and incoherent division between the real and the imaginary – between production and ideas, reality and consciousness, materiality and thought – that he originally wanted to exorcise with the distinction between the economic base of society and its ideological superstructure.25 Our primary concern here, however, is not the reproduction but the original, so let us turn to the words of Marx and Engels themselves. What these words immediately reveal, if any further confirmation of this were needed, is that we are once again dealing here with an absolutely explicit thematization of the simultaneous division and relation between the two domains of the real and the imaginary. »The premises from which we begin,« Marx and Engels tell us, »are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way« (GI: 42).

25 This division is in fact typical of more or less the whole of Balibar’s work.

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On the one hand, Marx and Engels make a fundamental distinction between the real conditions of individuals, which can be determined in an empirically precise manner (we can hear an echo here of »the precision of natural science« of the 1859 »Preface«), and the imaginary abstraction of them, an abstraction that apparently takes place in an alternative, non-empirical or ethereal realm (the echo here is of the »ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out«). On the other hand, the very strictness of this distinction has to some extent be seen to dissolve, because imaginary abstraction still has to be conceived as the abstraction from real conditions, with all the implications of an explanatory link that this necessarily involves. It is the vacillation between these two conflicting presuppositions that will centrally concern us here. As a result, we will ignore those deservedly famous sections of The German Ideology that seek to specify the real material and productive conditions of individuals and focus instead on the problems that arise when Marx and Engels try to explain how these conditions give rise to forms of consciousness that imaginarily or ideologically reflect or invert them (as we will see, there is another significant vacillation between the apparently contradictory implications of these last two terms: »reflection« and »inversion«). These problems emerge at four major points in the text. Firstly, when Marx and Engels attempt to advance a general definition of ideological inversion and, in the remaining three cases – as we have already seen Balibar point out – when they attempt to concretize this definition by offering more specific analyses of the division between material and mental labor, the state and the ruling or dominant ideology. We can deal, then, with each point in turn.

The Insoluble Contradictions of Ideological Inversion Marx and Engels’ general description of the imaginary or ideological inversion of the real runs as follows: »definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into […] definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and politi-

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cal structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will. The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology man and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical lifeprocess.« (GI: 46–7)

We can break this argument down into three separate claims that fit rather awkwardly together. Marx and Engel’s first contention – relying upon an unelucidated temporal connotation that runs throughout the quotation – is that originally there was no real difference between ideological consciousness and reality. The one is, »at first«, »directly interwoven« with, the »direct efflux« of, the other; consciousness is not removed from existence, it is, inescapably, »conscious existence.« The word »ideological« only seems to serve here as a neutral, non-pejorative designation of the realm of ideas. It might even be better to talk, at this stage, of »ideational« consciousness. In a second moment, however, this consciousness is said to become ideological in the strict, pejorative sense, that is, it comes to invert, distort or misrepresent reality; »in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura.« Thirdly, Marx and Engels conclude, if ideological consciousness does, in this second moment, practice an inversion of reality, this is not the result of its own entirely autonomous activity, but instead the simple rep-

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etition, reinforcement or redoubling of an inversion already inherent in reality itself; »this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.« If the state, as an ideological construct – of which more below – inverts reality, this inversion is »continually evolving out of« the real material and productive activity of individuals. Now, the main problem with these three claims is that the last one thoroughly deconstructs the very distinction between ideological consciousness and reality that organizes the other two (the second claim explicitly states this distinction; the first, we would argue, presupposes it even in its contention that there is no original difference between the two domains, for if there is no real difference, why are there two domains at all?) If the inversion that ideological consciousness carries out upon reality ultimately depends upon an inversion already existing in reality itself, then this reality – in an enormously paradoxical fashion – must in some sense be said to contain or anticipate the division between itself and ideological consciousness. But if this is the case, what is reality and what is ideological consciousness? How is it possible to make a coherent conceptual distinction between the two spheres in the first place? In a purely negative sense, Marx and Engels’ third claim functions as something of a deus ex machina. Having established an original identity between consciousness and reality, and having asserted that this later becomes a non-identity, they are confronted by the necessity of accounting for the passage between the two moments. And they can only do this by tracing the non-identity between consciousness and reality back to a non-identity within reality itself, demolishing in the process precisely that opposition that they are attempting to articulate. This demolition could also have, of course, positive consequences. For what Marx and Engels are implicitly demanding here is an explanation that their very own language functions to deny. If reality is divided and inverted within itself, then what we require is a precise account of this division, and not a falling back into the distinction between ideological consciousness and reality that it is supposed to produce, but which in fact we have already seen it to undermine. Unfortunately, Marx and Engels choose to pursue the second course, as the passages that follow the above quotation make abundantly

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clear. »We set out,« they say, »from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process«; »[m]orality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and material intercourse, alter, along with their real existence, their thinking and the products of this thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life« (GI: 47). Ideological consciousness leads a strange double life. On the one hand, it is conceptually distinguished from reality, possessing an undefined »semblance« of »independence.« On the other hand, this »semblance« disappears, is revealed as a mere »phantom«, because it is connected to reality by an explanatory link that is continually posited but never, for reasons that we have already explored, seen to arrive. The implication of all this seems to be that the content of ideological consciousness is ultimately irrelevant. For if sometimes, as we have seen, it is said to »invert« reality, here it appears as its simple »reflex« or »echo«. Inversion or reflection, we can hear the authors saying, does it really matter? After all, what we are dealing with here are mere »ideas«. In sum, then, Marx and Engels’ language of consciousness and reality has to be seen to veer between two contradictory, but closely intertwined, positions. Originally intended, as Balibar realizes, as an explanation of how consciousness relates to reality (emerges from it, reflects and echoes it, begins to invert it, etc., etc.), it ends up – perhaps necessarily, as a consequence of the philosophically unsustainable distinction between the two terms – by simply opposing them to one another as the spheres of the purely imaginary and the purely real; or, as Marx and Engels symptomatically state, when »[e]mpty talk about consciousness ceases, […] real knowledge has to take its place« (GI: 48).

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The False Distinction between Mental and Material Labor Marx and Engels’ more specific analyses do little more than confirm this contradictory pendulum-swing between the suggestion of an explanatory relation and the ultimate frustration of it by means of an opposition already inherent in the terms of the posited explanation itself. Their first discussion of the division between material and mental labor, for instance, again begins by establishing an original and virtual identity between consciousness and social reality: »Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not enter into ›relations‹ with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.« (GI: 51)

In a later and fundamental development, however, this original and continuing social identity between consciousness and reality opens out into an apparent conflict between them: »Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. (The first form of ideologists, priests, is concurrent.) From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of ›pure‹ theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. But even if this theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. comes into contradiction with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing social relations have come into contradiction with existing forces of production.« (GI: 51–2)

The difficulty confronting Marx and Engels here is, once again, that of producing a satisfactory account of genesis. How do we get,

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that is, from a first moment of original and fundamental identity to a second moment of apparent or ideological non-identity or conflict? Or how, we might ask, does the imaginary come to misrepresent the real? Marx and Engels give the following response: there is an apparent or imaginary division between consciousness and reality because there is a real, social division between mental and material labor. But how is it possible to distinguish between mental and material labor in the absence of a prior distinction between consciousness and reality? Rather than providing an explanation of the way in which consciousness comes to imaginarily or ideologically misrepresent reality, Marx and Engels just displace the problem to another level by paradoxically locating the very distinction between consciousness and reality, or between the imaginary and the real so defined, within social reality itself – as a supposed division between two strictly different kinds of labor. Mental labor is defined as the imaginary work of ideological consciousness; material labor as the real work that is, at first, essentially free of ideology, but that in some way comes, in turn, to be imaginarily misrepresented by it. The impression is created that real, material work simply follows its own independent and undiluted course, and that ideological or mental work is only required in order to lend to it a second-order or supplementary veneer of justification – the designation of »priests« as the »first form of ideologists« is, in this respect, extremely symptomatic.

The Ruse of the Ruling Ideology When Marx and Engels use this account of the division between material and mental labor in order to ground their description of the dominant or ruling ideology, this impression of a clear-cut separation between the material sphere of »reality« and the ideal sphere of »ideas« (even if it is supposed to exist within social »reality« itself; and even if the latter sphere is supposed to function as the »expression« of the former) only receives a profound reinforcement: »The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material

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production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch […] The division of labour […] manifests itself also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labor, so that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood), while the others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves.« (GI: 64–5)

In both this quotation and the one cited above it, Marx and Engels’ language of »consciousness« and »reality«  – upon which we have seen their claim of a division between mental and material labor to rely – brings them dangerously close to a naïve, Enlightenment conception of ideology as the conscious and deliberate manipulation of the powerless by the omnipotent powerful.26 On the one hand, of course, their words have to be interpreted as being critical of this conception. For what Marx and Engels are concerned to demonstrate is an organic connection between material and productive reality and the conscious production of ideas – a connection that the typical Enlightenment critique of ideas is not even remotely sensitive to. On the other hand, however, they seem to be inexorably tipped back in the direction of such a conception by means 26 For more on this »Priests and Despots« theory of ideology, and Marx and Engel’s relationship to it, see Althusser (1969 and 2001), 234–5 and 100, respectively, and Balibar (1995), 46.

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of the very separation between the two levels that they are attempting to connect. This becomes clearest in the incredibly clumsy language that the second quotation is occasionally compelled to lapse into. »Among other things«, we are told, »the individuals composing the ruling class possess consciousness, and therefore think«; some of these individuals, as a consequence of the privilege of their thought, have the time to »perfect the illusion of this class about itself«, the others are too busy for this, all of their activity accounted for by the apparently thoughtless engagement with an apparently illusionless reality. Once again, social reality is seen to unfold according to its own, real and material, logic; in addition, and for no apparent reason, it receives the imaginary or illusory blessing of its consciously aware apologists. The problem with this implication of a distinction and division between consciousness and reality is not only  – as we have been continually stressing throughout this section – that it renders impossible any coherent explanatory link between the two domains, filling in the explanatory gap with unsupported assertion (»the ruling ideas are nothing more«, Marx and Engels baldy state, »than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas«; but why, we should inquire, are certain material relationships »expressed« and »grasped« by certain ideas?27) For what this distinction also, and relatedly, prohibits is any properly historical understanding of the functioning of, and difference between, in Marx’s own words, modes of production. Neither the capitalist mode of production, nor any of its pre-capitalist predecessors, can be analytically dissected, that is, in terms of a separation between material, productive or economic reality and the consciously ideological misrepresentation of it. In pre-capitalist social formations, as we have already seen in section 1 (and preserving the terminology employed by Marx and Engels only in order to reveal its redundancy), the operation of the economy can in no way be comprehended outside of its determination by certain hierarchical »ideas«. The slave, for instance, does not just work for his master, and then discover that, ex post facto, his work

27 This is, of course, a rhetorical question, because the point is to do away tout court with the very language of »material relationships« and »ideas«.

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has been justified by his denomination as a slave; it is this very denomination that first sets his labor in motion, and without which it is unthinkable. Similarly, in capitalism, the »ideas« of »Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham« (C1: 280) – to quote this shorthand formulation once again – are not used to ideologically misrepresent and legitimate social or economic reality; they are inherent in the very functioning of this reality, which in some sense has to be said to misrepresent and legitimate (or, more precisely perhaps, reproduce) itself.

The Semblance of the State We will have much more to say about these issues later on. For the moment, however, it suffices to say that Marx and Engels’ distinction between consciousness and reality is hopelessly inadequate for both conceptual and historical reasons, the two being, of course, ultimately indissociable. In The German Ideology, this twofold inadequacy reaches its apogee when Marx and Engels try to define the state as the representative of a more specific instantiation of the dominant or ruling ideology, the general interest: »The division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the ›general interest‹, but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided […] And out of this very contradiction between the interest of the individual and that of the community the latter takes an independent form as the State, divorced from the real interests of individual and community, and at the same time as an illusory communal life, always based, however, on the real ties existing in every family and tribal conglomeration – such as flesh and blood, language, division of labour on a larger scale and other interests – and especially […] on the classes, already determined by the division of labour, which in every such mass of men separate out, and of which one dominates all the others. It follows from this that all struggles within the State, the struggle between democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the franchise, etc., etc., are

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merely the illusory forms in which the real struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another.« (GI: 53)

The conceptual failure of this argument should by now be easy to see. For it results, once more, from the contradiction inherent in the simultaneous claim of both a relation and separation between the spheres of the imaginary and the real. The passage describes a vertiginous zigzag from one contention to the other. At first, we are told that the »contradiction« between the particular and communal interest exists not in the »imagination«, but in »reality«. This real contradiction is then said to give rise to the »independent« form of the state, which represents an »illusory communal life« both »divorced from real interests« yet, at the same time, »based in real ties«. Finally, struggles within the state are defined as the »illusory forms« of »real struggles« between classes. A number of questions immediately arise, all of them focused around the same problem of articulating the supposed transition from the real to the imaginary, or vice versa; and all of them remaining unanswered. If the communal interest exists in reality »as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided«, why does this interest become illusory when it is represented by the state as the general interest? Similarly, how can the state be both divorced from real interests and the product of real ties? And if real class struggles appear in the state in an illusory form, what is the precise process of transformation that occurs between the two sides? The consequence of the failure to answer these questions – which of course results from their being wrong and unanswerable in the first place – is an historically false universalization of the state as the representative of the general interest. A very brief comparison of precapitalist and capitalist modes of production will once again make this apparent. For in pre-capitalist societies, if the state represents a general interest at all, it is a general interest in a directly manifested hierarchical ordering and subordination, something which turns the adjective »general«, to say the least, into something of a misnomer. In capitalist societies, by contrast, because direct hierarchical subordination is abandoned, the state can appear as the representative of the general interest in a meaningful sense. But the problem for Marx and Engels remains that the representation of this interest can

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in no way be said to originally and fundamentally ensue either from any real and simple »mutual interdependence« of individuals or from any imaginary or illusory representation of this interdependence by the state. Instead, as we will start to see in section 3, it has to be construed as the product of one side of the division of the subject within the capitalist »economy« itself – which, to reiterate, can in no sense be understood as a simple »economy«. More precisely, it is the product of the »Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham« that is inescapably attached to the subject as the seller of the commodity of its labor-power; a sale ultimately compelled, of course, by an indirect class hierarchy that its own functioning makes difficult to discern.

The Pure and Illusionless Real of the Proletarian Subject; in The German Ideology… From the perspective of that problematic of the subject that centrally concerns us here The German Ideology must ultimately be construed as a massively disappointing text. As we have seen, Marx and Engels repeatedly set themselves the task of explaining the genetic relationship of the subject – conceived as the bearer of imaginary or ideological consciousness – to its real, material and productive, conditions of existence: »the social organisation evolving directly out of production and commerce«, they say, »in all ages forms the basis of the State and the rest of the idealistic superstructure« (GI: 57); similarly, the »conception of history« that they defend depends upon their »ability to expound the real process of production […] as the basis of all history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc., etc. and trace their origins and growth from that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another)« (GI: 58). It is precisely the separation between a real economic »basis« and an imaginary or ideological »superstructure« of consciousness, however, that renders impossible the very explanation that they are looking for – the real problem being, of course, the very positing of an explanatory »relation« between two domains that have originally been quite clearly and conceptually divided.

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The symptoms of this division, throughout Marx’s middle period, are prodigious. For if the subject is divided between its real conditions of existence and its imaginary or ideological consciousness of them, it is inevitably condemned to appear on either one side or the other of this divide, that is, as either purely imaginary or purely real. This is already pretty clear in The German Ideology itself. After having earlier and explicitly located the subject at the superstructural level of ideological consciousness, Marx and Engels go on to famously claim that »[c]ommunism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things« (GI: 56–7). It quickly becomes apparent that this »real movement« is nothing other than the movement of the everexpanding and increasing forces of production. As in the 1859 »Preface«, these forces of production enter into conflict with the relations of production28 that are seen to fetter them, the cause or product of this conflict being a »propertyless mass« (GI: 56) of proletarian laborers whose really evolving revolutionary and »communist consciousness« (GI: 94) will allow them to simply »appropriate« (GI: 92) the forces of production that have developed alongside them. »[T]hings have now come to such a pass«, Marx and Engels contend, »that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces«; »[t]his appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated«, and »further determined by the persons appropriating. Only the proletarians of the present day, who are completely shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a complete and no longer restricted self-activity« (GI: 92–3). The ultimate point, of course, has to be that the appropriating persons are absolutely equal to that which they are supposed to appropriate. Proletarian subjectivity – far from being the product of imaginary or ideological misrepresentation (even if it is still described as »consciousness«; and even if the path from an absolute lack of self-activity to its complete fulfillment remains totally mysterious) – is the exact equivalent of the real unfolding of the material forces of production. The subject 28 It should be mentioned here that Marx and Engels have not yet explicitly developed in this text the concept of »relations of production«, but that the concept of »intercourse« (Verkehr) already serves there essentially the same function.

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experiences a paradoxical collapse, from its superstructural heights into its real and revolutionary economic depths. In The Communist Manifesto, The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, this paradoxical shuttling of the subject between the imaginary and the real is expressed in equally unambiguous terms, and the implicit opposition between the two spheres is granted a much more precise, but still hugely problematical, political function.

…The Communist Manifesto… The argument of The Communist Manifesto  – in the precise sense that it interests us here  – can be divided into two strands that, at first sight, appear to enter into contradiction with one another, only in order to ultimately resolve themselves in favor of the first. On the one hand, then, Marx and Engels effectively reduce the development of the proletarian subject to the real evolution of the forces of production. And, on the other hand, they seem to call the very political simplicity of this reduction into question. As we will see, however, the very terms of this questioning only serve to confirm the original reduction. The equation of the conditions of the proletarian subject with an apparently pure and illusionless real is undoubtedly the motif that dominates the main parts of the text. For Marx and Engels, of course, it is the revolutionary bourgeoisie that bears the responsibility for the production of these conditions, because »for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation« (CM: 222); under the rule of this class, »[a]ll that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind« (CM: 223). The bourgeoisie, however, is itself only the bearer of the revolutionary forces of production. Just as its own forces dissolved those feudal relations of production that once acted as fetters upon them, so its own relations will be destroyed in turn by their continuing expansion; »[t]he weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself« (CM: 226). Nevertheless, a new class needs to arise that will perfectly represent these newly

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expanded forces of production. Obviously, this is the role that is allocated to the revolutionary proletariat; »not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield these weapons  – the modern working class – the proletarians« (CM: 226). This proletariat, unfolding in frictionless harmony with the real forces of production that it purely and simply harnesses and represents, will be happily and healthily immune to any imaginary or ideological capture; »competition between the workers« will inexorably give way to their »ever-expanding union«, the product of the inevitable »equalization« of their wages and conditions (CM: 229–30); »[t]he proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industrial labour, modern subjection to capital […] has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices« (CM: 231–2); the workers »have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities« (CM: 232); »[t]he proletarians«, most famously, »have nothing to lose but their chains« (CM: 258). In other parts of the Manifesto, Marx and Engels somehow seem to recognize the radical implausibility of this thoroughgoing purification of the proletarian subject. This recognition takes the form of a political and organizational need to continually and consistently separate the real interests of the proletarian movement from its potentially imaginary or ideological overwriting. If this movement gets caught up in the particularity of national struggles, for instance, the task is to articulate »the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality« (CM: 234). Similarly, in every stage of the struggle between bourgeoisie and proletariat, what urgently need to be represented are »the interests of the movement as a whole« (CM: 234). Practically, there has to be an »advanced« and »resolute« component of the working class that »pushes forward all others« (CM: 234). Theoretically, this component is strictly distinguished from the remainder of this class by its »clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement« (CM: 234), by an incisive capacity to separate, within this movement, the wheat of the »future« from the chaff of the »present« (CM: 257).

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The proletarian subject appears here, then, not as the simple instantiation of the real, but – in an apparently more realistic fashion – as divided between the real and the imaginary (or, in Marx and Engels’ own words, the ideological). The problem, of course – as we have been consistently emphasizing throughout this section – is that the very nature of this division only functions in order to secure the subject’s ultimate reduction to the real. For, in the last instance, the supposedly political capacity to distinguish between the imaginary and the real is unequivocally said to be grounded in the putatively real movement of history itself, which is seen to mercilessly overturn all imaginary or ideological illusions. The communists, we are told, »merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of Communism« (CM: 235). The first sentence of this passage not unreasonably equates historical movement with class struggle; but the second sentence implicitly identifies the direction of this struggle with the ineluctably advancing movement of the forces of production themselves – a movement which Marx and Engels ultimately construe, of course, as the deep cause of the abolition of both extant social relations and their supposedly imaginary or ideological superstructural veneer. The Communist Manifesto starts out, then, by reducing the proletarian subject to the real logic of the forces of production. If it later appears to query this reduction – by suggesting that there is a potential imaginary or ideological capture of this subject that needs to be politically combated – it is only in order to finally confirm the very separation and opposition between the imaginary and the real that effectively determines it.

…The Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire In the Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire, the analysis proceeds in a different direction, albeit on the basis of essentially the same presuppositions. Both texts begin by reducing the subject, this time in its non-proletarian manifestations (aristocratic, bourgeois, petty-bourgeois and even at times peasant), to the supposedly illusory or self-deceptive play of the political imaginary.

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Against this apparently flimsy ideological background, the proletarian revolution – once again implicitly identified with the real unfolding of the forces of production – is gradually but necessarily, even in the reverses that it experiences, seen to assert its seemingly irresistible strength. In The Eighteenth Brumaire, providing a theoretical summary of his approach to the wide constellation of political forces confronting him, Marx again takes recourse to the terminology of the imaginary and the real, of ideological superstructure and economic base: »Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of different and distinctly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the corresponding social relations. The single individual, to whom they are transmitted through tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the real motives and the starting-point of his activity […] as in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.« (EBLB: 103)

Marx’s language here is already very familiar to us. For it essentially anticipates – especially in the metaphorical line of separation that it draws »between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does« – the much more definitive formulations of the 1859 »Preface«. Because we have already interrogated these formulations, we do not need to subject this language to any further form of general critique. Instead, we want to show how it informs, in a hugely problematical fashion, Marx’s more concrete political and economic analyses. And what is interesting here is that this language emerges precisely in the context of such an analysis. Marx introduces the concepts of the imaginary and the real, of the ideological superstructure and the economic base, in order to thematize and theorize the differences – and also, as we will see, the similarities – between the Legitimists and the Orleanists, »the two great factions«, in the sequence of historical events that he is dealing with, »of the Party of

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Order«. »Was what held these factions fast to their pretenders and kept them apart from one another«, he inquires: »nothing but lily and tricolour, House of Bourbon and House of Orleans, different shades of royalism, was it their royalist faith at all? Under the Bourbons, big landed property had governed, with its priests and lackeys; under the Orleans, high finance, large-scale industry, largescale trade, that is, capital, with its retinue of lawyers, professors and smooth-tongued orators. The Legitimate monarchy was merely the political expression of the hereditary rule of the lords of the soil, as the July monarchy was only the political expression of the usurped rule of the bourgeois parvenus. What kept the two factions apart, therefore, was not any so-called principles, it was their material conditions of existence, two different kinds of property, it was the old contrast between town and country, the rivalry between capital and landed property. That at the same time old memories, personal enmities, fears and hopes, prejudices and illusions, sympathies and antipathies, convictions, articles of faith and principles bound them to one or the other royal house, who is there that denies this? […] While Orleanists and Legitimists, while each faction sought to make itself and the other believe that it was loyalty to their two royal houses which separated them, facts later proved that it was rather their divided interests which forbade the unification of the two royal houses […] Orleanists and Legitimists found themselves side by side in the republic, with the same claims. If each side wished to effect the restoration of its own royal house against the other, that merely signified that each of the two great interests into which the bourgeoisie is split – landed property and capital – sought to restore its own supremacy and the subordination of the other.« (EBLB: 38–9)

If we read this passage carefully  – and the one that precedes it, with which it is in fact intertwined (the parentheses that we have introduced here mark the place of Marx’s more general theoretical reflections) – we cannot fail to be struck by the peculiar inadequacy of the claims that it is advancing. For if »under the Bourbons, big landed property had governed«, if »the Legitimate monarchy was merely the political expression of the hereditary rule of the lords of the soil«; and if »under the Orleans«, »capital« had ruled, if »the July monarchy was only the political expression of the usurped rule of

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the bourgeois parvenus« – then why is Marx so keen to insist that, in remaining attached to its particular royal house, each of these factions is »illusorily« or »imaginarily« deceiving itself about its »real« motives and interests? Surely it would be much more appropriate to recognize that there is a more organic connection between »principles« and »material conditions of existence« than Marx’s language of »base« and »superstructure« is prepared to admit? It is precisely Marx’s continuing analysis of the Legitimists and Orleanists that allows us to further draw out this connection, once again in contradistinction, of course, to his directly stated theoretical pronouncements. For what Marx famously claims about these two factions is that they are forced to become »républicains malgré eux« (CSF: 140), republicans in spite of themselves: the only way that each of these groups can successfully defend its class interests is by allowing its royalism to give way, even at the same time as it continues to be impotently pronounced, to the stuttering support for the parliamentary republic (CSF: 88–9; 110; EBLB: 29; 84–5). Now, according to the language of »economic base« and »ideological superstructure«, what is happening here is that one form of the »illusory« or »imaginary« representation of »real« motives and interests is being replaced by another. We are moving, we might say, from a royalist misrepresentation to a republican misrepresentation. How convincing is it, however, to claim that, in either case, »real« motives and interests are being »illusorily« or »imaginarily« misrepresented? Well, not very convincing at all, we want to suggest. For, in the first case – as we have already seen – the peculiar »royalist faith« of each faction serves as a perfectly adequate shorthand representation of its peculiar material and economic interests (the Bourbon monarch represents »landed property« and the Orleans monarch represents »capital«). And, in the second case – as Marx himself makes clear at the end of the passage that we are quoting from here; thus implicitly deconstructing the theoretical tenor of his entire argument – this is also true of their later republicanism (for this republicanism now represents, also in a perfectly adequate shorthand form, a »capital« that has effected a convergence between the two factions by coming to determine the fundamental conditions of »landed property« itself): »[w]e speak«, in speaking of the Legitimists and the Orleanists, Marx tells us, »of two interests of the bourgeoisie, for large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has been ren-

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dered thoroughly bourgeois by the development of modern society. Thus the Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent« (EBLB: 39). If Marx’s language of base and superstructure is obviously so inadequate to the task at hand, however, then why, we might inquire, is he so very keen to insist upon it? What we want to argue here is that Marx employs this language because it allows him to subliminally suggest – whether consciously or not – that all non-proletarian forms of political and economic subjectivity are purely imaginary and that, as against this, the proletarian form of political and economic subjectivity is nothing more than a purely unfolding real. In order to do this, however, Marx has to carry out precisely that fundamental displacement of terms that we have been critically analyzing throughout this section. That is, he has to suggest that all nonproletarian forms of political and economic subjectivity are »illusory« or »ideological« because they correspond to relations of production that have, to put it bluntly, passed their sell-by date. And he has to suggest that the proletarian form of political and economic subjectivity is at least tendentially real29 because it corresponds to forces of production that in the moment of their future triumph will explode all now imaginary relations of production and their correspondingly imaginary superstructures. This displacement of terms undoubtedly constitutes the centrally organizing leitmotif of both of the texts that we are dealing with 29 Marx’s description of the various kinds of socialism – »bourgeois«, »pettybourgeois« and »doctrinaire« (a list that corresponds to a famous and fuller depiction in The Communist Manifesto (CM: 245–58) – makes clear that this subjectivity can itself be subjected to a supposedly imaginary or »ideological« capture. This obviously does not change the fact, however – and, indeed, simply confirms – that real or »revolutionary« socialism, which Marx calls »communism«, unfolds in a simple accordance with the forces of production. »This socialism«, Marx informs us, »is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the inevitable transit point to the abolition of class differences generally, to the abolition of all the productive relations on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social connections« (CSF: 125–6).

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here. And, because of this, it is clearly not possible to provide anything near an exhaustive consideration of it. What we certainly can do, however, is select a couple of examples that unequivocally illustrate its structuring logic. We can summarize Marx’s attitude to all of the non-proletarian forces arraigned before him by saying that he describes them as »inverted Schlemihls, as shadows that have lost their bodies« (EBLB: 36); ideological and superstructural »shadows«, we can suppose, that have lost their reference to the firm »body« of stably governing relations of production. And we can summarize Marx’s attitude to the proletariat itself by simply quoting two of his most revealing extrapolations of its supposedly inherent revolutionary movement. The first passage is the opening passage of the Class Struggles in France: »With the exception of a few short chapters, every important part of the annals of the revolution from 1848 to 1849 carries the heading: Defeat of the revolution! […] But what succumbed in these defeats was not the revolution. It was the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages, results of social relationships, which had not yet come to the point of sharp class antagonisms – persons, illusions, conceptions, projects, from which the revolutionary party before the February revolution was not free, from which it could be freed, not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats […] In a word, revolutionary advance made headway not by its immediate tragic-comic achievements, but on the contrary by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an opponent, by fighting whom the party of revolt first ripened into a real revolutionary party.« (CSF: 33)

The second passage can be found towards the end of the Eighteenth Brumaire, in the context of Marx’s concluding discussion of the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte. Even if the »immediate and palpable result« of this coup was »the victory of Bonaparte over parliament, of the executive power over the legislative power, of force without words over the force of words«, it nonetheless »contains within itself«, Marx claims, »the germ of the triumph of the proletarian revolution«. For, as he very famously continues: »the revolution is thorough. It is still journeying through purgatory. It does its work methodically. By December 2, 1851 it had completed one

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half of its preparatory work; it is now completing the other half. First it perfected the parliamentary power, in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it has attained this, it perfects the executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, isolates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And when it has done this second half of its preliminary work, Europe will leap from its seat and exultantly exclaim: Well burrowed, old mole!« (EBLB: 106–7)

In both of these passages – and with a logic that can only strike us today as being more than a little peculiar – the proletarian revolution is essentially seen to be responsible for its own opposition. Every imaginary containment of this revolution, we are compelled to conclude (with this containment being effected by both obsolete ideological superstructures and obsolete economic relations of production), is nothing more than a straw man erected by the unstoppable power of its real development (by the real development of nothing less than the forces of production themselves). Now, it should already be fairly apparent that this logic of a conflict or contradiction between obsolete ideological superstructures and obsolete economic relations of production, on the one hand, and inherently revolutionary forces of production, on the other, does not provide a compelling picture of either the dominant or the dominated classes in any social situation. With regard to the dominant classes, for instance  – in this case the Legitimists and the Orleanists – we have already seen Marx reveal (contrary to his own theoretical intuitions) that, in the two distinct moments of their history that he effectively describes, their political and economic subjectivity corresponds to neither of the two instances (obsolete ideological superstructures and obsolete economic relations of production) here defined. Instead, it corresponds – both politically and economically, with the point now being that it is impossible to separate these two terms along the lines of base and superstructure – to nothing other than the extant, that is, far from obsolete, economic relations of production themselves. In the first moment, the support for each particular royalist house that divides the two factions corresponds to an underlying support for »landed property« and »capital«. In the second moment, the support for a republicanism that now unites the two

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factions corresponds to an underlying support for the »capital« that has in fact served to carry out this unification. And, with regard to the dominated classes, Marx’s own illustrious words on the peasantry could hardly be any clearer: »The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the members of which live in similar conditions but without entering into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is increased by France’s bad means of communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production, the smallholding, admits of no division of labor in its cultivation, no application of science and, therefore, no diversity of development, no variety of talent, no wealth of social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through exchange with nature than in intercourse with society. A smallholding, a peasant and his family; alongside them another smallholding, another peasant and another family. A few score of these make up a village, and a few score of villages make up a department. In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. Insofar as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organisation among them, they do not form a class. They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class interests in their own name, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental power that protects them against the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power subordinating society to itself.« (EBLB: 108–9)

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The political and economic subjectivity of a dominated class is certainly not constituted here by the burgeoning of the revolutionary forces of production. Instead, and just as in the case of the dominating classes before it, this subjectivity is constituted – and, moreover, divided; for we should remember that the peasantry both »forms a class« and »does not form a class« – by nothing other than the current relations of production (the »mode of production« and »economic conditions of existence«, in Marx’s own terms). Marx will of course later argue (EBLB: 110–9) that the peasantry itself becomes subject to a process of proletarianization, and that this proletarianization will function to link its subjectivity precisely to the revolutionary forces of production. But this argument only serves to beg, we want to claim, the fundamental question. For what Marx ignores in his discussion of the proletariat  – and of the proletarianization of the peasantry – is precisely the possibility that its subjectivity is as thoroughly constituted by capitalist relations of production as the subjectivity of the peasantry was once constituted by feudal relations of production (indeed, if one thinks through this possibility, the above quotation can start to acquire – accepting, of course, all the obvious differences  – a strangely contemporary relevance). It is this ignorance, we now want to argue, that Marx – at least implicitly – will correct in Das Kapital. And it is this correction that will allow him to substantially transform, by introducing the third category of the social or symbolic, the meaning that he has previously attached to the two concepts of the imaginary and the real.

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3. The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real: Das Kapital In sections 1 and 2 above, we have seen how, in the work of both the early and the middle period Marx, an unbreachable divide is erected between the two contrasting and contrary spheres of the imaginary and the real. According to that displacement of terms that centrally characterizes the early Marx, either the political state is conceived as the imaginary alienation of the economic real of civil society, or this civil society itself is construed as the imaginary alienation of a supposedly real and essential human sociality. In the first case, the very link between the imaginary and the real that Marx at times wants to establish is rendered effectively unthinkable. In the second, Marx is compelled to resort to a simple language of humanism that his entire later development, if properly understood, has to be seen to absolutely contradict. In what we have been calling Marx’s middle period, this displacement takes a different form, being organized around two central conceptual oppositions that are themselves derived from a certain conception of the historically inevitable or, indeed, history-constituting, interplay between three terms. The terms – in the ascending order of importance that, for Marx, determines their interrelationship – are ideological consciousness (or ideological superstructure), relations of production and forces of production. According to the first opposition, between relations of production and ideological and superstructural consciousness, there is a fundamental discrepancy between the real economic conditions of individuals and their imaginary (mis-) representation of them. According to the second opposition, there is a conflict or contradiction between the extant relations of production and the real underlying forces of production that they have apparently come to imaginarily fetter and restrain. The problem, in the first case, is that if we accept the very distinction between consciousness and reality that effectively structures the whole opposition, it becomes impossible to comprehend how the former imaginarily or ideologically »represents« or, even worse, »misrepresents« the latter. If consciousness and reality are methodologically and conceptually separated, the supposed link between them will forever resist elucidation. The problem in the second case is that the very opposition

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considered central to the first (and accepting this now only for the sake of argument) in turn becomes a matter of complete indifference. In an absolutely merciless fashion, the real expansion of the forces of production undermines both the imaginary relations of production and their conveniently flimsy layering of superstructural ideological consciousness. In short, then  – and in the terms that really concern us in this reconstruction – in both his early and middle periods, Marx systematically fails to articulate, in any compelling or convincing manner, the division, splitting or doubling of the subject. In the early writings, and on both sides of the displacement that Marx enacts, the subject is divided between an imaginary or alienating realm (first the state, and then civil society) and that deeper real that it is supposed to alienate (first civil society, and then the human or social essence). Any connection between the two spheres, which Marx is of course compelled to presuppose, remains entirely mysterious. In the work of the middle period, the subject appears once (explicitly) as the imaginary bearer of ideological consciousness, absolutely divided from its real economic conditions of existence, and once (implicitly) as the real instantiation of the forces of production, completely split apart from the imaginary relations of production that are seen to fetter it. That is, in Marx’s own heavily loaded terms, once as a nonproletarian inextricably bound up with ideological illusion, and once as a proletarian, tendentially and tendentiously free of all imaginary constraints. What we want to argue in this third and final section is that the late Marx – and this essentially means, of course, the Marx of Das Kapital – finally succeeds in precisely and compellingly elucidating the division of the subject between the two registers of the imaginary and the real. He does this, we will claim, by implicitly introducing a third term – the social or symbolic – that allows for or, more exactly, determines the articulation and combination of the other two – the imaginary and the real. For the late Marx, as we have already suggested, the capitalist mode of production comes to be understood as a social or symbolic order, or continuous process of ordering, that both constitutes and continues to reproduce itself by enacting a division or, better, knotting of the subject across the two spheres of the imaginary and the real.

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What does this mean? In the terms of what is undoubtedly Marx’s central and fundamental discovery (as we will shortly see, he explicitly considered this to be the case himself), it means that capitalism constitutes and reproduces itself by dividing and knotting the proletarian worker between and across the price of the commodity of his labor-power (Arbeitskraft), his capacity to work (Arbeitsvermögen) – this being the source of the imaginary »idea« that labor has a value – and the actual – or real – labor that he performs in the exercise of this capacity. This division or knotting constitutes capitalism as a mode of production because it is precisely what allows for the production of this system’s raison d’être: surplus-value. The real or actual labor of the proletarian worker produces more value for the capitalist than it originally cost him as the price of the commodity of his labor-power; the imaginary sting in the tail being, of course (and this is a sting that has enormous effects), that the worker is in some sense compelled to behave as if he were being paid not for his laborpower, but for his labor. Capitalism is nothing more, then, than a particular manner of splitting, doubling or knotting the subject. And our aim in this section is to provide a fairly detailed exposition of both the way in which Marx arrives at this conception and the way in which, once properly understood, it can allow us to resolve some of the lingering ambiguities in the late Marx’s thematizations of the nature of the proletarian subject. The argument will advance in three stages. Firstly, by means of a reconstructive commentary on the first two parts of volume 1 of Das Kapital, »Commodities and Money« and »The Transformation of Money into Capital« (C1: 123–280), we will see how the whole significance of Marx’s analysis revolves around a fundamental asymmetry in relation to what he refers to as the »dual« or »double« character (Doppelcharakter) of the commodity. When it concerns the subject, we will claim, the logic of this duality has to be comprehended as something very different than when it only applies to objects. Whereas in the commodity as object, use-value and value have absolutely nothing to do with one another, in the commodity as subject they mix and intermingle (once again, with profound, and not entirely sanguine, consequences). Secondly, we will show how the understanding of this asymmetry allows us to complicate Marx’s rather misleading description of the logic of commodity-fetishism. Rather than practicing, as Marx suggests, a simple inversion of the

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social and the thing-like, the subjective and the objective, the fetishism of the commodity – at least in its particular form of manifestation within the capitalist mode of production – has to be conceived as carrying out a crossing and combination of these two domains within the subject itself. If commodity-fetishism applies to subjects as well as to objects, its function in the former case is to produce and constitute the subject as a divided or knotted subject-object. Thirdly, and finally, we will see how this complication of the logic of commodity-fetishism enables us to discern some of the many ambivalences and contradictions that still plague the late Marx’s conception of the proletarian subject. To the extent that Marx construes commodityfetishism as a simple inversion of the social and the thing-like, the subjective and the objective, he experiences the temptation to revert to some of the incoherent themes of his early and middle periods, more specifically, the themes of alienation and of a simple conflict and contradiction between the forces and relations of production. To the extent that he understands that commodity-fetishism produces and constitutes a divided and knotted subject, Marx resists this temptation and (at least) implicitly recognizes the not necessarily revolutionary consequences of his own, and capitalism’s, dissection of the proletarian worker.

The Double Character of Labor and the Double Character of the Commodity In two letters to Engels, written shortly after the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital, Marx unequivocally draws attention to what he considers to be the work’s most fundamental contribution. Of »[t]he best points in my book«, he states, the most important is the exposition of »(1) the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed in use value or exchange value« (MECW42: 407). Or, similarly: »the economists, without exception, evaded the simple fact that, if the commodity has a double character – the usevalue and the exchange-value – then labour contained in the commodity must also be of double character, while mere analysis of labour as such, as with Smith, Ricardo, etc., must everywhere come up against the inexplicable. This is indeed the whole secret of the critical conception« (LC: 125). The simultaneously real and concep-

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tual core of Marx’s critique of political economy – that which allows him to symptomatically read its consistent confrontation with what, in its own terms, is »inexplicable« – is the discovery of the double character of labor. If the commodity is split or divided between its use-value and its exchange-value, then so is the labor »contained« within it. In order to comprehend this claim – and in order to see how the labor of the proletarian subject only becomes »contained« in the commodity (as object) precisely because it exceeds (as subject) its own »containment« by the commodity-form, even as it appears to succumb to it – we need to turn to the text of Marx’s magnum opus itself. As we have already suggested, the central argument of this text crucially turns around an asymmetry with regard to what Marx designates as the »dual« or »double« character of the commodity, its split or division into the two component parts of use-value and value. This double character describes both objects and subjects, and in the second case it functions according to a logic substantially different from that which determines the first. In anticipation, we can say that Marx distinguishes between two superficially similar, but in fact fundamentally distinct, processes: a purely metonymic process of the simple exchange and circulation of commodities as objects – according to which there is no relationship between use-value and value; and a simultaneously metonymic and metaphoric process, this time not confined to simple circulation, of the inclusion (and simultaneous exclusion) of the subject within (and from) the determinations of the commodity-form – and according to which use-value and value begin to develop a strange and particular interaction.30 One of the fundamental purposes of Marx’s analysis is to show that it is only the second process (the combination of the metonymic and metaphoric) that can actually ground the supposed »universality« of the first (the purely metonymic). It is only the inclusion of the subject, both within and without the sphere of circulation, that is capable of explaining the generalized interchange of objects.

30 Our definition of the metonymic and the metaphoric follows here – even as it rewrites it in an entirely new context – the seminal definition of Roman Jakobson (which was itself so important to the work of Lacan). According to this definition, metonymy serves to designate the combinatory aspect of language, and metaphor its substitutive aspect. See Jakobson (1956).

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We can begin to unpack these lapidary claims by taking a closer look at the first two parts of Das Kapital, »Money and Commodities« and »The Transformation of Money into Capital«. The first part advances a description of the metonymic level; the second – undoubtedly the book’s most important – an analysis of the metonymic/metaphoric. We will therefore deal quite quickly with the former, and with the latter in much greater detail.

C-M-C: The Metonymic Circulation of the Commodity as Object »Money and Commodities«, and Das Kapital as a whole, famously opens with the depiction of a seemingly infinite metonymic chain of commodity-objects: »[t]he wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ›immense collection of commodities‹; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity« (C1: 125). The repetition here is certainly designed to attract our attention: it is the »appearance« (the Schein) of capitalist society that Marx undoubtedly wants to emphasize. The capitalist mode of production is not just, that is, and not even primarily – as we will shortly see  – an immense collection of commodities; but nor – as will also become clear – can the objective »falsity« of this appearance be simply and conceptually dissolved. Before we turn to address these issues, however, before we seek to move beyond the metonymic level of appearance in order to grasp the metonymic/metaphoric production of its supposed universality, we need to ask a crucial preliminary question. What exactly is it that »appears« in the first place? What does the »elementary form« of the commodity contain? This, too, can be a deceptive question for, as Marx later tells us, the commodity possesses a »dual [doppelte] nature«, a »double form [Doppelform]« (C1: 138), it is a »twofold [doppeltes] thing« (C1: 152), and, most importantly, the precise nature of this duality is itself disguised. But how exactly? On a first glance, the commodity seems to be defined by the division between its use-value and its exchange-value. Its use-value (as long as we are dealing only with objects, and Marx here defines the commodity as being »first of all [that is, not only], an external object« (C1: 125)) is easy to comprehend. In the use or consumption of its

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particular qualities, every commodity serves to fulfill certain human needs; and the latter can arise (in contradistinction to the silly, but frequently aired, complaint that Marx’s concept of use-value is »essentialist«31) either from the »stomach« or the »imagination« (C1: 125). Exchange value, however  – which in the capitalist mode of production, Marx tells us, use-value also functions as the »material bearer [Träger]« (C1: 126) of – is a harder nut to crack. For although it allows certain quantities of commodities to be exchanged as equivalents, it can only do this by locating the source of this equivalence in a »contentful« contribution very different from its own merely representative »form«. As Marx puts it: »exchange-value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression [Ausdrucksweise], the ›form of appearance‹ [Erscheinungsform], of a content distinguishable from it« (C1: 127). This content is average or abstract human labor, the amount of which – measured in the hours of labor-time – actually constitutes the value of the objects that it produces. Labor, in the capitalist mode of production – and only, of course, in precisely this mode of production – is the creative source of value. Closer inspection has therefore revealed, then, that the commodity is not essentially split between its use-value and its exchange value, but instead between its use-value and its value, with the latter being both formed by labor and conventionally represented by the »form of appearance« of exchange-value. There is a discrepancy, we might say, between the form and that which forms. The twofold character of the commodity (its division between use-value and value) is concealed by the existence of a third term (exchange-value). Now, in what Marx calls the »social metabolism« (C1: 198) of the simple exchange and circulation of commodities as objects – the only thing that really concerns him in this first section of Das Kapital – the effects of this concealment cannot be considered to be of any great significance. Why? Because in the process of this circulation any real and consistent discrepancy between exchange-value and value remains a merely latent possibility. As we will see in a few moments, the only thing that can produce such a fundamental discrepancy is an interaction between use-value and value or, more 31 One could mention any number of texts here, but perhaps the most perniciously influential in this sense has been Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx. See Derrida (1994), especially 147–76.

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specifically, between the very particular use-value of human labor – human subjectivity  – and the value that it creates over and above its own exchange-value, its price as the commodity of labor-power. Obviously, in the mere exchange and circulation of commodities as objects – the subject not yet having been included – no such interaction takes place. Use-value and value (in its »form of appearance« as exchange-value) have here nothing to do with one another. Marx’s basic formula for this simple circulation is C-M-C: a commodity is exchanged for money and, in turn, this money is re-exchanged for another commodity; and so on and so forth, ad infinitum. The particular use-value of commodities is undoubtedly an indispensable factor of this process and, indeed, its very motivating force; for in the absence of it there would be no need for commodities in the first place. This necessity should not be allowed to distract us, however, from the fact that the particularity of use-value in no way enters into the correct, and purely »formal«, description of the process itself; for this is exclusively a process of the interaction of exchange-values (once again, of course, as the »forms of appearance« of values). As Marx himself says, in a famous piece of ventriloquism: »[i]f commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest men, but it does not belong to us as objects. What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value. Our own intercourse as commodities proves it. We relate to each other merely as exchange-values« (C1: 176–7). It is (exchange) value, irrespective of the particular use-value acting as its inevitable »bearer« (Träger), that fundamentally describes the movement traversing the formula C-M-C. Money replaces commodities, and commodities money, because each functions as the possessor of an equivalent value. The process of the circulation of commodities as objects is essentially metonymic: (exchange) value follows (exchange) value in an apparently endless series.

M-C-M´: the Symptom of Surplus-Value… Everything changes, however, when in the absolutely seminal second part of Das Kapital, »The Transformation of Money into Capital«, Marx slowly starts to turn away from this sphere of simple circulation. What is it that compels this turning? Nothing less, we might say, than

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the extrusion of a symptomatic excess. Marx begins by comparing the process of the simple circulation of commodities with the, at first, only formally distinct process of the circulation of capital. The formula C-M-C, as we have seen, describes the first process; the second is encapsulated by the precise inversion of these three terms: M-CM. In the first case, commodities are sold for money, which is then used to purchase other commodities; in the second case, money buys commodities, which are then (apparently) resold in order to recoup what was originally advanced in the first place: money again. There is, as Marx says, »a reflux of money to its starting-point« (C1: 250). The purpose of the first process, recapitulating what we have already said, is the consumption of use-value; commodities are bought and sold because there is a concrete need for them. The purpose of the second process, by contrast, is the abstract realization of exchangevalue; money purchases commodities only in order to ensure its own ultimate reappearance. Now, as Marx quite crucially points out, this reappearance would be »absurd«, »empty«, »purposeless« and »tautological« (C1: 248; 250–1) if it only served to recoup and repeat the original sum of money prospectively advanced. The only thing that can motivate the circulation of money as capital is the production of an »increment«, an »excess«, which Marx famously denominates as »surplus-value« (C1: 251). The proper formula for capital is not, then, merely M-C-M, but instead M-C-M´ (where M´ serves to designate the production of a surplus). The formal difference between the process of the simple circulation of commodities (C-M-C) and the process of the circulation of capital (M-C-M) is revealed to presuppose the inextirpable suggestion of a fundamental difference of content (M´). A symptom, then, is seen to extrude, the index of a hidden content, and the whole difficulty confronting Marx concerns the possibility of its decipherment. For the only thing that he has really succeeded in articulating so far, as the unexplained basis of this symptom, is the »form of circulation within which money is transformed into capital« (C1: 258). This form, however, precisely because it produces the surplus of the symptom, has to be said to »contradict […] all the previously developed laws bearing on the nature of commodities, value, money and even circulation itself. What distinguished this form from that of the simple circulation of commodities is the inverted order of succession of the two antithetical processes, sale and purchase.

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How can this purely formal distinction change the nature of these processes, as if by magic?« (C1: 258) Or, paraphrasing slightly: how can an apparently purely formal difference both presuppose as its purpose and produce as its consequence the ineradicable suggestion of a substantial difference in content, surplus-value (M´)? Any attempt to answer this question must first of all recognize that the purely formal »inversion of the order of succession« referred to here (from C-M-C to M-C-M´) cannot in itself – in the absence of a proper explanation of its increment – be considered to carry us outside the sphere of the simple circulation of commodities (for the second half of the second formula is, in appearance, that is, ignoring the unexplained excess that adorns it, the exact equivalent of the first half of the first; and, more simply, for in this case there is not even an excess to explain, vice versa: C-M=C-M and M-C=M-C, wherever each couple is located within the two chains of circulation). If the circulation of capital has not yet, then, been definitively shown to depart from the simple circulation of commodities, perhaps it is this second circulation itself, Marx rhetorically inquires, that can actually be seen to produce the defining characteristic of the first, surplusvalue? Can form not magically give rise to the symptomatic suggestion of its own new content? Marx’s answer, unsurprisingly, is resoundingly negative. The simple exchange and circulation of commodities as objects, whether we are concerned here with the pure form of the exchange of equivalents or the impure form of the exchange of non-equivalents, can never be seen to give body to an increment in value. When equivalents are exchanged this is absolutely clear. For, as we have already seen, this process of exchange is purely formal (the »content« of usevalue is certainly essential to it, but it in no way enters into the fundamental character of the process itself). The only thing that occurs in the exchange of equivalents is a transformation of the form of commodities. An equal amount of value, of embodied human labor (represented, of course, by its »form of appearance« of exchangevalue), appears first as a commodity, then as the money that it is sold for, and then again as a second commodity that this money is used to buy. This simple metamorphosis of form presupposes no increase in value. The same is true of the exchange of non-equivalents, even if we are presented here with a superficial complexity. A commodity-owner sells his commodities for more than they are

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worth, and therefore seems to create surplus-value. But this seller of commodities must in turn become a buyer, and what prevents the other commodity-owners from selling to him at an equally extortionate rate? Nothing, of course, and when they do this the apparent creation of a surplus will be consistently leveled out. A situation in which every commodity sells above (or, for that matter, below) its value is practically the same as one in which all commodities are purchased at their real value. In neither case is a surplus produced. What if one commodity-owner, however, succeeds in selling too dear and the others, for some reason, fail to react? Again, the result is the same. For although our ingenious commodity-owner may well have received more value than his competitors, the total amount of value in circulation will not have changed. Selling too dearly in this way is tantamount to stealing, and stealing certainly does not create a surplus, but instead only a local redistribution of the value already in existence. »However much we twist and turn«, Marx deduces, »the final conclusion remains the same. If equivalents are exchanged, no surplus-value results, and if non-equivalents are exchanged, we still have no surplus-value. Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, creates no value« (C1: 266). If form cannot create (the symptom of a) content, then, if circulation cannot produce surplus-value, perhaps content acts independently of form, perhaps surplus-value is produced entirely outside the sphere of circulation? This too, Marx contends, is impossible. For the only thing that the commodity-owner possesses, outside of this sphere, is his own commodity. This commodity contains, in its value, a certain amount of the commodity-owner’s own labor. But, as Marx emphasizes, this labor »does not receive a double representation« (C1: 268). It cannot be counted once in terms of its value and then once again in terms of a surplus or excess over and above this original amount. Although the labor of the commodity-owner, taken by itself, can certainly create value, it certainly cannot create value that adds more value to itself. If I turn leather into boots, for example, my labor has given rise to value, for the boots are undoubtedly worth more than the leather (and precisely because they contain a greater quantity of labor). The value of the leather, however, has not in itself increased, that is, my labor has in no way annexed surplus-value to it. The pure content of labor, extraneous to the formal sphere of circulation, is clearly incapable of producing any symptomatic excess.

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The terms of the difficulty confronting Marx are, then, irrevocably set. If neither form nor content, when taken in isolation, can bring about the extrusion of a surplus, this surplus has to be seen to result instead from a combination and coupling of the two sides. If surplusvalue is to be produced, form and content, circulation and its other, its »outside«, need to cross and overlap: »Capital cannot […] arise from circulation, and it is equally impossible for it to arise apart from circulation. It must have its origin both in circulation and not in circulation […] We therefore have a double result [ein doppeltes Resultat] […] The transformation of money into capital has to be developed on the basis of the immanent laws of the exchange of commodities, in such a way that the starting-point is the exchange of equivalents. The money-owner, who is as yet only a capitalist in larval form, must buy his commodities at their value, sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at the beginning. His emergence as a butterfly must, and yet must not, take place in the sphere of circulation. These are the conditions of the problem. Hic Rhodus, hic salta!«(C1: 268–9)

Marx’s solution to this problem constitutes, without the shadow of a doubt, his most considerable achievement. If we take up, once again, the basic formula for the circulation of capital (M-C-M´), it should be clear that the ultimate increment in value (M´) can in no way be produced either by the money originally advanced (M) (for this only »realizes« (C1: 270), in Marx’s own words, the price of the commodity that it purchases) nor by the final resale of the central commodity (C-M´) (for this only converts the commodity back into its monetary form). In the absence of these two possibilities, the increase must instead be seen to arise within the commodity that is originally purchased (M-C). This commodity, like all commodities, is a »twofold thing«: it possesses a value and a use-value. Obviously, its value cannot give rise to new value, for what we are concerned with here is the exchange of equivalents. This leaves, then, only one possibility: surplus-value has to be created through the consumption of the commodity’s use-value. And for this to happen: »our friend the money-owner must be lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose use-value

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possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification [Vergegenständ­ lichung] of labour, hence a creation of value. The possessor of money does find such a special commodity on the market: the capacity for labour [Ar­beitsvermögen], in other words labour-power [Arbeitskraft] […] We mean by labour-power, or labour-capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind.« (C1: 270)

We will ignore here the historical conditions of the appearance of this particular commodity, and focus instead on the process that capital goes through once it has been definitively constituted by this appearance.32 The trajectory of this process is described by the subtle interaction of three terms (each of which now takes on a different aspect than in the simple circulation of commodities): exchangevalue (labor-power), use-value (labor) and value (in its specific form as surplus). This trajectory begins when labor is effectively divided from itself, or doubled, by means of its representation in accordance with the exchange-value of the commodity of labor-power. In this second form, labor only appears as a »capacity«, as a »power« in the precise sense of a potentiality. It is only this potentiality that can be commodified, given an (exchange) value, for – as we will see in greater detail below – it is meaningless to speak of the value of labor itself. The »value« of labor (for the capitalist, of course) is not its exchange-value but its use-value, its capacity to create value through its own consumption. Labor is valueless because, in the capitalist

32 We obviously cannot enter into here the thorny historical question of the origins of capitalism. But it perhaps suffices to say that, in our view at least, the most compelling account of these origins – the only account that does not in some way presuppose the existence of capitalism in order to then go on to explain its historical emergence – can be found in Robert Brenner’s two articles »Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe« and »The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism«. See T. H. Aston and C. H. E. Philpin eds. (1985), 10–63 and 213–327. For a very useful overview of Brenner’s account, and of its superiority to its numerous alternatives, see Meiksins Wood (2002). Brenner’s work is of course indebted to Marx’s own preliminary investigations of the origins of capitalism in the final part of volume 1 of Das Kapital, »So-Called Primitive Accumulation« (C1: 871–940).

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mode of production, it is the »source of value«. It can only act as the source of surplus-value, however, to the extent that it has already been divided from itself in the first place. The trajectory of the capitalist process completes itself by actualizing labor’s potentiality. Or, as Marx himself later says: »[t]he use of labour-power is labour itself. The purchaser of labour-power consumes it by setting the seller of it to work. By working, the latter becomes in actuality what previously he only was potentially, namely labour-power in action, a worker« (C1: 283). The particular use-value of human labor now works to produce more value. And the crucial thing to understand is that this »more« can only acquire consistency when it is measured in relation to the original exchange-value of the commodity of labor-power. Surplus-value is only created because the potentiality of labor is split apart from its actuality, because the actual labor of the (proletarian) subject brings forth a greater value than it originally cost (the capitalist) as the commodity of labor-power. If, in the simple circulation of commodities, value and exchange-value were fundamentally homologous, then now, given their place in the circulation of capital, they begin to experience the profundity of a divorce; the »form of appearance« of value falls away from the real determinations underlying it.

…and the Metonymic-Metaphoric… We want to emphasize here two things with regard to this specifically capitalist process. Firstly – as we have been prospectively suggesting throughout this section – its structure has to be understood not only as metonymic, but instead as both metonymic and metaphoric. In the simple exchange and circulation of commodities – an exclusively metonymic process, as has already been made clear – the two levels of (exchange) value and use-value remain fundamentally set apart. The continuous sliding of (exchange) values follows its course irrespectively of the particular use-values that »bear« it, that function as its »Träger«. In the circulation of capital, by contrast, there is an interpenetration of these two formerly separate spheres. The particular use-value of human-labor plays its role here as the creator of (surplus) value. What is it, however, that allows for this interpenetration? Nothing less, we want to claim, than a metaphori-

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cal substitution that presupposes as its basis that very metonymic logic of exchange and circulation that we have already seen to be set in place. What is the nature of this substitution? When the potentiality of labor is sifted out from its actuality, an essentially valueless phenomenon (labor, the source of value) does in fact come to possess (only as labor-power, of course, the capacity to labor) a value. Labor (in its form as labor-power) is a commodity like all others. It enters, under the halo of exchange-value, into the simple metonymic circuit of exchange and circulation. The metaphoric identification that begins the process of capital is, then, the identification of labor (power) and (exchange) value. Like all such identifications (for every metaphor presupposes its own conditions of impossibility) this one too is condemned to fail. But this can hardly be said to constitute a problem, because the very completion of the capitalist process precisely and crucially depends upon it. It is only because the identification falters, because labor both does and does not have a value (as potentiality and actuality, respectively, labor-power and labor proper) that surplus-value can actually be produced. Real labor can only create value when it has first been counted as the capacity of labor-power. In Das Kapital, the only thing that Marx chooses to stress as regards this metonymic/metaphoric process is a certain paradoxicality. That is, although the metaphoric identification of labor (power) and (exchange) value certainly presupposes the prior existence of the metonymic sphere of the simple exchange and circulation of commodities, this sphere is only itself rendered »universal«, as Marx puts it, by means of this very identification. The »universality« of metonymy presupposes a metonymic/metaphoric exception, for it is only this consistent exceptionality that can continue to »universally« motivate exchange and circulation (naturally, under the watchful eye of the capitalist) as the production of surplus-value. In Marx’s own words (and shifting the perspective to the position of the laborer, something which we will shortly see to involve immense consequences): »[t]he capitalist epoch is […] characterized by the fact that labour-power, in the eyes of the worker himself, takes on the form of a commodity which is his property; his labour consequently takes on the form of wage-labour. On the other hand, it is only from this moment that the commodity-form of the products of labour becomes universal« (C1: 274n). Or again, this time in »Results of the Immedi-

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ate Process of Production«:33 »[o]nly on the basis of capitalist production does the commodity actually become the universal elementary form of wealth« (RIPP: 951).

…Production of the (Proletarian) Subject The second thing that we want to emphasize with respect to this particular, metonymic/metaphoric process of capitalism – and here we start to approach the apogee of this whole reconstruction of Marx’s thought  – is that it essentially includes and, moreover, fundamentally constitutes, a subject. The »bearer«, the »Träger«, of the simple exchange and circulation of commodities was the specific use-value of various objects. As we have seen, this use-value in no way interferes with the metonymic shifting of (exchange) values. The »Träger« of the circulation of capital, by contrast, is the very specific use-value of the human subject itself. The use-value of this subject is its labor, which »possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value«. When the subject acts as the »Träger« of the exchange-value of the commodity-form, use-value and value can interact in order to produce a surplus. This is certainly, then, the moment to discuss Marx’s (in)famous conception of the subject as a »Träger«. In the preface to the first edition of Das Kapital, he lets us know the following: »individuals are dealt with here only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, the bearers [Träger] of particular classrelations and interests. My standpoint, from which the development of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he remains, socially speaking, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.« (C1: 92)

Typically, this standpoint is dismissed as the crux of Marx’s socalled »economic essentialism«.34 The wealth of subjective life, so the 33 The planned seventh part of the first volume of Das Kapital, that was only published for the first time – in Russian and German – in 1933. 34 The work of Althusser (and Balibar) constitutes a clear exception here,

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argument goes, is unjustifiably reduced to the hard determinations of capital and class. In direct contradistinction to this claim, what we want to argue here is that Marx’s conception of the »Träger« implicitly contains a profound (or, if you like, non-reductive) theorization of the production – in both senses of this word – of the (proletarian) subject of capital. At its most basic level, this conception finally fulfills the fragmentary claim that we have already seen Marx make in the »Theses on Feuerbach«: »[i]n its reality [the human essence] is the ensemble of the social relations.« The subject, the »individual«, can no longer be separated from the object or, more specifically, from »social relations«, because it is itself essentially constituted by them, their »creature«. Much more importantly, however, the specific subject constituted by the capitalist mode of production, the specific »Träger« of its social relations, is very far from being a simple phenomenon. It has to be comprehended, rather – and this time, as we will see, Marx’s terms are absolutely compelling  – as being split, divided or doubled or, even better, knotted, across the two conflicting registers of the imaginary and the real. As a particular, that is, historically specific, social or symbolic order, capitalism continually divides the (proletarian) subject between its real or actual labor and the imaginary value that this labor has when it is counted as or, more properly, reduced to the commodity of labor-power. Capitalism is nothing more, we might say, than the apparently infinite, social or symbolic knotting of this division; it possesses the characteristics of a Borromean knot.

The Real of Labor and its Tendential Imaginarization It is the labor of the (proletarian) subject, then, that inescapably constitutes the real of capital.35 Why? Firstly, because it is only the real-

taking seriously, as it does, Marx’s concept of the »Träger«. See Althusser and Balibar (1970), 207–8, 232–3, 252–3. Unfortunately, however, this concept is made to fit into that absolute separation between the real and the imaginary that we have already diagnosed. 35 It will hopefully become clear, in section 2.2 of chapter II below, that labor constitutes the real of every mode of production, but that it is treated very differently in pre-capitalist modes than in capitalism itself.

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ity, the actuality, of this labor, as opposed to its potentiality (laborpower), that is actually capable of producing value (once it has been counted, of course, as a commodity). And secondly, because, as the source of value, the reality of this labor is fundamentally valueless or, as Marx implicitly claims, non-imaginary. It is as meaningful to talk of the value of labor, Marx points out in volume 3 of Das Kapital, as it is to talk of a »yellow logarithm« (C3: 957). Or, a little less succinctly, and returning to volume 1: »[l]abour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but it has no value itself […] In the expression ›value of labour‹, the concept of value is not only completely extinguished, but inverted, so that it becomes its contrary. It is an expression as imaginary as the value of the earth« (C1: 677). Engels is only elucidating Marx’s position when, in his preface to volume 2, he tells us that »[i]t is not […] labour that has a value. Labour, as value-creating activity, can just as little have a particular value as heaviness can have a particular weight, heat a particular temperature, or electricity a particular intensity of current. It is not labour that is bought and sold as a commodity, but rather labourpower« (C2: 101). But if the labor of the (proletarian) subject irrevocably constitutes the real of capitalism, the whole problem with this mode of production is that, in its »form of appearance« (Erscheinungsform), this real imaginarily tends to disappear. How? In the circulation of capital (M-C-M´), money purchases commodities in order to produce more money. This surplus is only produced, however, because the central commodity (C) – the (proletarian) subject – is itself divided in two (or, more precisely, divided between its existence and its nonexistence as a commodity). It – the subject – has an exchange-value, the price of the commodity of labor-power (determined like the price of every other commodity) and a use-value, the specific usevalue that subjective human labor possesses as the creative source of value. The difficulty that concerns us here arises because, in the network of monetary signifiers that represent this movement of capital, the division of the commodity  – and hence of the subject that it (fails to) contain(s) – simply does not appear in its specificity. It only appears, that is, as a symptomatic excess, surplus-value (M´). Because the labor of the (proletarian) subject, as we have already seen Marx stress in a slightly different context, »does not receive a double representation«, it only appears as the price of the commodity

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of labor-power. The metaphoric process of the circulation of capital, precisely because it depends in its content on the metonymic process of exchange and circulation, is effectively swallowed – at least at the level of representation – by the latter. The only thing that is represented in the circulation of capital is a change in the form of money. It is money that begins the process, money that temporarily transforms itself into a commodity, and money that reemerges (with a symptomatic increment) at the end. Although the whole movement of capitalism is motivated by the hidden cause of this symptom, it appears as if it is money itself that keeps the ball rolling. Marx invents a variety of ways of describing this imaginary concealment of the real. In the »spiral« (C1: 727), the »perpetuum mobile« (C1: 227), of the circulation of capital, he claims, the money originally advanced is a »vanishing quantity (magnitudo evanescens)« (C1: 734). If, in the process of this circulation, £100 becomes £110, there is no »qualitative« (C1: 252) difference between these two amounts. One cannot smell the difference or, more importantly, the difference in origin, between two sums of money: »[s]ince every commodity disappears when it becomes money it is impossible to tell from the money itself how it got into the hands of its possessor, or what article has been changed into it. Non olet, from whatever source it may come« (C1: 205). Nor will our sight be able to assist us: »[f]rom the mere look of a piece of money, we cannot tell what breed of commodity has been transformed into it. In their money-form all commodities look alike. Hence money may be dirt, although dirt is not money« (C1: 204). Or, similarly: »[s]ince money is the transformed shape of the commodity it does not reveal what has been transformed into it: whether conscience or virginity or horse dung« (RIPP: 1073). The important thing to bear in mind here, however, is the fundamental – and specifically capitalist – logic of this imaginary elision of the real. It is only because the labor of the (proletarian) subject is represented by the price of the commodity of labor-power that the »imaginary« can first be imagined to cover the real. The price of the commodity of labor-power is not in itself, that is, imaginary (indeed, in the capitalist mode of production, labor-power really does possess a value). What is imaginary is the »idea« (much more coherently conceived as the consequence of a recurrent practice) that this value represents the value of labor. It is because labor (the real)

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and labor-power are imaginarily identified that »[e]vents which take place outside the sphere of circulation, in the interval between buying and selling«, are not seen to »affect the form of [the] movement [of capital]« (C1: 256). It is only this particular imaginarization of the real that explains the significance of the »elimination of every unwelcome sign, all potentially confusing evidence of the actual process of production« (RIPP: 976).

The Separation of the »Economic« is the Separation of the »Economic« and the »Political« Within the capitalist mode of production, then, and within, of course, the (proletarian) subject necessarily presupposed by this specific social form, there is an undeniable tendency for the real to lose itself in the hardenings and encrustations of the imaginary. We ought to point out here that the thematization of this tendency allows us to resolve a difficulty that we first confronted in section 1 above; and the implications of which we continued to grapple with in section 2. This is the problem of providing a convincing account of the specifically capitalist separation of the economic and the political; an account that refuses to get stuck in the methodological and philosophical dead-end of economic »base« and ideological »superstructure«. As we suggested in section 1, this separation can only be satisfactorily explained when it is seen to presuppose a more fundamental separation already existing at the level of the »social« or »economic« itself (which it is then, in turn, seen to both supplement and reinforce). We can now see exactly what this separation is. It is the separation, the splitting, division or doubling, of the (proletarian) subject between the interacting, or knotted, spheres of the imaginary (laborpower) and the real (labor). And it is one side of this separation, the imaginary side (labor-power), that is repeated and reinforced in the capitalist separation between the economic and the political. Or, more precisely – and once again avoiding the suggestion that laborpower is in itself an imaginary factor – it is only the imaginary identification (itself the result of a real practice) of labor and labor-power that can genetically explain the production of imaginary (but also, in their conditions and effects, very practically real) political »ideas«.

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As Marx unsurpassably argues, in a passage we have already (in sections 1 and 2) referred to: »The sphere of circulation or commodity exchange, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, let us say of labour-power, are determined only by their own free will. They contract as free persons, who are equal before the law. Their contract is the final result in which their joint will finds a common legal expression. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to his own advantage. The only force bringing them together, and putting them into relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interest of each. Each pays heed to himself only, and no one worries about the others. And precisely for that reason, either in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an omniscient providence, they all work together for their mutual advantage, for the common weal, and in the common interest.« (C1: 280)

It is the »social« or »economic« sphere of exchange and circulation, of the sale and purchase of labor-power (appearing, of course, as the sale and purchase of labor), that gives rise to and is, in turn, reinforced by the »political« ideas of »Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham«. There is no question here of a fruitless architectonic of »economic« base and »ideological« political superstructure.36 Firstly, because the »economy« is not just an economy. It is, rather, a particular, historically specific, social or symbolic mode of production (for in no other mode of production has the working subject been divided between its labor and its labor-power or, presupposing their identification, between the imaginary and the real). Secondly, because the »political ideas« under discussion here are neither merely politi36 Although, as we have already seen, Marx himself continues to contradictorily appeal to such an architectonic by quoting in a footnote from his own earlier 1859 »Preface«.

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cal nor merely ideas. They are, rather, inherent in the practical and economic reality of one side of the capitalist mode of production. It is only because labor is imaginarily identified with labor-power that, under the purifying light of the political ideas of »Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham«, a common refrain can sound: »›everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds‹« (C1: 302). Having explained how the capitalist mode of production tends to imaginarily cover over (at the same time as it presupposes and produces) the real labor, the real division, of the (proletarian) subject, we can now try to deepen our understanding of this division’s knotted and continuously knotting logic. In order to do this, we will interrogate two rather misleading tropes that Marx consistently takes recourse to in Das Kapital (and other more or less contemporaneous texts). Firstly, we will consider the comparison he often draws between his own discovery of the process of production of surplusvalue and the supposedly similar procedures of science. Secondly, and more importantly, we will both question and ultimately complicate Marx’s famous, but all too frequently misunderstood, descriptions of the character of commodity-fetishism.

The Critique of Political Economy is not a Science On a number of occasions, Marx implicitly defines his discovery of the division of the (proletarian) subject as »scientific«. In the continuation of a passage cited above, where Marx is stating that the expression the »value of labor« is purely »imaginary«, he also contends that »[t]hese imaginary expressions arise, nevertheless, from the relations of production themselves. They are categories for the forms of appearance of essential relations. That in their appearance things are often presented in an inverted way is something fairly familiar in every science, apart from political economy« (C1: 677). Or, once again, a little later: »what is true of all forms of appearance and their hidden background is also true of the form of appearance ›value and price of labour‹, or ›wages‹, as contrasted with the essential relation manifested in it, namely the value and price of labour-power. The forms of appearance are reproduced directly and spontaneously, as current and usual modes of thought; the essential relation must first be discovered by science« (C1: 682). Finally, in Wages, Price and

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Profit, a short text published two years before the first volume of Das Kapital, Marx says the following about the fact that the production of surplus-value fundamentally obeys the logic of the exchange of equivalently priced commodities: »[t]his seems paradox and contrary to everyday observation. It is also paradox that the earth moves round the sun, and that water consists of two […] gases. Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the elusive appearance of things« (WPP: 92). In all three of these cases, Marx conceives his procedure as scientific because it involves a shift from the mistaken level of everyday appearance to the truthful level of a fundamental and essential reality. In the first two cases, it appears as if labor possesses a value; in essence, however, it is labor-power that has a value, and labor itself is revealed to be fundamentally valueless. In the third case, it appears paradoxical that surplus-value is produced without transgressing the logic of the exchange of equivalents; but this is only because it is mistakenly assumed, once again, that the commodity actually being exchanged as an equivalent is labor itself, and not, as is in fact the case, the commodity of labor-power. In a purely formal sense, Marx’s equation of his procedure with the procedures of science is, of course, correct. Marx certainly does reveal that, even if it appears to the (proletarian) subject that he is being paid for his labor, he is in fact, that is, essentially, being paid for the commodity of his labor-power. This is indisputable, and it is not what we want to call into question here. What we want to question are the potentially misleading consequences of a literal identification of Marx’s analysis with the particular inexorability of scientific terms.37 What, then, is the fundamental difference between the two types of procedure? In the procedure of the real or »hard« sciences, we might say, the shift from the level of appearance to the level of essence is purely and simply a question of knowledge. Once we know that the earth moves around the sun, or that water is composed of two gases, we know it, so to say. Nobody, that is (if we ignore the rather insignificant exceptions), thinks otherwise and, much more importantly in this context, nothing compels them to do so. Even if it 37 This should be understood, of course, as a critique of all those thinkers – from Engels to Stalin to Althusser – who have attempted to carry out such a literal identification.

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still appears to us as if the sun goes around the earth, or that water is not composed of two gases, this appearance in no way interferes with our essential knowledge (after all, it is quite possible to drink a glass of »everyday« water in the full awareness that one is imbibing a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen). Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the capitalist mode of production. For even if some people (Marxists, let us say) know that it is not labor that has a value, but instead the commodity of laborpower, this knowledge in no way simply prohibits the continual and practical emergence and re-emergence of the former appearance  – which this time crucially conceals and contradicts the essential reality itself. In capitalism, that is, the (proletarian) subject (on literal pain of survival) is continuously compelled to labor on the condition that it is first prepared to sell the commodity of its labor-power. It is continuously compelled to divide itself, we can say, as a subject. Now, in spite of this division, the subject knows two things: firstly, that it works (for who is going to deny this?); and secondly, that at the end of the week (or whenever) it receives a certain amount of money. It is only natural to assume, then, that the money is provided for the work; but this is not, as we have seen, the case. Capitalism has to be seen to presuppose a certain practical compulsion of the transformation of knowledge into non-knowledge, of the imaginarization of the real. It is precisely because the laborer knows that he works, and knows that he is paid, that he does not know (at least not necessarily) that he is paid for the commodity of his laborpower. Capitalism both continually divides the subject between the (potentially) imaginary and the real and (by activating this imaginary potentiality; by appearing to identify labor and labor-power) binds and knots it across these two conflicting registers. The »level« of essence always simultaneously and practically produces or, more correctly, is inextricably bound up with, that very »level« of appearance that consistently disguises its own operations. As long as the circulation of capital persists, this practical (and, in this sense, very »real«) appearance will be maintained, irrespective of the theoretical demonstration of its essential untruth. At two points in Das Kapital, Marx shows himself to be extremely sensitive to this rather thorny problematic, and thus implicitly starts to deconstruct the strict »scientificity« of his own analytic procedure. On the first occasion, Marx criticizes the naïve Enlightenment idea

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that value is a simple »imaginary« symbol: »if it is declared that the social characteristics assumed by material objects, or the material characteristics assumed by the social determinations of labour on the basis of a definite mode of production, are mere symbols, then it is also declared, at the same time, that these characteristics are the arbitrary product of human reflection. This was the kind of explanation favored by the eighteenth century: in this way the Enlightenment endeavored, at least temporarily, to remove the appearance of strangeness from the mysterious shapes assumed by human relations whose origins they were unable to decipher« (C1: 185–6). Imaginary »appearances« cannot be straightforwardly peeled off from the real, for they are themselves, and just as much as this real, the practical (and not merely »reflective«) result of social and economic reality. Similarly, in Marx’s second example, the »scientific« (for Marx still uses this word, even as he decomposes its strict presuppositions) decipherment of a social hieroglyphic in no way affects the continuing social inscription of its objective reality: »Value […] does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, men try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of their own social product: for the characteristic which objects of utility have of being values is as much men’s social product as is their language. The belated scientific discovery that the products of labour, in so far as they are values, are merely the material expressions of the human labour expended to produce them, marks an epoch in the history of mankind’s development, but by no means banishes the semblance of objectivity possessed by the social characteristics of labour. Something which is only valid for this particular form of production […] [the fact that labor appears to have a value, we can add, slightly modifying Marx’s argument] appears to those caught up in the relations of commodity production (and this is true both before and after the above-mentioned scientific discovery) to be just as ultimately valid as the fact that the scientific dissection of the air into its component parts left the atmosphere itself unaltered in its physical configuration.« (C1: 167)

Marx’s final comparison is once again somewhat misplaced. For what he has just shown (especially if our slight modification is

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accepted) is that in the capitalist mode of production appearance conceals essence, that is, does not just exist alongside it, even when it has been »scientifically« dissolved. And this is certainly not true of the properly scientific example that Marx here gives.

The Confusions of Commodity-Fetishism… In the (proletarian) subject of capitalism, then, the real is continually and practically, that is, socially and symbolically, knotted and bound up with its imaginary appearances (which are much more, of course, as the product of social reality, than mere »appearances«). As a particular social or symbolic order, or mode of production, capitalism continuously constitutes and reconstitutes a (proletarian) subject folded across these two opposing registers. We can further develop our comprehension of this peculiar logic of knotting and folding by turning our attention to Marx’s extremely famous, but also extremely misleading, section »The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret« (C1: 163–77). The first thing that strikes us about this section of Das Kapital is that it is situated before Marx’s uncovering of the very specific characteristics of the circulation of capital; before, that is, his demonstration of the fact that capitalism is constituted, as a particular mode of production, by the inclusion (and production) of the (proletarian) subject, by the availability on the market of the particular commodity of the subject’s labor-power. As a consequence of this, Marx’s discussion of commodity-fetishism is only and exclusively concerned with commodities as objects. The well-known example that he provides is that of a »table«, »an extremely obvious, trivial thing« (C1: 163) (»[c] ommodities are things« (C1: 178), Marx tells us a little later). There is »nothing mysterious«, he claims, about this table’s use-value; it »satisfies human needs« (C1: 178), we eat at it, drink at it, talk at it, whatever. Once the same table possesses an exchange-value, however, its character is absolutely transformed: »as soon as it emerges as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than if it were to begin dancing of its own free will« (C1: 163–4).

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It should be obvious – on the terms of our reconstruction so far – that these comments cannot be simply transferred to the commodity insofar as it is a subject. Firstly, of course, because Marx would not have to resort to prosopopoeia; the brains of subjects can evolve »grotesque ideas« all by themselves. But secondly, and much more importantly, because there undoubtedly is something »mysterious« about the use-value of the (proletarian) subject. As we have seen, this particular use-value creates surplus-value for the capitalist, as long as it has already been counted (as labor-power) by the exchange-value of the commodity-form. This »mystery« (this crisscrossing intersection of use-value, value and exchange-value) should already alert us to the fact that commodity-fetishism is going to be something very different when it concerns the subject than it is when it only concerns objects. And the whole problem with Marx’s analysis is that it stops seriously short of any explication, or even awareness, of this fundamental difference. Indeed – in complete indifference to what he will later point out about the subjective specificity of capitalism – Marx actually defines the logic of commodity-fetishism as a simple inversion of the subjective (or social) and the objective, the human and the thing-like: »The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists […] simply in the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men’s own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the socio-natural properties of these things. Hence it also reflects the social relation of the producers to the sum total of labour as a social relation between objects, a relation which exists apart from and outside the producers. Through this substitution, the products of labour become commodities, sensuous things which are at the same time suprasensible or social. In the same way, the impression made by a thing on the optic nerve is perceived not as a subjective excitation of that nerve but as the objective form of a thing outside the eye. In the act of seeing, of course, light is really transmitted from one thing, the external object, to another thing, the eye. It is a physical relation between physical things. As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material [dinglich] relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes

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here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.« (C1: 164–5)38

The fetishism of the commodity is conceived here in terms of the »objective« or »thing-like« aspect that »subjective« or »social« relations between people (»men«, »the human race«) acquire in any commodity-producing society. Marx is saying nothing specific, that is, about capitalist society (for such a society, as we have seen, is not constituted by the simple production of commodities, something which is common to many social forms, but instead by the inclusion (and simultaneous exclusion) of the subject within (and from) the logic of the commodity-form). We do not want to criticize Marx, then, by saying that his analysis of commodity-fetishism is false. As far as it goes, it is correct; it applies to every mode of production in which commodities are produced. But, to repeat, it tells us nothing about the particularity of capitalism, and in the context of Marx’s whole work – and, even more, of the reconstruction of it that we are advancing here – this certainly has to be considered to constitute a serious problem. Why? Because in the specifically capitalist mode of production it is impossible to speak of any simple inversion of the »subjective« or »social« and the »objective«, of the »human« or »personal« and the »thing-like«. Capitalism is constituted, as a particular social form, by the inclusion of the »subject« within the »objective« logic of the commodity-form, by the reduction of the supposed »humanity« or »personality« of this subject to the »thing-like« status of an exchange-value (the exchange-value of labor-power). This inclusion or reduction is not, of course, the whole story, because it can only produce surplus-

38 It is not, of course, a coincidence that Marx returns here to the Feuer­ bachian logic of the critique of religious alienation.

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value for the capitalist when something (labor) resists it – obviously, at the very same time as it succumbs to it (as labor-power). Capitalist »society« divides, folds and knots the (proletarian) subject, we might say, between and across an »objective« and »thing-like« aspect (the exchange-value of the commodity of labor-power) and a properly »subjective«, but hardly simply »human« or »personal«, quality or activity (the actual labor that it performs for the capitalist). Marx’s logic of commodity-fetishism, a simple inversion of the »subjective« and the »objective«, the »human« and the »thing-like«, is redoubled, that is, within the (proletarian) subject itself. The (proletarian) subject is produced by capitalism as an inextricably knotted subjectobject. There is a kind of »objectivity« inherent and inextirpable in the »subjectivity« of this subject. And the profound problem with this mode of production, as we have shown (and for the proletarians, of course, not for the capitalists), is that the real social activity of this subject (its labor) tends to be representatively swallowed up by its imaginary, but at the same time very practically »real«, »objectivity« (the commodity of its labor-power). If Marx defines capital as a »social relation between persons which is mediated through things« (C1: 932), we can add the crucial qualification, and there lies here a world of difference: »a social relation between persons [somehow produced as things] which is [itself] mediated through things.«

…and their Contradictory Consequences There is an ambiguity, then, not to say a potentially very serious lack and inadequacy, in Marx’s conceptualization of the logic of commodity-fetishism. The idea of a simple inversion of the »subjective« (or »social«) and the »objective«, the »human« and the »thing-like«, because it applies to every mode of production in which commodities are produced, fails to take account of that specific »objective« knotting of the subject that uniquely characterizes capitalism. Throughout Das Kapital, we want to claim in these concluding pages, this ambiguity, and possible inadequacy, has to be seen to give rise to a series of ambivalences and contradictions in Marx’s numerous thematizations of the nature of the proletarian subject. (Ambivalences, we ought to stress, which Marx never displays in his depictions of the capitalist. The capitalist subject is always, for Marx, nothing more

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than the »personification« (C1: 254), the »bearer« (Träger), of the relentless desire to produce and accumulate his own raison d’être, surplus-value; even if he is also, in a manner somewhat analogous to the proletarian, irredeemably divided from himself in his fetishistic failure or, more properly perhaps, self-interested refusal (and here he would somewhat differ from the worker), to comprehend and articulate the actual basis of this production.) More specifically, we can say that to the extent that Marx does not reflect upon the particularly capitalist characteristics of commodity-fetishism, the redoubling of its logic within the (proletarian) subject, he experiences the temptation to revert to some of the theoretical incoherencies that we have already seen to afflict his early and middle periods. When Marx fails to problematize the specifically capitalist knotting of the (proletarian) subject, he again starts to resort, that is, to the humanistic language of alienation or to the idea of a simple conflict and contradiction between the relations and forces of production. On the occasions that Marx conceives of commodity-fetishism in terms of a language of alienation, he tends to veer – as in his early writings, in fact – between granting to this term a purely technical meaning and, in addition, apportioning to it a whole host of stronger connotations. According to the technical meaning, which is indisputably correct, the (proletarian) subject alienates his labor to the capitalist; this labor, and its product, are the sole property of the latter. The problem – already hinted at in the long quotation on commodity-fetishism above – is that, a lot of the time, this purely technical meaning of the word gets inextricably entangled with its other, less philosophically innocent, associations; as, for instance, in the following passage from the »Results of the Immediate Process of Production«: »the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the producer […] Thus at the level of material production […] we find the same situation that we find in religion at the ideological level, namely the inversion of subject into object and vice versa […] What we are confronted by here is the alienation [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour. To that extent the worker stands on a higher plane than the capitalist from the outset, since the latter has his roots in the process of alienation and finds absolute satisfaction in it whereas right from the start the worker

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is a victim who confronts it as a rebel and experiences it as a process of enslavement.« (RIPP: 990)

It is hard to separate here the unobjectionable technical meaning of alienation – the rule of »the product over the producer«, »the alienation of man from his own labor«  – from its theoretically unsustainable, Feuerbachian-humanist inflection (something that we have already subjected to criticism in section 1). According to this inflection, what the inversion of commodity-fetishism alienates is »man« himself, a »living« being, an implicitly purely human (proletarian) subject who, precisely because he essentially exists outside, »on a higher plane« than, capital, can clearly and directly confront the simple »enslavement« that it imposes on him as a »victim« and a »rebel«. Marx most notably flirts with the notion of a straightforward contradiction between forces and relations of production in a very short and, perhaps because of its exceptionality, almost freestanding chapter of Das Kapital entitled »The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation« (C1: 927–30).39 We find here the following famous claims and predictions, actually quite rare in Marx, about the inevitably approaching end of the capitalist mode of production: »This […] is accomplished through the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist always strikes down many others. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, other developments take place on an ever-increasing scale, such as the growth of the co-operative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the planned exploitation of the soil, the transformation of the means of labour into forms in which they can only be used in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime. Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist 39 And it is certainly not a coincidence that Marx also flirts here, much more than in other parts of his text, with an unequivocally Hegelian language, the language of »antithesis«, »negation« and the »negation of the negation«.

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magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production which has flourished alongside and under it. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.« (C1: 929)

The »revolt of the working class« is blithely equated here  – in a strange return to those teleological assumptions that we have already shown to be indefensible in section 2 – with a virtually logical »incompatibility« between the »centralized« and, relatedly but much more importantly, »socialized« forces of production and the »private« capitalist relations of production that act as their fettering integument. We do not want to dwell here on the radically unsatisfactory character of these two re-appearing motifs; for we have already done this in our previous analyses. Instead, what we want to argue is that, at a number of other points in Das Kapital (and related works), Marx starts to call into question and, in fact, effectively demolishes, the presuppositions that support them both. At a more general level, Marx starts to interrogate the first motif when he suggests that the capitalist mode of production does not alienate the proletarian subject  – at least not in anything more than a technical sense  – but instead constitutes and produces it in what can only be described as a degraded form. (Marx’s various descriptions of this degradation, both mental and physical, are virtually omnipresent throughout his magnum opus, and they are well-known enough not to require here any detailed repetition.) He starts to interrogate the second motif when he suggests that collectivization and co-operation – the »centralization« and »socialization« of the passage quoted above – are not revolutionary forces of production that resist the capitalist relations of production, but instead characteristics that irrecusably pertain to nothing less than these relations of production themselves. »Being independent of each other«, Marx tells us, »the workers are isolated. They enter into relations with the capitalist, but not with each other.

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Their co-operation only begins with the labour process, but by then they have ceased to belong to themselves. On entering the labour process they are incorporated into capital. As co-operators, as members of a working organism, they merely form a particular mode of existence of capital. Hence the productive power developed by the worker socially is the productive power of capital. The socially productive power of labour develops as a free gift to capital whenever the workers are placed under certain conditions, and it is capital which places them under these conditions« (C1: 451). Marx’s words become even more pointed when he really begins to draw out the consequences of the specifically capitalist logic of commodity-fetishism, that is, following everything that we have already said in this section, of the specifically capitalist division of the (proletarian) subject. We can group these consequences, to conclude, under four main headings (and the relative brevity of our remarks will be justified by the re-elaboration that they receive in the ensuing sections). In the first place Marx shows how the division of the proletarian subject between its labor and the commodity of its labor-power, a division that tends to produce and reproduce itself – at least from the perspective of this subject – in the form of the disappearance of the former term under the ministrations of the latter, also corresponds, and once again from the point of view of this subject, to an elision of the fundamental difference between paid and unpaid, necessary and surplus labor. Indeed, Marx refers to these two things as the »double [zweierlei] consequence« of the specifically capitalist division of the subject. For if, on the one hand, »[t]he value or price of the labouring power takes the semblance of the price or value of labour itself, although, strictly speaking, value and price of labour are senseless terms«, then, on the other hand: »although one part of the workman’s daily labour is paid, while the other part is unpaid, and while that unpaid or surplus labour constitutes exactly the fund out of which surplus value or profit is formed, it seems as if the aggregate labour was paid labour […] This false appearance distinguishes wages labour from other historical forms of labour. On the basis of the wages system even the unpaid labour seems to be paid labour. With the slave, on the contrary, even that part of his labour which is paid appears to be unpaid. Of course, in order to work

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the slave must live, and one part of his working day goes to replace the value of his own maintenance. But since no bargain is struck between him and his master, and no acts of selling and buying are going on between the two parties, all his labour seems to be given away for nothing […] Take, on the other hand, the peasant serf, such as he, I might say, until yesterday existed in the whole East of Europe. This peasant worked, for example, three days for himself on his own field or the field allotted to him, and the three subsequent days he performed compulsory and gratuitous labour on the estate of his lord. Here, then, the paid and unpaid parts of labour were sensibly separated, separated in time and space; and our Liberals overflowed with moral indignation at the preposterous notion of making a man work for nothing […] In point of fact, however, whether a man works three days of the week for himself on his own field and three days for nothing on the estate of his lord, or whether he works on the factory or the workshop six hours daily for himself and six for his employer, comes to the same, although in the latter case the paid and unpaid portions of labour are inseparably mixed up with each other, and the nature of the whole transaction is completely masked by the intervention of a contract and the pay received at the end of the week. The gratuitous labour appears to be voluntarily given in the one instance, and to be compulsory in the other. That makes all the difference.« (WPP: 98–9)

In the final part of the following chapter, we will return to this essential demarcation between capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of production (and especially to the example that Marx provides here of the east European corvée), in order to show how it really is a demarcation that makes, in terms of the theorizations of the subject that it implies, »all the difference«. For the moment, however, it perhaps suffices to say – for this is also an issue that we will be returning to later on – that this elision of the distinction between paid and unpaid, necessary and surplus labor is effectively redoubled in capitalism by the further elision of the distinction between productive and individual consumption. (Productive consumption, Marx informs us, refers both to the means of production that are consumed by proletarian labor in order to produce surplus-value and to the consumption of this labor by the capitalist; individual consumption refers to those means of subsistence that the proletarian consumes with the money that he receives for the sale of the commodity of his labor-

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power (C1: 717–8).) In a nutshell, then, if the work of the proletarian subject is inevitably made up a combination and intermixture of the two ­inseparable »moments« of necessary and surplus labor, then so too are the commodities that are finally produced by this work. And, crucially – and speaking of course, as Marx reminds us, of the full »social scale« (C1: 717) of the capitalist mode of production – it is precisely these commodities that the proletariat consumes at the same time as it produces them or, in Marx’s own terms, that it individually consumes at the same time as it produces them through its productive consumption. The proletarian subject consumes, we might say – in an equally undifferentiated form – the very conditions of its own production. Secondly, Marx links the »appearance« of »voluntariness« described above to what it is only appropriate to call the »free« implication of the proletarian subject in the perpetuation of the conditions of its own subordination. Now, Marx of course famously defines this subject as being »free« in a »double sense [in dem Doppelsinn]«. That is, if, on the one hand, it is »free« to sell the commodity of its own laborpower, then, on the other hand, it is only »free« to do this because it has already been »freed« from the ownership of the means of production (C1: 271–3), rendered, in Marx’s shorthand designation, »vogelfrei« (C1: 896). This latter »freedom«  – which is naturally nothing more than a form of unfreedom – does nothing to override, however, the characteristics that are attached to the former (and which are certainly more difficult to describe in purely negative terms). For if we quickly run through the long list of attributes that Marx provides in Das Kapital, and also – and especially – in the »Results of the Immediate Process of Production«, we can see that this former sense effectively determines »the free worker« as »individual«, »independent«, »intensive« and »energetic«; as »self-controlled«, »responsible«, »diligent« and »skilled«; and as »talented«, »competitive«, »flexible« and »versatile« (the »fluidity« of the proletarian subject makes it fundamentally »indifferent«, Marx claims, to the »particular content« of its labor). All of these characteristics are essentially reinforced, moreover, by local and specific variations in the market price of laborpower – variations that can increase, within strictly defined limits, of course, the worker’s ability to do with his money what he sees fit – and by the fact that he is also »free«, as Marx succinctly puts

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it, to periodically »change masters« (C1: 697; 723–4; RIPP: 1013–4; 1031–4). Thirdly – and emphasizing now the inescapable inverse of all of these attributes; emphasizing, that is, the determination of the proletarian subject as »vogelfrei« – Marx also shows how the »freeing« of this subject from the ownership of the means of production must also be seen to imply what we can only refer to as a deprivation of its knowledge: »The knowledge, judgement and will which, even though to a small extent, are exercised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman, in the same way as the savage makes the whole art of war consist in the exercise of his personal cunning, are faculties now required only for the workshop as a whole. The possibility of an intelligent direction of production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the specialized workers is concentrated in the capital which confronts them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufacture that the worker is brought face to face with the intellectual potentialities [geistige Potenzen] of the material process of production as the property of another and as a power which rules over him. This process of separation starts in simple co-operation, where the capitalist represents to the individual workers the unity and the will of the whole body of social labour. It is developed in manufacture, which mutilates the worker, turning him into a fragment of himself. It is complemented in large-scale industry, which makes science a potentiality for production which is distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital.« (C1: 482)

The paradox, of course, is that this deprivation appears alongside all of those apparently contradictory definitions that we have given above. Fourthly and finally, we can effectively summarize everything that we have been saying here by pointing out – both following Marx’s own terms and introducing a new significance into them – that capitalism ultimately implies not only a »formal subsumption« of the working subject’s capacities, but also, and much more radically, their »real subsumption« (with this »real subsumption« entailing, moreover, nothing less than a subsumption of the real). Marx defines the »formal subsumption of labour under capital« in terms of the

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harnessing or appropriation by capitalism of the modes and methods of an essentially pre-capitalist kind of work; and he defines the »real subsumption of labour under capital« in terms of the penetration by capitalism into the very inner core of the processes of work. (The first phase corresponds roughly to the period of manufacture; the second to the permanent revolutionizing of production in the modern factory.) (RIPP: 1019–38) If we inflect Marx’s terms a little, however, then it is not too difficult to suggest that the first form of subsumption involves a harnessing or appropriation by capitalism of precisely that real knowledge that is still attached to the worker as a lingering consequence of his previous ownership of the means of production; and that the second kind of subsumption involves a deprivation  – and, in fact, as we have been arguing throughout this section, a tendential imaginarization – of this knowledge as the result of the coterminous deprivation of the ownership of the means of production, and of the thoroughgoing organization of the labor process according to the terms of this deprivation. It is exactly this real deprivation, then, we can conclude – or, more precisely perhaps, and as we will see more clearly in some of the sections that follow, this tendential deprivation of the real – that gets returned to the proletarian subject in his imaginary (but also, in its effects, also very real) sense of »freedom«. Or, as Marx himself puts it, »the isolated worker, the worker as ›free‹ seller of his labour-power, succumbs without resistance once capitalist production has reached a certain state of maturity« (C1: 412).40

40 Once one recognizes this, it becomes easier to understand why it is that perhaps the greatest study of worker’s resistance, E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, essentially corresponds to the period of »formal subsumption«. See Thompson (1991). For a fascinating discussion of this question, see also the short essay on Thompson in Anderson (2005), 177–87.

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II. From Freud to Lacan… and Back to Marx; or, How Psychoanalysis Slowly Discovers the Social

1. »The Nucleus of the Ego is Unconscious«: the Trauma of the Social in Freud’s Two Topographies In a very famous and very influential passage of Moses and Monotheism, Freud draws attention, with his characteristic élan, to that intricate and interweaving logic of Entstellung by means of which a text both symptomatically registers and, at the same time, symptomatically covers over the unmasterably traumatic core of its own motivation: »The text […] as we possess it […] will tell us enough about its own vicissitudes. Two mutually opposed treatments have left their traces on it. On the one hand it has been subjected to revisions which have falsified it in the sense of their secret aims, have mutilated it and amplified it and have even changed it into its reverse; on the other hand a solicitous piety has presided over it and has sought to preserve everything as it was, no matter whether it was consistent or contradicted itself. Thus almost everywhere noticeable gaps, disturbing repetitions and obvious contradictions have come about  – indications which reveal things to us which it was not intended to communicate. In its implications the distortion of a text resembles a murder: the difficulty is not in perpetrating the deed, but in getting rid of its traces. We might well lend the word ›Entstellung [distortion]‹ the double meaning to which it has a claim but of which to-day it makes no use. It should mean not only ›to change the appearance of something‹ but also ›to put something in another place, to displace‹. Accordingly, in many instances of textual distortion, we may nevertheless count upon finding what has been suppressed and disavowed hidden away somewhere else, though changed and torn from its context. Only it will not always be easy to recognize it.« (MM: 43)

Now, anybody who has made a serious attempt to work through the development of Freud’s metapsychology will be indisputably aware that the description advanced here turns, with an irony that is perhaps specific to the psychoanalytic domain, quite beautifully and quite cruelly back upon the very person doing the describing. On the justifiable proviso that we treat this development as a single

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»text«, that is, it too has to be seen to be dominated by the interlocking »traces«, the closely imbricated »vicissitudes«, of »two mutually opposed treatments«. In the first place, as we will see – and as a somewhat paradoxical result of the »solicitous piety« of Freud’s matchless intellectual integrity – this »text« is absolutely replete with »noticeable gaps«, »disturbing repetitions« and »obvious contradictions«, all of which certainly »reveal things to us« that they were »not intended to communicate«. A theoretical »murder« has undoubtedly been committed – perhaps even unbeknownst, we will suggest, to the author of the deed himself – but its effects keep rebounding and returning to disturb that equally theoretical tranquility that he so clearly is longing for. Something has been »changed«, »suppressed« and »disavowed«, but only in order that it might continually and repeatedly reappear elsewhere; very significantly, one supposes, »hidden away« and »torn« from its proper setting. All of these things, and of this we can be sure, »will not always be easy to recognize«. Not least, of course, because – in the second place  – this »text« is also thoroughly saturated by the »secret aims« of »revision«, »falsification«, »mutilation«, »amplification« and »reversal«; aims that have quite vainly, but nonetheless quite misleadingly, sought to drape a veil of consistency over and around an otherwise radically inconsistent core.

The Supposedly Seamless Narrative of the Development of Freud’s Metapsychology… We can begin, then, by trying to grasp the nature of this second logic – the logic of the falsely harmonizing imposition of consistency – first (for it is only after we have done this that we will be able to turn our attention to the much more interesting inconsistency that it attempts, and ultimately fails, of course, to conceal). In the particular domain that concerns us here, this logic is, we want to claim, the inescapable product of Freud’s massively overweening desire to present the development of his metapsychology as a development in the first place, that is, as something that smoothly and seamlessly progresses from a first and fundamentally inadequate psychical topography to a second, much more coherent and convincing one. The narrative of this development, which is fairly well-known, – in addition to being

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present in Freud’s own texts, it is rather slavishly and unthinkingly reproduced in every textbook introduction to his work – quite naturally tends to break itself down into three, apparently merely chronologically successive, stages: a before, an after, and in between, as we will see, a deceptively simple point of transition. These stages can be very schematically represented in the following terms (and even here there will be hints of the many obstacles to the putative smoothness of the narrative progression). Originally then, we are told, the fundamental hypotheses of psychoanalysis were theoretically grounded upon a relatively simple – and essentially twofold or dualistic1 – opposition between the consciousness of the ego2 and the contradictory and countervailing tendencies of a specifically unconscious thought. (We ought to stress in passing here – as this is certainly something that will become important for our argument later on – that this primordial opposition between the conscious and the unconscious was of course seen to entail a whole host of other antithetical couples. To name only the most important here (and we will discuss the implications of these distinctions in more detail a little further on): the primary process is counterposed to the secondary process; the pleasure principle is juxtaposed with the reality principle; the energy of mobile cathexes is contrasted with the energy of bound cathexes; and thing-presentations (Dingvorstellungen) are differentiated from word-presentations (Wortvorstellungen). All of these oppositions, moreover, – and this too is something that we will later not fail to interrogate  – find themselves superimposed upon a more general, and certainly rather confused and confusing, conception of the irreconcilable conflict between the precarious achievements of human civilization and the endlessly disrup-

1 This dualism is complicated, of course, but at the same time essentially left intact by the references that Freud makes to the domain of the »preconscious«. For the defining characteristic of this »preconscious« is its easy access to consciousness. 2 Freud only systematically developed his theory of the ego in his later work, but it is certainly fair to say that its presence is implicit, and at times even explicit, from the very beginning. Freud even provided a first theoretical outline of this instance in his pre-psychoanalytic publication the »Project for a Scientific Psychology«, which can be found in Volume I of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 281–397.

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tive instincts or drives (Triebe),3 primarily those of a sexual nature (although, as we will see, Freud later changes in this view), that threaten them from beneath.)4 At a certain point, however, the story continues – some time around 1920, the time of the publication of Beyond the Pleasure Principle – this simple, metapsychological opposition between the conscious and the unconscious starts to run into insurmountable difficulties. These were, by and large, the product of a single and rather troubling (although, for Freud, not troubling enough, we might ultimately be led to think) clinical experience. In the context of his analytic practice, that is, Freud was forced to recognize that a lot of the resistances coming from his patients were of an undeniably unconscious character. And because these resistances undoubtedly emanated, in his view, from the source of the ego, part of this ego – its »nucleus«, Freud says  – had to be construed as fundamentally unconscious. The consequences of this discovery are, Freud contends, obvious (perhaps a little too obvious, we will inevitably be led to suspect). If the nucleus of the ego is itself unconscious, and if (a very big if, this one!) psychoanalysis still wants to oppose the repressive instance of the ego to that which it is supposed to repress (formerly, of course, what was repressed was the unconscious per se), then this opposition can no longer be comprehended as one between the conscious (ego) and the unconscious (repressed). As Freud himself rather neatly puts it, if everything that is repressed is unconscious, then not everything that is unconscious is repressed. The ego, in other words – or, at the very least, its »nucleus« – must be paradoxically conceived as something that is both indubitably unconscious and, at the same time, certainly not repressed. (Here, of course, the alarm bells should really begin to ring: for if the unconscious was previously defined as the repressed, how are we supposed to understand this new and wholly unrepressed unconscious instance?)

3 It is important when reading Freud not to presuppose that the concept of instinct or drive (Trieb) already possesses the conceptual coherence that Lacan would later introduce into it, by essentially translating it into linguistic and, in our own view, ultimately social and historical terms. 4 See especially on this the 1908 essay »›Civilized‹ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness«, in Volume IX of the The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 177–204.

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Freud’s narrative predictably concludes, then, with the introduction of a new set of metapsychological oppositions that are supposed to do justice (but do they?, we will ask) to this simultaneously clinical and theoretical registration of the ego’s essential unconsciousness. Psychoanalysis will no longer simply oppose, the argument runs, the conscious and the unconscious. Instead, it will start to work with an apparently (but not, as we will see, in reality) entirely new opposition between the coherent ego and the unconscious repressed – both of which, to reiterate, can be construed as unconscious, but only one of which, obviously the latter, can be conceived as repressed (the ego itself, on the basis of what Freud has already said, necessarily having to be understood as repressing). And finally, this new, and still fundamentally twofold or dualistic, opposition will in turn be seen to feed into (but how exactly? we will inquire) that equally new, and now supposedly threefold or ternary opposition – ego, super-ego and id – that famously defines Freud’s later topographical thinking. (We are said to advance, that is, from the more general perspective informing our whole reading of Freud, from an incoherent thinking of the two to a much more compelling thinking of the three.)

…and its Hidden and Haunting Traumatic Core Now, as the parenthetical hints above were obviously intended to suggest, our ultimate aim in this section is to show that – if one looks a little more closely at Freud’s metapsychological texts, from the very early seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams to the much later The Ego and the Id, and even beyond – this apparently smooth and seamless narrative of development quite inexorably begins to unravel and dissolve. Or, in more precise terms, it starts to erode, undermine, dismantle and even deconstruct itself from within.5 This 5 The terms of this deconstruction have absolutely nothing to do with that other deconstruction of Freud’s work that can be found in the œuvre of Jacques Derrida. See Derrida (1978), 196–231, Derrida (1987), 257–521 and Derrida (1998). To sum things up in a single sentence: if Derrida, as always, wants to deconstruct Freud’s supposed impositions of order by showing how they presuppose the background of a quasi-transcendental différance, then what we want to do is show how Freud’s orderings are always already ordered by a social and historical frame that ultimately eludes him.

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narrative is nothing more, we want to claim, than the symptom of a continually repeating and recurring trauma – a trauma that it unconsciously and unsuccessfully, and thus in a highly contradictory and compromising fashion, seeks to cover over and repress. In the language that we used to introduce this section, this narrative is the »murder«, the »Entstellung«, of the very traumatic core of its own motivation. This core, we will discover, has been distorted and displaced; and its fate, as a consequence, is to return and reappear, this time in a different form, elsewhere. What, then  – the question inevitably arises  – is this continually repeating and recurring traumatic core? It is constituted, we will claim, by nothing other than that precise recognition that Freud’s self-imposed narrative of progression seeks to describe as a simple point of transition. The recognition, that is, that the nucleus of the ego is unconscious. Freud uncovers with this claim, we want to argue – in a manner that he himself was certainly entirely unaware of – an absolutely revolutionary folding or knotting logic which neither his first topography (clearly, for he himself freely admits this) nor his second topography (much less clearly) can compellingly articulate. Rather than being a simple point of transition between these two topographies – as Freud’s story of his own advancement is inevitably bound to suggest – the experience that produces this folding or knotting logic has to be seen to explode from within the essential presuppositions of both. Our argument will advance, then, by paying attention to each of these two topographies in turn; and in both cases what we will seek to do is detain ourselves, to a much greater extent than Freud’s own narrative does, on both the difficulties and the simultaneously implicitly dramatic insights produced by the experience and recognition of the ego’s fundamental unconsciousness. Firstly, and relatively quickly, we will see that, very far from being the simple point of transition that this narrative implies, this experience and recognition – and the folding or knotting logic that it ineluctably entails, of course  – is present in Freud’s work, exceptionally, we might say, from a very early stage (beginning, in fact, with his first major publication, The Interpretation of Dreams). Freud’s first topography cannot just be seen, then, to function happily for a certain time, and then later on to run into those insurmountable difficulties that we have already described. Instead, it – and all of the oppositions that

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it implies – has to be understood as being subjected to a radical and immanent subversion by these difficulties from the very outset. Secondly, and much more importantly, we will see that even when – in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id – this experience and recognition is supposedly given a much more central theoretical significance, and even when it is apparently dealt with by the turn to Freud’s second topography, its folding and knotting logic still continues in its mischievously dismantling and deconstructive work. Freud’s second set of topographical oppositions, and that whole paradoxical idea of a »beyond« of the pleasure principle that is somehow supposed to merge into them, have to be construed, we will argue, as little more than a speculative flight from, a »murder« and »Entstellung« of, the unparalleled radicality of this logic; and hence also as a flight back into a lot of those essentially dualistic oppositions that centrally structured the first topography. Freud’s two topographical models, we will contend, are not so dissimilar after all. (Or, once again in those more general terms that essentially define our reading, Freud does not in the end find it so easy to advance from an incoherent thinking of the two to a much more compelling thinking of the three.) Ultimately, we will conclude – and this is where this section will most obviously meet up with what we have already said about Marx, and with what we will say about Lacan (and Marx) in the following section – this flight must be comprehended as a flight from, a »murder« and »Entstellung« of, the folding and knotting logic of the social. For it is only the reference to the social or, much more precisely, we will contend, to the specific social form of the capitalist mode of production, that can provide an adequate account of that folding and knotting logic that in fact constitutes and defines the nucleus of the ego as unconscious. (It is only the introduction of a third term, that can allow us to comprehend the combined articulation of the other two; even if one of these two terms, the unconscious, is compelled to undergo in the process a quite thoroughgoing, and this time quite proper, displacement). The metapsychological we will argue – and this has to be seen to determine the absolute limit to Freud’s thinking – is just, in this very precise and, in the last instance, very historical sense, the social. Or, in other words, it is precisely because Freud refuses to carry out this social dissolution of the metapsychological that his own treatment of the social is compelled to adhere to that very

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double logic of Entstellung that he himself so brilliantly describes. Because Freud first »changes the appearance of«, or »suppresses and disavows«, the social by transforming it into the metapsychological, he is later forced to »displace« it, »to put it in another place«, by conceiving it not on its own terms, but instead in accordance with that very metapsychology that has systematically occluded it in the first place. Rather than making use of the social to explain and, in fact, collapse the metapsychological, Freud uses the metapsychological to explain, in a necessarily inadequate way, the social itself.

The Dissolution of Freud’s First Topography… We can deal with the deconstruction of Freud’s first topography fairly rapidly then. As we have already seen, in our brief reconstruction of Freud’s narrative of his own development, this topography can essentially be said to be organized around a fundamentally twofold or dualistic opposition between the consciousness of the ego and the supposedly strictly contrary trends of a specifically or uniquely unconscious thought. It is only the primordiality of this opposition – and of that apparent discovery of »the unconscious« (in a grammatically substantive sense) that is said to go hand in hand with it – that is capable of grounding and generating all of those other two-term juxtapositions that famously define Freud’s early (and, as we will see, not so early) thinking. If the primary process is counterposed to the secondary process, the pleasure principle to the reality principle, the energy of mobile cathexes to the energy of bound or quiescent cathexes, and thing-presentations to word-presentations, this can only be because the former set of terms is allied with Freud’s definition of the unconscious and the latter (circuitously, at least, via the detour of what Freud denominates the »preconscious«) to his definition of the consciousness of the ego. In summary, then, Freud’s first topography has to be seen to presuppose, as he himself says, the existence of »two fundamentally different kinds of psychical process« (ID: 597). Unconscious thought processes (those of or attached to the primary process, the pleasure principle, mobile cathexes and thing-presentations) are fundamentally situated by one set of characteristics; conscious thought processes, the thought processes of the ego (those of or attached to the

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secondary process, the reality principle, bound or quiescent cathexes and word-presentations), are definitively placed by another. Very briefly (and imposing a little order ourselves on Freud’s proliferating list of descriptions), the former processes can be said to possess the characteristics of orderlessness; or, in Freud’s own terms: condensation, displacement, the absence of negation and the absence of time. The latter processes, in a purely ex negativo fashion, can be said to acquire the characteristics of order; or, following Freud once again: lack of condensation, lack of displacement, the presence of negation and the presence of time (ID: 588–621; U: 186–204). Orderlessness, Freud explicitly claims, additionally possesses a »chronological priority« (ID: 603) over the apparently later imposition of order; and this is why, finally, unconscious thought processes can also be conceived to bear a more intimate or more privileged relationship  – a relationship of »representation« (U: 186), Freud says6 – with the supposed originality of the instincts or drives (and especially at least for the early Freud, with those drives of a sexual nature that constantly threaten to undermine the fragile accomplishments of human civilization and society). On a fairly superficial reading, then  – one that sticks closely to the conceptual and theoretical surface of Freud’s texts – the oppositions that determine this first topography could not be more clearly differentiated. The traits of the conscious ego and the contrary traits of the unconscious stare uncomprehendingly at one another across the immovable space of a definitional abyss. If one starts to penetrate a little more deeply, however, into the intricacies that surround the apparent clarity of Freud’s concepts, then all of the distinctions referred to above quite ineluctably begin to dissolve and disintegrate (not surprisingly for as the sensitive reader will no doubt already have noticed, every one of them is absolutely ripe for deconstructive dismantling). There are numerous examples of this dissolution, and we obviously do not have time here for anything like an exhaustive consideration of them. What we want to do instead, then, is focus our attention on just a couple of passages in which Freud, more or less explicitly, starts  – but, as we will see, only starts  – to call 6 Freud uses here the somewhat confusing concept of the »Vorstellungsrepräsentanz«, which we will later see Lacan clarify in linguistic and also, implicitly, social and historical terms.

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into question that fundamentally anchoring opposition between the consciousness of the ego and the supposedly strictly counterposed trends of a specifically unconscious thought.

…in the Seventh Chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams… The first of these passages can be found in the famous seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams (the chapter in which Freud first systematically lays out the metapsychological terms of his first topography7). Freud is talking here about »punishment-dreams« (dreams that fulfill the dreamer’s desire to be castigated for the emergence of a repressed or forbidden wish); and what he wants to emphasize is the fact that the theorization of these dreams seems to require a »new addition« to that very metapsychological framework that he is in the process of constructing. Very briefly, if punishment-dreams certainly resemble other dreams in the sense that they too originate from an unconscious wish, they also have to be said to differ from such dreams to the extent that, in their case, this wish can only be seen to emanate from the ego itself. If, in all other dreams, »the dream-constructing wish is an unconscious one and belongs to the repressed«, then in punishment dreams, although this wish »is equally an unconscious one, it must be reckoned as belonging not to the repressed but to the ›ego‹«. »[P]unishment-dreams«, Freud continues, »indicate the possibility that the ego may have a greater share than was supposed in the construction of dreams. The mechanism of dream-formation would in general be greatly clarified if instead of the opposition between ›conscious‹ and ›unconscious‹ we were to speak of that between the ›ego‹ and the ›repressed‹« (ID: 557–8). Now, it should be obvious that the whole conceptual edifice of Freud’s first topography is teetering here on the brink of a rather ignominious collapse (and in precisely the place, no less, in which it is first systematically articulated). For if part of the ego, at least,

7 We ignore here the very early »Project for a Scientific Psychology«, where this topography is certainly present in an embryonic form, but in a form rendered unnecessarily confusing  – at least before Lacan’s linguistic clarifications – by Freud’s conviction that he is describing the movements of a neuronal apparatus.

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is unconscious – if the ego itself is the originator, as Freud says, of indisputably unconscious wishes – then surely it is no longer feasible to oppose its consciousness to that supposed negation of itself (the unconscious) that it has now, somewhat paradoxically, come to welcome and include. Rather than continuing to simply oppose the conscious and the unconscious, do we not need to speak instead, Freud suggests, of a new – and in some way entirely different – opposition between the ego and the repressed? But at this point in Freud’s text, something very strange happens; for no sooner has he raised this question – one that will later come back to haunt him, as we will see, in more ways than one  – than he quickly proceeds to demolish its most troubling implications. In the first place, he tells us, any new opposition between the ego and the repressed cannot be erected »without taking account of the processes underlying the psychoneuroses«; »for that reason it has not been carried out in the present work«. The »present work«, Freud quite happily appears to be accepting here, is theoretically grounded upon a psychical topography that its own author has already recognized, at least in exceptional cases, to be fundamentally inadequate. Even more striking, however, is what Freud says next: »[t]he essential characteristic of punishment-dreams would thus be that in their case the dream-constructing wish is not an unconscious wish derived from the repressed (from the system Ucs.), but a punitive one reacting against it and belonging to the ego, though at the same time an unconscious (that is to say, preconscious) one« (ID: 558). Now Freud appears to be telling us that the unconscious wishes originating in the ego are not really unconscious at all (or, in his own rather technical  – and rather confusing  – vocabulary, that even if they are »descriptively« unconscious, they are certainly not »dynamically« unconscious8). The unconscious wishes of the ego are, he says, »preconscious«, that is, according to his own definition of this term, they are contingently unconscious but capable of being brought

8 The »descriptively« unconscious serves to designate for Freud everything that lies outside the sphere of consciousness; as such, it includes both the »preconscious« and the unconscious proper. The »dynamically« unconscious serves to designate that which is removed from consciousness more than just contingently, that is, by more than just its momentary absence from consciousness; as such, it includes only the unconscious proper.

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at any moment into an unproblematic relationship with consciousness. If this is really the case, however, then why has Freud previously even bothered, on the very basis of these wishes of the ego, to momentarily call into question the whole opposition between the conscious and the unconscious (for if ego-wishes are only »unconscious« in a »preconscious« sense, this opposition – and the opposition between the ego and the unconscious that it inevitably entails – is just as secure as ever)? Freud seems to taking away with one hand here what he has already given with the other; and one can only be led to suspect that this sleight has enabled him to avoid a deeply disturbing recognition. (Later on, we will be able to see that this gesture of avoidance is quite typical of all of Freuds’s confrontations with the particular problematic at hand).

…and in the Metapsychological Paper on »The Unconscious« The second passage that concerns us here is located in »The Unconscious«; the third, and undoubtedly the most important, of Freud’s Papers on Metapsychology. (Once again, then, we are dealing with a text generally considered to be a simple locus classicus of the first topography). In this instance, Freud is discussing the difficulties  – of which we have already had a small taste above  – of drawing a compelling division between the supposedly distinct spheres of the conscious, the preconscious and the unconscious. »The reason for all these difficulties«, he wants to claim: »is to be found in the circumstance that the attribute of being conscious, which is the only characteristic of psychical processes that is directly presented to us, is in no way suited to serve as a criterion for the differentiation of systems […] consciousness stands in no simple relation either to the different systems or to repression. The truth is that it is not only the psychically repressed that remains alien to consciousness, but also some of the impulses which dominate our ego – something, therefore, that forms the strongest functional antithesis to the repressed. The more we seek to win our way to a metapsychological view of mental life, the more we must learn to emancipate ourselves from the importance of the symptom of ›being conscious‹.« (U: 192–3)

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Freud certainly seems to have eliminated here any lingering doubts about the real and proper unconsciousness of (at least a part of) the ego; for »some of its impulses«, he states, are quite simply »alien to consciousness«. The whole train of thought that he is engaged in is nonetheless still marked by an absolutely peculiar quality of evasion. For if the (partial) unconsciousness of the ego deprives the characteristic of consciousness of any real metapsychological significance (the ego previously having been defined, of course, as the simple seat of consciousness), then it also seems to do the same for that very characteristic of unconsciousness that is still supposed to define it (for what can the unconscious possibly designate if there is no longer any clearly conscious ego to juxtapose it to?). Perhaps not surprisingly, then, in a text that has formerly sought to set out »the special characteristics of the system Ucs« (U: 186), Freud once more seems reluctant to push his thoughts through to their apparently logical, and certainly quite dizzying, conclusions. (In The Ego and the Id, as we will see below, Freud comes one step closer to accepting this apparent metapsychological meaninglessness of the quality of unconsciousness; once again, however, he will turn away from the theoretical abyss that seems to be opening up before him.) We can see, then, that in the very same texts in which Freud is constructing and adhering to his first topography – a topography that is essentially organized, of course, around an opposition between the unconscious and the consciousness of the ego – he is, at the same time, already starting to interrogate the theoretical or metapsychological viability of its central presuppositions; by drawing intermittent, but nonetheless dramatic attention to the ego’s undeniable unconsciousness. Freud’s smooth and seamless narrative of his own progression is already beginning, that is, to slowly and surely fall apart. (For on the terms of this narrative, the recognition of the ego’s unconsciousness only appears as a simple point of transition between the first and second topographies; and certainly not as something that is always already undermining the former from deep within.) Our alternative story is only just getting underway, however, for – as we hope to show in what follows – the self-dissolution of Freud’s first topography can only be said to pale in comparison with the self-dissolution of his second. That is to say, it is precisely when Freud claims to take proper theoretical cognizance of the ego’s unconsciousness – in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id – that he really

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starts to tie himself up in a dense web of knots. (Indeed, we will claim, this is the only thing that one can do when one is so obviously running away from a folding or knotting logic.)

The Dissolution of Freud’s Second Topography; Beyond the Pleasure Principle… Beyond the Pleasure Principle is undoubtedly one of Freud’s most bemusing and bewildering texts. Not because, when approached with the right attitude,9 it does not open up a whole series of fundamental questions, but because, in the end – and in relation to these questions  – it seems to do little more than render impossible that very »beyondness« that it is so resolutely searching for. Indeed, in the first three parts of the text (BPP: 7–23), having first struggled long and hard to justify the hypothesis of this »beyond«, Freud almost gets to the point of retracting and revoking the very basis for it. The later parts (BPP: 24–64), where Freud proceeds to »speculate« on the instinctual or drive-like (triebhafte) confirmation of this hypothesis, are hardly any clearer; for Freud appears to be intent here on deconstructing all of the key theoretical distinctions that he has already put in place. This is the peculiar textual movement that we can now attempt, then, to briefly reconstruct. Freud begins by advancing an oddly double-edged contention. If the pleasure principle can undeniably be said to play a dominant role in mental life, there are, nonetheless, enough reasons to suspect that this dominance is not exactly total. Freud cites a number of these reasons, the most important of which, at least at the outset of his text, are constituted by the dreams of traumatic neuroses and the particular phenomena of children’s play. What both of these instances inextirpably suggest is the existence of what Freud famously calls

9 The right attitude, to put it bluntly, is Lacan’s. For rather than dismissing Freud’s reflections on this »beyond« as a meaningless piece of metaphysical speculation – as so many of his followers did (with the notable, but still very problematic, exception of Melanie Klein) – Lacan seeks to ground these reflections in a conceptual coherence that they themselves could not quite manage to attain. The following arguments should be understood as a further contribution to the articulation of this conceptual coherence.

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a »compulsion to repeat«. (The dreams of traumatic neuroses compulsively return to the original scene of an accident; and children’s play – illustriously exemplified, of course, by the vacillations of the fort-da – repeatedly reenacts on its own terms the already registered disappearance of the mother.) For Freud, however, these examples remain problematic, for if they certainly can evoke the possibility of a tendency operating »beyond«, that is, »more primitively than« and »independently« of (BPP: 17), the pleasure principle, they just as certainly cannot provide any definitive or irrefutable proof of it. In both cases, that is – and even if Freud only really emphasizes this in the case of children’s play – the continuing repetition of an unpleasurable experience can in no way be fully dissociated from the simultaneous emergence of a substantial yield of pleasure. How can Freud corroborate, then, his intuition of a »primitive« and »independent« »beyond«? Only by proceeding, we want to suggest, in a hugely diversionary manner. Rather than continuing to simply evoke the evidential reasons for his intuition, Freud first decides, that is, to revise the whole theoretical architecture of his mental or metapsychological topography (and, as we will shortly see, it is only this revision that will later allow him to claim discovery of those very evidential reasons that he is looking for). Freud is talking now about the resistances and the »compulsion to repeat« that are experienced in analysis; and he makes the following rather striking – and, let us anticipate, certainly rather unsustainable – claims and distinctions: »In order to make it easier to understand this ›compulsion to repeat‹, which emerges during the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, we must above all get rid of the mistaken notion that what we are dealing with in our struggle against resistances is resistance on the part of the unconscious. The unconscious  – that is to say, the ›repressed‹  – offers no resistance whatever to the efforts of the treatment. Indeed, it itself has no other endeavor than to break through the pressure weighing down on it and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge through some real action. Resistance during treatment arises from the same higher strata and systems of the mind which originally carried out repression. But the fact that, as we know from experience, the motives of the resistances, and indeed the resistances themselves, are unconscious at first during the treatment, is a hint to us that we should correct a shortcoming in our terminology. We shall avoid a lack

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of clarity if we make our contrast not between the conscious and the unconscious but between the coherent ego and the repressed. It is certain that much of the ego is itself unconscious, and notably what we may describe as its nucleus; only a small part of it is covered by the term ›preconscious‹. Having replaced a purely descriptive terminology by one which is systematic or dynamic, we can say that the patient’s resistance arises from his ego, and we then at once perceive that the compulsion to repeat must be ascribed to the unconscious repressed. It seems probable that the compulsion can only express itself after the work of treatment has gone half-way to meet it and has loosened the repression.« (BPP: 19–20).

What is happening, then, in this fantastically dense passage? Firstly, Freud is insisting upon an absolutely clear-cut separation between the forces of resistance and repression and the supposedly directly countervailing energies of the unconscious or repressed. Secondly, Freud is emphasizing that this separation can no longer be understood – as in the explicit terms of his first topography – as a separation between the conscious and the unconscious. If the resistances that arise in analysis are themselves unconscious – and if the »nucleus« of the ego that provokes these resistances is itself unconscious too – then it is surely more appropriate to speak of an absolute and clear-cut separation between the (unconscious) coherence of the repressing ego and (the unconsciousness of) the psychically repressed. (We have a new separation, that is – and a new or second psychical topography – in which both the repressed and the repressing sides are characterized by the phenomenon of unconsciousness!) Thirdly and finally, Freud is implicitly claiming, it is precisely this new separation that will from now on allow us to justify the hypothesis of a »beyond« of the pleasure principle. For if resistances can now be said to emanate from the ego, the »compulsion to repeat« – the very index of this »beyondness« – can just as unambiguously be assigned to the workings of the unconscious repressed. Freud continues by unpacking what for him is the significance of this third and final claim. »There is no doubt«, he says, »that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure principle: it seeks to avoid the unpleasure which would be produced by the liberation of the repressed.« (It is worth stressing in passing that Freud is absolutely contradicting

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here something that he has previously stated; for ten pages prior to this he had asserted that »under the influence of the ego’s instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is replaced by the reality principle« (BPP: 10).) »But how is the compulsion to repeat«, he asks, »the manifestation of the power of the repressed«, »related to the pleasure principle?« This compulsion, he replies, »must cause the ego unpleasure, since it brings to light activities of repressed instinctual impulses.« We have already discussed, however, Freud points out – especially in the example of children’s play, of course – this particular kind of unpleasure, and it cannot be said to »contradict« the pleasure principle; for it is always accompanied, as we have seen, by a simultaneous yield of pleasure or, as Freud himself puts it, »unpleasure for one system and simultaneously satisfaction for the other.« »But we come now«, Freud concludes, »to a new and remarkable fact, namely that the compulsion to repeat also recalls from the past experiences which include no possibility of pleasure, and which can never, even long ago, have brought satisfaction even to instinctual impulses which have since been repressed« (BPP: 20). Now Freud proceeds to describe the examples of the »compulsion to repeat« that, in his view, have nothing to do with pleasure and its principle; and the only thing that we can say is that they are just as unconvincing, as examples of a supposedly absolute »beyond«, as those that Freud has already considered to be so. In the situation of analytic transference, Freud states, some patients are compelled to repeat all the frustrations of their early or infantile sexual desires; and even in »normal« life, the »perpetual recurrence of the same thing« can lead us to believe that certain people are possessed by a partially self-created »daemonic« power (BPP: 21–2). Do either of these examples really exist, however, as Freud quite definitively wants to suggest, in a domain entirely external to the subtle ministrations of a paradoxical pleasure? Surely the whole problematic of psychoanalysis is constituted by the fact that this cannot be said to be the case. (And didn’t Freud himself substantially contribute to his own invention of this discipline by paying special and contradictory attention to an oddly suffering smile on the face of one of his first hysterical patients?) (SH: 137; 144–5) When people transferentially repeat the sexual disappointments of their early lives or, this time outside the sphere of analysis, continually run up against the same self-erected obstacles, it is radically implausible to suggest – just as much as in

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the case of children’s play  – that they are effectively immune to a heavily substantial yield of pleasure or satisfaction. And if we grant this implausibility, it now becomes possible to suggest that the only thing convincing Freud of the compellingness of his examples is the prior reorganization of his psychical topography. That is, it is only when Freud has definitively located the »compulsion to repeat« within the »unconscious repressed«  – and absolutely apart from the resistances of the »coherent« and repressing ego  – that his examples begin to acquire for him a strong and unshakable force. (It is certainly not a coincidence that these new examples rely, in a presentiment of the remainder of Freud’s text, on a primordialist – and even biologistic – language of »instincts« or »drives« (Triebe); these »Triebe« of course being considered to exist in a privileged relationship with the still putatively original energies of the »unconscious repressed«.) As Freud himself deduces, we can now »find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which over-rides the pleasure principle«; and we can even retroactively introduce this assumption into the previously inadequate instances of children’s play and the dreams of traumatic neuroses (BPP: 22–3). Not even now, however, is Freud’s critical sense bowled over by the strength of his theoretical or metapsychological desire. It is »only in rare instances«, he says, that we can »observe the pure effects of the compulsion to repeat, unsupported by other motives«. If children’s play has already revealed to us the »intimate partnership« between pleasure and unpleasure, then the phenomena of transference – phenomena already cited by Freud, we should remember, as indisputable evidence of an absolute »beyond« of the pleasure principle – can also be said to hammer home the same point. These phenomena, Freud now contends, »are obviously exploited by the resistance which the ego maintains in its pertinacious insistence upon repression; the compulsion to repeat, which the treatment tries to bring into its service is, as it were, drawn over by the ego to its side (clinging as the ego does to the pleasure principle)« (BPP: 23). On a first reading of these sentences, it is hard to give credence to what Freud is actually saying in them. Let us reiterate: »the compulsion to repeat […] is, as it were, drawn over by the ego to its side (clinging as the ego does to the pleasure principle).« That is, although Freud is nominally  – »as it were«  – still adhering to his

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new topographical opposition between the »coherent ego« and the »unconscious repressed«, he is, at the same time, thoroughly and radically undermining and exploding its very basis. For if the »compulsion to repeat« is acting on the side of the ego, how can that »unconscious repressed« that it is supposed to belong to still be said to be opposed to this very same ego’s equally supposed coherence? Similarly, if the »compulsion to repeat« is operating on the side of the pleasure principle  – »clinging as the ego does to the pleasure principle«  – how can this principle be said to possess an absolute »beyond« (the »compulsion to repeat« being the only apparent index of it)? Freud seems to be implicitly recognizing here that, if we still want to talk about something like a »beyond« of the pleasure principle, we will have to do this by articulating a new and very different, that is, non-oppositional, topographical logic; according to which both the pleasure principle and the ego that clings to it will have to be paradoxically – but nonetheless very productively – construed as being beyond themselves. And we can only conclude that Freud has been pushed in this direction – even if he himself appears to be entirely unaware of this – by his prior recognition of the fact that the »nucleus« of the ego is unconscious (for, after all, it is the ego’s unconscious resistance that Freud is once again referring to in the two indispensable sentences quoted here). Freud has almost got to the point of admitting, then, that his new topography – a fundamental opposition between the »coherent ego« and the »unconscious repressed« – fails to do justice to the folding or knotting logic of the ego’s essential unconsciousness. Once again ignoring his own insights, however, he still continues to insist upon the viability of his intuitions. »Enough is left unexplained«, Freud says, »to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat – something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over-rides« (BPP: 23). In the next forty pages of his text, Freud thus proceeds to engage in an infamously »far-fetched speculation« (BPP: 24) on the existence of this transcendently instinctual »compulsion to repeat«. And on the basis of what we have argued here, it is not surprising to find that this speculation gets tied up in a whole welter of ambiguities and contradictions. We obviously do not have time here for a lengthy discussion of all of these, so instead we will quickly run through their predominant features. Firstly, Freud makes an inconsistent return to all of those

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old oppositions that should have disappeared along with the opposition between the conscious ego and the supposedly entirely contradictory trends of the unconscious (in particular, he keeps talking about the primary and secondary processes and mobile and bound cathexes (BPP: 34–5; 62–3)). Secondly, and undoubtedly because he continues to think in terms of these oppositions or, more specifically, in terms of a necessary transition or mediation between them, Freud gets involved in a fruitless attempt to define a mental activity that can be said to both precede the pleasure principle and, at the same time, function on its very behalf (BPP: 32–3; 62–3). Thirdly, and most importantly, when Freud is trying to spell out the particular and general characteristics of the supposed »beyond« of the pleasure principle, he can only succeed in deconstructing his own oppositions at every turn. In the first place, Freud’s distinction between life instincts and death instincts – Eros and Thanatos – seems only to reproduce, within the putative »beyond« of the pleasure principle, the very distinction between the pleasure principle and its »beyond« (with Eros functioning as a surrogate for the former, and Thanatos as a substitute for the latter). And even on its own terms  – and certainly as a direct consequence of the above  – the distinction between these supposedly different kinds of instinct is not especially clear: they are rarely identifiable in isolation, Freud says, because they are almost always mutually »mitigated« or »intermixed« (BPP: 53–5); similarly, they can be said to »vacillate« between one another (BPP: 40–1); and if the life instincts are more or less clearly perceivable (one wonders how Freud can possibly think this), the death instincts »seem to do their work unobtrusively« (BPP: 63), often only appearing within the life instincts themselves. At other times, Freud’s statements – adhering to a self-destructive logic that we have already diagnosed – seem to render the very distinction between these instincts and the pleasure principle that they are supposed to serve as the »beyond« of absolutely unworkable: it is the very operation of the pleasure principle, Freud claims – or of its sister the »Nirvana principle« – that leads us to believe in the existence of those death instincts that, at the same time, are said to function as its supposed limit (BPP: 55–6); or the pleasure principle is already functioning, he says, in the »instinctual« sphere of the primary process (BPP: 63) (when, if these distinctions are to make any sense at all, it should only be able to function in and

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as the secondary process); or again, »the pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts« (BPP: 63). Finally – and most significantly in the context of our discussion – all of Freud’s central oppositions dissolve around the category of the ego; for this ego appears once in the life instincts (BPP: 52; 60–1n), once in the death instincts (BPP: 41; 44; 60–1n) and once again, as we have already seen, in the pleasure principle itself (if we include the earlier reference to the reality principle, also quoted above, then it has to be said to appear four times  – and each time in a totally different place!). Freud’s simultaneous recognition and misrecognition of the ego’s essential unconsciousness – a recognition insofar as this unconsciousness is correctly registered; a misrecognition to the extent that it is improperly or incorrectly placed, the »compulsion to repeat« being wrongly confined away from it in the »unconscious repressed« – certainly seems to have caused him then, we can conclude, a whole host of irresolvable problems.

…and The Ego and the Id The Ego and the Id – a work which Freud himself describes as a »further development of some trains of thought […] opened up in Beyond the Pleasure Principle« (EI: 12) – can just as certainly not be said to solve these problems; nor, as we will see, can it be said to do away with that simultaneous recognition and misrecognition of the ego’s unconsciousness that fundamentally gives rise to them. Once more here, then, Freud is discussing this unconsciousness in the context of the resistance that arises during the analytic treatment. There is »no question«, he says, »but that this resistance emanates from [the] ego and belongs to it«; we thus »find ourselves in an unforeseen situation«: »We have come upon something in the ego itself which is also unconscious, which behaves exactly like the repressed  – that is, which produces powerful effects without itself being conscious and which requires special work before it can be made conscious. From the point of view of analytic practice, the consequence of this discovery is that we land in endless obscurities and difficulties if we keep to our habitual forms of expression and try, for instance, to derive neuroses from a

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conflict between the conscious and the unconscious. We shall have to substitute for this antithesis another, taken from our insight into the structural conditions of the mind – the antithesis between the coherent ego and the repressed which is split off from it.« (EI: 17)

On a first glance, Freud simply seems to be repeating here an argument that he has already advanced, albeit with self-dissolving results, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle: if the resistances of the ego are unconscious, then we can no longer oppose – as the first psychical topography does – the consciousness of this ego to the apparently contrary trends of the unconscious; instead, we have to construct a new antithesis between the coherent ego and the (unconscious?) repressed. If we look a little more closely, however  – and think a little more seriously about this rather conspicuous refusal to designate the repressed as unconscious – we can see that Freud has in fact introduced a new, and undoubtedly even more disturbing, reflection. The ego, he states, »behaves exactly like the repressed« (even if, on his own account, it is indisputably not repressed, but repressing). It is precisely this peculiar behavior of the ego that now proceeds to push Freud to the verge a theoretical black hole: »For our conception of the unconscious […] the consequences of our discovery are even more important. Dynamic considerations caused us to make our first correction; our insight into the structure of the mind leads to the second. We recognize that the Ucs. does not coincide with the repressed; it is still true that all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed. A part of the ego, too – and Heaven knows how important a part – may be Ucs., undoubtedly is Ucs. And this Ucs. belonging to the ego is not latent like the Pcs.; for if it were, it could not be activated without becoming Cs., and the process of making it conscious would not encounter such great difficulties. When we find ourselves thus confronted by the necessity of postulating a third Ucs., which is not repressed, we must admit that the characteristic of being unconscious begins to lose significance for us. It becomes a quality which can have many meanings, a quality which we are unable to make, as we should have hoped to do, the basis of far-reaching and inevitable conclusions. Nevertheless we must beware of ignoring this characteristic, for the property of being conscious or not is in the last resort our one beaconlight in the darkness of depth-psychology.« (EI: 17–8)

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The insights that Freud is expressing here are just as astonishing as his previous evocation of the possibility that the »compulsion to repeat« is acting in the side of the ego  – and the pleasure principle  – itself. If the unconscious ego, Freud is claiming, »behaves exactly like the repressed«, whilst certainly not being repressed but repressing, then we can no longer simply equate the instances of the unconscious and the repressed; or, as Freud himself very tidily puts it, »all that is repressed is Ucs., but not all that is Ucs. is repressed.« The ego, in other words, sticks out; for part of this, in Freud’s view, eminently repressing instance – »and Heaven knows how important a part«  – is itself, »undoubtedly«, unconscious (once again, Freud obliterates here his earlier attempt to confine this unconsciousness to the »preconscious«). But if the ego is both unconscious and not repressed – but instead repressing – we seem to run into a potentially insurmountable difficulty. How can we possibly conceive, that is, an unconscious that is not repressed (earlier in his text, we should stress, Freud has unequivocally defined the repressed as the very »prototype of the unconscious« (EI: 15); with the obvious implication that the ego is a repressing instance unproblematically opposed to it)? If we are forced to admit such an unrepressed unconsciousness, Freud concludes – or appears to conclude – then the very concept of the unconscious »begins to lose significance for us.« We can surmise, then, that it is precisely because Freud so clearly wants to oppose a repressed and a repressing instance that he is compelled to confront the impossibility of locating the phenomena of the unconscious. There is a solution, however, we want to suggest – or, more properly speaking, a dissolution  – of this impossibility. For rather than simply counterposing a repressed and a repressing instance, and then trying (impossibly) to locate the unconscious on one side or the other, Freud could conceive the very act of »repression« – and the collateral, but no longer locatable, existence of »the unconscious«  – as the always already accomplished combination and articulation of two different, but non-oppositional, terms. On this account – which we can only sketch the outlines of here – the ego (that supposedly repressing instance) would no longer have to be said to behave »exactly like the repressed«, for what would be »repressed« (and simultaneously »repressing«, of course) would be its very »unconscious« constitution as an ego in the first place. It is only this constitution, that is, that can simultaneously give rise

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to »the unconscious« as a strictly non-localizable domain; or, in Freud’s own unsurpassably dialectical terms, »the nucleus of the ego is unconscious«. (As we will see in the next section, this is exactly the account of »repression« that Lacan provides; and it is precisely this account, moreover, that enables him to enact such a powerful and convincing »return to Marx«.) As the last sentence of the above quotation makes clear, however – and as we will see in a little more detail in what follows – this is certainly not the path that Freud chooses to follow. Once again, then, we have seen how Freud’s diagnosis of the folding and knotting logic of the ego’s unconsciousness has come very close to dislodging his new set of topographical oppositions. For if (given the experience of this unconsciousness) the simple juxtaposition of a repressed and a repressing instance makes it quite literally impossible to locate »the unconscious«, how can Freud continue to oppose the »coherent ego« – which is still obviously construed as a merely repressing force – to the (unconscious?) »repressed«? (Freud’s earlier refusal to actually designate this »repressed« as unconscious can now be seen to acquire an enormous, even if largely inadvertent, significance.) For one last time, however, Freud turns his back on one of his own most revolutionary discoveries. Even if the quality of unconsciousness has become impossible to locate, we must »nevertheless«, he says, »beware of ignoring this characteristic, for the property of being conscious or not is in the last resort our one beacon-light in the darkness of depth-psychology.« In the remainder of his text  – and in all of those later works in which he also seeks to articulate his new topographical distinction between the ego, the super-ego and the id (or, more correctly, to somehow join this distinction together with that between the »coherent ego« and the »(unconscious?) repressed«)10 – Freud can only be said to remain faithful to this hugely disappointing theoretical and metapsychological retreat.

10 We are referring especially here to chapter XXXI of the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, »The Dissection of the Psychical Personality«, and chapters I, VIII and IX of An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, »The Psychical Apparatus«, »The Psychical Apparatus and the External World« and »The Internal World«.

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What form, however, does this regressive faithfulness take? Well, in the first place, when Freud is attempting to delineate his new opposition between the ego and the id, he strangely seems to have forgotten almost all of those difficulties that he has previously described; not only the difficulties of flatly juxtaposing a repressed and a repressing instance, and thus of locating »the unconscious«, but also  – and this is really quite startling  – those of simply setting against one another the conscious and the unconscious. That is, although Freud occasionally reminds himself that part of the ego is unconscious (EI: 23; NIL: 68–70), and although he occasionally emphasizes that the id cannot be equated with what was formerly known as »the unconscious« (NIL: 71–2), both of these new terms for the most part continue to function as direct synonyms of precisely those psychical qualities of consciousness and unconsciousness that they were supposed to have replaced. The ego, Freud states, is closely tied to the »superficial system« of perception and consciousness, and is once again – in a head-spinning retraction of a previous retraction – said to »embrace« the »preconscious«. The id, by contrast – and one can only throw one’s hands up in exasperation here – »behaves as though it were Ucs.« (EI: 23); »[t] he sole prevailing quality in the id is that of being unconscious« (OP: 163). And once these definitions have been (re)established, all of the old oppositions can make their dutiful return: the id is said to be governed by the primary process, the pleasure principle and the energy of mobile cathexes, and its operations are identified with those of the »instincts« or »drives« (even if Freud states elsewhere that there is »no question« of a simple direction of fit between these »instincts« and the different topographical regions of the mind (OP: 149–50); the ego is predictably seen to come under the sway of the secondary process, the reality principle and the energy of bound cathexes, and to exist in a condition of irreconcilable conflict with the »instincts« or »drives« (even if, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, we have already seen it to be at work within these supposed »instincts« themselves) (NIL: 73–6; OP: 163–4; 197–200). (We should also stress in passing here  – and in relation to that wider context of discussion that is essentially determining our analysis – that it is precisely when Freud contrasts the ego and the id in this way that he comes closest (without actually using the terms, of course) to erecting a simple, and obviously radically unsatisfactory,

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opposition between the two uncomprehending spheres of the imaginary and the real; and even comes closest, one might dare to say, to what the vulgar and unthinking mind might expect of psychoanalysis. The ego, he says – in a wild proliferation of metaphors that are intended to suggest its subordinate relationship to the id – is a »constitutional monarch«, a »helper« or »submissive slave who courts his master’s love«, »a man on horseback […] who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse«; in attempting to remain »on good terms« with the id, the ego »clothes« and »cloaks« the latter’s »commands« with its »rationalizations« and »diplomatic ingenuousness«; it »pretends« and »disguises«, »dodges« and »conceals«, is »sycophantic«, »opportunistic« and »lying«, »like a politician who sees the truth but wants to keep his place in popular favour«.11 The id, as against all of this – and in addition to retaining all those characteristics of »the unconscious« already outlined in the texts of Freud’s first topography (in direct contradiction, that is, of his claim that the id is something different from the unconscious) – is the »dark, inaccessible part of our personality«; it is a »chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations.« In short, then, Freud rather ridiculously concludes, the ego is a seat of »reason and common sense«, the id a store of »untamed passions« (EI: 25; 55–6; NIL: 73–8).) Freud’s apparently new topographical opposition between the ego and the id has thus fallen irreversibly back into a very old opposition between the conscious and the unconscious; and it is hardly surprising to discover that, against the background of this opposition, Freud finds it extremely difficult – and ultimately, indeed, impossible – to coherently locate the, for him, still fundamental phenomenon of the psychically »repressed«. (Freud’s very commitment to this phenomenon, we will remember, was the result of an equally new – but this time much more significantly blurred – distinction between the (partially unconscious) »coherence« of the ego and the (similar unconsciousness of the) »repressed« itself.) This »repressed«, Freud now wants to tell us, has to be seen to belong to the id (even if the two domains tied together in this way are very far from being definitionally interchangeable). One can only wonder, however, about the

11 To anticipate our own argument a little, it is perhaps not a coincidence that Freud falls back here upon a whole host of ineradicably social metaphors.

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supposed ease, and the supposed character, of this belonging. For hasn’t Freud already come up – at least inadvertently – against the impossibility of defining the »repressed« (or anything else, for that matter) as »unconscious«? And hasn’t he already implicitly identified the id with what was formerly known as »the unconscious« (in blatant disregard of his own insistence upon a conceptual differentiation between the two terms)? In summary, then, Freud’s conception of the »repressed« seems to be little more than a symptom – and, at the same time, as we have already suggested, a cause  – of his inability to adequately define either the (old) »unconscious« or the (new) »id« (and by extension, of course, the »ego« as well). It is surely not coincidental then that, in Freud’s new pictorial representations of the mental apparatus (EI: 24; NIL: 78), this »repressed« begins to acquire a quite peculiar form. It can only be said to appear here as a mouth-like cavity or inlet that diagonally intrudes into the ambiguous space between (separating or uniting? we might ask) the ego and the id. That is, in contrast to Freud’s contention that it belongs exclusively to the id, it seems to traverse both sides of the opposition (ego and id; repressing and repressed?) that are said to determine it as »repressed« in the first place.12 Freud’s descriptions of his diagrams only serve to compound the theoretical confusion: »the repressed«, he says, »merges into the id […] and is merely a part of it«; but, at the same time, it »is only cut off sharply from the ego by the resistances of repression; it can communicate with the ego through the id« (EI: 24). In insisting upon such a »sharp« separation between »repression« and »repressed«, Freud is only committing himself, once again, to the articulation of metapsychological incongruities. For if the »repressed« is »part« of the id, and »cut off sharply from the ego«, how can it »communicate with the ego through the id«? This »communication« would certainly seem to imply a much more intimate relationship between the ego and the id than Freud – at least in his theoretically regressive mode – is prepared to admit. Having sacrificed this intimacy, however, Freud can predictably – but still quite astonishingly – go on to actually retract that intricately 12 In fact, in precisely these two diagrammatic representations, the concept of the »repressed« appears once on the side of the id, and once again on the side of the ego.

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interweaving insight the revolutionary character of which we have been consistently attempting to stress. The »nucleus« of the ego, Freud now contends, can no longer be comprehended as »unconscious«. Instead, »[i]t starts out […] from the system Pcpt., which is its nucleus«, even if, »as we have learnt, the ego is also unconscious« (EI: 23). Or, even more clearly, although this time half hidden away at the end of a footnote: »[s]ome earlier suggestions about a ›nucleus of the ego‹, never very definitely formulated, also require to be put right, since the system Pcpt.-Cs. alone can be regarded as the nucleus of the ego« (EI: 28). The fundamental regression of Freud’s second topography now appears to be complete.

The Social Supplementarity of the Super-Ego Somewhat paradoxically, however, one of the things that enables Freud to enact this regression is a simultaneous – although, as we ultimately want to suggest here, also extremely partial  – theoretical advance. For at exactly the point at which he rescinds his former claim about the »nucleus« of the ego being unconscious, Freud decides to introduce the new idea of a »grade« or »differentiation« within the ego itself – something which he famously denominates, of course, as the »super-ego«, »ego ideal« or even »ideal ego«.13 In relation to the metapsychological regression that we have outlined here, it is precisely the introduction of this »grade« or »differentiation« that allows Freud – at least from his perspective – to so easily shift the quality of unconsciousness away from the ego per se. Because if, as he now argues, the super-ego »is less firmly connected with consciousness«, this consciousness can be essentially restricted to the ego itself, with the super-ego, a conveniently »separate« or »autonomous« (NIL: 60) part of the ego, also very conveniently acquiring the now oddly moveable characteristic of being unconscious (EI: 28). But what of the theoretical advance constituted by Freud’s invention of the concept of the super-ego? The last thing that we want to 13 Freud had, of course, first introduced this notion  – under the exclusive title of the »ego ideal« – in his slightly earlier text on »Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego«, which can be found in Volume XVIII of The Standard Edition, 65–143.

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do here is call into question the simple and undeniable fact of this advance. For, as is well-known  – and as the very development of Freud’s later writings makes abundantly clear – what the theorization of the super-ego opens up (in one direction, at least14) is the whole crucial question of the »supra-personal« (EI: 35) or, more simply, the social; in inextricable interrelationship, of course, with that »other« hugely thorny problematic of the Oedipus complex. The fact that Freud wants to consider these questions is important in itself, and, to reiterate, we certainly do not want to dispute the general validity of this consideration; that is, we do not want to dispute the absolutely pressing need for a thoroughly social articulation of both the super-ego and the Oedipus complex. What we certainly do want to interrogate, however, is the thoroughness of the specific social articulation that Freud provides for these two concepts. More precisely, we want to suggest that Freud effectively treats the super-ego, and by extension the Oedipus complex – and by extension once again the very existence of sociality – as nothing more than a supplement to an already existing, and thus completely naturalized, relationship between the ego and the id. Freud adheres to this logic of supplementarity in a number of different ways. Firstly, in a kind of prelude to his introduction of the concept of the (unconscious) super-ego, he erects a suspiciously clear separation between the phenomena of the »unconscious sense of guilt« and the previously discussed phenomena of unconscious resistance. The former, he says, the product of an entirely »new discovery«, have to be seen to belong exclusively to the super-ego; the latter, as a consequence and by contrast, pertain only to the ego (EI: 26–7).15 But isn’t the ego, and the unconscious resistance that inevitably accompanies it, very implausibly cut off in this way from the implicitly social bearing of the »unconscious sense of guilt«? Is it really possible to say – from the social perspective that Freud is starting to open up here – that unconscious guilt belongs only to the super-ego?

14 We will shortly see that Freud’s thinking of the social also pursues another direction, the direction opened up by his new theory of the life instincts and the death instincts. 15 Freud himself, it should be noted, later undermines this separation by claiming that the phenomenon of unconscious resistance pertains both to the ego and the super-ego (NIL: 68–9).

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Secondly, when Freud is describing the origin of the super-ego as the »heir of the Oedipus complex« (EI: 36), that is, when he is defining this super-ego as the bearer of those identifications with the parents (and especially the father, of course) that allow the child to overcome the apparently deadly desires of the Oedipus complex, he refers to these identifications as »the forming of a precipitate in the ego«; as a »modification of the ego« that »retains its special position; [confronting] the other contents of the ego as an ego ideal or super-ego.« The super-ego is quite clearly being conceived here as something that is simply added to or superimposed upon an already existing ego (even if this ego itself is somehow seen to be »modified« in the process). Indeed, Freud even goes as far as to suggest that it is the pre-existent »infantile ego« itself that »represses« the Oedipus complex by »erecting« the ego ideal (EI: 34). And even when, in an apparently contrasting line of thought, Freud wants to argue that it is the »character« and »form« of the ego itself that is »built up« and »determined« by the process of identification, it is still only its »character« and »form«; that is, the ego is once again being seen to paradoxically pre-exist its own process of determination (EI: 28). Elsewhere, Freud is only taking this logic to the extreme when he defines the very process of identification as »the assimilation of one ego to another« (NIL: 63). Thirdly and finally  – and as an inevitable consequence of the above two maneuvers – Freud is compelled to say some very peculiar things about the ego, the super-ego and the id. Until the age of around five, he states, the child’s ego »mediates between the id and the external world«; and only after this do the intersubjective effects of the super-ego come into operation (OP: 205–6). Or, similarly, the id is said to represent »the influence of heredity«, and the ego to be »principally determined by the individual’s own experience« of »accidental and contemporary events«; the super-ego, by contrast, is the indelibly social residue »of what is taken over from other people«. Still more bizarrely, Freud’s »general schematic picture of a psychical apparatus may be supposed to apply as well to the higher animals which resemble man mentally«; even if the civilizing super-ego can only »be presumed to be present wherever, as is the case with man, there is a long period of dependence in childhood« (OP: 146–7). And again: »[t]he differentiation between ego and id must be attributed not only to primitive man but even to much simpler organisms, for it

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is the inevitable expression of the influence of the external world«; in contradistinction – and we will hear more of this below – the sociality of the super-ego is assumed to have »actually originated from the experiences that led to totemism« (EI: 38). Overall, the »cultural […] differentiation of the super-ego from the ego […] represents the most important characteristics of the development both of the individual and of the species« (EI: 35). Freud’s words, in all of these quotations, could not be any clearer. The ego and the id, he is contending, are always already there, the human and equally non-human products of nature and biology. The super-ego can only be said to emerge against this naturalized background as the privileged carrier of an eminently social surplus. (It is extremely important to emphasize here – and once again in relation to the broader theoretical context of our analysis – that, in so conceiving these three instances (the ego, the super-ego and the id), Freud is yet again effectively exploding his own painfully constructed narrative of metapsychological development. For – as should already be quite clear – what these conceptions make impossible is any simple transition from an incoherent thinking of the two (consciousness versus the unconscious, etc., etc.) to a much more compelling and convincing thinking of the three (ego, super-ego and id). Rather than attempting to really think through this ternary relation, as we have already seen, the only thing that Freud can actually be said to do is superimpose a third term (the super-ego) upon an already existing – and still fundamentally dualistic – opposition between the other two (the ego and the id). In the terms that we have already introduced in our discussion of Marx, and which will also be central to our discussion of Lacan in the following section, we might even say that Freud systematically fails in this way to convincingly articulate the closely imbricated interrelationship between the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real (represented for him  – albeit inadequately – by the three psychical instances of the ego, the superego and the id). For what this articulation requires  – as Marx has already shown us, and as Lacan, after a long development, will only confirm – is that the two registers of the imaginary and the real be located exclusively in their combined relationship to the third register of the symbolic or social. It requires, that is, a thorough socialization of all three terms; and this is precisely, of course, what Freud is

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incapable of considering (in his restriction of this socialization to the supplemental instance of the super-ego).) Once Freud has erected this super-egoic supplement, however, – and once he has thus failed to compellingly elucidate the mysterious interaction between the ego, the super-ego and the id  – he is once again, with a by now rather dispiriting predictability, forced to engage in a whole series of self-deconstructing gambits. The »three provinces of the mental apparatus« are metaphorized as »a landscape of varying configuration […] with a mixed population«, implacably resistant to the geographical »neatness« of »partition« (NIL: 72–3). Or, in another analogy, these instances cannot be painted in »linear outlines«, they are like »the areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented by modern artists« (NIL: 79). If one has read Freud carefully, one can only concur: there is, he says, an originally »undifferentiated ego-id« (OP: 149); or »[o]riginally, to be sure, everything was id; the ego was developed out of the id« (OP: 163); or again, the super-ego, as the heir of the Oedipus complex, is the »expression of the most powerful impulses and most important libidinal vicissitudes of the id« itself, which it also has to be seen to »merge into« (EI: 36; NIL: 79). Given these confusions, it is scarcely surprising to discover that Freud defines any attempt to »localize« the super-ego as »vain« (EI: 36–7) (the only thing that is surprising, we might think, is that he still considers it possible to »localize« the ego and the id).16 We can save Freud’s most outlandish reflections until last, however (and if they are outlandish, we should stress, it is because they point to the solution of Freud’s problems at the very same time as they carry them through to their uttermost limit). When the »experiences of the ego«, Freud says, »have been repeated often enough and with sufficient strength in many individuals in successive generations, they transform themselves, so to say, into experiences of the id, the impressions of which are preserved by heredity«; hence »in the id, which is capable of being inherited, are harboured residues of the existences of countless egos; and, when the ego forms its super-ego out of the id, it may perhaps only be reviving shapes of 16 Freud’s comments do not prevent him from later attempting such a localization himself. For in his second diagram of the mental apparatus, the superego assumes its rightful place at the left perimeter of the ego itself (NILP: 78).

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former egos and be bringing them to resurrection« (EI: 38). Or, even more strikingly: our »cultural acquisitions have undoubtedly left a precipitate behind them in the id; much of what is contributed by the super-ego will awaken an echo in the id; not a few of the child’s new experiences will be intensified because they are repetitions of some primaeval phylogenetic experience«; the super-ego assumes then »a kind of intermediate position between the id and the external world [to which the ego is closely attached]; it unites in itself the influences of the present and the past. In the establishment of the super-ego we have before us, as it were, an example of the way in which the present is changed into the past« (OP: 206–7). Who can fail to discern here, in the final and irrevocable collapse of all of Freud’s topographical distinctions  – and beyond the biologistic appeal to »heredity« and the »primaeval« – that very logic of sociality and historicity that might itself become capable of refounding them anew (even if, in the process and as we will see, they will undoubtedly come to look a little different)?

The Metapsychological »Murder« of the Social If our reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id has taught us anything, then, it is that Freud can only attempt to construct his metapsychological and topographical oppositions by living in denial of – or, in the language that we used to introduce this section, by »murdering«  – his own thoroughly radical recognition of the ego’s essential unconsciousness. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud gets to the point of admitting that, in the unconscious resistances of the ego, the »compulsion to repeat« is acting on the side of the ego itself; and not, as he had previously claimed – thus justifying the very hypothesis of a »beyond« – on the contrary side of the »unconscious repressed«. He goes on, however, to blithely ignore this insight, and to speculatively »confirm« his original intuition of an instinctual transcendence. In The Ego and the Id, having supposedly established that the ego is both unconscious and not repressed (but repressing), Freud even goes so far as to say that the characteristic of being unconscious is fundamentally meaningless (for this characteristic was formerly identified, of course, with the phenomenon of the repressed itself). But, once again, he turns away from his own

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discoveries and continues to effectively oppose the ego and the id as if it were still possible for them to be the unproblematic – repressing and repressed – bearers of the conscious and the unconscious; and, in explicit terms at least, the social supplementarity of the super-ego only serves to confirm the centrality of this very opposition. Now, what we want to emphasize in these final pages is that it is precisely these two »murderous« logics that essentially determine the nature of Freud’s later social writings. These writings can be divided up, that is, into two more or less separate strands (even if, as we will see below, these strands ultimately have to be said to overlap). On the one hand, then – in The Future of an Illusion and, even more clearly, in Civilization and its Discontents – Freud attempts to understand the logic of the social in terms of those life instincts and death instincts that he has already located in the apparent »beyond« of the pleasure principle. In this view – which is extremely well-known, and which we do not need to dwell on here in any detail – the binding and civilizatory powers of Eros are engaged in a permanent struggle with the unbinding and anti-civilizatory forces of Thanatos or, more precisely, of that instinct for aggressiveness and destruction that Freud rather implausibly claims to constitute »a piece of unconquerable nature« in »our own psychical constitution« (CD: 86). On the other hand  – and most conspicuously in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego  – Freud seeks to comprehend this logic in terms of the super-egoic supplement to an already existing relationship between the ego and the id. In this context, it suffices to simply quote Freud’s famous »formula for the libidinal constitution of groups« (or at least of those groups with a leader that he very symptomatically considers to be the most important): »[a] primary group of this kind is a number of individuals who have put one and the same object in the place of their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego« (GP: 116). But who are these pre-existent »individuals« and pre-existent »egos«, actively identifying themselves with one another solely as a consequence of an »objective« transformation in the position of their super-egos? Does one not need to be first socially and »subjectively« constituted as an ego, we might inquire, in order even to desire that supposedly necessary submission to the leader that Freud himself, throughout his social writings, so faithfully reaffirms?

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We can express all of this in slightly different terms by saying that, once Freud has »murdered« the folding and knotting logic of the ego’s unconsciousness, and once he has thus deprived himself of the possibility of overcoming the simple and undialectical opposition between a repressed and a repressing instance, he is irrevocably condemned to discover the whole phenomenon of the social – and everything else, for that matter – on either one side or the other of this divide. In The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents, the logic of the social is implicitly located, that is, on the side of the »unconscious repressed«; for it was the »compulsion to repeat« supposedly at work in this repressed that originally served Freud, we will remember, as the very index of a »beyond« of the pleasure principle. In Group Psychology, by contrast, the logic of the social is quite explicitly located on the side of the repressing; for, as we have seen, this entire logic is explained in terms of an apparent interaction between the pre-existent and repressing ego and its new and effectively supplementary »grade« or »differentiation«, the super-ego. Freud’s thinking of the social runs up then, we can conclude, against its own self-imposed theoretical limits. For what it attempts – and ultimately fails, of course, to think – is not the logic of the social itself, in its necessary variety and specificity, but the (impossible) logic of the transition from, and inescapable tension between, the presocial and the social or, if you like, the repressed and the repressing. (Freud’s fundamental – and fundamentally lingering – topographical opposition between the characteristics of order and orderlessness (the secondary and the primary processes, etc., etc.) can now be seen to bear its thoroughly soggy theoretical fruit.) And, in addition to being at work in the relationship between the two strands of Freud’s social thought – with one strand representing the repressed and the other the repressing – this absolute limitation to Freud’s thinking has also, in an enormously paradoxical fashion, to be seen to operate within each strand itself. In The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents, it appears that  – within the sphere of the »unconscious repressed« itself – it is the instinct toward aggressiveness and destruction that is always unsuccessfully repressed by the civilizing tendencies of Eros. And in Group Psychology, it appears that – within the very sphere of the repressing – it is the pre-existent individuality of the ego that is repressed by the social supplementarity of the

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super-ego. Given the combination of these two appearances, it is not surprising to find Freud claiming – in a classically conservative manner – that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the pre-social claims of the individual and the contrary and superimposed claims of society (CD: 95–6). And given all of these confusions surrounding the social and the pre-social, the repressing and the repressed, it is equally unsurprising to discover that the dominant motif of the whole of Freud’s social thinking is the myth – or, as he himself says, quoting an early review of Totem and Taboo, the »Just-So Story« (GP: 122) – of the primal father. For what this myth attempts to explain, of course – through the idea of the sons and brothers coming together to assassinate this unbridled and uninhibited figure of authority – is the very passage from the pre-social to the social, from the absolutely unrepressed »state of nature« (FI: 15), we might say, to the repressing or repressive condition of culture and civilization. Precisely because it is a myth, however, this story is not itself immune to those contradictory oscillations that we have already described. For, from the implicit perspective of The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents, the father would have to appear on the side of the pre- or anti-social, that is, on the side of the isolating or unbinding instinct toward aggressiveness or destruction. From the explicit perspective of Group Psychology, however, the father actually does appear on the side of the social itself; »[t]he primal father is«, Freud incredibly claims, »the group ideal, which governs the ego in the place of the ego ideal« (GP: 127). Such, then, we can surmise, is the fate of Freud’s (anti-)social fantasy. If Freud had really wanted to come to grips with the irreducibly specific problematic of the social, we want to conclude this section by suggesting, he would have been much better served by remaining faithful to his own absolutely revolutionary insight into the folding and knotting logic of the ego’s essential unconsciousness. For if he had done this, he would have recognized – as Marx had implicitly done before him, and as Lacan, at times implicitly and at times explicitly, would do after him (but only, we should stress, after himself returning to Marx) – that the very unconsciousness of the ego needs to be produced by something; and that this something can only ultimately be of a social character. (He would have recognized – in the broader theoretical terms of our analysis – that the imaginary

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ego and the real of the unconscious or, more properly speaking, as we will see, the real of labor (the unconscious no longer being, of course, discretely localizable), can only be combined through the intervention and activity of a third, and unavoidably social or symbolic, term.) If Freud had followed this path, moreover, he would have been able to rid himself both of his »far-fetched speculations« concerning the »beyond« of the pleasure principle and of his above-mentioned worries about the strict impossibility of locating the phenomenon of the unconscious. For, as we have already suggested, what the unconscious constitution of the ego reveals – or better perhaps, the constitution of the ego as unconscious – is that the pleasure principle that is undeniably attached to the ego is beyond itself (always imaginarily incapable, we might say, of totalizing or mastering its own inescapably social or symbolic relationship to the real). And what it also reveals is that the phenomenon of the unconscious does not need to be located at all; for this phenomenon, as we will see more clearly in the following section, is itself nothing more than the product of a – very particular – social form: namely, the capitalist mode of production (the unconscious just is, we might say, at least in its experienceable form, an ineluctable effect of the capitalist imbrication of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real). If Freud had really wanted to recognize all of this, however, he would have had to have taken a much more radical step than he was in fact capable of. For rather than simply using an inadequate metapsychology in order to inadequately explain the supposed logic of the social, he would have had to have employed an adequate conception of this logic in order to explain – and ultimately, of course, dissolve and collapse – the sphere of the metapsychological itself. He would have had to have explicitly renounced, that is, the rather dubious benefits of that whole »murder« and »Entstellung« of the social here described.

Coda: Fetishistic Disavowal and the Social Constitution of the (Unconscious) Ego In two very short and very late texts, Freud can nonetheless be seen to move in a much more interesting direction (even if he remains

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incapable of according to his insights anything even resembling their properly social significance17). In »Fetishism« and »The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence«, Freud points out, that is, that the ego itself can be  – or even in fact merely is  – the subject of a »division«, »splitting« or »rift« (F: 156; SE: 276). (As Freud himself admits, this realization disarrays everything that he has previously said about the supposedly »synthetic function« of an ego still tied to the definitional quality of consciousness (SE: 276).) Even more importantly, however, this »division« and »splitting« of the ego is described in terms of the simultaneous recognition and non-recognition  – or »disavowal« (Verleugnung), Freud famously says  – of an incontrovertible »fact« (in Freud’s equally famous, and certainly quite over-literal example, of course, the »fact« of the possibility of castration revealed by the fearful sight of the female genitalia) (F: 152–4; SE: 275–7; OP: 202–4). If we ignore the specific details of this brilliantly discerned logic of »Verleugnung«  – or, more correctly, if we try to generalize this logic in a different direction – then doesn’t a really quite fascinating perspective start to open out before us? If the ego itself can be – or even simply is – split or divided in this way, then why not go one step further and conceive the very social production of this ego – the social »nucleus« of its unconsciousness, we might say – as a dividing or splitting? This is the precise step, of course, that Lacan will later take; although only really consistently and compellingly – we want to argue in the following section  – when he effects an unabashed return to the social thinking of Marx or, more specifically, to Marx’s fundamentally unsurpassable analysis of the fetishistic constitution of the proletarian subject of capital. For isn’t the ego, we can ask in anticipation, just the inherent and – to put it mildly – not easily superable fetish of precisely this proletarian subject? And doesn’t the terminological homology between Freud and Marx – for both of them want to talk about »fetishism«, of course – thus receive its properly theoretical mooring? These are some of the questions to which we now wish to turn. 17 Freud does hint at such a significance, however, albeit by confining his comments to an apparently pre-capitalist context, when he compares the fetishistic »disavowal« (Verleugnung) of castration to the »panic« that a »grown man« might feel »when the cry goes up that Throne and Altar are in danger« (F: 153).

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2. From the Transcendental Symbolic to the Historicity of Discourse: Lacan’s »Return to Marx« In the previous section, we have seen how Freud’s revolutionary recognition of the ego’s unconsciousness quite thoroughly dismantles and deconstructs from within all of the central oppositions that govern both his first and, much more importantly, his second topographies. Indeed, one of the overarching conclusions that our analysis of Freud has compelled us to draw is that the presuppositions of the second topography are not in the end so different from the presuppositions of the first; for, despite his own persistent claims to the contrary, Freud finds it absolutely impossible to in any way rid himself of his own fundamentally organizing – but, even on his own terms, obviously fundamentally inadequate  – opposition between the (repressing) consciousness of the ego and the supposedly strictly countervailing trends of a specifically unconscious (and repressed) thought. It is through the open door of this inadequacy, of course, that all of Freud’s early dualisms can make their predictably late – and predictably easy – return; for, as we have seen, the later Freud still continues to insouciantly oppose the primary process to the secondary process, the pleasure principle to the reality principle, the energy of mobile cathexes to the energy of bound cathexes and thingpresentations (Dingvorstellungen) to word-presentations (Wortvorstellungen). Now Lacan, of course, is famous for his linguistic reinscription of the Freudian unconscious; and, on a first view – one that is unfortunately only reinforced by a lot of the rather uncritical Lacanianism that surrounds us today  – this reinscription might appear to solve all of the problems confronting Freud at a single stroke. For if, as Lacan illustriously claims, »the unconscious is structured like a language«,18 then surely it becomes impossible to simply oppose the supposed primordiality of Freud’s first set of terms (the primary process, the pleasure principle, the energy of mobile cathexes and thingpresentations) to the supposed secondariness of his second (the sec-

18 Lacan makes this claim so often that it is pointless to give a single reference for it.

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ondary process, the reality principle, the energy of bound cathexes and word-presentations). It surely becomes impossible, that is, to oppose the putative orderlessness of the repressed unconscious to the putative order of the repressing and conscious ego; for the symbolic order of language is, so to speak, always already there, happily immune to any meaningless speculations about what might be said to have come before it. (This »transcendental« and »a priori« structure of the linguistic domain can obviously be most easily demonstrated over against the incredible clumsiness of Freud’s distinction between Dingvorstellungen and Wortvorstellungen (with the former apparently belonging to the unconscious, and the latter apparently attached to the consciousness of the ego); for what Lacan essentially does, of course, is generalize and universalize the exclusively symbolic reach of the Wortvorstellungen. There are no Dingvorstellungen, we might hear Lacan saying, in the absence of the prior existence of Wortvorstellungen; with the obvious result that consciousness and unconsciousness can no longer be counterposed along these hopelessly inadequate conceptual lines.) But if Lacan’s linguistic rewriting of the Freudian unconscious undoubtedly has to be seen to accomplish an enormously important theoretical leap, we nonetheless want to argue in this section that this leap is not in itself enough to do away with every one of the difficulties that we have seen Freud face. And the difficulty that persists, we want to claim, is the very one that is opened up by Freud’s thoroughly radical registration of the ego’s essential unconsciousness. For, to put it very simply, there is nothing about the »transcendental« and »a priori« »symbolic order« of language that can be thought to explain and determine – and even, in fact, as we ourselves will want to contend, produce – the characteristics of the imaginary ego. And a lot of Lacan’s »early« work (by which we mean here, once again, everything that precedes Seminar XVII) remains committed precisely to this transcendental and a priori conception. This is not the only story, however, for there is also, we will be suggesting, another »early« Lacan; a Lacan who detranscendentalizes and historicizes the »symbolic order« (which now becomes pluralized) by relating it precisely to the third register of the real; and who locates the symbolic or social production of the imaginary ego precisely by relating it to this real. It is this second strand of the »early« Lacan that reaches its

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consummation, we will be claiming, in the absolutely fundamental formulations of Seminar XVII.

2.1 Two Contradictory Trends in the »Early« Lacan i) The Missing Link Between the Imaginary and the Symbolic; or, the Ego as the Historical Limit of the Transcendental Symbolic Order The »early« Lacan is undoubtedly best known, then, for what we might call his »classic« articulation of the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the symbolic. According to this articulation – which we only have the time here to telegraphically recapitulate19 – the register of the imaginary can essentially be said to be defined by the constitution of the ego, as a fundamentally misrecognized and misrecognizing instantiation of self-mastery, in that famous play of »insufficiency« and »anticipation« (MS: 78) that is confidently said to characterize the vacillating maneuvers of the mirror stage. The register of the symbolic, by contrast  – whose conspicuously transcendental features Lacan more or less directly introjects from the structural anthropology of Lévi-Strauss (and hence, moving even further back, from a Saussurean linguistics whose basic terms he will nonetheless subject to a rather substantial modification) – is seen to acquire its characteristics as a consequence of the subject’s radically decentering immersion in a signifying order of language over which the imaginary graspings of its ego will never be able to assume any meaningful mastery. Now, the problem with most of the interpretative overviews of Lacan’s development  – and we could speak here both of a whole swathe of inevitably over-simplifying introductions to his work, as well as of a number of supposedly more sophisticated attempts at its narrative comprehension20 – is that they tend to take the existence

19 For Lacan’s own »classic« account, of the imaginary and the symbolic, respectively, see the two Écrits »The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function« and »The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis«. 20 For an over-simplifying introduction see Sean Homer’s Jacques Lacan

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or, more properly speaking, we want to argue, the co-existence of these two spheres of the imaginary and the symbolic almost entirely for granted. Pretty much every one of these interpretations tends to assume, that is, that there is no significant conflict or contradiction between the terms of Lacan’s theorization of the imaginary ego (which is thought to be the product of the oscillatory movements of the mirror stage) and the terms of his theorization of the symbolic subject (which, for its part, is supposed to be the product of the structural or transcendental order of a signifying language). In theory, at least  – if certainly not in practice  – the ego and the subject, the imaginary and the symbolic, and the mirror stage and the order of language can be said to sit quite happily side by side. What we want to argue in this section – in stark and direct contrast to the peculiar emollience of these interpretations – is that there is in fact a very serious deficiency in the »early« Lacan’s »classic« elaboration of the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the symbolic; and that the ultimate cause or consequence of this deficiency is a systematic failure to think the nature of the interrelationship between these two counterposed and contrasting domains. In his »classic« guise, we will contend, the »early« Lacan finds it absolutely impossible (and, on most occasions does not even attempt) to provide a coherent and convincing account of the linkage, the coupling or – in a language that we have already started to become familiar with – the knotting between the two spheres of the imaginary and the symbolic. Or, in other words – and this time in a language that will hopefully become clearer to us as the argument of this chapter advances – he finds it absolutely impossible to provide a coherent and convincing account of the way in which the supposed imaginariness of the ego is located, determined or even, as we ourselves will later want to argue, produced by the supposedly purely symbolic inscription of the subject. In the final instance, we want to suggest, it is the very failure to overcome these impossibilities that has to be seen to call into question the precise and particular definitions that the »early« Lacan »classically« gives of the imaginary and the symbolic (but also, as we (2005); for a supposedly more sophisticated attempt at narrative comprehension see Jacques-Alain Miller’s famous resumé of the six Paradigms of Jouissance (2000).

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will see, of the real) domains. If the »classically early« Lacan can only systematically fail in his articulation of the interrelationship between these two registers, then isn’t this because the constitution of the ego cannot be said to take place in anything even resembling the machinations of the mirror stage? And isn’t it because the constitution of the subject cannot be said to occur through anything even resembling the structural or transcendental »symbolic order« of language? And isn’t there, moreover, a subterranean link between the inadequacy of the »early« Lacan’s »classic« conception of these two registers and the inadequacy of his »early« and »classic« conception of the third register of the real? Isn’t there a subterranean link, that is, between the »early« Lacan’s »classically« transcendental conception of the symbolic – with all that this necessarily implies about the impossibility of properly situating the imaginariness of the ego – and his »classically« transcendent conception of the third register of the real, which is still predominantly thought of at this stage as a purely external limit to the linguistic determinations of the »symbolic order«?

The »Mirror Stage«: neither Primordial nor (as yet) Produced We are starting to run, however, a little too far ahead of ourselves; so why don’t we take a few steps back and try to define more clearly the serious deficiency that afflicts the »classically early« Lacan’s articulation of the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the symbolic? As we have already suggested, this deficiency results from, or is itself perhaps the cause of, a systematic failure to think the nature of the interrelationship between these two spheres. And what we want to show here is that this failure has to be to seen to assume two main forms (the second of which will undoubtedly prove more important to our argument than the first). For, on certain occasions – and especially in his very early work21 – Lacan problematically seems to suggest that the mirror stage’s constitution of the imaginary ego entirely predates and precedes the subject’s later entry into the very different determinations of the structural and transcendental »symbolic order«

21 We are thinking here of everything that Lacan wrote or presented before 1948.

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of language. And, on other occasions – and after a certain point of his »early« development pretty much exclusively22 – Lacan equally problematically appears to claim that this very imaginariness of the ego is itself located and determined, if not yet exactly produced, by the instantiations of the structural and transcendental »symbolic order« of language itself. In his single most influential Écrit, for example – »The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function«  – Lacan says that »[t]he jubilant assumption of his specular image by the kind of being […] the little man is at the infans stage thus seems to me to manifest in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the I is precipitated in a primordial form, prior to being objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject.« »This form would, moreover«, he continues, »have to be called the ›ideal-I‹« (of which we will hear much more later on); and »the important point is that this form situates the agency known as the ego, prior to its social determination, in a fictional direction that will forever remain irreducible for any single individual or, rather, that will only asymptotically approach the subject’s becoming« (MS: 76). Lacan’s language here is somewhat ambiguous, if not to say downright contradictory (especially in its invocation of what, from the perspective of his own later development, can only be understood as an essentially pre-symbolic »symbolic matrix«). But even if we grant the existence of these ambiguities, the basic tenor of Lacan’s argument remains rather drastically clear: the constitution of the ego is »primordial«, it comes »prior to« and »before« the »social« (and certainly also, we might surmise, the properly symbolic) »determinations« of a »universal« »dialectic« of »language«. The constituted ego is »infans« in a strictly literal sense, antecedent to the powers of speech. Its imaginariness definitively precedes the later setting in place of the symbolic. In another important Écrit, however  – one so important, in fact, that it stands at the head of this definitive collection of texts (we are speaking, of course, of the famous »Seminar on ›The Purloined Letter‹«) – Lacan directly contradicts these claims by unequivocally

22 Consistently with the note above, we are thinking here of everything that Lacan wrote or presented from 1948 onwards.

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stating the following: »[t]he teaching of this seminar is designed to maintain that imaginary effects, far from representing the core of analytic experience, give us nothing of any consistency unless they are related to the symbolic chain that binds and orients them« (SPL: 6). The imaginary – and the imaginariness of the ego, we can infer – is no longer thought to predate and precede the symbolic, but is instead said to be »related« to it or, in a much stronger and much less ambiguous language, to be »bound« and »oriented« by it. It is this view – and certainly not the countervailing one that it contradicts – that Lacan will reiterate again and again both throughout his Écrits and throughout his long sequence of »early« seminars. And it is this view that will of course compel him to engage in his famous series of rethinkings and rewritings of the fundamental characteristics of the mirror stage. (For, very briefly, the more that Lacan’s conception of this stage progresses and develops, the more the constitution of the imaginary ego is itself seen to be »mediated« by the interventions of the symbolic; without however, as we will see, this »mediation« ever coming to be compellingly thought out – at least prior to the crucial innovations of Seminar XVII; which effectively do away with, or at least substantially rewrite, the very existence of the mirror stage.) We are confronted, then, by two absolutely incompatible claims. For if, on the one hand, we are asked to conceive the constitution of the imaginary (ego) as being primordial to the supposedly later instantiations of the symbolic, then, on the other hand, we are told to construe these instantiations as themselves locating and determining – if not yet precisely producing – the now decidedly non-original characteristics of the imaginary (ego) itself. And, to reiterate, what we want to do in what follows is not so much choose between these conflicting claims as make clear that  – at least in the work of the »classically early« Lacan – both of them are equally unsustainable. Lacan’s first claim, then  – the claim that the constitution of the imaginary ego entirely precedes the later installation of the symbolic – is obviously the most implausible. In the first place, of course, because it allocates the formation of one of the central axes of human »subjectivity« (now using this term in a non-specific and specifically non-Lacanian sense) to a mechanism, the mirror stage, that is itself – at least at the time of the formulation of this claim – thought to have nothing to do with the linguistic and symbolic determinations that must surely be seen to invest this »subjectivity« all the way down. (It

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is perhaps not a coincidence, we might suspect, that the »evidence« that Lacan provides for the existence of this stage is itself primarily derived from the definitively »non-subjective« sphere of ethological experiment (MS: 77–8).) And secondly, and as we have already suggested, this claim is implausible because it is itself contradicted by what Lacan will later have to say about the symbolic location and determination of the imaginary itself. (On the basis of what we have said so far, the nature of this contradiction should already be fairly apparent; in the next section, when we refer to Lacan’s comments on the eminently symbolic – and, more importantly, also eminently social and historical – production of the imaginary ego, its characteristics will hopefully be rendered perfectly transparent.) It follows, then, that Lacan’s second claim – the claim that it is the symbolic itself that fundamentally locates and determines the situation of the imaginary ego – is, at least on the face of it, much more promising. For if Lacan’s first claim posits an essential non-relation between the imaginary and the symbolic, his second claim posits an essential relation – a relation, moreover, in Lacan’s own language, of »binding« and »orientation«. The positing of a relation is not the same, however, as the explanation of its nature; and it is the very provision of such an explanation that the vast majority of Lacan’s affirmations of a link between the imaginary and the symbolic seem intended to avoid. For it is all very well to say – as Lacan certainly does say in his successive rethinkings and rewritings of the mirror stage – that the constitution of the imaginary ego is itself symbolically »mediated«; and it is all very well to state – as Lacan undoubtedly does state in the formulation of his famous »schema L«, as well as in the elaboration of his equally famous »optical model«23 – that it is the »axis« or »plane« of the symbolic that itself unavoidably situates the »axis« or location of the imaginary. It is an entirely different thing, however, to actually engage in an explanation or articulation of this presupposed symbolic determination of the imaginary (ego); and, once again, it is precisely such an engagement that is conspicuously lacking in all three of those instances of Lacan’s work that we have here briefly cited.

23 For a quick description of both this schema and this model see the relevant entries in Evans (1996).

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The Ego-Ideal and the Ideal-Ego; a Modification of Freud… It appears, then – at least following the terms of our analysis thus far – that what Lacan’s »classically early« work is sorely and centrally missing is any kind of serious or sustained attempt at an explanation or articulation of the supposed interrelationship between the registers of the imaginary and the symbolic. If one starts to look at this work a little more closely, however, one will discover that there is at least one such significant and recurring attempt. But, as we will try to demonstrate in the remainder of this section, the only thing that can ultimately be said to be significant about this attempt is that it ineluctably ends up by reinforcing the absolutely strict separation between the two very terms – the imaginary and the symbolic – that it was originally intended to somehow bring together. So what form does the »classically early« Lacan’s one real attempt to think the co-dependency of the imaginary and the symbolic take? Well, the only possible answer to this question is a very peculiar form indeed. For what the »classically early« Lacan does when he somehow wants to weld together these two registers is irrevocably divide in two what is indisputably, in the work of Freud himself, a single concept. Whereas Freud talks indiscriminately, that is (and as we have already had a slight chance to see), of the super-ego, the ideal-ego and the ego-ideal, and uses these terms rather loosely as theoretical synonyms for one another, Lacan – sometimes citing Freud’s authority for this, and sometimes contradictorily drawing attention to his own ingenuity – tries to draw a very strict distinction between the last two terms: with the ideal-ego being allocated to the realm of the imaginary and the ego-ideal taking up its place in the contrary, but nonetheless supposedly closely imbricated, sphere of the symbolic.24 It is not at all surprising of course that, in attempting to link up the two registers of the imaginary and the symbolic, Lacan should take recourse to a particular, and particularly idiosyncratic, reading and

24 The super-ego, it should be mentioned, follows its own peculiar path, being allocated – at different points of Lacan’s work – to each of the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, something which our own account, both in the previous section and the sections that follow, makes easier to understand.

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interpretation of the Freudian conception of the super-ego. For, as we have already tried to make clear in our own previous discussion, it is precisely by means of his own specific inflection of this concept that Freud effectively sacrifices the possibility of any implicitly coherent articulation of the three opposing but nonetheless interpenetrating registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real (embryonically represented in his work, as we have also tried to show, by the three distinct conceptions of the ego, the super-ego and the id). Because Freud essentially conceives the (embryonically symbolic) super-ego as the mere instantiation of a social supplementarity, we have argued, he can only succeed in naturalizing – or, more precisely perhaps, in re-naturalizing  – the supposedly pre-existent and presocial relationship between the (embryonically imaginary) ego and the (embryonically real) id. But what this re-naturalization implicitly contradicts, of course, is Freud’s own revolutionary recognition of the ego’s fundamental unconsciousness. For, as we have also claimed, what this recognition would ultimately have to be seen to require – in order for its presuppositions to be rendered clear and convincing – is some kind of account of the social or symbolic production of the imaginary ego itself. What it would ultimately have to be seen to require, that is, is some kind of compellingly social articulation of the linkage, coupling or knotting between the symbolic character of the super-ego and the imaginary character of the ego. (And this articulation would also have to be seen to explain, moreover, the specifically social emergence of something somehow resembling the real of the id. For if this id can no longer be construed, as Freud himself occasionally admits, as a discretely localizable sphere of »the unconscious«, it must instead come to be comprehended as an inescapable and inextricable part – and perhaps even as more than a part – of this now thoroughly ternary, and also thoroughly social, constellation.) As we have seen, then, it is precisely such a compelling articulation of the imaginary and the symbolic (and also, by implication, of the real) that remains absent in Freud’s work until the very end. And, if we recognize this, it is not too difficult to suggest that it is some kind of implicit improvement or correction of Freud that Lacan is aiming at when he seeks to divide up the concept of the super-ego (and by extension, of course, the concept of the ego itself) into two separate – and supposedly closely interrelated – spheres: the imaginary sphere of the ideal-ego and the symbolic sphere of the ego-ideal. As we hope

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to make clear in our ensuing discussion, however, Lacan’s attempt to distinguish between these two domains has to be understood to be as radically unsatisfactory as Freud’s previous reduction of the super-ego to a mere instantiation of social supplementarity. For if Freud (by conceiving of the social in these supplementary terms) effectively cuts the (symbolic) super-ego off from the re-naturalized relationship between the (imaginary) ego and the (real) id, then Lacan (by essentially bypassing, in his own specific way, the whole thorny question of the social) effectively removes both the symbolic and the imaginary from any productively explanatory relationship to the third register of the real. But before we start to spell out the precise logic of the failure of Lacan’s distinction, we ought to look a little more carefully perhaps at the exact manner of its elaboration. And if we once again take an overview of the whole of the work of the »early« Lacan, we will see that this elaboration can be seen to move in two ultimately very different – if, at this stage, equally unsatisfactory – directions. For if, on the one hand, Lacan often attempts to articulate his distinction in purely theoretical terms, then, on the other hand, he is also on occasion compelled to delineate it in a more colloquial – and thus at least implicitly, we want to argue, more social and historical – sense.

…that Falters; both Theoretically… Lacan’s theoretical elaboration, then – after everything that we have already argued in this section – can only be said to be of limited interest. For all that it does is repeat – albeit in a significantly displaced set of terms – his original (and obviously unexplained) affirmation of a simultaneous separation and conjunction between the two registers of the imaginary and the symbolic. The ideal-ego, Lacan tells us, has to be seen to define the ego or the subject (and it is precisely the ambiguous oscillation between these two terms that will concern us here) in its imaginary aspect; it is »the mirage of the ego«, »an aspiration (and to such a significant extent)«, when »not to say […] a dream«. The ego-ideal, by contrast, has to be seen to define this very same ego or subject in its now thoroughly symbolic mode; it serves to designate, as its name suggests, »the formation of an ideal«, the imposition of and adhered attachment to a »model« (S7:

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98; RDL: 562). And furthermore, we should stress, if this ego or subject can certainly be said to be afflicted by the »dreams«, »mirages« and »aspirations« of the imaginary ideal-ego, this is just as certainly only because, and to the extent that, every one of these phenomena is ultimately located and determined by the »models« and »ideals« of the symbolic ego-ideal itself; or as Lacan himself puts it (in terms that are very far from being theoretically transparent), »it is in the [symbolic S. A. & H. R] Other that the subject is constituted as ideal, that he has to regulate the completion of what comes as ego, or ideal ego – which is not the ego ideal – that is to say, to constitute himself in his imaginary reality« (S11: 144). If Lacan originally distinguished, then – as we have seen – between an imaginary ego and a symbolic subject, and experienced the impossibility of explaining the combination between these two domains precisely as a consequence of the strictness of the separation between them, he now seems to want to escape this impossibility by introducing both a new set of terms and, more importantly perhaps (even if only implicitly), a central vacillation within these terms between their ascription to the spheres of either the imaginary (ego) or the symbolic (subject). For if, on the one hand, the ideal-ego and the ego-ideal still have to be said to unambiguously belong to the respective and opposing registers of the imaginary and the symbolic, then, on the other hand, the very existence of these two terms seems to suggest – perhaps as an inevitable consequence of their simple and chiastic inversion of one another – both a symbolic intermingling of the imaginary and an imaginary intermingling of the symbolic. The ego, after all, which was initially supposed to be a purely imaginary instance  – and which, to some extent at least, has to continue to be so conceived (as the quotation at the end of the previous paragraph makes clear)  – now also has to be said to appear on both sides of the very division between the imaginary and the symbolic (it appears once as ideal-ego, that is, and once again as ego-ideal; or once under the auspices of the supposedly purely imaginary and once again under the auspices of the supposedly purely symbolic). And the same can also be said, of course, albeit this time in reverse order, of the ideal itself. For if Lacan initially insists (in the very same quotation) upon the purely symbolic character of this ideal, it also has to be seen to partially escape from this denomination in order to reemerge in a massively paradoxical double form (once as ideal-ego,

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that is, and once again as ego-ideal; or to reiterate, once under the aegis of the »purely« imaginary and once again under the aegis of the »purely« symbolic).

…and Socially and Historically Lacan’s purely theoretical distinction between the ideal-ego and the ego-ideal is obviously nothing more, then, than a sadly convenient deus ex machina. (For in the absence of a proper explanation of the interrelationship and interaction between the imaginary and the symbolic, it only serves to introduce the mysterious implication of their crossing and overlapping.) And if similar things can ultimately be said of Lacan’s colloquial – and thus also, by implication, thoroughly social and historical – extrapolation of this distinction, then it is also certainly true that this extrapolation can be said to reveal, when read quite firmly against the grain, the equally social and historical limitations of the whole of the »early« Lacan’s »classical« position. Lacan’s most extensive colloquial exposition of his distinction can undoubtedly be found towards the end of his eighth seminar; and precisely because it necessarily involves us in such a sudden and dramatic shift – or series of shifts – in both theoretical and thematic registers, it is worth quoting, if not in full, then at least at some length. »The ideal-ego«, Lacan pontificates: »is the family son, at the wheel of his little sports car. With this he’ll take you on a journey. He’ll play the smart-ass. He’ll exercise his sense of risk, which isn’t anything bad at all  – his liking for sport, as one says – and everything consists in knowing what meaning he gives to this word, if sport cannot also be challenging the rules, and I’m not only referring to those of the driving code, but also to those of security […] In any case, this is certainly the register in which he will have to show himself, or not show himself, and know how it is to his advantage to show himself, as being stronger than the rest, even if this consists in making us say that he is overdoing it a bit. This is the ideal-ego. I limit myself here to opening a side-door, because what I have to talk about is the relationship with the ego-ideal. In effect, this doesn’t leave the ideal-ego alone and without an object, because after all, on certain occasions, not on all, if our guy dedicates himself to these scabrous

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exercises, why is this? – to pick up a girl […] Are we concerned here with picking up a girl or rather with the form of picking her up? The desire matters less here, perhaps, than the form of satisfying it. And in this and because of this, certainly, as we know, the girl can be a complete accessory, she can even be lacking.«

So far, then, we might think, so good. The ideal-ego is possessed of a certain conventional flair for brinkmanship and self-assertion. Unfortunately, however  – at least from the perspective of its own rather solipsistic motivations – this flair, as its conventional nature would suggest, is very far from being either discrete or isolatable. For as Lacan once again reminds us, the (imaginary) flourishes of the ideal-ego must always be related to the more fundamental determinations of the (symbolic) ego-ideal. And if this latter ideal first appears here under the banner of courtship and matrimony (even when – or precisely because! – the wife or the girlfriend is always potentially missing), this is not quite yet the whole story. For if the imaginary maneuvers of »picking up a girl« undoubtedly play themselves out within a symbolic framework, this framework must also be seen to be wider, of course, than what is designated by the name of courtship itself. To what overarching symbolic instance, then, is courtship subjected? Or, as Lacan himself continues by inquiring, »What«, really, »is the ego-ideal?«: »The ego-ideal, which has the closest relationship with the play and function of the ideal-ego, is clearly constituted by the fact that at the beginning, if he has little sports car, this is because he is the child of a good family, he is daddy’s boy – and to change the register, if MarieChantal becomes a member of the Communist Party, as you know, it is to piss daddy off […] To know whether she doesn’t misrecognize in this function her own identification with what she goes after in pissing off the father, this is another side-door which we will not bother to open. But we certainly can say that both the one as much as the other, MarieChantal and the daddy’s boy at the wheel of his little sports car, would limit themselves to remaining englobed within the world organized by the father if it were not precisely for the signifier father, which allows us, let us say, to extract ourselves from him in order to imagine that we are pissing him off, and even perhaps allows us to achieve this […] Are we not also saying with this that it is the instrument thanks to which

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the two characters, masculine and feminine, can extroject themselves from the objective situation? This is what introjection is, in sum – to organize oneself subjectively in a form in which the father, in effect, under the form of the ego-ideal, not so bad in spite of all, will be a signifier from the perspective of which the young person, male or female, can come to contemplate him or herself without too much disadvantage at the wheel of his little car or brandishing the card of the Communist Party […] In sum, if because of this introjected signifier the subject falls beneath a judgment that reprimands it, it will acquire the dimension of a reprobate, which narcissistically, as the whole world knows, doesn’t suppose any great disadvantage.« (S8: 401–3)25

So now we know what it is that is ultimately supposed to function as the symbolic anchor of the imaginary machinations of the ideal-ego. It is the ego-ideal, of course, but only once this has been rendered equivalent to the symbolic operation of the signifier of the father. If our little »fils de famille« can imaginarily indulge in his predilection for dangerous driving, and if – a very big leap, this one! – Marie-Chantal can imaginarily exercise her rather dubious right to »piss daddy off« (by joining, no more and no less, the Communist Party), then, in both cases, imaginarization is only made possible because of a prior subordination to the symbolic name of the father itself. It is only the symbolic »identification« with this name that allows both of our protagonists – to their own »narcissistic advantage«, of course – to imaginarily »misrecognize« the very desires that they are momentarily pursuing. They can only imaginarily »extract« or »extroject« themselves from the signifier of the father to the extent that they have already symbolically »introjected« it. It is the symbolic ego-ideal, we might say – the symbolic instance of the father – that essentially opens up the space for the proliferating imaginarizations of the ideal-ego. Or, once again, if the ideal-ego stands in possession of a certain imaginary freedom of movement, this freedom can in the last instance be defined as imaginary precisely as a consequence of the previous and continuing intervention of the symbolic and fatherly ego-ideal.

25 The translation of this passage – and of all those citations from the original French that follow – is our own.

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We seem to have finally penetrated, then, to the core of the »early« Lacan’s »classic« attempt to link up and combine the two distinct registers of the imaginary and the symbolic; to the core of his attempt to couple and conjoin the two counterposed but always simultaneously united spheres of the (imaginary) ideal-ego and the (symbolic) egoideal. The imaginary and the symbolic are linked and coupled, Lacan wants us to believe, because it is the symbolic itself – under the aegis of the father as ego-ideal – that, in the first place, somehow enables the hypostatizations of the imaginary even to emerge and, in the second place (and also somewhat paradoxically, we might think), ultimately serves to situate these hypostatizations in their truth as imaginary. The symbolic both gives birth to the imaginary and, at the same time, by functioning as its limit, works to dominate and master it. The imaginary is nothing more than the apparently rebellious, but in the end only firmly obedient, child and servant of the symbolic. How convincing, however, is this attempted articulation? Well, not very convincing at all, we want to argue; because the only thing that Lacan’s constructions are doing – for the umpteenth time now – is systematically begging the very questions that they are setting themselves up as being capable of resolving. For how can the symbolic be said to be properly related to the imaginary  – in the sense of both opening up the field for it and fundamentally locating it in its limited truth – when there is nothing inherent in this symbolic that can be said to explain the very appearance of the imaginary in the first place? If the symbolic must ultimately be conceived as being absolutely distinct from the imaginary, even at the same time as it is said to open up the room for it – and one wonders how things could be otherwise given the self-evidence of Lacan’s continuing desire to reduce the imaginary to the purely imaginary, and the symbolic to the purely symbolic – then why, we might ask, does imaginarization even occur at all (or, at the very least, why does it occur, as Lacan is now compelled to assume, in a manner that can in the last instance be said to be tied up with the supposedly higher determinations of the symbolic itself)? These are, of course, extremely abstract questions. But we can try to render them a little more concrete by re-situating them within the framework of the two examples that Lacan himself so helpfully provides. Why is it, then, we can inquire, that the »fils de famille« even wants to exercise his imaginary »liking for sport«, his imaginary

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desire to be »stronger than the rest«, at all? And similarly – albeit this time moving in a direction explicitly opposed to the father’s putatively symbolic will  – why is it that Marie-Chantal, by becoming a member of the Communist Party, even wants to imaginarily »piss daddy off« (assuming, of course, and it is in fact a very big assumption, that this is all that she wants to do)? Lacan tries to answer these questions, as we have seen, by claiming that it is the efficiency of the symbolic itself – or the efficiency of the fundamentally symbolic signifier of the father – that essentially opens up the space for the possibility of imaginarization. But for two main reasons, we want to suggest, this answer has to be seen to be grossly inadequate. Firstly, then, because we seem to be talking here about something that definitively exceeds the realm of the merely possible; we seem to be talking, that is, about nothing less than the symbolic compulsion of the imaginary. And, secondly, because this compulsion can only be said to assume – both following Lacan’s examples, but ultimately turning against what he wants to achieve with them – a definitively social and historical form. What does it mean, then, to claim – in accordance with the selftranscending logic of Lacan’s examples – that there is something like a symbolic forcing or compulsion of the imaginary? Well, it means – as Lacan’s own words can perhaps be seen to admit  – that if the »fils de famille« even first »has his little sports car« this is only and precisely »because he is the child of a good family, he is daddy’s boy«. And it means  – albeit now in a manner that unambiguously pushes beyond the severe limitations of Lacan’s interpretation – that if Marie-Chantal »becomes a member of the Communist Party […] to piss daddy off« – this is only and precisely because there is something about him that is worth »pissing off« in the first place. In both of the cases that Lacan cites, that is, it is only possible to consistently explain the imaginary by conceiving it as the more or less inevitable consequence of an imaginarization that is always already at work within the symbolic itself; and always already at work, of course, within the very signifier of the father that is supposed to function as this symbolic’s ultimate guarantee. The »fils de famille« can only want to exercise his imaginary »liking for sport«, his imaginary desire to be »stronger than the rest«, as a consequence of the fact that this imaginary liking and desire is always already embedded in the soil of the symbolic itself; and

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in the soil of the father as the ultimately signifying instance of this symbolic. (For does the father not also possess, we might rhetorically ask, the keys to his very own »little sports car«? Perhaps it is this very same car, in fact, that his son is so ostentatiously borrowing? Or perhaps the father has now traded it in, as the maturity of his »symbolic« wisdom would require, for a more stately and respectable model?) And Marie-Chantal can only want to exercise her imaginary right to »piss daddy off« as a consequence of the fact that there is something inherent in this symbolic »daddy« that itself imaginarily provokes, in a now quite depressing double-sided logic, the very desire for its own provocation. (Although we can also start to question here, on the basis of this recognition of the peculiar interaction of the symbolic and the imaginary, whether it is entirely correct to define MarieChantal’s activity as purely imaginary. Would it not be more appropriate to say, in fact, that what she is looking for in joining the Communist Party – with all of the narcissistic dangers that this of course entails, and with all of the more properly political dangers that such a decision opens up  – is a new and different symbolic response to the father’s (or to the signifier of the father’s) own symbolic imaginarization?) The symbolic, then – or the symbolic signifier of the father – is not quite as purely symbolic as Lacan would have us believe (and the imaginary, of course, is not quite as purely imaginary). But once we have accepted this, what does it mean to say that the symbolic compulsion of the imaginary, and the imaginary contamination of the symbolic, can only be adequately comprehended in social and historical terms? Well, it means that it is impossible even to conceive of Lacan’s examples outside of an essentially social and historical framework. For it is naturally not every social order that would allow the »fils de famille« to exercise his »liking for sport«, his desire to be »stronger than the rest« (and indeed, we might reasonably suspect, there is only one social order that would happily grant to him the flirtation with these apparent liberties). And, even more obviously, it is not every social order that would »allow« (and even, of course, potentially »disallow«) Marie-Chantal’s becoming a member of the Communist Party (for, indeed, there really is now only one social order in which this activity can said to acquire a certain significance). The behavior of both of our protagonists seems to presuppose, then, in direct contrast to Lacan’s own theoretical presumptions, the exis-

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tence of a social or symbolic world in which imaginarization is not only possible, but also – and to a very considerable extent – necessary; with this necessity being ultimately explained, of course – to emphasize this once again  – by the ministrations of the symbolic itself. (It is worth emphasizing in passing here that, on a number of other occasions, the »early« Lacan’s discussions of the ego-ideal do seem to unambiguously register – in a manner that is pretty much diametrically opposed to his own previous definitions of this concept – the unavoidably social and historical process of (at least a certain kind of26) imaginarization of the symbolic. In Seminar V, for instance, The Formations of the Unconscious, Lacan fascinatingly informs us that »Freud’s discovery of the ego-ideal more or less coincided with the inauguration in Europe of that type of personality that offers to the political community a single and easy identification, that is, the dictator« (S5: 267). Or, once again, in Seminar VIII: The Transference: »Take the schema from the Massenpsychologie with which Freud originates for us the identification of the ego-ideal. From which side does he approach it? By taking a detour through collective psychology. What is produced, then, he asks us – thus prefacing the great Hitlerian explosion  – in order that everyone can fall into that species of fascination that allows for the emergence of a mass, that gel, the gelling of what we call a crowd? In order that all subjects can collectively have, at least for an instant, the same ideal, which allows anything and everything for a fairly short time, it is necessary, Freud explains, that all of these exterior objects be considered to possess a common trait, ein einziger Zug« (S8: 462).27

26 It will hopefully become clear in the following sections that the symbolic has never been purely symbolic; that is, to anticipate our own argument, that if the capitalist mode of production is defined by one kind of imaginarization of the symbolic, pre-capitalist modes are defined by another. 27 Lacan’s comments here should certainly be subjected to that critique of Freudian group psychology that we have already developed in the previous section, and, especially, to the critique of the idea that the group is first and foremost constituted through the elevation of the figure of the leader. In Seminar XVIII – and anticipating a lot of the arguments that we are making here, and that we will make even more clearly in the following sections – Lacan has already presented this critique in a perfectly precise manner. »In every dis-

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The ego-ideal no longer appears here, then, as that calmly symbolic signifier of the father that we have already seen Lacan describe as being »not so bad in spite of all«. For it now serves to designate an imaginarization of the symbolic – and what could better exemplify this imaginarization than the figure of Hitler himself?  – that could not possibly be any worse.)

The Social and Historical Limitations of the Transcendental Symbolic… But if we continue to confine our own discussion – at least for the moment  – to the predominant conception that Lacan entertains of the ego-ideal, we can surely now see that the fundamental problem with this conception is that it is essentially set out in structuralist or transcendental terms. For, according to the ultimate presumption of Lacan’s examples, the only thing that can really be said to define the symbolic – in a consummately tautological fashion – is its very symbolic nature. The symbolic, we can hear Lacan saying, just is the symbolic; and the father, the overarching signifying instance of this symbolic, just is – a little like the God of the Old Testament – exactly what he is. And once the symbolic has been defined in these terms – terms which can be seen to stretch elastically across the putatively unchanging course of history itself – its supposed efficiency can of course be made to override, or, more precisely perhaps, draw the sting from, the very real social and political problems that this history inevitably produces. For if Lacan’s examples undoubtedly contain an

course that appeals to the You«, he says, »something provokes a camouflaged and secret identification, which is nothing more than the identification with this enigmatic object that can be nothing at all, the little surplus jouissance of Hitler, which perhaps went no further than his moustache. This sufficed to bring together people who were not mystical at all, who were fully engaged in the process of the capitalist discourse, with all that this implies about the questioning of surplus jouissance under the aspect of surplus-value. It was about knowing whether on a certain level one would still have one’s little piece, which was enough to provoke this effect of identification« (S18: 29). The leader only »brings people together«, that is, to the extent that they have already been »brought together«  – and set apart, we might say  – within the »discourse of capitalism«.

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implicit reference to these problems – as we have been attempting here to clearly demonstrate – then they just as undoubtedly seek to explicitly exorcise them by effecting their dissolution into the ethereal realm of the symbolic itself. (It is hardly surprising, then, that the overwhelming tone of Lacan’s reflections is archly conservative; for what the most subtle conservatisms do, of course, is effectively embed themselves in history only in order to better accomplish this history’s terminal naturalization.) If Lacan’s examples can be read against the grain, however, in such a way that they can be said to reveal, at least implicitly, the social and historical process of the imaginarization of the symbolic – and of the symbolic signifier of the father – then we are of course entitled to ask ourselves the following question: what is it that can ultimately be said to explain this process of imaginarization? And what we want to start to suggest here – following what we have already argued about Marx in our first chapter, and in anticipation of what we will have to say about both Lacan and Marx in the following two sections – is that it is only possible to answer this question when we also turn our attention to the so far essentially uncharted territory of the third register of the real; and when we start to think this real – in a manner that is certainly implicit in the later Lacan’s work, but which is never explicitly carried through there – in terms that are analogous, or even in the end homologous, to the terms of human production or labor. We can only really understand the social and historical process of the imaginarization of the symbolic – and of the symbolic signifier of the father – when we start to think, that is, once again, about the essential modus operandi of the capitalist mode of production. For what this mode of production fundamentally does, of course, as we have seen, is socially and symbolically compel the imaginarization (or at least the tendential imaginarization) of the real. Capitalism produces surplus-value by socially or symbolically compelling the counting (and ultimately, of course, also the non-counting) of labor (the real) as the commodity of labor-power (the at least tendentially imaginary). The imaginarization of the symbolic can only be properly comprehended, that is, when the symbolic itself – or, more precisely speaking, a particular historical mode of the symbolic – is seen to practically enforce the (tendential) imaginarization of the real.

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…and the Social and Historical Limitations of the Transcendent Real We do not want to dwell too much here upon the implications of this threefold logic; for, as we have already said, this is what we will be doing – to either a greater or a lesser degree – for the remainder of this chapter. We can perhaps conclude by suggesting, however, that – once we have some kind of awareness of the specifically capitalist imbrication of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real  – it becomes relatively easy to see that one of the fundamental problems with the »early« Lacan’s »classic« position is its thoroughly inadequate conception of precisely this third register of the real. For, as is well-known, the »early« Lacan predominantly conceives this real as the merely external limit to the structuralist and transcendental determinations of the symbolic order itself. »[T]he real«, Lacan tells us in Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique, »is what resists symbolisation absolutely« (S1: 66); or, once again, and this time in the »Seminar on ›The Purloined Letter‹«: »the real, whatever [symbolic S. A. & H. R.] upheaval we subject it to, is always and in every case in its place; it carries its place stuck to the sole of its shoe, there being nothing that can exile it from it« (SPL: 25); and finally, and certainly most strangely, in Lacan’s »Response to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s ›Verneinung‹«: »the real does not wait, especially not for the subject, since it expects nothing from speech [the symbolic S. A. & H. R]. But it is there, identical to his existence, a noise in which one can hear anything and everything« (RJH: 388). There is a deep and intimate connection, then, we can surmise, between the »early« Lacan’s »classically« transcendental conception of the symbolic and the »early« Lacan’s »classically« transcendent conception of the real. The supposedly transcendental symbolic seems to secrete, that is, as an inevitable consequence of its own theoretical inadequacies, the further theoretical inadequacies of a supposedly transcendent real.28 So what Lacan needs to do in order to be able to properly articulate his three registers – and in order to be able to provide a compelling account of the symbolic production of the imaginary (ego) (one that surpasses, of course, or at the very least

28 Lacan is of course repeating here an essentially Kantian problematic.

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substantially rewrites, the by now thoroughly inadequate hypothesis of the »mirror stage«29) – is detranscendentalize or historicize his conception of the symbolic and immanentize (ultimately under the aegis of the concept of labor or production) his conception of the real. And as we will now begin to see, this is exactly what he does.

ii) A First Approach to the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real; or, the Symbolic and Social Production of the Modern Ego and its Delusory Discourse of Freedom In the previous section, we have seen how, in one strand of his »early« thinking – the strand that focuses upon the supposed constitution of the ego in the mirror stage, and upon the supposed constitution of the subject in the structuralist or transcendental order of language – Lacan systematically fails in his attempt to articulate the interrelationship between the two registers, the imaginary and the symbolic, that are supposed to be indexed by these very terms. The »classically early« Lacan either conceives the constitution of the imaginary ego as something that occurs prior to the later setting in place of the symbolic, thus condemning himself to an entirely pre-symbolic and presocial myth of the mirror stage; or, more plausibly, he conceives the symbolic itself as something that locates and determines the position of the imaginary ego, but without ever succeeding in the exposition and explication of this determination. The »classically early« Lacan’s one real attempt to think the co-implication of the imaginary and the symbolic, his theoretical and colloquial elaboration of the supposed interdependency of ideal-ego and ego-ideal, ultimately does nothing more than erect an absolute separation between the two terms at the very same time as it continues to vaguely and mysteriously suggest their crossing and overlapping. The ultimate cause of the absoluteness of this separation, we have argued, is the »classically early« Lacan’s essentially structuralist or transcendental conception of the symbolic order itself. Because this 29 Lacan himself suggests such a rewriting when, in Seminar V, he describes Marx’s analysis of the metonymic exchange and circulation of commodities as nothing less than a »precursor« of precisely this stage (S5: 81; 97). And this suggestion, as we will later start to see, comes to its full fruition in Seminar XVII.

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transcendental conception of the symbolic inevitably secretes a transcendent conception of the real (which the »early« Lacan predominantly conceives as the merely external limit of the symbolic order), it can only systematically fail in its attempted articulation of the location and determination of the imaginary ego. For – as we have already started to suggest, and as we will continue to suggest in what follows – the only way in which the symbolic can be convincingly and compellingly linked to the imaginary is through the introduction of a consideration of the third register of the real. What we want to do in this section, then, is begin to show how in other parts of his »early« work – parts that are certainly less wellknown than the »classic« elaborations of the mirror stage and the transcendental symbolic – Lacan starts to sketch out, by essentially detranscendentalizing and historicizing his own position in relation to all of these terms, an embryonically much more coherent articulation of the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real. We will see how, in Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Lacan begins to thematize the modern (for want of a better word30) in terms of a novel and essential rupture between the symbolic and the real; without, however, properly comprehending that it is only a distinctively modern practice and instantiation of the imaginary that can be seen to account for this rupture in the first place. And we will also see how, in earlier interventions – or, more specifically, in the very early text »Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis«, and in the very early seminars on the ego and the psychoses – Lacan certainly does start to come to grips with the fact that, if modernity is essentially constituted by a rupturing of the symbolic and the real, then this is only ultimately because it is also essentially constituted by a rupturing of the imaginary and the real; or, more precisely, that is, because the very symbolic order of modernity itself has to be seen to compel, in one form or another, the real’s tendential imaginarization. (We will obviously not be engaged here, then, in anything like a simple reconstruction of the gradual and progressive detranscendentalization and historicization of Lacan’s »early« work; for as the non-chronological nature of our argument itself makes clear  – we 30 Rather than talking about »the modern«, we are suggesting, Lacan would have done better – as he later does – by talking directly about the »discourse of capitalism«.

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will simultaneously »advance« and »regress« from Seminar VII to the Écrits, to two very early seminars – there simply is no such gradual or progressive development to be reconstructed in the first place. If Lacan’s »early« work can certainly be seen to subject itself to a detranscendentalization and historicization, then it just as certainly has to be seen to do this in a thoroughly uneven and even haphazard fashion. At times, as we will see, historical insights that have already been formulated (in the earlier writings and seminars) will later be ignored or forgotten (in Seminar VII); and, on other occasions (in Seminar VII once again), historical insights will themselves be expressed more or less alongside the simultaneous desire for their own suppression; through the return, strangely persistent in Lacan’s work, to the ahistorical comforts of both a transcendental symbolic and an equally transcendental imaginary. It is some idea of this uneven and haphazard development, then, that we are attempting here to give; but only in such a way that we can sift through it in order to produce and reconstruct the outlines of a possibly more coherent development.)

Seminar VII: the (Social and Historical) Rupturing of the Symbolic and the Real… Any attempt to comprehend the detranscendentalization and historicization of Lacan’s »early« work would be well-advised to begin, then, by taking a fairly close look at the famous Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. For it is precisely here – and precisely through the mediation of the categories of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real; or at least, as we will see, precisely through the mediation of the categories of the symbolic and the real (Lacan’s theorization of the imaginary being strangely deficient in this seminar) – that Lacan starts to draw a fundamental line of demarcation between what we might call, even if these terms are rather vague, the modern and the pre-modern; or, in the terms of the seminar itself, between the social and historical context of modern ethics (Luther, Kant, Hegel, Sade, Bentham and above all Freud) and the social and historical context of traditional or pre-modern ethics (Plato, the Stoics, the Epicureans, Saint Augustine, Aquinas and above all Aristotle).

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In the very first pages of Seminar VII, then, Lacan informs us that his attempt to distinguish between the modern and the pre-modern will take pleasure as its central topic. For it is the concept of pleasure that both unites Aristotle and Freud (both of them taking an enormous interest in what this concept designates, of course) and, at the same time and more importantly, both for Lacan’s purposes and our own, separates and disunites them: it is certainly not »the same pleasure function«, Lacan tells us, that is »at work in both of these articulations« (the articulations, that is, of Aristotle and Freud). But »[i]t is almost impossible to isolate [the] difference« between these two articulations«, he continues, »if we do not realize what took place in the interval«. »I will not […] be able to avoid«, then, Lacan concludes, »a certain inquiry into historical progress«.31 Now, what is especially interesting for us here is the fact that, as soon as Lacan begins to chart the course of this »historical progress«, he also begins to introduce the three very terms that will orient us – both following Lacan, but also turning against him – in our reading of this seminar. »It is at this point«, he says, »that I must refer to those guiding terms, those terms of reference which I use, namely, the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real.« In the past, Lacan tells us, »when I was discussing the symbolic and the imaginary and their reciprocal interaction« (a »reciprocal interaction« whose terms we have seen to always elude the »classically early« Lacan), »some of you wondered what after all was ›the real‹«. Well, it is precisely this real that Lacan now wants to elucidate; for »[i]nsofar as Freud’s position constitutes progress here, the question of ethics is to be articulated from the point of view of the location of man in relation to the real«. In order to »appreciate this«, however, »one has to look at what occurred in the interval between Aristotle and Freud«. So what is it, then, that actually did take place in this obviously rather momentous historical »interval«? Lacan, as we might expect, is not at all afraid to tell us: »At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was the utilitarian conversion or reversion. We can define this moment  – one that was

31 The concept of progress is of course to be understood here in an entirely neutral sense.

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no doubt fully conditioned historically – in terms of a radical decline of the function of the master, a function that obviously governs all of Aristotle’s thought and determines its persistence over the centuries. It is in Hegel that we find expressed an extreme devalorization of the position of the master, since Hegel turns him into the great dupe, the magnificent cuckold of historical development, given that the virtue of progress passes by way of the vanquished, which is to say, of the slave, and his work. Originally, when he existed in his plenitude in Aristotle’s time, the master was something very different from the Hegelian fiction, which is nothing more than his obverse, his negation, the sign of his disappearance. It is shortly before that terminal moment that in the wake of a certain revolution affecting interhuman relations, so-called utilitarian thought arose, and it is far from being made up of the pure and simple platitudes one imagines.« (S7: 11–12)

We already stand in possession, then, of two fairly fundamental – and fundamentally social and historical  – ideas. According to the first idea, what essentially distinguishes the modern from the premodern is a »radical decline«, an »extreme devalorization«, of the »function« and »position« of the master.32 If, »in Aristotle’s time«, the master »existed in his plenitude«, then, by the time of Hegel, he has been reduced to the status of the »dupe« and »cuckold« of history, his role has been »obverted« and »negated« and he has essentially »disappeared«.33 According to the second idea, this »radical decline of the function of the master« has something to do with the emergence into prominence of the category and, more importantly perhaps, the experience of the real. For, as Lacan has already informed us, what essentially distinguishes modern ethics from traditional or pre-modern ethics is the fact that it must inescapably be articulated as nothing less than an ethics of the real. 32 Lacan is already anticipating here, ten years in advance, what he will have to say about the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of the university« (and by extension, we will argue, the »discourse of capitalism«) in Seminar XVII. 33 It should be stressed here that Lacan will later call into question the Hegelian presuppositions of this »decline« and »devalorization« of the master. For, as we will see in the following sections, there is nothing about this »decline« and »devalorization« that inevitably implies the ascent and revalorization of the slave, laborer or worker. See Hegel (1977), 111–9.

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What we have to do, then, is try to effectively combine these two conceptually distinct social and historical insights. And the best way to do this is by interrogating a little more closely the essential characteristics of the two periods that Lacan is attempting here to differentiate between: the traditional or pre-modern period of an ethics of the master (in which – as Lacan has already suggested, and as we will see further in what follows – the real is essentially contained, subsumed and domesticated); and the modern or contemporary period of an essentially masterless ethics (in which  – as Lacan has also suggested, and as we will also see – the real essentially emerges as an excessive and fundamentally disturbing protuberance or excrescence). What then, very quickly, are the essential characteristics of the period of pre-modernity, a period in which the terms of ethics are fundamentally regulated by the indisputable authority and efficiency of the figure of the master? Lacan’s longest sustained discussion of the basic and underlying concepts of Aristotle’s ethics leaves us in very little doubt as to the nature of these characteristics. For what the function and position of the master above all ensures, he tells us, is that this ethics »tends to refer to an order«; an order of the science (the episteme) of what has to be done in accordance with the norm of a certain character (ethos). The whole (more or less tautological) question of Aristotelian ethics concerns the possibility of the subject’s establishment of an adequation between itself and the deeper constraints of the order that always fundamentally contains it anyway. When man acquires habits (ethos), these habits have to be made to conform with the very order of ethics (the ethos) itself, that is, with an order that brings together, under the aegis of the cosmically guaranteed Sovereign Good, both the particular and the universal and the ethical and the political. In Aristotle’s thought, unlike in Freud’s of course,34 the »notions of macrocosm and microcosm are presupposed from the beginning«. And the crucial thing about this ordered presupposition, at least in the terms of our own reconstruction, is that it contains, subsumes and domesticates the potentially 34 We are referring to Freud’s famous claim, in Civilization and its Discontents, that there is no place for happiness, for the fulfillment of the pleasure principle, in either the macrocosm or the microcosm (CD: 76–7).

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severely troubling errancy and indiscipline of the real itself. Or, as Lacan himself puts it: from within the perspective of this ethics, it is »a question of having a subject conform to something which in the real is not contested as presupposing the paths of that order« (S7: 22–3). In Aristotle’s ethics, we can conclude – and, by extension, in the ethics of the pre-modern as a whole – the ordering of the real, its quite literal mastery, is something total and without limit. So what, then – more fully now – of the period of modernity itself, a period in which the radical decline of the master serves to free ethics from its traditional and pre-modern constraints and limitations (without this resulting, of course, in anything even resembling an authentic »liberation«, whatever this term might be taken to mean)? Well, Lacan begins by defining this period in a double sense. Firstly, he tells us, it is a period that is essentially organized by the principle of the servicing or the economy of goods. »I will try to discuss«, he says, »the point of view not only of the progress of thought, but also of the evolution of history, in order to demystify the Platonic and the Aristotelian view of the good, indeed of the Supreme Good, and to situate it on the level of the economy of goods« (S7: 216). This principle clearly does not suffice, however, to precisely define a very specific period of social and historical development. For it is obviously the case that every period of history is organized by a certain principle of the servicing or the economy of goods. What has to seen to distinguish the modern, then, in the second place, is the fact that this servicing or economy has been effectively rendered universal. And if the servicing or the economy of goods is effectively rendered universal in modernity, that »is because«, Lacan continues, »as Saint-Just says, happiness has become a political matter. It is because happiness has entered the political realm that the question of happiness is not susceptible to an Aristotelian solution, that the prerequisite is situated at the level of the needs of all men. Whereas Aristotle chooses between the different forms of the good that he offers the master, and tells him that only certain of these are worthy of his devotion – namely, contemplation – the dialectic of the master has, I insist, been discredited in our eyes for historical reasons that have to do with the period of history in which we find ourselves. Those reasons are expressed in politics by the following formula: ›There is no satisfaction for the individual outside of the satisfaction of all‹« (S7: 292).

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Under the conditions of modernity, then, the servicing or the economy of goods applies (at least tendentially) to everybody, without conceivable theoretical or practical exception. And the last thing that can be said about this universalization of the economy of happiness is that it resolves (as the liberals would like to have us believe) the newly emerging problematics of an ethics of desire: »[t]he movement that the world we live in is caught up in, of wanting to establish the universal spread of the service of goods as far as conceivably possible, implies an amputation, sacrifices, indeed a kind of puritanism in the relationship to desire that has occurred historically. The establishment of the service of goods at a universal level does not in itself resolve the problem of the present relationship of each individual man to his desire in the short period of time between his birth and his death« (S7: 303). As this last quotation starts to suggest, then, what is absolutely fascinating about Lacan’s theorization of the modern universalization of the servicing and the economy of goods is that it resolutely refuses to conceive this servicing as anything that could ever come to be completed or totalized. As far as the servicing or the economy of goods is concerned, the universal will never be able to be made equal to the complete or the total. For something always exceeds, or stands outside of, the very principle of this servicing or economy. As Lacan himself puts it (in terms that remain, for the moment, rather mysterious and enigmatic): »[b]eyond this place of restraint constituted by the concatenation and circuit of goods, a field nevertheless remains open to us that allows us to draw closer to the central field« (S7: 216). Or, once again, and this time returning to the theme of that »utilitarian conversion or reversion« that is supposed to determine modernity, there is, in this very same modernity, »the sign of a gap, a beyond relative to every law of utility« (S7: 81). It is this »beyond«, of course, and that which it is understood to be the »beyond« of, that constitutes the central theme of more or less the whole text of Seminar VII; so perhaps the best way to continue is by advancing a brief outline of the fundamental characteristics of these two closely and inextricably interrelated realms or domains. Lacan uses a number of terms to define what we can only describe as being »on this side of«, »opposed to«, or »in tension with« the »beyond«. This is the domain, he tells us, of »repetition«, »fiction«, and the »good« (the same »good«, of course, that is serviced in the

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economy as »goods«); it is the domain of the »signifiers« or, more precisely, the »Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen«35 that cluster together so as to avoid a recognition of the essential void or emptiness that organizes (or, more properly perhaps, disorganizes) them. Most importantly, however, this is the domain of the »symbolic« »pleasure principle« itself; a symbolic principle of order or ordering that essentially retreats or defends itself from its own »beyond« in order to first gain, and thus forever regain, the pleasures of a certain balance and homeostasis. What, however, of this »beyond« itself? Well, it is essentially defined as the »obverse« of that which it is said to transcend. For this »second« domain is the domain, Lacan tells us, of the limit of »repetition«, the limit of »fiction« and the limit of the »good« (or once again, of the servicing and the economy of »goods«); it is the domain of »jouissance«, »das Ding« and the »death drive«, all of the things around which, in fact, the signifying »Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen« are said to gravitate and circulate. Most importantly, however, in this case, it is the domain of a »real« that, following Freud’s own terms, is »beyond the pleasure principle«. If the symbolic order or ordering of the pleasure principle can retreat from and defend itself against its own »beyond«, this is only ultimately because this »beyond« always already functions as the »real« of the »symbolic« »pleasure principle« itself (S7: 43–230). As even this brief summary of concepts makes clear, then, it is extremely misleading to talk either of a »beyond« or of something that it is supposed to be the »beyond« of. Indeed, one of the overriding purposes of Lacan’s subtly shifting analyses in Seminar VII is to show that the »real«, the supposed »beyond of the pleasure principle«, is nothing more than the internally »operational« (S7: 103; 106; 137) limit of the »symbolic«, the »pleasure principle«, itself. If Lacan undoubtedly on occasion defines this real as that which is »excluded« from and »exterior« to the symbolic (S7: 71), then he also, on other occasions, takes pains to point out, through the invention of a now quite famous neologism, that the very thing that is »excluded« and »exteriorized« possesses the qualities of something »extimate« (S7:

35 We will see in the following section how Lacan comes to define this term more fully.

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139). If the symbolic certainly does »exclude« and »exteriorize« the real, then it only does this by »excluding« and »exteriorizing« what is already immanent to its own operations. If the »repetitions«, »fictions« and »goods« of the »pleasure principle« – or, in a word perhaps, its »signifiers« and »Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen« – certainly do run up against the barriers and limits of »jouissance«, »das Ding« and the »death drive«, the so-called »beyond of the pleasure principle«, then this is only because these barriers and limits, this »beyond«, are already at work in that which is attempting, and both succeeding and failing, to set itself up against them. Or, in Lacan’s own rather pithy formulation, one that effectively summarizes everything that we are trying to say here, »the field of the pleasure principle is beyond the pleasure principle« itself (S7: 104). And if we now try to remind ourselves that Lacan is essentially referring in all of this to the specific situation of the modern, we can perhaps see a little more clearly what it is that fundamentally distinguishes this modern from the traditional or the pre-modern. The symbolic order of the pre-modern,36 we can say, is constituted by the fact that it contains, subsumes and domesticates the (only ever potential) errancy and indiscipline of the real (under the ultimate and unquestioned authority, of course, of the figure of the master). This order is, as a consequence, entirely governed by the homeostatic tendencies of the pleasure principle. (For what else, in the end, is revealed by the fundamental presuppositions of Aristotelian ethics?) The symbolic order of modernity, by contrast, gives rise (once the figure of the master has been thoroughly destituted) to the real’s fundamentally disturbing protuberance and excrescence. In modernity, we can say, the real is always experienced as a symptom of excess; a symptom of the excess, or of the limit, of the very symbolic order of modernity itself. The symbolic order of modernity is »beyond the pleasure principle«; or more precisely, as we have seen, under the symbolic conditions of modernity the »pleasure principle« is »beyond« itself; always already exposed to that underlying real that both limits it and inhabits it as an »extimate« thing.37 36 There is, of course, more than one such order; but it is certainly fair to say that all of these orders are united by some kind of subordination to the principle of mastery. 37 At the risk of spelling things out a little too clearly we can now see that

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…and the (Transcendental and Transhistorical) Rupturing of the Imaginary and the Real Lacan’s understanding of modernity – and of its fundamental difference from the pre-modern – might still be a little vague and imprecise, then, but it is also, in the very broad terms that define it, quite compelling and convincing. (For who could deny that the modern is essentially constituted by some kind of rupture between the symbolic and the real or, more precisely, by some kind of rupturing of the real38 that itself serves to punctuate and dissolve every longed for symbolic consistency?) What is not so convincing in Seminar VII, however – somewhat paradoxically perhaps, because it is this category that Lacan developed first – is the elaboration of the imaginary (for, as we will see, although Lacan is certainly trying to think here in terms of a fundamental rupture between the imaginary and the real, he is also systematically failing in the task of rendering this rupture consistent with the more thoroughly historically understood rupture of the symbolic and the real). Somewhat peculiarly, then, Lacan’s discussion of the imaginary assumes the form, more or less throughout Seminar VII, of a discussion – and a rewriting – of the Freudian concept of sublimation. And, from the beginning, Lacan makes clear that what is interesting for him about this concept is that it cannot be comprehended outside of a decidedly social (or symbolic, we might say, continuing to refine this term) framework. »[S]ublimation is characterized«, he tells us, »by a change of objects, or in the libido, a change that doesn’t occur through the intermediary of a return of the repressed nor symptomatically, indirectly, but directly, in a way that satisfies directly. The sexual libido finds satisfaction in objects; how does it distinguish them? Quite simply and massively, and in truth not without opening a field of infinite complexity, as objects that are socially valorized, objects of which the group approves, insofar as they are objects of public utility. That is how the possibility of sublimation is defined« (S7: 94). Sublimation is concerned with objects only to the extent, then, that they are the objects of a »social recognition« (S7: 107), a there is obviously no such thing as the »symbolic order« in itself. 38 This phrase is to be understood in both the subjective and the objective genitive.

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»social consensus« (S7: 145). Or, more »frankly« and »cynically«, this concept »literally means that man has the possibility of making his desires tradable or salable in the form of products« (S7: 293). This irredeemably social or symbolic understanding of sublimation also immediately opens up, however, onto a thematization and theorization of a fundamental difference – a fundamental gap or rupture – between the two opposing spheres of the imaginary and the real. For, as Lacan does not hesitate to inform us, there are objects and there are objects; or, more precisely, there are imaginary objects which exist in an essential concordance with the narcissistic strivings of the subject’s ego, and there are real »objects«, or one real »object«, das Ding, which cannot really be called an »object« at all (S7: 110–2), and which, furthermore, definitively exceeds and transcends (albeit perhaps in an immanent or »extimate« way) every imaginary attempt to limit or restrict its essentially illimitable and unrestrictable scope. »Between the object as it is structured by the narcissistic relation and das Ding«, Lacan says, »there is a difference, and it is precisely on the slope of that difference that the problem of sublimation is situated for us« (S7: 98). From here it is only a short step to Lacan’s famous definition of the process of sublimation. For if the imaginary object »is not the Thing to the extent that the latter is at the heart of the libidinal economy«, then the only possible »formula« for this sublimation is that »it raises an object [an imaginary object S. A. & H. R.] […] to the dignity of the Thing [to the dignity of the real itself S. A. & H. R.] (S7: 112). Sublimation – a fundamentally social or symbolic procedure – essentially functions, then, by putting the imaginary in the place of the real, or by elevating the imaginary, we might say, to the status of the real. But if this is the case, then how exactly does this elevation, this putting in place of, actually work? Well, it works, Lacan tells us, by means of the socially or symbolically imaginary operations of delusion and fantasy: »At the level of sublimation the object is inseparable from imaginary and especially cultural elaborations. It is not just that the collectivity recognizes in them useful objects; it finds rather a space of relaxation where it may in a way delude itself on the subject of das Ding, colonize the field of das Ding with imaginary schemes. That is how collective, socially accepted sublimations operate […] Society takes some comfort

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from the mirages that moralists, artists, artisans, designers of dresses and hats, and the creators of imaginary forms in general supply it with. But it is not simply in the approval that society gladly accords it that we must seek the power of sublimation. It is rather in an imaginary function, and, in particular, that for which we will use the symbolization of the fantasm ($ ◊ a), which is the form on which depends the subject’s desire […] In forms that are historically and socially specific, the a elements, the imaginary elements of the fantasm come to overlay the subject, to delude it, at the very point of das Ding. The question of sublimation will be brought to bear here.« (S7: 99)

On a first reading, then, this account of social or symbolic sublimation – of the social or symbolic elevation of the imaginary to the status of the real – might appear to be entirely satisfactory. Every »society«, Lacan is claiming, every »collectivity«, every symbolic order, imaginarily »deludes« itself about, or imaginarily erects »mirages« around, the real of das Ding. Every society »overlays« this real thing – and »overlays« the subject itself as the bearer of this thing – with imaginary »schemes« and »fantasms«, even if the »forms« that these fantasms assume have to be seen to be »historically and socially specific«. If we think a little more carefully about this last phrase, however, we can see that Lacan’s argument is afflicted by a very serious problem, and that this problem precisely concerns the question of whether this argument is »historically and socially specific« enough. For is it not too simple to claim, we might ask, that every society is engaged in the same kind of imaginarization of the real, under the basic proviso that this imaginarization must then be seen to assume »historically and socially specific« »forms«? Lacan’s rather facile understanding of »society« might even be seen to serve as an index of this simplicity; for is it really possible to reduce the workings of the social to the »comfort« that is provided by »moralists, artists, artisans, designers of dresses and hats, and the creators of imaginary forms in general«? Would it not be more correct to claim, in fact, that it is the very »form« of the social or symbolic imaginarization of the real that itself, from time to time (and in fact not that frequently at all), undergoes significant transformation? Rather than conceiving this »form« of imaginarization as universal, then, in such a way that it can then be particularized through the inevitably abstract appeal to

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its »historically and socially specific« »forms«, would it not be better to conceive it as something that must itself, in its very form-giving capacity, be irremediably »historically and socially specific«? Lacan’s preceding analyses have already implicitly provided us with an answer to these questions. For if there is undeniably something »historically and socially specific« about the modern rupturing of the symbolic and the real – about the emergence of the real, within the very symbolic order of modernity, as a fundamentally disturbing protuberance or excrescence  – then there must also be something undeniably »historically and socially specific« about the modern rupturing of the imaginary and the real (on the not unreasonable assumption, of course, that these two conceptually different ruptures need to be thought together in a consistent way). It is precisely this second specificity, then, that Lacan’s account of sublimation  – of the social or symbolic imaginarization of the real – has to be seen to deny. For, once again, if the »form« of this imaginarization is understood as universal, and only then considered to assume, under the very aegis of this universality, »historically and socially specific« »forms«, there can obviously be nothing »historically and socially specific« about the very »form« of social imaginarization itself. This »form« is effectively left to hover above history and its supposedly ever-changing – but also supposedly ever-similar – social and historical »forms«. In summary, then, we can say that Lacan’s account of the social imaginary remains, in Seminar VII, essentially transcendental and transhistorical. Rather than being immanently embedded in the changing course of social and historical development, the »form« of social imaginarization is seen to essentially transcend this development, and to essentially »inform« it, we might say, precisely from this transcendental position of transcendence. And, as we have seen, this transcendental and transhistorical account of the imaginary can only enter into conflict with Lacan’s own definitively non-transcendental, and in fact thoroughly historical, account of the symbolic and the real. For, to reiterate, if there needs to be a thoroughly historical understanding of the modern dislocation of the symbolic and the real, then there also needs to be a thoroughly historical understanding of the modern dislocation of the imaginary and the real. We cannot have history in one place (the symbolic and the real) and the transcendental and transhistorical in another (the imaginary and the real). Theo-

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retical consistency demands that these two dislocations be thought together under the same set of thoroughly historical terms.

Retranscendentalizing the Symbolic It is just this consistency, then, that is lacking in Seminar VII; and we can even go further than this and say that, once Lacan has effectively conceived the imaginary in transcendental and transhistorical terms, he also experiences the temptation to retranscendentalize and dehistoricize the symbolic itself, in its very relationship to the real; to retranscendentalize and dehistoricize, that is, what he has already conceived, in other important parts of his text, in thoroughly nontranscendental and thoroughly historical terms. For, on a number of occasions, Lacan certainly does want to tell us that the consistent rupturing and dislocation of the symbolic and the real is not something specifically modern, but instead something that pertains to the order of the signifier, to the order of language, and to the order of the symbolic sans phrase. »I ask you to consider«, Lacan says, »the break that, in the order of the manifestation of the real […] is introduced by the simple fact that man is the bearer of language« (S7: 223). Or again: »the Thing is that which in the real suffers from this fundamental, initial relation, which commits man to the ways of the signifier by reason of the fact that he is subjected to what Freud calls the pleasure principle, and which, I hope it is clear in your minds, is nothing else than the dominance of the signifier« (S7: 134). And finally: »[i]t is because the movement of desire is in the process of crossing the line of a kind of unveiling that the advent of the Freudian notion of the death drive is meaningful for us. The question is raised at the level of the relationship of the human being to the signifier as such, to the extent that at the level of the signifier every cycle of being may be called into question, including life in its movement of loss and return« (S7: 236). And once he has retranscendentalized and dehistoricized the symbolic in this way, Lacan can even go on to retranscendentalize and dehistoricize what we have already seen to be his thoroughly nontranscendental and historical account of the (modern) servicing and economy of goods; and to claim, with an astonishingly inappropriate bravura, that the »order of power« represented by this servicing

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is »always« and everywhere »the same«. »[T]he order of things on which it [the servicing of goods] claims to be founded«, Lacan says, »is the order of power«; and »[a]s far as that which is of interest to us, namely, that which has to do with desire, to its array and disarray, so to speak, the position of power of any kind in all circumstances and in every case, whether historical or not, has always been the same […] What is Alexander’s proclamation when he arrived in Persepolis or Hitler’s when he arrived in Paris? The preamble isn’t important: ›I have come to liberate you from this or that.‹ The essential point is ›Carry on working. Work must go on.‹ Which, of course, means: ›Let it be clear to everyone that this is on no account the moment to express the least surge of desire.‹ […] The morality of power, of the service of goods, is as follows: ›As far as desires are concerned, come back later. Make them wait‹« (S7: 314–5). »[I]t is quite unthinkable nowadays to speak abstractly of society. It is unthinkable historically, and it is unthinkable philosophically« (S7: 105). These are Lacan’s own words in Seminar VII; and they are words that we can now see to fall on the partially deaf ears of the very person who enunciates them. For if one word can be said to define Lacan’s understanding of the imaginary in this seminar – and a certain tendency of his understanding of the symbolic once this transcendental and transhistorical account of the imaginary has been set in place – it is the word »abstract«. If Lacan’s understanding of the rupturing of the symbolic and the real is, at least at times, quite thoroughly »historically and socially specific« and concrete, then this concreteness is also, at the same and at other times, substantially covered over by a conception of the imaginary – and the symbolic – that is essentially seen to pristinely overarch the very contingencies of social and historical development itself. In Seminar VII, then, we can conclude, Lacan’s conception of the imaginary – and on occasion his conception of the symbolic  – is, on his own terms, »quite unthinkable«.

»Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis«; the Modern Imbrication of the Symbolic and the Imaginary… In order to render this conception of the imaginary »thinkable«, then – in order to render it consistent, that is, with Lacan’s properly

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historical conception of the modern rupturing and dislocation of the spheres of the symbolic and the real – we need to begin by taking a look at some of Lacan’s earlier writings and seminars (for most peculiarly, we might think, Lacan seems to forget in Seminar VII what he has already quite clearly put forward in precisely these other places). Perhaps the best way to start is by turning our attention to the final section of Lacan’s early text »Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis«; for as the somewhat unwieldy title of this section already suggests, it is something that clearly wants to take up our central theme; that is, the theme of the distinctively »modern« imbrication of the imaginary (ego) with the symbolic or social itself (all of these terms ultimately being conceived in their relationship to the third register of the real, which remains essentially absent, at least at this early stage, from the terms of Lacan’s discussion): »This notion of aggressiveness as one of the intentional coordinates of the human ego, especially as regards the category of space«, Lacan tells us, »allows us to conceive of its role in modern neurosis and in the malaise in civilization« (AP: 98). Lacan begins this section, then, by quite simply drawing attention – in a manner that anyone would have difficulty disputing – to the absolutely central role of the imaginary ego, and its aggressiveness of course, in the contemporary form of social life; to the indisputably modern overlapping and co-implication, we might say, of the two still separate39 spheres of the imaginary and the symbolic: »Here I want to merely sketch out a perspective regarding the verdicts analytic experience allows us to come to in the present social order. The preeminence of aggressiveness in our civilization would already be sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that it is usually confused in everyday morality with the virtue of strength. Quite rightly understood as indicative of ego development, aggressiveness is regarded as indispensable in social practice and is so widely accepted in our mores that, in order to appreciate its cultural peculiarity, one must become imbued with the meaning and efficient virtues of a practice like that of yang in the public and private morality of the Chinese.« (AP: 98)

39 As we will see in the following section, it is this separateness that can in fact be considered to define the modern, as long as this »modern« is viewed under the lens of the »discourse of capitalism«.

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The »evidence« that Lacan first adduces for this modern or contemporary »preeminence« or »indispensability« of aggressiveness  – for this modern or contemporary conjunction of the social or symbolic with the overstretchings of the imaginary ego  – is (at least when judged from the perspective of his own later standards) fairly conventional. And his description of the consequences that more or less inevitably follow from the accumulation of this »evidence« is certainly quite incredibly quick (none of which should be taken to imply, of course, the invalidity of either this »evidence« or these consequences. Indeed, all that we want to suggest here is that Lacan’s treatment of both these issues continues to remain a little hazy and abstract, if not to say, perhaps, quite self-consciously dilettantish). Firstly, then, we have the »evidence« of the success of the Darwinian theory of the »struggle for life«, a success attributable, in Lacan’s own view, to nothing less than the »projection« on a different level – the level of the animal’s »laissez-faire« »conquest of space« – of the »economic euphoria« and »social devastation« of the Victorian age (AP: 98). Secondly, we have the »evidence« of the Hegelian dialectic of Master and Slave, a dialectic that »deduced the entire subjective and objective progress of our history« from the aggressive conflict between these two figures under the ultimate sign of the possibility of death, and under the ultimate sign of the order of »desire« and »labor« that emerges when one of these persons (the Slave, of course) retreats from the overwhelming fear of this possibility (AP: 98–9). And thirdly and finally, we have the consequences of this preceding »evidence«, the emergence of Marx’s – and Marxist – discourse itself, with everything that this implies about the necessity of social and political practice, and with everything that this implies about the translation of imaginary aggressiveness into the explicit (and explicitly social or symbolic?) terms of class struggle: »[t]he support this profound doctrine [the dialectic of Master and Slave] lent to the slave’s constructive Spartacism, recreated by the barbarity of the Darwinian century, is well known« (AP: 99). Of much greater interest, then – at least for the moment (for we will obviously be making a more detailed return to these Marxian themes a little later on)  – are the explanations that Lacan gives of this modern or contemporary explosion of imaginary aggressiveness (with the exception, it has to be said, of a disappointingly Heideggerian emphasis upon the supposedly autonomous developments and

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depredations of a self-evidently rampant technology (AP: 99)). In the first place, then, Lacan informs us, imaginary aggressiveness has grown exponentially in modernity because of »the increasing absence of all the saturations of the superego and ego-ideal that occur in all kinds of organic forms in traditional societies«. »We no longer know« these forms, he continues, »except in their most obviously degraded guises«. And in the second place, we learn, imaginary aggressiveness has flourished because »in abolishing the cosmic polarity of the male and female principles, our society is experiencing the full psychological impact of the modern phenomenon known as the ›battle of the sexes‹« (AP: 99). These explanations might still be a little vague, then – or, just as importantly, they might even be a little nostalgic (for who would really want to return, even if such a return were possible, to the »organic« and »traditional« »saturations of the superego«, or to the »cosmic polarity of the male and female principles«?) – but this does not mean that they are not also, in terms of the direction of explanatory fit that they set up, quite convincing and compelling. For what Lacan is effectively doing here is providing the outlines – however sketchily, and however negatively  – of a properly and thoroughly social or symbolic account of the modern or contemporary imaginariness and aggressiveness of the ego itself. (The imaginary aggressiveness of the ego is so prevalent in modernity, Lacan is claiming, precisely because the modern symbolic, or the modern social, systematically fails to »saturate« the previously apparently substantial instance of the super-ego or the ego-ideal; and precisely because it, the symbolic order of modernity, succeeds in doing away with »the cosmic polarity of the male and female principles«.) Lacan’s explanations are convincing, then, in nuce, because they open up – without yet really positively fulfilling – the possibility of an inextinguishably social or symbolic location and determination of the imaginary ego; because they prospectively subordinate the understanding of the imaginary ego to the understanding of the distinctively modern or contemporary social or symbolic order.

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…and its Imaginary Inversion But this is really the last thing that could be said about the alternative explanations that Lacan now proceeds to advance. For, as we will see, these explanations try to move in exactly the opposite direction. Rather than conceiving the imaginary in terms of the social or symbolic, that is, they attempt to conceive the social or symbolic in terms of the imaginary; or, more precisely – and with predictably implausible results – they attempt to erect a conception of the social or symbolic, or of some of the social or symbolic specificities of modernity, upon the extremely fragile basis of Lacan’s own conception of the supposed constitution of the imaginary ego in the moments of the mirror stage. What the mirror stage reveals, then, at least according to Lacan, »is the space in which the imagery of the ego develops, and which intersects the objective space of reality«. »The notion of the role of spatial symmetry in man’s narcissistic structure is essential in laying the groundwork for a psychological analysis of space«. If »[a]nimal psychology has shown us that the individual’s relation to a particular spatial field is socially mapped in certain species, in a way that raises it to the category of subjective membership«, then »it is the subjective possibility of the mirror projection of such a field into the other’s field that gives human space its originally ›geometrical‹ structure, a structure I would willingly characterize as kaleidoscopic«. Does this imaginary structuring of the ego provide us, however, Lacan continues by inquiring, with a »secure basis«? Well, according to Lacan again, the answer is no; because what this structuring leads to – and here Lacan can hardly be said to blink an eye – is the conception of »Lebensraum«, »in which human competition grows ever keener«, and in relation to which »an observer of our species from outer space would conclude we possess needs to escape with very odd results«. And what this conception of »Lebensraum« leads to, obviously, is war, a war that »is increasingly proving to be the inevitable and necessary midwife of all our organizational progress«. The conception of »Lebensraum« might inevitably have to be seen to run up against its own internal limits (for, as Lacan rather obscurely analogizes, the »realized« »conceptual extension« of the physicists will »vanish in turn in a roar of the universal ground«); and the ego’s »temptation to dominate space« might inevitably overcome its

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own »supposed ›instinct of self-preservation‹« (just as »the narcissistic fear of harm to one’s own body« inevitably overcomes the more abstract preoccupations with the possibility of death); but none of this changes the fact that both this social or symbolic conception and this social or symbolic »temptation« are essentially conceived here as the more or less unavoidable consequences of the mere existence of the mirror stage itself, as that which supposedly gives rise to the very existence of the imaginary ego (AP: 99–100). It is extremely important to emphasize that Lacan’s argument here is even more implausible than certain claims that we have already seen him make in the previous section (section 2.1i). For if, in other very early parts of his »early« work, Lacan is certainly guilty of believing that the constitution of the imaginary ego entirely predates and precedes the later setting in place of the social or symbolic, then here he goes beyond even this view, by claiming, with a simply astonishing inadequacy, that it is possible to derive the logic of the social or symbolic – or, at the very least, of certain forms of the social or symbolic – from the logic of the imaginary ego itself, as this is supposedly constituted in the deceptive maneuvers of the mirror stage. Lacan is here guilty, that is, of a simply gigantic over-inflation of the significance of his own, in fact rather problematic, theorizations. For rather than being inserted into – or, more precisely perhaps, rethought in relation to – a more adequate conception of the social or symbolic, something that we will see occur later on, the conception of the mirror stage, and of the imaginary ego that it supposedly produces, is crudely and unsatisfactorily invoked here as the very underlying fundament of the social or symbolic itself. The proper direction of fit between the imaginary and the symbolic, which we have already seen Lacan allude to, undergoes, in short, a quite spectacular inversion. And once Lacan has effected this inversion, it is hardly surprising to see him concluding this section with a rather awkward mixture of abstraction and concreteness (the abstraction reflecting the overinflation of the purported significance of the mirror stage; and the concreteness reflecting  – at least implicitly  – the contrary attempt to locate the imaginary ego that is supposedly produced by this stage in properly social or symbolic, that is, also properly historical, terms). The »spatial dimension« of the imaginary ego, Lacan claims (abstractly), meets up with the »temporal dimension« of »anxiety«,

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and »[o]nly at the intersection of these two tensions should one envisage the assumption by man of his original fracturing, by which it might be said that at every instant he constitutes his world by committing suicide, and the psychological experience of which Freud had the audacity to formulate as the ›death instinct‹«. Or (more concretely now): »In the ›emancipated‹ man of modern society, this fracturing reveals that his formidable crack goes right to the very depths of his being. It is a self-punishing neurosis, with hysterical/hypochondriacal symptoms of its functional inhibitions, psychasthenic forms of its derealizations of other people and of the world, and its social consequences of failure and crime. It is this touching victim, this innocent escapee who has thrown off the shackles that condemn modern man to the most formidable social hell, whom we take in when he comes to us; it is this being of nothingness for whom, in our daily task, we clear anew the path to his meaning in a discreet fraternity  – a fraternity to which we never measure up.« (AP: 100–1)

Seminar II; the Social or Symbolic Production of the Imaginary Ego In his Seminar II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, Lacan finally gives us a precise idea of what this social »emancipation« of modern man consists of. It consists of nothing less than the social and historical emergence and production of the ego itself, of the social and historical emergence and production of a subject that is undeniably separated and divided from the equally undeniable reality of its ego. »I try to underline for you in a thousand different ways«, Lacan tells us, »that it [the ego] is only a historical contingency« (S2: 58). Or, once again, »it is only rather recently that the ego has been theorised. Not only did the ego not mean in Socrates’s time what it means today – open the books, you will see that the word is altogether absent – but actually – used here in the full sense of the word – the ego didn’t have the same function« (S2: 13); »if we do not know what a contemporary of Socrates might have thought of his ego, even so there must have been something at the centre, and there is no reason to believe Socrates ever doubted that«; crucially, however, »[i]t was probably not made like the ego,

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which starts at a later date, which we can locate towards the middle of the sixteenth, beginning of the seventeenth centuries« (S2: 7). It is difficult to overestimate the absolutely revolutionary character and consequences – both inside and outside the narrow context of Lacan’s work – of this short series of statements. For, on the one hand, what Lacan has effectively done here is provide the outlines of a now fully positive account of the distinctively modern crossing and overlapping of the two still separate spheres of the social or symbolic and the imaginary (»[t]he imaginary experience is inscribed«, he can now say, thus correcting his earlier failure to convincingly articulate these two domains, »in the register of the symbolic as early on as you can think it« (S2: 257)). Rather than pointing to the simple »absence« of »organic« and »traditional« forms of the »saturation« of the super-ego, or to the simple »abolition« of the »cosmic polarity of the male and female principles«, this account now draws attention to the indubitable presence of a specifically modern social or symbolic production of the imaginary ego. (The dimension of the real remains, for the moment, unthought on the terms of this account; but, as we will shortly see, it can quite easily be reinscribed back into it.) And, on the other hand, what Lacan has also effectively done here is eviscerate – or, at the very least, compel the fundamental rethinking of – the significance of his own theory of the mirror stage (a theory which, not so long ago, we have seen him relying on in order to develop a grossly inadequate conception of the modern social or the modern symbolic). For if the imaginariness of the ego is indisputably produced by something wholly specific to modern social or symbolic forms – by something wholly specific, that is, to the modern social or symbolic order – it is surely impossible to reduce this specificity to the mere existence of something like the mirror stage itself (for this would only serve to reintroduce the massive implausibility of Lacan’s attempted derivation of social or symbolic forms from the supposed pre-existence of the imaginary ego). If the mirror stage is to be saved, that is, – in some perhaps unrecognizable form – then it certainly needs to be inserted into, and consistently rewritten in relation to, a much broader conception of the social or symbolic emergence and production of the imaginary ego itself.

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Seminar III; the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the (Embryonic) Real; the Modern Ego and its Delusory Discourse of Freedom Now, in a really rather astonishing passage of his Seminar III: The Psychoses – a passage that is certainly worth quoting here at some considerable length – Lacan further deepens this account of the social or symbolic emergence and production of the imaginary ego (and he further deepens it, we should stress, by implicitly opening it out onto what will become, in the work of the »later« Lacan himself, the absolutely fundamental third register of the real; a register that we have already seen to be partially adumbrated by Lacan’s reflections in Seminar VII). Lacan begins this passage, then, by talking, once again, about our contemporary social or symbolic order; although what is striking now is that his descriptions of this order have started to assume a much more concrete and specific form. For this order is, when all is said and done, nothing other than the order of capitalism itself. »We live in a society«, Lacan reminds us: »in which slavery isn’t recognized. It’s nevertheless clear to any sociologist or philosopher that it has in no way been abolished. This has even become the object of some fairly well-known claims. It’s also clear that while bondage hasn’t been abolished, one might say it has been generalized. The relationship of those known as the exploiters, in relation to the economy as a whole, is no less a relationship of bondage than that of the average man. Thus the master-slave duality is generalized within each participant in our society.«

The »slave« side of this »duality« is relatively easy to comprehend (although we should continue to bear in mind that it will later serve as the basis for Lacan’s implicit extrapolation of the category of the real). This »slavery« is constituted by the simple fact of the existence of »exploitation« (or, in the case of the »exploiters«, by the simple fact of their serving, with the same grim necessity that afflicts the »exploited« themselves, the very system of »exploitation«).40 What is 40 Lacan is already anticipating here what he will have to say in Seminar XVII concerning the »castration«, within the »discourse of capitalism«, of both the laborer or worker and the capitalist. As we will see, he is quite faithfully following here the ideas of Marx himself.

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it, however, that can explain the »master« side of the equation; or, anticipating Lacan’s terms a little, what is it that can explain, in a (real) situation of »generalized« »slavery« or »bondage«, the (imaginary) conviction of »mastery« that »each participant« in this situation more or less indubitably possesses? Well, as Lacan now tells us, the necessary explanatory factor is the »patent discourse of freedom« that this situation  – the situation of capitalist society  – inherently supports; a »discourse of freedom« that continually runs up against the walls that it has itself erected; or, more precisely perhaps, that it has been compelled to erect: »Some time ago an imbalance was observed between the pure and simple fact of revolt and the capacity of social action to transform. I would even say that the entire modern revolution was founded on this distinction and on the notion that the discourse of freedom was, by definition, not only ineffectual but also profoundly alienated from its aim and object, that everything probative that is linked to it is properly speaking the enemy of all progress towards freedom, to the extent that freedom can have a tendency to animate any continual movement in society. Nonetheless, this discourse of freedom is articulated deep within us all as representing a certain right of the individual to autonomy.«

But what does this »right of the individual« consist in? Well, in nothing particularly substantial, Lacan informs us; for, when we really start to think about it, it presents itself as a »right« to »intimacy« and »personality« that is, strictly speaking, »delusional« (which should never be taken to mean, of course, easily eradicable): »A certain mental breathing space seems indispensable to modern man, one in which his independence not only of any master but also of any god is affirmed, a space for his irreducible autonomy as individual, as individual existence. Here there is indeed something that merits a point-by-point comparison with a delusional discourse. It’s one itself. It plays a part in the modern individual’s presence in the world and in his relations with his counterparts. Surely, if I asked you to put this autonomy into words, to calculate the exact share of indefeasible freedom in the current state of affairs, and even should you answer, the rights of man, or the right to happiness, or a thousand other things, we wouldn’t get very far before realizing that for each of us this is an intimate, per-

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sonal discourse which is a long way from coinciding with the discourse of one’s neighbor on any point whatsoever. In a word, the existence of a permanent discourse of freedom in the modern individual seems to me indisputable.«

This »discourse of freedom«, this »right of the individual to autonomy«, is not »delusional« in itself, however, but only in its relationship to what Lacan now calls »the discourse of the other«. For whenever the »discourse of freedom« runs up against this »discourse of the other« (a discourse that of course has to be seen to include and produce its own sense of freedom in the first place) it inexorably tends to give way; that is, it inexorably tends to cede its »rights« at the very same time as it impotently continues to believe in their »permanent« and ongoing efficacy. For: »how can this discourse be matched up not only with the other’s discourse but with his conduct as well, assuming that he tends to base it on this discourse at all? There is a truly discouraging problem here. And the facts show that there is invariably not just a coming to terms with what everyone effectively contributes, but actually resigned abandonment to reality […] as soon as it’s a matter of acting, in the name of freedom in particular, our attitude towards what in reality we have to endure, or towards the impossibility of our acting together to further this freedom, has entirely the character of resigned abandonment, of a renunciation of what is nevertheless an essential part of our internal discourse, namely that we have not only certain indefeasible rights but that these rights are founded on certain primary freedoms, which can be demanded for any human being in our culture […] We all remain at the level of an insoluble contradiction between a discourse that is at a certain level always necessary and a reality to which, both in principle and in a way proved by experience, we fail to adjust […] Moreover, don’t we see that analytic experience is deeply bound up with this discursive double of the subject, his discordant and ridiculous ego? The ego of every modern man?« (S3: 132–4)

Lacan’s argument here relies upon – or, more precisely perhaps, itself helps to give rise to – a clear conception of the »insoluble contradiction«, at the very heart of the »discursively doubled« »subject« of modernity, between two fundamental terms. On the one hand,

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we have the »discordant« and »ridiculous« »ego of every modern man«, with the »discourse of freedom« and the »individual right to autonomy« that the existence of this ego inescapably entails; and, on the other hand, we have the »reality« (and Lacan has used this word three times) that just as inescapably enters into conflict with the claims of this ego, and that just as inescapably reduces these claims to a more or less derisory status, by effectively compelling their »renunciation« or »resigned abandonment« (something which should not be taken to imply, of course, that these claims cease to be in some sense »essential« or »necessary«). If we allow ourselves a little license with the second of Lacan’s terms (»reality«), we can now see that the subject of modernity is essentially defined by a fundamental conflict  – or, once again, in Lacan’s own possibly more pessimistic terms, by an »insoluble contradiction« – between the registers of the imaginary and the real.41 And if we now remember that this conflict or »contradiction« can only be said to take place within an irredeemably social or symbolic context – the context of a still rather loosely defined capitalist order or ordering – it is surely also possible to see that Lacan’s three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real are finally beginning to fit together, to cross and overlap, in something like a coherent fashion. If, in Seminar VII, Lacan successfully identified the specifically modern, that is, specifically social and historical, rupture between the symbolic and the real (without properly grasping the fact that this rupturing must also presuppose a specifically modern, and specifically social and historical, rupturing of the imaginary and the real); and if, in »Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis« and Seminar II – and despite some false moves along the way (which consist in the attempt to derive the social or symbolic from the logic of the imaginary itself, as this is supposedly revealed in the primordial structurations of the mirror stage)  – he successfully recognized that the modern imaginary, the imaginariness of the modern ego, must itself be socially or symbolically produced; then now, in Seminar III, he succeeds, for the first time, in articulating all of these moments together. There is a 41 This license is perhaps justified here by the fact that Lacan has not yet drawn, as he will later do, a distinction between the concept of the real and the concept of reality.

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modern rupture between the symbolic and the real, we can say, precisely because there is a modern rupture between the imaginary and the real, and precisely because this rupture  – the rupture between the imaginary ego and the real conditions that surround it (conditions that, of course, at the same time, have to be seen to contain and presuppose this ego in its very imaginariness) – is itself socially or symbolically produced; produced, that is, by the »freedoms« and constraints – or, a little more precisely perhaps, by the constraining freedoms – of its very capitalist framework. In order to more fully and precisely work out this threefold imbrication of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real; and in order, just as importantly, to discover what exactly this third register of the real has to be said to consist in (labor or work), we now need to turn – after this long, but hopefully enlightening, detour through the inadequacies, ambiguities and eventual successes of Lacan’s »early« work  – to the much more definitive sketches and formulations of Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (and, undoubtedly in much less detail, to the other »later« interventions of Lacan that can be said to bear a direct relation to this seminar’s central themes).

2.2 Egocracy and the »Discourse of Capitalism«; or, Rethinking the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real in Seminar XVII In the previous two sections, we have seen how – after a considerable amount of reconstructive effort – Lacan’s »early« work can be seen to divide itself up into two fundamentally conflicting and even contradictory strands. The first and, in the end, essentially structural or transcendental strand has to be seen to systematically fail in its attempted (and at times even non-attempted) articulation of the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. For what Lacan does when he conceives the symbolic in transcendental terms is effectively cut it off from any potentially explanatory relationship to the existence and emergence of the imaginary ego (Lacan’s conception of the »mirror stage«, as we have seen, often serves as little more than a convenient alibi for this deficit of explanation). And the only way to solve these problems, we have suggested, is by introducing a consideration of the third register of the real; but, once again, Lacan’s transcendental conception of the symbolic frustrates such a

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solution by effectively secreting a transcendent conception of the real as a form of pure exteriority. The second and, in the end, essentially social and historical strand of Lacan’s »early« thinking has to be seen to be much more productive – although still quite imprecise – in its working out of the difficult interplay between these same three registers. Because what Lacan slowly and unevenly starts to recognize here  – in Seminar VII, in »Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis«, and in Seminars II and III – is that, to put things a little bluntly, the symbolic is never just the symbolic. The »symbolic order«, we might say, is always thoroughly socialized and historicized, and it is precisely this socialization and historicization that has to be seen to account for both the »modern« existence and emergence of the imaginary ego (something that effectively does away with, or at least compels the fundamental rethinking of, Lacan’s own conception of the »mirror stage«) and the discordant and dissonant relationship that this ego maintains with its own now thoroughly »extimate« real. What we want to do in this section, then, is show how – in Seminar XVII (and other related texts) – Lacan effectively consummates this social and historical strand of his »early« work by implicitly opening up the possibility of precisely thinking the symbolic, the imaginary and the real in relation to the capitalist mode of production; or in relation to what he himself might call, and on occasion even does call, the »discourse of capitalism«.42 Lacan can only fully and consistently think the interrelationship of these three registers, we want to

42 Lacan in fact only used this term once, in a conference  – »Du discours psychanalytique« – given at the University of Milan in 1972. See Lacan (1978). He defines the »discourse of capitalism« there in the following terms: $ → S2 S1 a It should become clear that we consider Marx’s own formulations – and even Lacan’s »discourse of the university«, once it has been understood in accordance with these formulations  – as providing a better representation of this »discourse«. But what place does this leave for Lacan’s »discourse of capitalism« per se? This »discourse« is best comprehended, we would suggest, as presenting capitalism from the fantasmatic perspective of the very (proletarian) subject constituted by it. Once again, this suggestion should become clear a little later on.

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argue, when he has come to effect something like a »return« – albeit perhaps a critical »return« – to the work of Marx himself. The »discourse of capitalism«, we will see Lacan claiming  – and we should not forget that this idea is already contained in the subtitle of this famous seminar – is nothing less than the »other side«, the »inverse« or »reverse«, of psychoanalysis itself; and if we take into account one of the many nuances of the French term that Lacan actually uses here (l’envers), we can see that what this means is that psychoanalysis relates to the »discourse of capitalism« as the outside of a glove relates to its inside (what we discover here once again, we might say, is precisely the peculiar logic of »extimacy«).43 That is, if the imaginary, the symbolic and the real have to be seen to constitute the three fundamental registers of Lacanian psychoanalysis, this is only perhaps because, we want to claim, they also have to be seen to constitute the three fundamental registers of the »discourse of capitalism« itself (for, to both repeat and anticipate, the capitalist mode of production is nothing more than a Borromean knot: capitalism is a social or symbolic order that produces and divides the subject in relation to and across the two opposing registers of the imaginary and the real; or, a little more precisely now and in more Lacanian terms, it is a social or symbolic order that produces and reproduces a subject divided between the imaginariness of its ego and the real subjectivity of its labor). We do not want to proceed here, however, by simply spelling out the location of the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real within the »discourse of capitalism«. In the first place, of course  – and as we have already suggested  – because this is not something that can easily be done on the basis of Lacan’s own direct and explicit theoretical formulations. Lacan says very little in Seminar XVII about the three registers of the imaginary, the symbolic and the real, and he also gives nothing like a clear and concrete definition of something that we might want to call – in an approximation to his own terms both in this seminar and elsewhere – the »discourse of capitalism« (Lacan speaks instead, a little ambiguously as we will see, of the »discourse of the master« in its contemporary »capitalist« 43 A little later, Lacan will implicitly refer to the »discourse of capitalism« as that »place which demonstrates the proper torsion« of the ›discourse of psychoanalysis‹ (S18: 9).

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form, or, this time a little less ambiguously, of the »discourse of the university« that sits rather comfortably alongside the constraints and compulsions of the capitalist mode of production itself). If we want to speak precisely, then, of the »discourse of capitalism«, and of the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real that this discourse quite indubitably contains, then it should be made clear from the outset that in order to do so we will have to introduce something new into Lacan’s work; something that can only perhaps be introduced as the result of an attention to Marx’s work that is much closer than anything that Lacan himself is prepared to give. And, in the second place, if we are ultimately justified in introducing these new terms, this can only be on the basis of a detailed reconstruction of the steps in Lacan’s own work that in fact render possible their own clarification and completion. We will identify here, speaking now in broad terms, three of these steps. For, firstly, we want to interrogate the absolute profundity of Lacan’s famous claim that »the signifier represents the subject for another signifier«, a claim that immediately has to be seen to open up onto the fact that the subject is always »represented« in this way as working or laboring within a particular social and historical »discourse« or »social link«. And, secondly, we want to show how this very idea of »discourse« itself has to be seen to open up  – at least implicitly – onto a fundamentally social and historical distinction between two main »discourses«: what Lacan calls the »discourse of the master« – a discourse that we will see, perhaps a little more clearly than Lacan himself, as serving to designate every pre-capitalist social formation – and what, to reiterate, he should have called with more conviction the »discourse of capitalism« (once again, it is only the work of Marx that, once it has been combined with the work of Lacan, allows us to articulate this »discourse« in anything like a fully compelling fashion). Thirdly and finally, we want to investigate the fundamental features of these two »discourses«, and especially their fundamental differences. For, as we will see, these discourses have to be said to produce or »represent« very different subjects; or, more precisely, they have to be said to produce or »represent« subjects who work or labor under very different »discursive« conditions. Indeed, in the very terms that we want to introduce into Lacan’s work in Seminar XVII – thus remaining faithful to our whole reconstruction here of Marx, Freud and Lacan – each of these »discourses«

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has to be said to accommodate the real of labor in a very different way; that is, by means of a very different combination of the imaginary and the symbolic. And, once again – and as we will hopefully come to see – none of these differences can be considered to be of negligible consequence.

»The Signifier Represents the Subject for another Signifier«; the Numerous Implications of a Fundamental Phrase Seminar XVII opens, then, with what, at first sight, might appear to be another eminently structuralist and transcendental – or purely symbolic – definition. »The signifier«, Lacan tells us, (S1), »represents the subject ($) for another signifier (S2)« (S17: 13). Or, in the matheme that Lacan invents in order to represent this act of »representation« or, more properly speaking, as we will see, this act of »representativeness«: S1 → S2 $ This »altogether fundamental notation« (S17: 198) simultaneously implies, for Lacan, a number of different things. (And, to anticipate, what we ultimately want to suggest here is that none of these things  – appearances notwithstanding  – can be coherently considered to be structuralist and transcendental, or purely symbolic. That is, although all of these things can be correctly defined as transhistorical, this should in no way be taken to mean that they are structuralist and transcendental. For, as we will see, it is their very transhistoricality that in the end has to be seen to condition and explain their equally thoroughgoing historicity.) Firstly, then, Lacan’s »notation« has to be seen to imply what he refers to – both following Freud and, at the same time, introducing into his work a linguistic sophistication that it did not itself possess44  – as the inescapable reality of an Urverdrängung. For what the signifier primordially represses, of course, in »representing« the

44 For a quick summary of the Freudian concept of »primal repression«, see the relevant entry in Laplanche and Pontalis (1988).

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subject »for another signifier«, is the very possibility of its own  – and, more importantly perhaps, the subject’s  – self-representation. »[T]he signifier«, Lacan reminds us, is »that which represents the subject for another signifier«; and »I am surprised that nobody has ever remarked that it follows as a corollary from this that a signifier [and a subject S. A. & H. R.] would not be able to represent itself« (S16: 20). Or again: »[t]he relation of the one to the other one makes it necessary that the subject is only represented at the level of the second one, of S2 […] The first one, the S1, certainly intervenes as a representation of the subject, but this intervention doesn’t imply the appearance of the subject as such at anything other than the level of S2« (S16: 381). From the mere fact of its »representation« in this minimal relationship of signifiers, the subject finds itself tied, that is, to a »knot« that will forever be »beyond its reach« (S16: 55). Secondly, this Urverdrängung must itself be seen to imply what Lacan identifies  – once again following Freud, and once again linguistically clarifying him  – as the unimpeachable reign of the Vorstellunsrepräsentanz. For if the subject of the signifier – just like the signifier of the subject – is incapable of ever representing itself, it will only ever be »represented« by »another signifier«, there will only ever be, that is, »representatives« of what is to be »represented«. »[I]t is not a question of representation«, Lacan informs us – thus exploding an entire philosophical tradition – »but of a representative« (S17: 29). Or, once again: »[n]o representation supports the presence of that which is called the representative of the representation [Vorstellungs­ repräsentanz S. A. & H. R.] And we can only see here the distance marked by this term. There is no equivalence between the one and the other, between the representative and the representation« (S16: 261). The subject, the support of this whole complex game of representing representation, »is not«, then, »univocal«, »[i]t is represented, undoubtedly, but also it is not represented« (S17: 89). Thirdly, this Urverdrängung and this Vorstellungs­repräsentanz must both be seen to presuppose, as their very condition of possibility, repetition. For the subject can only come to be »represented« by certain signifiers (S1), in their relationship to other signifiers (S2) – and thus instantiated in the impossibility of its self-representation, and in the impossibility of its ever coming to find a final or adequate »representation« – to the extent that this first set of signifiers can in some way be seen to prize themselves apart, through the very act of

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repetition, from the otherwise indifferent body of language. As Lacan himself puts it, »that which represents the subject only manifests itself under the form of an infinite repetition« (S16: 74). Fourthly, however  – and certainly most importantly for the purposes of our discussion – this repetition, and the Urverdrängung and Vorstellungsrepräsentanz that it conditions, must itself be seen to imply what Lacan refers to, a little ambiguously perhaps, as a »loss« or »entropy«; a »loss« or »entropy« that he defines in Seminar XVII – evidently opening up with this the possibility of a whole series of fundamental homologies with Marx’s work – as »surplus jouissance« (S17: 19). And coterminously – and just as importantly – this repetition must also be seen to imply that it is the subject itself that essentially functions as the »supposition«, the »hypokeimenon«45 (S17: 13), of this entropic loss. (We will not yet write here the fourth term that Lacan introduces into the bottom right hand corner of his matheme so as to designate this loss: the famous objet a of »surplus jouissance«. For, as we will see, to do this would be to already write out what Lacan will come to refer to as the »discourse of the master«; and the last thing that we want to do here is create the impression – as Lacan himself sometimes does (S17: 188; 207) – that this »discourse« is coextensive with the mere existence of the order of language itself.) Repetition implies the »entropic loss« of »surplus jouissance«, then, because it can only ever be the repetition of a certain number of signifiers. In order even to be repeated, that is – and as we have already seen – these signifiers have to extricate themselves from the otherwise indifferent mass of language; and what this extrication ineluctably entails, of course, is the »loss«, the »entropy«, of the possible repetition of other signifiers. Full jouissance is prohibited, we might say, and »reduced« to the status of »surplus jouissance«, because the simple fact of repetition makes it impossible for us ever to have access to anything even resembling the whole of language, and to anything even resembling the full range of possibilities that the use of this language might be thought to evoke. As Lacan says, brilliantly 45 Lacan of course derives the concept of the »hypokeimenon« from Aristotle’s Categories, where it is defined – in an eminently proto-Lacanian fashion, we might think – as that which can be predicated by other things but not of them. See Aristotle (1984), 3–24.

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mimicking, it should be noted, the very process that he wants to describe: »[b]y virtue of being expressed and as such repeated, of being marked by repetition, what is repeated cannot be anything other, in relation to what it repeats, than a loss« (S17: 46). Or similarly: »[w]hat becomes evident from this formalism [the formalism of the signifier’s representation of the subject for another signifier S. A. & H. R.] […] is […] that there is a loss of jouissance. And it is in the place of this loss introduced by repetition that we see the function of the lost object emerge, of what I am calling the a [of »surplus jouissance« S. A. & H. R.]« (S17: 48). The »supposition«, the »hypokeimenon«, of this »entropic loss« of »surplus jouissance«, is nothing other, Lacan claims, than the subject itself. For if the signifier »represents« this subject for another signifier, and, if this very act of »representation« unavoidably carries with it a certain loss, then it just as unavoidably follows that the subject itself is the bearer of this loss. »There is no way of escaping«, Lacan contends, »this extraordinarily reduced formula that there is something underneath. But precisely, there is no term that we can designate this something by. It cannot be an etwas, it is simply an underneath, a subject, a hypokeimenon« (S17: 48). »The subject emerges«, that is, from the »entry into a relation«, and it emerges from this entry as precisely »the subject that something, a certain loss, represents« (S17: 19). The signifying articulation always gravitates, we might say  – definitively introducing in this way a pair of terms that will be crucial, albeit in slightly different ways, to both Lacan’s analysis and our own – around the »impossible real« (S17: 103; 163–93) of an »entropic loss«; and it is the fate of the subject, as the »supposition« or »hypokeimenon« of this articulation, to carry the weight of this »real« in its very »impossibility«.

»Discourse« and the »Social Link«; Organizing the Impossible Real of the Subject’s Labor We will be talking – throughout this section – about little more than this »entropic loss«, this »impossible real«, of »surplus jouissance«; or, more precisely, we will be talking about little more than the different social and historical forms that this »loss« can be seen to assume. Before we can do this, however – and in order even to explain how

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it is that this »loss« can be seen to assume different social and historical forms; or how it is that it can be seen to presuppose different social and historical subjects as the »suppositions« or »hypokeimena« of these forms  – we need to make it clear that we are not dealing here, in our reconstruction of Lacan’s »fundamental notation«, with a set of structuralist and transcendental, or purely symbolic, definitions. And the best way to do this is by saying something about that conception of »discourse« that is inevitably opened up by Lacan’s contention that »the signifier represents the subject for another signifier«. For even if, at first sight once again, this conception might appear to be simply structuralist and transcendental, or purely symbolic, it soon becomes evident, on a closer view, that this can in no way coherently be considered to be the case. That is, in positive terms, it becomes evident that this conception of »discourse« is itself quite thoroughly social and historical. How, then, does Lacan define his conception of »discourse«? Firstly, to reiterate – and to remain for the moment within the confines of the apparently structuralist and the apparently transcendental  – he defines it in terms of that irreducible fact of ordering that inescapably follows from the signifier’s representation of the subject for another signifier: »[t]here are structures«, Lacan tells us, and »we cannot describe them in any other way«, »for characterizing what can be extracted from this […] fundamental relation, the one I define as the relation of one signifier to another« (S17: 13). Secondly – and still remaining within these confines – Lacan describes »discourse« as a »discourse without speech«; and what this somewhat oracular formulation should be taken to mean is that »discourse« is »a necessary structure that goes well beyond speech, which is always more or less occasional«; for »[t]he fact is that, in truth, discourse can clearly subsist without words. It subsists in certain fundamental relations which would literally not be able to be maintained without language. Through the instrument of language a number of stable relations are established, inside which something that is much larger and goes much further than actual utterances [énonciations] can, of course, be inscribed. There is no need of the latter for our conduct, possibly for our acts, to be inscribed within the framework of certain primordial statements« (S17: 12–3). The subject only has to »speechify himself«, Lacan continues elsewhere, to the »fittings« of »discourse« (S17: 51);

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or, this time even more radically, »speech« is the »carrion« of »discourse« (S17: 166–7). Thirdly, however, Lacan claims – moving more now in the definitively social and historical direction that we here want to take him – »discourse« should in no way be seen to be suspended above or alongside the real world; instead, it has to be seen to constitute this world in its very reality; »discourse« is »an arrangement that has absolutely not been imposed in any way – as they say, from a certain point of view, nothing has been abstracted from any reality. On the contrary it’s already inscribed in what functions as this reality […] the reality of a discourse that is already in the world and that underpins it, at least the one we are familiar with. Not only is it already inscribed in it, but it is one of its arches« (S17: 14–5). Fourthly and finally  – and certainly most importantly in the context of our discussion  – »discourse« has to be seen to inhabit the world in order to do something very specific; »discourse«, Lacan claims, is »that something which, within language, fixes, crystallizes and uses the resources of language – and there are many other resources – so that the social link between human beings functions« (JLS). It is perhaps not unreasonable, then, to reduce Lacan’s numerous descriptions of »discourse« to this final definitional essence: »discourse« is what explains, no more and no less, the »functioning« of the »social link«. But how, we might ask, does »discourse« get the »social link« to »function«? Well, what we want to argue here  – both following Lacan to a certain degree but, at the same time, trying to conceptually clarify some of his ideas – is that it does this by essentially organizing the »entropic loss«, the »surplus jouissance«, the »impossible real« of the subject’s labor or work; or, in other words, by essentially »representing« or producing the subject as nothing more than the »supposition«, the »hypokeimenon«, of precisely that »real loss« that inevitably has to be seen to ensue from its own irremediably specific, that is, thoroughly social and historical, ordering of the phenomenon of labor or work itself. (It is exactly at this point, we would contend, that Lacan’s conception of the subject as a »supposition« or »hypokeimenon« has to be seen to meet up with Marx’s in fact startlingly similar conception of this very same subject as a »bearer« or »Träger«. For if, as we will remember from chapter 1, »individuals are dealt with« in Marx’s work »only in so far as they are the

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personifications of economic categories, the bearers [Träger] of particular class-relations and ­interests«, the subject – at least from Seminars XVI and XVII onwards, and at least tendentially – is only dealt with in Lacan’s work to the extent that it is the »supposition«, the »hypokeimenon«, of a socially and historically particular »discursive« ordering of the »real loss« of labor or work.) What we are claiming here, then – and it should certainly not be ignored that this is a very strong claim – is that the best way to precisely define Lacan’s third register of the real (a register that becomes coterminous in Seminar XVII, as we have seen, with the category of the impossible) is by conceiving it as the real of labor or work. This is the only way to consistently avoid, we would suggest, the apparently structuralist and apparently transcendental character of Lacan’s »fundamental notation«. For it should be fairly obvious now that the signifying articulation – with its implicit Urverdrängung, its implicit Vorstellungsrepräsentanz and its implicit repetition – never just gravitates around, and never just »represents« the subject as the »hypokeimenon« of, any old »entropic loss«, any old »surplus jouissance« or any old »impossible real«. The signifying articulation always gravitates around, that is, and always «represents« the subject as the »hypokeimenon« of, a very specific »entropic loss«, a very specific »surplus jouissance« and a very specific »impossible real«; a real that is always associated with a very specific kind of social and historical labor or work; that is, with a kind of labor or work that is itself articulated through a very specific social and historical »discourse«. The two main social and historical »discourses« that we will see Lacan describing here, then,  – the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism« (which, when properly understood in Marx’s own terms, has to be seen to underlie what Lacan has to say about both the »discourse of the university« and the »discourse of the master« in its supposedly contemporary capitalist form)  – are best comprehended as two fundamentally different ways of dealing with or managing the impossible real of labor or work.46 These »discourses« are different, that is  – and, as we will see, in absolutely 46 If this sounds a little anodyne, then it should be remembered that this »management« always takes place under the aegis of the struggle between classes.

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fundamental ways  – because they articulate the impossible real of labor or work through very different combinations or admixtures of the symbolic and the imaginary; or because they »represent« and produce subjects that respectively condense and divide these three registers in very different fashions. If, then, as Lacan informs us, »the real is not initially there to be known«, and if »this is the only dam that can hold idealism back« (S17: 186), this is only ultimately because, we want to claim, the real is always initially there – at least for the linguistic, and thus indelibly social and historical beings that we are – to be labored or worked; and because it has only ever been there, to be labored or worked – at least across the course of history so far, or at least across the course of the different social formations that have populated this history – under the conditions of its varying symbolic-imaginary containments.

A Few Methodological Markers Before we proceed to discuss, however, the intricate details of the two main social and historical »discourses« that Lacan describes in Seminar XVII, it is perhaps worth saying something more about his general conception of »discourse« itself. For, as we now want to make clear, this conception has to be seen to introduce or, at the very least, entail – when read both with and against certain formulations from Marx’s own work – a number of absolutely crucial methodological points and presuppositions. Firstly, then, we can see how Lacan’s introduction of the conception of »discourse« allows him to substantially inflect his famous claim that »there is no such thing as metalanguage«.47 On its own, of course, this claim implies that we will never be able to erect a fundamental or formal language that – in the limit case, from a position supposedly »outside« language – enables us to position and situate the very phenomenon of language itself. Once this claim has been tied together, however, with the notion of »discourse«  – with the idea, that is, that the subject is always »represented« or produced

47 Again, Lacan says this too many times to make the provision of a single reference purposeful.

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within an irredeemably specific social and historical order of language – it can also be taken to mean, following, of all people, Stalin (in his delayed but nonetheless rather biting response to the aberrations of the linguist Marr48), that, as Lacan consistently reminds us throughout his »late« work, »language is not a superstructure«. The »logos«, Lacan tells us, »is not a superstructure«; »indeed, it is rather« something like a »substructure« (DC: 39–40). But the language here should not be allowed to lead us astray. For if, in the passage we are citing from, Lacan is certainly continuing to flirt with the concept of a »substructure«, his words ultimately have to be interpreted in such a way that they can be seen to render this flirtation redundant. The very existence of language has to be seen to explode, that is, Marx’s (in)famous metaphor of (economic) base and (ideological) superstructure (a metaphor that we have already seen to be inadequate in sections 1 and 2 of chapter 1 above; before definitively doing away with it in the final section 3). If the operations of language can never be reduced to the supposed security of a metalanguage, then it is just as impossible to conceive these operations as the »superstructural« or »ideological« »reflection« or »distortion« of a supposedly more fundamental »base« of social – and primarily, of course, »economic«  – relations. These social and »economic« relations are inseparable from, inextricably intertwined with, the very operations of language itself; and, as an inevitable consequence of this, the subject of these relations can in no way be considered to simply »super-structurally« and »ideologically« hover above them in its supposed »consciousness« (whether this »consciousness« is taken to be »true« or, more probably it has to be said, »false«). Instead, this subject has to be seen to inhabit (»unconsciously« perhaps, as we will see) the inner structure of these relations themselves; which is none other, of course, than the fundamental implication of Lacan’s very notion of »discourse«. »Discourse« never divides the subject, we might say, between the imaginary of the ideological superstructure and the real of the economic base. Instead, as we will see, if there is always something like a conjunction or disjunction between the two registers of the imaginary and the real, within the subject, this has to be comprehended as the result of a conjunctive or disjunctive logic

48 See Stalin (1950).

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that is simply internal or immanent to (that is, neither »superstructural« or »substructural« in relation to) the symbolic, that is, thoroughly social and historical, specificity of »discourse« itself. Secondly, we can see  – as we have been trying to emphasize throughout this section – that Lacan’s conception of »discourse« must be construed as finally laying to rest any lingering suspicion that he remains a merely structuralist or transcendental thinker. Or, speaking more positively, we can see how this conception opens up the possibility of a thinking of structure or, more correctly, of structures, in their very ineradicable sociality and historicity. »I hadn’t thought of myself«, Lacan informs the rebellious students on the steps of the Pantheon, as being »all that transcendental« (S17: 145); or, even more clearly now, in the short oration »My Teaching, its Nature and its Ends«: »[y]ou know the nonsense they’ve come up with now. There is structure, and there is history. The people they’ve put in the ›structure‹ category, which includes me, – it wasn’t me who put me there, they put me there, just like that – supposedly spit on history. That’s absurd. There can obviously be no structure without reference to history. But first, you have to know what you are talking about when you talk about structure« (MT: 68). It is impossible, then, to peel structure apart from the density of history; because structure just is, or structures just are, historical through and through. There is no such thing – to repeat this absolutely fundamental point for one last time – as a purely »symbolic order«. For what history inevitably entails – or what it has inevitably entailed so far – is that the symbolic or social ordering of the world must proceed through different combinations of the symbolic with different combinations of the imaginary and the real. Thirdly and finally, then, we can see that – in order to round off this short series of methodological statements; and in order to make clearer something that we have been hinting at from the beginning of this section – we need to comprehend history (in precisely its different combinations of the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real) as nothing more than the result of a never-ending interplay between the historical and the transhistorical. It has to be said that this idea is much more clearly expressed in Marx’s work than it is in Lacan’s (although what we want to argue here is that it is the very clarity of Marx’s expression that allows us, in turn, to clarify the work of Lacan himself). »Labour, then«, Marx tells us, »as

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the creator of use-values, as useful labour, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself« (C1: 133). Labor or work, we might say – translating Marx’s insight into the more Lacanian language that we are employing here – is the transhistorical real, the transhistorical impossible, of every social and historical formation. (And it is the transhistorical necessity of labor or work that accounts for the fact that there will always be an Urverdrängung, a Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, a repetition and a loss, with the subject itself always appearing as nothing more than the »hypokeimenon«, the »Träger«, of this loss.) It is precisely the transhistoricality of this impossible real that has to be seen to give rise, however, to the very necessity of history itself or, more precisely, to the very necessity of the history of different social formations (with their Urverdrängungen, their Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen, their repetitions and their losses, and with their different subjects as the »hypokeimena« or »Träger« of these losses). For what is strictly impossible about the real of labor or work is the idea that it might ever appear as it is in itself, purified, so to speak, of all its symbolic and imaginary contaminations.49 The impossible real of labor or work only does appear, that is, in the different social formations of history, under the aspect of its different symbolic and imaginary containments and constraints. And the task of a properly social and historical thinking, of course – whether it be Marx’s or Lacan’s or, as here, a combination of the two – is to discern the precise nature of these containments and constraints, and the precise nature of their various effects and consequences.

The Four »Discourses« (Halved)… Now that we have succeeded in extrapolating Lacan’s conception of »discourse« from the »fundamental notation« that defines the signifier as representing the subject for another signifier; and now that we have claimed in anticipation  – drawing a number of methodologi-

49 Marx himself makes this very clear in »Results of the Immediate Process of Production« (C1: 998–1000).

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cal conclusions from this – that this conception of »discourse« must always be seen to assume socially and historically specific forms (that is, that it must always be seen to involve – or have involved – a specific symbolic and imaginary articulation of the (transhistorical) impossible real of labor or work, and that it must always be seen to »represent« or produce – or to have »represented« or produced – the subject as the »hypokeimenon« or »Träger« of this symbolic imaginarization of the real), we can finally start to take a look at the two main social and historical »discourses« that Lacan talks about in Seminar XVII: the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism«. (Lacan speaks of course, once again, about the »discourse of the university«, or about the »discourse of the master« in its supposedly contemporary capitalist form; but what we want to argue here is that both of these references – the first being a lot clearer than the second – can only be properly comprehended on the basis of what Marx says, using now a Lacanian terminology, about the »discourse of capitalism«.) We certainly ought to make it clear here that, in concentrating our attention on the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism« (as the essential underpinning of the »discourse of the university«), we will only be talking about two of the four »discourses« that Lacan introduces in Seminar XVII; and precisely about the two most obviously social and historical »discourses«. For Lacan also speaks, of course, about the »discourse of the hysteric« and the »discourse of the analyst«. And it is perhaps because these last two »discourses« are not so obviously social and historical that, at times, Lacan can be a little more ambiguous than we are claiming that he should be about precisely the social and historical import of his own work. »I won’t say«, he demurs, »that this [the introduction of the four discourses S. A. & H. R.] is Archimedes’ lever. I will not tell you that this makes the slightest claim to a renewal of the world system, or of thinking about history« (S17: 173). Or, even more definitively: »[m]y little quadrupedal schemas – I am telling you this today to alert you to it – are not the Ouija boards of history. It is not necessarily the case that things always happen this way, and that things rotate in the same direction. This is only an appeal for you to locate yourselves in relation to what one can call radical functions, in the mathematical sense of the term« (S17: 188).

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It suffices to say here that we do not consider these comments to be particularly fruitful. Much more fruitful, we would suggest, are those passages in which Lacan draws attention to the thoroughgoing sociality and historicity of both the »discourse of the hysteric« and the »discourse of the analyst«; in which he implicitly draws attention, we would claim, to the fact that both of these »discourses« can only ultimately be coherently conceived as the product, the effect, of the very social and historical passage or transition from the »discourse of the master« to the »discourse of capitalism«. The »hysteric’s discourse«, Lacan now affirms, »is what made the decisive shift possible by giving its meaning to what was historically elaborated by Marx. That is, that there are historical events that can only be judged in terms of symptoms« (S17: 204). Or, continuing the analogy, but at the same time making it clearer that the hysteric responds to a passage or transition between the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism«: »[s]he unmasks […] the master’s function, with which she remains united«, despite, or precisely because of, the fact that she is »not a slave«, by »going on a kind of strike« (S17: 94). The »discourse of the analyst«, for its part, is more or less always conceived by Lacan – as we have seen – in implicitly social and historical terms, as the »inverse« or »reverse«, the »other side«, of the »discourse of the master« in its contemporary form, that is, of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«. In one crucial passage of his short presentation on »The Triumph of Religion«, however, Lacan further specifies exactly what it is that this »analytic discourse« is the »other side« of: »[t]here was a little flash of lightning – between two worlds, if I can put it this way, between a past world and a world that is going to reorganize itself as a superb world to come. I don’t think that psychoanalysis holds any key to the future. But there will have been a privileged moment during which we will have had a fairly just measure of that which I call in my discourse the parlêtre« (TR: 87–8). The »discourse of the analyst«, we can surmise, just like the »discourse of the hysteric«, has to be seen to trace its historical emergence back to the still lingering passage or transition between the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism«.

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…and their Four Fundamental Positions Lacan gives a formal definition of these two main social and historical »discourses«, then (with the »discourse of the university«, we will argue – at least in its contemporary and hegemonic form – only essentially being definable as that which arises on the basis of the »discourse of capitalism«, as this is explicitly defined in the work of Marx himself), by distributing them – like all of his discourses – across the four interrelated positions of a fundamental matheme. And it will certainly be much easier to orient our discussion if, from the beginning, we can give some idea of what it is that each of these positions is intended to represent; or, just as importantly, if we can give some idea of what the fundamental relationships between these positions are supposed to be. On one occasion, then, Lacan identifies the four positions as follows (S17: 93): desire → Other truth loss And, on another occasion, he specifies them thus (S17: 169): agent → work truth production If we pay attention now to each of these positions in turn, moving clockwise – as Lacan intends – from the top left hand corner to the bottom left hand corner (or moving, from left to right, across the top line, and from right to left across the bottom), we can see a number of very interesting things. Firstly, then, we can see that the »desire« of every »discourse« is instituted by its »agent«, by what Lacan elsewhere calls the »order« or »command« (S17: 117) of its »dominant« (S17: 43–4) or »master«. »[T]he reference of a discourse«, Lacan tells us, »is what it acknowledges it wants to master« (S17: 79); without this implying, however, either that the »master« is in a position of complete »mastery«  – »the agent is not at all necessarily someone who does«, Lacan elucidates, »but someone who is caused to act« (S17: 169) – or, as we will see in the case of the »discourse of the university« or the »discourse of capitalism«, that it is the »master« himself who in fact occupies the position of explicit »mastery« in the »discourse«. Secondly, we can see that what every »discourse« wants to »master« – or at least serve as the »agent« of – is the »work« of the

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»Other«. Every »discourse« gravitates, that is – as we have already suggested – around the impossible real of the subject’s labor or work. »[T]he structure«, Lacan informs us, »is real«, and »[t]his is generally determined by a convergence towards the impossible. This is why it is real«; and this is why the real that pertains to this real structure – the real of labor or work – has to be seen to function as »the cause of the discourse itself« (S16: 30). Bringing these two moments together, then, we can now see that the upper storey of Lacan’s mathemes must always be seen to represent a relationship of impossibility per se (for what effectively is impossible – which does not mean, of course, that it does not in some sense happen all the time – is the »mastery« of the impossible real of the subject’s labor or work): »[t]he first line«, Lacan confirms for us, »comprises a relation, indicated here by an arrow, which is always defined as impossible« (S17: 174). Thirdly, then, we can see  – now reiterating this point in this slightly more precise context – that every »discourse« must be considered to involve the »production« of a »loss« or, alternatively perhaps and with a little more pungency for the laboring or working subject concerned, the »loss« of a »production«; every »discourse« must be considered to entail, that is – as we will see in more detail in what follows – its own particular form of »entropy«. And, fourthly and finally, we can see that every »discourse« must be thought of as being suspended above and around the hiddenness, the obscurity or, more radically perhaps, the undisclosability of its own »truth«. ­»No discourse«, Lacan aphoristically puts it, »can say the truth« (S16: 42). What really needs to be emphasized here is that, if the »truth« of a »discourse« is hidden, obscure or undisclosable – or, in Lacan’s own words, »unsayable« – this is only ultimately because of the relationship that it maintains with the »production« of a »loss« (or, once again, with the »loss« of a »production«). For this relationship – the one that defines the bottom storey of Lacan’s mathemes – can no longer be construed as a relationship of simple impossibility; instead – as we can now see Lacan arguing in a passage that is certainly worth citing here in full – it has to be comprehended as something much more radical: as a relationship or, more correctly, a non-relationship, of nothing less than impotence: »at the level of the second line there is no suggestion of an arrow. And not only is there no communication, but there is something that acts

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as a block […] What is it that is blocking? It is what results from the work. And what a certain Marx’s discovery accomplished was to give full weight to a term that was already known prior to him and that designates what work occupies itself with – it’s called production […]. Whatever the signs, whatever the master signifiers that come to be inscribed in the place of the agent, under no circumstances will production have a relationship to truth. One can do all one wants, one can say all one wants, one can try to conjoin this production with needs, which are the needs one fashions – there is nothing doing. Between the existence of a master and a production’s relation with truth, there is no way of getting it to work […]. Each impossibility, whatever it may be, between the terms that we put in play here is always linked to this – if it leaves us in suspense over its truth, it is because something is protecting it, which we shall call impotence.« (S17: 174)

This dense and difficult passage is bursting with the most profound implications; but the problem is that these implications are still only formulated in essentially abstract terms. If the impossibility of a »discourse«, Lacan is arguing – this being represented, of course, by its upper storey – effectively leaves the very »truth« of the »discourse« in a state of »suspense«, then this is only ultimately because  – on the bottom storey – this impossibility is itself »protected« (made possible, we might suspect, in its very impossibility) by a relationship or, more properly speaking, a non-relationship, a »block«, of impotence; an impotence that is itself defined by the fact that that which is »produced« within a »discourse« (and we should think here perhaps both of the »product« of the subject’s work, and of the subject itself as the »product« of a certain kind of »discursive« work) will never have – just like the impossibility that it »protects« – a relationship to the »truth« of the »discourse« itself. It is in order to further concretize the consequences of Lacan’s comments, then, that we now want to turn  – after this fairly long series of preliminary remarks  – to the definitions and descriptions that he advances of the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of the university« (always remembering, of course, that this last »discourse« will have to be seen to be sustained by what Marx himself has to say about the »discourse of capitalism«).

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The »Discourse of the Master«… Lacan defines the »discourse of the master«, then – as we have already suggested – by adding a fourth position, the position of »loss«, »production«, »entropy« or »surplus jouissance« (a), to the matheme that is intended to designate the signifier’s representation of the subject for another signifier: S1 → S2 $ a Much more is going on here, however, than the mere, apparently structuralist or transcendental, representation of the subject for one signifier by another. For Lacan’s definition of these terms – whether, once again, he fully recognizes this or not – is quite thoroughly social and historical. (This is why we earlier refrained, of course, from adding this fourth position to Lacan’s primordial, three-pronged matheme; for what happens when one does this is that one immediately creates the impression, the mistaken impression, it has to be said, that the »discourse of the master« – in its irredeemably social and historical sense – is simply coterminous with the supposedly structuralist and transcendental logic of language itself. On certain occasions Lacan appears to strongly contest this impression: »the function of the master signifier«, he says, »is not in itself inherent to language« (S18: 137); and, on others, he seems to do his best to prop it up: »there is no contingency«, he firmly states, »in the slave’s position. There is the necessity that something be produced that functions in knowledge as a master signifier« (S17: 188).) The S1, then  – in the position of the »agent« or the institutor of »desire«  – is the »master« himself; or  – once again remembering that we need to purge this claim of any structuralist or transcendental implications – it is »the signifier, the signifier function, that the essence of the master relies upon« (S17: 21). The S2 – in the position of the »Other« that »works« – is the »slave«; or – in less socially and historically loaded terms – it is the »laborer«, the »worker« per se; and, crucially, this »laborer« or »worker« – or, in Lacan’s terms, »slave« (which we will henceforth use as a conventient shorthand) – is considered to be the possessor of knowledge: »the slave’s own field«, Lacan tells us, »is knowledge, S2«; the »laborer« or »worker« »is the one who has the know-how [savoir-faire]« (S17: 21). The a –

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in the position of »loss« or »production« – is the surplus product that the »laborer« or »worker« produces for the »master«; and this product is of course tied up, for both the »laborer« and the »master« – albeit, as we will see, in very different ways – with the »entropy« of a »surplus jouissance«. And the $, finally – in the position of »truth« – is that very barring or division of the subject that the whole operation of the »master’s discourse« serves to render hidden, obscure and even – from a position within the »discourse« itself – undisclosable; the »structure« of this »discourse«, Lacan informs us, works to »mask […] the division of the subject« (S17: 103). (Looking forward a little, then, we can see that the impossibility of the »discourse of the master« will have to be thought to concern the relationship between the »master« (S1) and the »slave« (S2); and that its impotence – functioning, of course, to »protect« this impossibility – will have to be thought to concern the relationship or, more correctly, the non-relationship, the »block«, between the »slave’s« product (or between the »slave« himself as product, a product of »surplus jouissance« (a)) and the »truth« of the barring or division of the subject ($).)

…is Coterminous with Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production; the Example of the Corvée Now, what we want to argue here – both clarifying Lacan’s work and even, where necessary, correcting it – is that this simple, four-footed schema can essentially be seen to represent, in purely formal terms, of course, the manner of functioning of every pre-capitalist society; or, in more explicitly Marxian terms, that it can essentially be seen to characterize the fundamental logic of every pre-capitalist »social formation« or »mode of production«. Lacan’s language – the language of »masters« and »slaves« – makes it clear that his own favored example of such a »social formation« or »mode of production« is the Greece of a supposedly classical antiquity (as this is displayed, and no doubt also distorted, in the work of Plato and Aristotle or, more specifically, in Plato’s Meno and Aristotle’s Politics). But what we want to briefly show here is that the scope of Lacan’s mathematical reduction is in fact much broader than his own overwriting of it might at times appear to suggest. And the best way to do this, we want to claim, is

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by picking up the thread – left dangling a long time ago, at the end of Chapter 1 above – of one of Marx’s own especially clear examples: that of the corvée. The corvée, then, was a form of peasant labor widely practiced, or enforced, in Europe from the early Middle Ages to the middle of the nineteenth century. But we are obviously not concerned here with the wealth of its historical details. Instead, what we are concerned with is the way that, as Marx himself puts it, this »social formation« or »mode of production« »presents surplus labour [and thus also perhaps surplus jouissance S. A. & H. R.] in an independent and immediately perceptible form« (C1: 345); that is, with the way that it can be seen to reveal, with particular clarity, the basic underlying logic of a pre-capitalist society or, in Lacanian terms, a »discourse of the master«. For what happens in the corvée – in a typical week, let us say, for the sake of simplicity – is that the peasant works for three days on his own land, or on communal land, producing a product either for himself and his family or the community, and for three days on the land of the landlord, producing a surplus product, of course, for the sole benefit and consumption of this latter figure. The positions of Lacan’s »discourse of the master« can be plotted here with a satisfying ease (and we might suppose that this has something to do with the easy  – or, at the very least, easily mappable – satisfactions produced by this »discourse« itself). The landlord, then, the person for whom the three days of surplus labor are performed, is the »master«, S1. The peasant, the person who performs this three days of surplus labor, is the »slave«, S2 (and, following Lacan’s indications, we can say that he performs this labor precisely because he knows how to do it, precisely because he stands, that is, in possession of a certain »knowledge«, »know-how« or »savoirfaire«. It is perhaps also fair to assume, introducing with this a more explicitly Marxian twist, that this knowledge is in some sense bound up with his at least partial ownership – or, in the case of the slave per se, his full identification with – the means of production). The surplus product that the three days surplus labor on the landlord’s land produces is a. (And we might also suppose that the production of this surplus product will be tied up with an equally clear-cut division between two kinds of surplus jouissance: a surplus jouissance of consumption, we can say, which pertains, of course, only to the landlord (S1), for it is he who is allowed to consume the surplus; and a surplus

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jouissance of production, which pertains, of course – this time with less obviously benign consequences – only to the peasant (S2), for it is he who is compelled to produce the surplus, and to take, as we will see, some kind of enjoyment in this production.) The only position that Marx’s example does not elucidate, then, is the $, the barring or division of the subject. (But this is simply because – as we will also come to see, thus comprehending the particular impotence at play here – this barring or division is always effectively concealed or, more properly speaking perhaps, excluded by the directly hierarchical ordering of pre-capitalist societies themselves (represented here by the corvée.) The fact that such societies do conceal and exclude the subject’s barring or division only becomes visible, that is, in a paradoxically nachträglicher fashion. In order to see that the subject always effectively was barred and divided, without, of course, ever coming close to realizing it, we need to have lived through that very particular barring and division that is relentlessly imposed by capitalist society itself. The barring and division of the subject is itself a thoroughly social and historical phenomenon (which should in no way be taken to suggest that one day this division might be quite happily overcome50)).

Surplus-Value and Surplus Product We can already see, then, that Marx’s example of the corvée will allow us to more precisely discern the way in which pre-capitalist societies  – or »discourses of the master«  – have to be said to presuppose, give rise to or produce a certain kind of, working or nonworking, subject. But before we proceed to analyze in more detail the characteristics of these subjects, we ought to point out that Marx’s example also allows us to identify one of Lacan’s more significant conceptual confusions. For, on a couple of occasions, Lacan wrongly contends that the position of the a in the »discourse of the

50 As Lacan himself says, it is a »mirage« to »think that all the problems of jouissance are related in an essential manner with the division of the subject«; and that »consequently, if the subject were no longer divided, he would reencounter jouissance« (S16: 115). It is only possible to imagine, that is, different – social and historical – divisions of the subject.

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master« can be defined as the position of the production of surplusvalue. »I have already shown you«, he maintains, »that in the master’s discourse the a is precisely identifiable with what the thought of a worker, Marx’s, produced, namely what was, symbolically and really, the function of surplus value« (S17: 44); or again: »[w]hatever way you come at things, whatever way you turn them, each of these little four-legged schemas has the property of leaving its own gap […] At the level of the master’s discourse, the gap is precisely that of the recuperation of surplus value« (S17: 203). Lacan is mistaken, of course, because there is no suggestion in pre-capitalist societies – the only societies that can be consistently represented, we are claiming, by the »discourse of the master« – of the production of surplus-value. What is produced in the corvée, for example, by the three days of surplus labor that the peasant performs on the landlord’s land, is not surplus-value, but instead a surplus product (and the same would have to be said, of course, of Lacan’s own favored example of the slave of classical antiquity). As we will see, the consequences of this distinction are very far from being academic; and this is precisely because the production of surplus-value has to be seen to produce a very different subject than the production of a mere surplus product. The production of surplus-value is the key, that is, to the fundamental subjective transformation that takes place between the »discourse of the master« and the »discourse of capitalism«.

A Long Series of Subjective Suppositions How are we to understand, then, that subject – or those subjects – that function as the »hypokeimena« or »Träger« of pre-capitalist societies, or of the »discourse of the master«? We want to make here five essential points. (And it should be borne in mind that, at the very same time as we are making these points, we will be outlining, in a purely ex negativo fashion, of course, the basic characteristics of the subject  – or subjects  – produced by the »discourse of capitalism«; for, as will later become clear, this last »discourse« has to be seen to enact, in each of these five spheres, an absolutely fundamental transformation of what occurs in the »discourse of the master« itself.) Firstly, then, we can say, further concretizing with this a point that we have already made in the abstract, that the repetition, the

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»repeated assertion« (S17: 79), of the »discourse of the master« – the fact that, to put it simply, labor or work is done for the »master« day after day, week after week, year after year – always entails for the very subject(s) produced and presupposed by this repetition a certain »loss« or »entropy«; a »loss« or »entropy« that is always bound up, of course, with a certain »surplus jouissance«. (We will later see that, although it is certainly possible to speak of an »entropy« within the »master’s discourse«, this term can only really be said to acquire its full and proper metaphorical meaning when it is seen as functioning within the »discourse of capitalism«.) Lacan first approaches this »loss« or »entropy«, then, from the place where one might least expect to find it, that is, form the position of the »master« himself. For full jouissance is as »fundamentally prohibited« (S17: 108) for the »master« as it is for the »slave«, »surplus jouissance is the function of the renunciation of jouissance under the effects of the discourse« (S16: 19) for both the »slave« and the »master«; the »master signifier«, Lacan tells us, »determines castration« (S17: 89), and not only for those who »work« or »labor« under it; for the very person who gives the order to work must himself be seen to suffer (although not quite in the same way, we might expect, as those to whom he gives it) from its jouissance-prohibiting effects: »what constitutes the essence of the master’s position«, Lacan firmly concludes, »is to be castrated« (S17: 121). The »master« is »castrated«, then, – he is the subject of a »loss« or »entropy« – precisely because he has to give the order to »labor« or »work«; and it is precisely the giving of this order that guarantees for him his own particular kind of »surplus jouissance«: »[t]he master […] makes a small effort to make everything work, in other words, he gives an order. Simply by fulfilling his function as master he loses something. It is at least through this something lost that something of jouissance has to be rendered to him – specifically, surplus jouissance« (S17: 107). It is precisely because the »master« gives the order to the »slave« to produce a surplus that, once this surplus has been produced, it is the »master« himself who consumes it. Or, returning to the example of the corvée, it is precisely because the landlord gets the peasant to perform three days surplus labor on his own land that, once this labor has been performed, its benefits can accrue solely to the landlord himself. The »surplus jouissance« of the »master«, rendered possible by the »loss« or »entropy« entailed by his giving of an

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order – an order of production – is essentially, then, a »surplus jouissance« of consumption. (And Lacan’s explanations of the »master’s« »right« to command and consume the surplus product are at times mythical, and at times not. For, on certain occasions, Lacan simply repeats the Hegelian and Kojèvian fantasy about the »master’s« willingness to assume the overwhelming risk of death: »the master to whom this surplus jouissance is owed«, he says, »has renounced everything, and jouissance first up, because he has exposed himself to death, and because he remains firmly fastened to this position whose Hegelian articulation is clear« (S17: 107); and, on other occasions, which are certainly more consistent with the critique of both Hegel and Kojève that Lacan develops elsewhere in Seminar XVII (S17: 143; 169–71), he explicitly dismantles the central presupposition of this fantasy: »[i]t would be quite false to think«, he claims, »that this [the differentiation of the master] occurs at the level of a risk. This risk is, despite everything, quite mythical. It’s the trace of a myth that still remains in Hegelian phenomenology. Isn’t this master nothing other than the one who is the strongest? This is certainly not what Hegel records. The struggle for pure prestige at the risk of death still belongs to the realm of the imaginary« (S17: 152).) We are not really concerned here, however, with the particular conditions that explain the »master’s« ability to consume the surplus product. For what we want to emphasize is that, in giving the order to produce this product to the »slave« – that is, in subjecting himself to his own particular (and, in the end, not too unpleasant) form of »loss«, »entropy« and »surplus jouissance«  – the »master« is essentially fulfilling, in Lacan’s own terms, an impossible task (this impossibility corresponds of course, as we have already seen, to the upper storey of Lacan’s »discourse« (S1 → S2)): »[i]n the master’s discourse«, Lacan informs us, »it is effectively impossible that there be a master who makes the entire world function. Getting people to work is even more tiring, if one really has to do it, than working oneself. The master never does it. He gives a sign, the master signifier, and everybody jumps. That’s where you have to start, which is, in effect, completely impossible. It’s tangible every day« (S17: 174). The »master« fullfils an impossible task, we might say, because the (imaginary-symbolic) »signifier« of his hierarchical ordering manages to subsume, to give sense to, to make possible in its very impossibility, the impossible real of the subordinate subject’s labor or work. The »master« gives

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the order to work, and »everybody« works. Impossible, it might be thought, for nothing necessitates that the impossible real of labor or work be subsumed in precisely this (imaginary-symbolic) way; nothing necessitates, that is, that the »slave« obey the »master’s« order. But possible nonetheless, for under the conditions of the »discourse of the master« this is what happens on any and »every day«. It is the fact that the »master« performs this impossible function, in precisely the way that he does, that allows us to explain another of Lacan’s hugely significant conceptual and historical confusions. For what the »master’s« hierarchical ordering of the phenomenon of labor or work makes clear is that he – the »master« – can never even come close to conceiving of himself as a self-identical subject. (It is this strict impossibility of self-representation, for both the »master« and the »slave«, that can be seen to define, as we will now see, the very specific Vorstellungsrepräsentanz of the »discourse of the master«.) But Lacan contradicts this conclusion in a number of different places: »the master’s discourse«, he tells us, »begins with the predominance of the subject as, in fact, tending to be supported only by this ultra-reduced myth of being identical with his own signifier« (S17: 90); or similarly, »what is found, on the horizon of the rise of the master subject« is »a truth which asserts itself on the basis of his equality with himself, on the basis of this I-cracy I once spoke of, and which is, it seems, the essence of every affirmation in culture that has seen this master’s discourse flourish over all others« (S17: 79–80); and finally, the »principle« of the »discourse of the master« is »to think of oneself as univocal«; it is »precisely« for this reason that this »discourse« »masks the division of the subject« (S17: 103). This simply cannot be considered to be the case, however; for what »masks the division of the subject« within the »master’s discourse« is not the myth of the »master’s« self-identity, but instead the very hierarchical ordering of the »discourse« itself, the fact that its subjects are explicitly divided up into the two camps of »masters« and »slaves« (or »laborers« and »workers«). It is this hierarchical ordering that explains, of course, the strict impossibility of even the myth of self-representation within the »discourse of the master«. For it is clear, we can surmise, to everybody involved in this »discourse«, that the »master« only exists through the mediation of the »slave«, and that the »slave« only exists through the mediation of the »master«. The landlord knows that he is the landlord only and precisely

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because the peasant comes to perform three days surplus labor on his own land, and the peasant knows that he is the peasant only and precisely because he performs this three days surplus labor on the landlord’s land. As Lacan himself puts it, emphasizing even more with this – in contradistinction to his previous assertions – the absolute dependency of the »master«: in the »discourse of the master« »it is only the slave that is real […]. If the slave dies there is nothing left. If the master dies everybody knows that the slave is always a slave« (S16: 385). This, then, is the »master discourse’s« very specific form of Vorstellungsrepräsentanz: the »signifier« – even the »master signifier« – cannot represent itself because it »represents the subject for another signifier«; or, more concretely now, the »master« cannot represent himself because he is only represented by and through the »slave«, and the »slave« cannot represent himself because he is only represented by and through the »master«. Within the »discourse of the master«, the myth of the »master’s« self-representation must itself be seen to be a myth (as we will see later, it is only the »discourse of capitalism« that can coherently be considered to give rise to the mirage of the subject’s self-identity). Having identified the »loss« or »entropy« that the »discourse of the master« entails for the »master« himself, we can now turn our attention to the »loss« or »entropy« that it imposes on the »slave«. And in many ways, of course, this »loss« or »entropy« is much more obvious and much more pressing. For what the »slave« loses in working for the »master« is, firstly, his time, secondly, the surplus product that he produces over this time and, thirdly – and in this case a little more speculatively perhaps – the possibility of his using this time by not working for the »master«. In the corvée, for example, the peasant loses the three days work on the landlord’s land, the surplus product of this work (the work of his own hands), and the possibility of using these three days to work for himself, his family and his community. The »loss« or »entropy« experienced by the »slave« is clear, then; but what is not so clear is the particular form of »surplus jouissance« that it must necessarily be seen to entail, a »surplus jouissance« that we have already defined – in stark contrast to the »master’s« enjoyment – as a »surplus jouissance« of production. »What people usually say«, Lacan tells us, »is that jouissance« [and we should think here only of »surplus jouissance S. A. & H. R.] is the privilege of the master. What is interesting on the contrary, as everyone knows, is what

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belies this within it«; what is interesting, that is, is »how the slave’s position is articulated with respect to jouissance« (S17: 22). For if the »master« must certainly be said to enjoy his consumption, the »slave« must also be said to enjoy his production. But how exactly? Lacan’s answers to this question might at times appear to be a little facetious: »the whole of the literature of antiquity testifies to us«, he says, »that being a slave was not that troublesome at all« (S16: 115). The simplicity of this statement should not be allowed to blind us, however, to its absolutely serious animating intent. For what Lacan is implicitly claiming here is that the »surplus jouissance« of the »slave« consists precisely in the fact of his knowing that he is working for the »master«: »[t]he slave knows many things, but what he knows even better still is what the master wants« (S17: 32); or again, »the master’s desire is the Other’s desire, since it’s this desire that the slave anticipates« (S17: 38). The »slave« has to be seen to derive his surplus of satisfaction, then, from nothing more than the continuing state of his own subordination. If »[t]he master was satisfied with« his »little tithe« of »surplus jouissance«, then there is also »no indication that in himself the slave was unhappy to be giving it« (S17: 79). Within the hierarchical ordering of the »discourse of the master«, the »surplus jouissance« of consumption is supported, held in place, by the »surplus jouissance« of production. It is the »surplus jouissance« of the »slave« that guarantees and grants consistency to the »surplus jouissance« of the »master«. Secondly, then  – and following on rather neatly from this last point  – we can see that if the »slave« certainly loses something in the »discourse of the master«, what he certainly does not lose is his knowledge. For, as we have already seen, it is knowledge, in Lacan’s view, that has to be said to define the essence of the »slave’s« position. »Knowledge serves the master«, he informs us, but it is »born from the slave« himself (S16: 393). And, as we have also started to suggest, this knowledge can be seen to fan out in a number of different directions. In the first place, then, the »slave« stands in possession of the knowledge, the »know-how«, the »savoir-faire« that informs his very work. If the »slave« is working for the »master« then this is obviously only because he knows how to do this work. If the peasant is performing three days surplus labor on the landlord’s land, this is clearly only because he knows how to perform this surplus labor.

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And, in the second place, it needs to be pointed out – this time in more explicitly Marxian terms  – that this knowledge, this »knowhow«, this »savoir-faire« must essentially be seen to stem either from the »slave’s« partial ownership of the means of production, as in the case of the peasant of the corvée, or, in the case of Lacan’s own preferred example of the slave of classical antiquity, from his absolute identification with and reduction to the level of these means of production. The peasant of the corvée partially owns the means of production, and this is why his work is informed by a certain knowledge. The slave of classical antiquity just is a means of production, but this is also what explains the impossibility of detaching his work from the knowledge that informs it. In the third place, then – and as we have tried to make clear only a short while ago – the »slave« can also be seen to stand in possession of another kind of knowledge: the absolutely indubitable knowledge that, at least as far as the production of a surplus is concerned, he is working only for the »master«. It is from this knowledge, of course, a knowledge that also has to be said to inform every minute of his work, that the »slave« must be seen to derive all the ambiguity of his »surplus jouissance«. For knowing that one is working for the »master« certainly has to be said to constitute a very peculiar form of enjoyment (a form no more peculiar, however, as we will later have a chance to see, than other more contemporary models and manifestations). Thirdly, then, we can see that it is precisely this last kind of knowledge, and the »surplus jouissance« attached to it, that can be said to explain the particular form of impotence that is at play within the »discourse of the master«. We have already seen Lacan define impotence, as opposed to impossibility, as that characteristic that stretches out across the bottom storey of every »discourse« or, more precisely, as that characteristic that results from the non-relationship or »block« between what is »lost« or »produced« within a »discourse« and the »truth« of the »discourse« itself (a »truth« that always remains, of course, for the very subjects involved and implicated in the structure of the »discourse«, essentially hidden or undisclosable). In the »discourse of the master«, then, impotence has to be seen to define the non-relationship or »block« between the »production« and »loss« of a surplus product (a) and the hidden or undisclosable »truth« of the barring or division of the subject ($).

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What does this mean, however? Well, it means, to further develop this point, that if a surplus product (a) is produced within an explicitly hierarchical ordering of »discourse« – within a »discourse« that explicitly distinguishes, that is, between »masters« (S1) and »slaves« (S2) – it is precisely this hierarchical ordering that must be seen to conceal or, more properly speaking, even exclude the barring or division of the subject ($). The subject is not really divided, we might say, within the »discourse of the master«. Instead, it is the »discourse« itself that is divided between or across two entirely different kinds of subjects: »masters«, of course, and »slaves«. In retrospect, of course, from the nachträgliche perspective that is opened up by nothing less than the demise of the »discourse of the master« (a demise that can only be accounted for, as we will see, on the basis of the emergence of the »discourse of capitalism«), it certainly becomes possible to see that what this division  – the division between »masters« and »slaves«  – conceals or excludes is nothing more than the barring or division of the subject itself; but what really needs to be emphasized is that it only becomes possible to see this precisely from this nachträglichen perspective. We can certainly see today that what the »discourse of the master« conceals or excludes is the barring or division of the subject; but we can just as certainly only see this because we ourselves have been subjected to that very particular barring or division that is so consistently and continually imposed by the »discourse of capitalism itself (and we will, of course, be further specifying this division a little later on). From a position within the »discourse of the master«, then, anything like an awareness of the barring or division of the subject is quite strictly inaccessible. The »slave« simply knows that he is a »slave«, and he simply knows that, at least as far as the production of a surplus is concerned, he is working only for the »master«. It is this knowledge that has to be seen to bar any awareness that the »slave« might have of his barring or division as a subject (for knowing that one is dependent upon the »master«, and thus not self-identical, is not the same as knowing – even if unconsciously, as we will see – that one is barred or divided). And something similar, of course, is also true of the figure of the »master« himself. For what the »master« knows, in an inverse repetition of the tautology of the »slave«, is that he himself is the »master«; he knows, that is, that when a surplus is being produced the »slave« is working only for him. It is this

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knowledge that renders the »master« as immune as the »slave« to any awareness of his own barring or division (for, once again, to know that one is dependent on the »slave« – to know that one is not a selfidentical subject – is not to know, even if unconsciously, that one is barred or divided as a subject). As Lacan himself puts it, implicitly hinting in this way at that very link between knowledge, the limits of knowledge and impotence that we are here trying to explain: »there is no relationship between what will more or less become the cause of desire for a character like the master who, as usual, fails to understand anything about it and what constitutes his truth. As a matter of fact, there is a barrier here [of impotence] on the lower level [of the discourse of the master S. A. & H. R]« (S17: 108). For both the »master« and the »slave«, we can surmise, »there is no relationship« between the »cause of desire« of the »discourse of the master« – the production of a surplus (a) – and the concealed or excluded »truth« of the barring or division of the subject ($). It is the »barrier« or »block« of impotence  – the absolute unawareness that the subjects (and especially the »slaves«) of a hierarchical ordering entertain with regard to their own effectively excluded barring or division – that functions to protect the very impossibility of this hierarchical ordering itself; that explains, in more everyday terms, how it is that the master can come to fulfill the »completely impossible« task of getting the »slaves« to work for him. It is the impotence imposed by hierarchy that renders it possible in its very impossibility. We can express all of this in slightly different terms by saying that what the »discourse of the master« fundamentally forecloses is any irreducibly specific experience of fantasy. »In its fundamental beginning«, Lacan tells us, »the master’s discourse excludes fantasy. And that’s what makes [both] him [and the »slave« S. A. & H. R.], fundamentally, completely blind« (S17: 108). Lacan’s famous formula for fantasy is, of course, $ ◊ a: the barred or divided subject both conceals and confronts – or, more properly speaking perhaps, confronts by concealing  – the enigmatic excess of its »surplus jouissance«.51 It is precisely such a relationship that is sealed off, however, by the »barrier« or »block« of impotence that arises on the bottom storey of

51 Once again, Lacan spells out this formula so many times that it is impossible to give a meaningful individual reference for it.

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the »discourse of the master«. For, as we have seen, this »barrier« or »block« is erected between the »loss« or »production« of a surplus product, and the »loss« or »production« of a »surplus jouissance« (a), and the concealed or excluded »truth« of the barring or division of the subject ($). The »barrier« or »block« of impotence is a »barrier« or »block« between the two very terms that serve to define the function of the Lacanian fantasy. All of which is to say, of course, that there is nothing enigmatically excessive about the »surplus jouissance« that takes place within the »discourse of the master«. The »slave«, as we have already said, enjoys as nothing more than a »slave«; he enjoys, that is, only by producing the surplus product. And the »master« enjoys as nothing more than a »master«; he enjoys, that is, only by consuming the surplus product. It is this strict partition of »surplus jouissances« that explains, then, why nothing like a specific experience of fantasy is possible within the »master’s discourse« (for although we can certainly imagine the »slave« fantasizing about being a »master«, there is nothing specific about this fantasy that can be seen to regulate the »slave’s« most essential activity, his work itself). The specificity of fantasy is excluded from the »discourse of the master«, we can conclude, precisely because the entirety of this »discourse« is bathed in nothing more than fantasy itself, the fantasy of a hierarchical ordering. (From a contemporary perspective, we can see that the central division of the »master’s discourse«  – the division between »masters« and »slaves«  – is nothing short of fantasmatic; but this does not mean, of course, that within the specific social logic of this »discourse« this fantasy does not function as the firm and fundamental basis of reality itself.) Fourthly, then – and drawing out with this the more general implications of our last point  – it is now possible to see what it is that has to be said to constitute the very specific form of Urverdrängung that is at work within the »discourse of the master«. For what this »discourse« primordially represses – in rendering the self-representation of its subjects impossible by means of an explicitly hierarchical ordering – is nothing less than the barring or division of the subject itself. (We can only become aware of this repression, as we have already pointed out, from the privileged historical position of our Nachträglichkeit.) And what this means, of course, is that, from a position within the »discourse of the master«, anything like an expe-

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rience of »the unconscious« is strictly impossible. For what opens up the possibility of this experience is nothing other than the barring or division of the subject. It only becomes possible to experience »the unconscious«, that is – as we will see in more detail when we later start to discuss the »discourse of capitalism« – when it also becomes possible to experience something like the supposed (but only supposed) self-identity of the subject. The experience of »the unconscious« is constituted by the barring or division of the subject between its apparent self-identity (an appearance that, as we have seen, has no place within the »discourse of the master«) and everything that serves to render this identity nothing more than derisory. Or, in more Lacanian terms, the experience of »the unconscious« is constituted by the barring or division of the subject between its ego and its subjectivity proper (and this barring or division can only be comprehended, we will claim, on the basis of the »discourse of capitalism« itself). None of which should be taken to mean, of course, that there is no place for »the unconscious« within the »discourse of the master«. For, in an absolutely fundamental sense, everything about this »discourse« is unconscious. (Where is the place for »consciousness«, we might ask, in the hierarchical relationship between the »master« and his »slaves«?) The fact that everything is unconscious does not mean, however, that the very subjects of this unconsciousness are capable of experiencing it as such. For, as we have already tried to make clear, in order to experience »the unconscious« something needs to have emerged that functions as its apparent  – but obviously only apparent – counterweight. If this counterweight has not emerged then the experience of »the unconscious« is nothing short of impossible. Or, as Lacan himself says, in a concise but nonetheless wonderfully pregnant phrase: »the slave’s labor« – the labor that determines the whole structural logic of the »discourse of the master« – »constitutes a non-revealed unconscious« (S17: 30). Fifthly and finally, we can provide a shorthand summary of everything that we are saying here by stating that, in the »discourse of the master«, the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real essentially constitute a »closed whole« or »sphere«. »[T]he idea that knowledge can, in any way or at any time, even as a hope for the future, form a closed whole«, Lacan tells us, »is something that didn’t have to wait for psychoanalysis for it to appear questionable«.

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But »the idea that knowledge can make a whole is, if I may say so, immanent to the political as such. This has been known for a long time. The imaginary idea of the whole that is given by the body, as drawing on the good form of satisfaction, on what, ultimately, forms a sphere, has always been used in politics by the party of political preaching. What is more beautiful, but also what is less open? What better resembles closure of satisfaction?« (S17: 30–1). »Political preaching« is wholly unnecessary in the »discourse of the master«, we can conclude, because the satisfaction – and the knowledge – of this »discourse« simply is spherically organized: SI → R $ a The symbolic-imaginary signifier of »mastery« (SI) fully subsumes, that is, the real (R) of the laboring subject’s work (and this is why the surplus produced by this work (a) returns directly to the »master«, rather than being bound up with the barring or division of the subject ($)).

The »Discourse of Capitalism«… We have seen, then – with all of the various consequences for the subject that this carries in its train – that Lacan’s »discourse of the master« can essentially be considered to be coterminous, at least in a purely formal sense, with every pre-capitalist »mode of production« or »social formation«. And one of the implications of this claim is that, if we now want to speak of the »discourse of capitalism« – and conceive this »discourse« as the fundamental support of what Lacan has to say about the »discourse of the university« – we will certainly not be able to speak of it as a simple contemporary modification or transformation of the »discourse of the master«. The »discourse of capitalism«, we want to argue, has to be understood, in relation to the »discourse of the master«, as a very new and very different kind of »discourse«; and it is only this newness and difference – this irremediable specificity of the »discourse of capitalism – that will allow us to properly account for the functioning of the »discourse of the university«.

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It should be made clear from the outset that this understanding of the »discourse of capitalism« is not always  – and not even predominantly  – shared by Lacan himself. For, on a number of occasions, Lacan wants to suggest that the »discourse of capitalism« (if it is even appropriate to employ this designation here) is nothing more than the modern or contemporary form or instantiation of the »discourse of the master« itself. In order to see certain things, he informs us, »one hasn’t had to wait for the master’s discourse to fully develop and reveal its last word in the capitalist’s discourse, with its curious copulation with science« (S17: 110). Or again: »I am speaking of this capital mutation […] which gives the master’s discourse its capitalist style« (S17: 168). And this time in a little more detail (in a passage whose historical imprecision it is important to bear in mind; and we refer here to things that we have already said in chapter 1): »[s]omething changed in the master’s discourse at a certain point in history. We are not going to break our backs finding out if it was because of Luther, or Calvin, or some unknown traffic of ships around Genoa, or in the Mediterranean sea, or anywhere else, for the important point is that on a certain day surplus jouissance became calculable, could be counted, totalized. This is where what is called the accumulation of capital begins« (S17: 177). On a number of other occasions, however – as we will see in more detail in what follows – Lacan certainly does suggest, without perhaps following this insight through in its fundamental consequences, that the »discourse of capitalism« is an absolutely specific social form. Typically, this suggestion is bound up with the idea that there is a very close link or relationship or, even more strongly, a fundamental homology between the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«. It is this relationship or homology, then, which we now want to investigate. The »discourse of the university«, we will claim – and emphasizing this very important point once again – can only be properly comprehended upon the basis of the »discourse of capitalism«. And the »discourse of capitalism« can only itself be adequately understood  – given all of those ambiguities in Lacan’s work that we are here trying to draw attention to – if we once again take a short detour though the much less ambiguous work of Marx himself. In the third and final part of chapter 1 above, we have already discussed in great detail the way in which Marx both defines and deter-

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mines that which he refers to as the »general formula for capital«. And, on the basis of this discussion, it is certainly not too difficult to convert this formula into its own very specific kind of »discourse«. We can write this »discourse« out in the following way: M − C(LP) − M´ (L) Money (M) buys a commodity (C) in order to produce more money (M´): surplus-value. But surplus-value can only be produced when this central commodity (C) is itself effectively divided in two (in such a way, of course, that its two sides can be seen to develop a peculiar interaction). This central commodity (C) is none other than the (proletarian) subject itself (and this subject, we can surmise, is the »Träger«, the »hypokeimenon«, of the »discourse of capitalism). The »discourse of capitalism« produces surplus-value by dividing the (proletarian) subject between its exchange-value, the price of the commodity of its labor-power (LP), and its use-value, the real labor that it actually performs (L) (with this labor only possessing, of course, a use-value for the capitalist). It is the difference between the potentiality of labor, once this potentiality has been counted as the commodity of labor-power, and its actuality, once this actuality has been seen to give rise to more value than was originally paid for it as the commodity of labor-power, that accounts for the generation of surplus-value. It is the discrepancy between the exchange-value and the use-value of the (proletarian) subject that itself gives rise to the final increment in value. Or, in the slightly more sophisticated terms that we introduced in chapter 1, the »discourse of capitalism« produces surplus-value by metaphorically reducing the (proletarian) subject – and also, of course, metaphorically failing to reduce it – to the metonymic chain of commodity values. Marx’s account of commodity-fetishism, when understood in this way, has to be seen to constitute an absolutely compelling theorization of the specifically capitalist division of the (proletarian) subject (for it is precisely this division that such fetishism seeks to deny).

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…the »Discourse of the University«… Now that we have briefly recapitulated our most important reconstruction of Marx’s work in chapter 1 – and now that we have extrapolated from this reconstruction the basic coordinates of the »discourse of capitalism« – we can start to consider how this last »discourse« can be seen to function as the fundamental underpinning of what Lacan refers to as the »discourse of the university«. (The »discourse of the university«, Lacan at times wants to tell us, is a »relaxation« that the »discourse of capitalism« can afford to allow itself; but this »relaxation« turns out, if we decide to »embrace« it, to be nothing more than a terrible »trap« (S17: 168)). Lacan defines the »discourse of the university«, then, as a »quarter turn« (S17: 14), a ninety-degree rotation, of the »discourse of the master«, which means that it is written out in the following terms: S2 → a $ S1 What are the four positions here intended to represent? The S2 – which has now come to occupy the place of the »desire« or »agency« of the »master – is none other than knowledge itself; and the hypertrophy of knowledge that defines this »discourse« »stems«, Lacan claims, »from progress, from this seesaw that I describe as a quarter turn, which brings an unnatural knowledge out of its primitive localization at the level of the slave into the dominant place, by virtue of having become pure knowledge of the master, ruled by his command« (S17: 104). Knowledge functions here as a sign of what Lacan very presciently describes as the »absolutization of the market of knowledge« (S16: 47), it is a »price« (S16: 39; 200), a »value« (S16: 19; 160), an »exchange-value« (S16: 284–5), a »commodity« (S16: 39), a »commodity« that typically takes the form of that »little piece of paper« (S16: 42) that is made up of »credit points« (S17: 200–1). All of which means, of course, that knowledge (S2) functions within the »discourse of the university« more or less exactly as the commodity of labor-power (LP) functions within the »discourse of capitalism«. There is a fundamental homology, we might say, between these two »discursive« instances. Or, in more Lacanian terms – terms that chime with our own interpretation of Marx – as long as »surplus

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jouissance« is a »surplus jouissance« of knowledge, its »support« will be the perpetual sliding of a monetary »metonymy« (S18: 49). Just as, within the »discourse of capitalism«, the commodity of labor-power (LP) serves to count the irredeemable surplus of labor itself (L)  – a surplus that gives rise, of course, once it has been counted, to the symptom of surplus-value – so, in the »discourse of the university«, knowledge (S2) serves to count the equally irrecoverable surplus of the »Other’s« »work«: a. In »all the […] little squares or schemas with four legs, it is always the one up here on the right that does the work […] In the master’s discourse this place is occupied by the slave, in the discourse of science [synonymous here with the »discourse of the university« S. A. & H. R.] it is the a student« (S17: 105). The student does not study knowledge, as he himself might like to think, but is instead studied by it. It is knowledge, once again, that counts and covers over the surplus of his »work«. »The student feels ›astudied‹. He is ›astudied‹ because, like any worker – get your bearings from the other little orders – he has to produce something« (S17: 105). There is another fundamental homology, that is, between the student and the proletariat: »[i]n the articulation that I describe as the university discourse the a is in the place of what? In the place, let’s say, of the exploited in the university discourse, who are easy to recognize – they are students« (S17: 148); »at the level of the university discourse the object a comes to occupy a place that is in play each time it moves, the place of more or less tolerable exploitation« (S17: 178). In the same way that the proletarian subject is produced by the division between the commodity of labor-power (LP) and the labor that it counts (and also, of course, fails to count) (L), the student is produced by the division between knowledge (S2) and its own (uncontainable) containment of a surplus of »work« (a). (But this homology between the student and the proletarian is not perhaps as simple as it seems. For, at least while he is studying, or being studied – that is, as long as he has not yet definitively entered the more fundamentally constraining arena of the capitalist mode of production per se – the student experiences, occasionally, we might say, the strange temptation to apportion himself to the ranks of the egregiously excluded: the student has the »feeling«, Lacan states, that he is the »brother, as they say, not of the proletariat but of the lumpen-proletariat« (S17: 190). This »feeling« is surely a little out of place, however; for if he is studying, or being studied, then this is

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certainly only because he wants to avoid the abnegations and depredations of a »purely« proletarian fate. If we are all the »miscarriages« of the »discourses« that produce us as subjects, then there is still »a world of difference between the miscarriage of the high bourgeoisie and that of the proletariat. After all, the miscarriage of the high bourgeoisie, as miscarriage, is not obliged to constantly carry its incubator around with it« (S17: 178).) Both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« have to be seen to produce, then, a divided subject. The explicit product of the »discourse of capitalism« is, of course, surplus-value; but, as we have seen, this product can only be produced when the (proletarian) subject is divided in two, split between the commodity of its labor-power (LP) and its labor proper (L). The »discourse of the university« makes this production of a divided subject even clearer, by placing this subject ($) in the very position of »loss« or »production«. Which is to say – as we will shortly see in more detail – that, at the very same time that this »discourse« »produces« a divided subject, the precise nature of this division tends to be »lost«. The division of the subject ($) is »lost« because the surplus of the student’s work (a) is counted by the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) (just as, within the »discourse of capitalism«, the surplus of the proletarian’s labor (L) is counted by the commodity of labor-power (LP)): »[y]ou are the product«, Lacan once again tells the agitating students, »of the university, and you prove that you are the surplus value, even if only in this respect – which you not only consent to, but which you also applaud  – and I see no reason to object  – which is that you leave here, yourselves equivalent to more or fewer credit points. You come here to gain credit points for yourselves. You leave here stamped, ›credit points‹« (S17: 201). The division of the subject ($) is still »produced«, however, even in the midst of its apparent »loss«, because if the students »are« surplus-value (at least prospectively), this is only because it is in fact impossible to fully reduce the surplus of their »work« (a) to the simple status of »credit points« (S2) (just as it is impossible, within the »discourse of capitalism«, to fully reduce the surplus of proletarian labor (L) to the commodity of labor-power (LP)): »I would homologize knowledge with the function of price. Price certainly doesn’t establish itself by chance, no more than any other effect of exchange. But it is certain that price in itself doesn’t

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constitute a work, and this is the important point, because knowledge doesn’t either, no matter what is said« (S16: 200). The fourth and final position of the »discourse of the university« should by now be perfectly clear (even clearer, perhaps, than it is in Lacan’s own explicit formulations). The hidden »truth« of this »discourse« is the »master« (S1), and this »master« is none other than the »discourse of capitalism« itself. For what the fundamental homology between these two »discourses« reveals is that it is the »discourse of capitalism« that functions as the basic support of the »discourse of the university«. The »discourse of the university« is overwritten on top of the »discourse of capitalism«.52 Or, continuing the analogy – one that will prove crucial to our later discussion – if the »discourse of capitalism hides its »truth« by counting the (proletarian) subject’s labor (L) as the commodity of labor-power (LP), then the »discourse of the university« hides its »truth« by counting the (student) subject’s »work« (a) as the »commodity« of knowledge (S2), with this knowledge (S2) essentially being subordinated by the imperatives of capital itself (S1): it is »[n]ot that the knowledge that you are given«, Lacan continues to inform the students, »is not structured and solid. On the contrary, you have only one thing to do, which is to weave yourselves into it along with those who work, that is with those who teach you, under the banner of the means of production and consequently, of surplus value« (S17: 203–4). (Once again anticipating Lacan’s description of the relationships that obtain between these four positions, we can say that the impossibility of the »discourse of the university« will have to be seen to concern the relationship between knowledge (S2) and its counting – and simultaneous failure to count – the surplus of a »work« (a). (Or, continuing the homology with the »discourse of capitalism«, that it is impossibility that will have to be said to define the always unequivalent relation between labor (L) and the commodity of labor-power 52 The »discourse of the university« can, of course, quite literally be written on top of the »discourse of capitalism«: M(S1) − C(LP)(S2) − M´ ($) (L) (a) Which throws a lot of light upon that »quarter turn«, that ninety-degree rotation, that we are here discussing. The »discourse of capitalism« is the »quarter turn« of the »discourse of the master«.

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(LP).) For its part, the impotence of the »university discourse«  – which serves, once again, to protect this impossibility – will have to be seen to concern the relationship or, more precisely speaking, the non-relationship, »barrier« or »block« between the barring or division of the subject ($) and the hidden »truth« of the »discourse« itself, the »truth« of its determination by the »mastery« that is constituted by the »discourse of capitalism« (S1). (Or, in the terms of the homology with this »discourse«, it is impotence that will have to be said to define the non-relationship, the »barrier« or »block«, between the (proletarian) subject, divided between its labor and its labor-power, and the hidden »truth« of that whole capitalist system that exploits this division – not least by concealing it – in order to give rise to the supplement of surplus-value.) This impotence is only strengthened, moreover  – as this last comment starts to suggest; and as we will certainly see in more detail in the discussion that follows – by the persistent and practical mirage-effect of its own disappearance).

…and another Long Series of Subjective Suppositions In what manner, then, can we comprehend those divided subjects – the proletarian and the student (and also, of course, the capitalist) – that serve as the »Träger«, the »hypokeimena«, the products, in fact, of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«? At the end of the last part of chapter 1, we have already seen how, in his more lucid moments, Marx describes that very specific division of the subject that is so relentlessly imposed by the operations of the capitalist mode of production or, more precisely, by its centrally informing logic of commodity-fetishism. (We discussed there, it will be remembered, four main themes: the unavoidable intermixture of necessary labor and surplus labor; the necessary implication in capitalism of the desires of a »free« subject; the detachment of knowledge from the place and function of the worker; and the »real«, that is, not merely »formal«, subsumption of labor.) Now that we have combined the »discourse of capitalism« with the »discourse of the university«, Marx with Lacan, we can start to approach this division from a more fundamentally Lacanian perspective; and we can start to make a point by point comparison between the divided subjects produced by these two »discourses« and the very different kinds of

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subjects produced and presupposed by the »discourse of the master«. (There will obviously be some overlap between what we have already said from a Marxian perspective and what we now want to say from a more explicitly Lacanian point of view; but we will try to avoid any simple repetition; and, indeed, we will also try to bring out, with much greater clarity, what is undoubtedly this book’s most important proposition.) Firstly, then, we can say that the repetitions of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« – the fact that, within these »discourses«, labor (L) is continually counted as the commodity of labor-power (LP), and knowledge (S2) continually counts the surplus of a »work« (a) – have to be seen to imply, for the very subjects produced and presupposed by these repetitions, an »entropy« or »loss«; an »entropy« or »loss« that will always be recuperated through the now (in comparison with the »discourse of the master«) much more fragile consistency of a »surplus jouissance«. (Indeed, we will now start to see that Lacan’s employment of the concept of »entropy« can finally be said to acquire in this context its full and proper metaphorical meaning. »Entropy«, in the two »discourses« that we are referring to here, serves as the index not only of a »loss«, but of something much more radical and profound in its subjective effects: the »loss« of a »loss«, its tendential disappearance.) We can once again begin by approaching this »entropy« or «loss« from its least expected side. For if full jouissance is prohibited for the »master«, as we have already seen, then it is also, of course, prohibited for the capitalist (the effective »master« of both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«). If the »master« is »castrated«, then so is the capitalist. The capitalist’s sole function within the »discourse of capitalism« is the governance and guaranteeing of the production of surplus-value (M-M´), and it is precisely the exercising of this function that liquidates his freedom just as effectively as it liquidates the freedom of both the proletarian and the student. In Marx’s own words (which tend, as we have already suggested in chapter 1, to be much less ambiguous when they concern the capitalist than when they concern the proletarian, with the following quote constituting something of an exception): »[t]he self-valorization of capital – the creation of surplus-value – is […] the determining, dominating and overriding purpose of the capitalist; it is the absolute motive and content of his activity. And in fact

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it is no more than the rationalized motive and aim of the hoarder – a highly impoverished and abstract content which makes it plain that the capitalist is just as enslaved by the relationships of capitalism as is his opposite pole, the worker, albeit in a quite different manner« (RIPP: 990). The capitalist is »enslaved« or »castrated«, then – the subject of an »entropy« or »loss« – because, in giving the famous order to work, in giving the order to produce surplus-value, he is effectively fulfilling, in Lacan’s own terms, an impossible task (the »direct exploitation of labor«, Marx pointedly reminds us – reiterating Lacan’s own comments in a different (capitalist) context – itself »costs labor« (C1: 741)). Within the »discourse of capitalism«, the capitalist performs the impossible task of getting labor (L) to be counted as the commodity of labor-power (LP); and, within the »discourse of the university«, he (the hidden »master« of this »discourse«) performs the equally impossible task of getting the surplus of a »work« (a) to be counted as the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) (it is the upper storey of this »discourse« (S2 → a) that Lacan, of course, explicitly identifies as being impossible). It is precisely because the capitalist performs this task, moreover, that once surplus-value has been produced it returns to him in the form of »surplus jouissance«. (Although, as we will later come to see, it is no longer possible to define this »surplus jouissance« as a simple enjoyment of consumption. The capitalist only receives the surplus on the condition that – at least if he wants to keep the »discourse of capitalism« going – he put a very good part of it back into production.53 And he also only receives this surplus on the condition that the very people who have produced it – the proletarians – are willing and, more importantly, capable of completing this production by consuming what they have produced.)54 We can put all of this in slightly different terms – terms that we will be expanding upon below – by saying that, within the (symbolic)

53 Marx himself provided, of course, a peerless description of the historically varying combination of these two forms of »surplus jouissance« within the capitalist class (C1: 738–46). 54 Marx implicitly refers to this condition as the »salto mortale« of the circuit of capitalist production (C1: 200). The experiences of the last few years have revealed, once again, that, at certain times, this jump is deadlier than at ­others.

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context of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, the capitalist has to see to it that the impossible real of the subject’s labor will be subsumed, made sense of, rendered possible in its very impossibility, by its subordination to what is  – on the assumption that this subordination is even possible in the first place – a thoroughly imaginary instance. On the one hand, of course, this appears to be an impossible task. For nothing necessitates that the impossible real of the subject’s labor be subordinated in precisely this tendentially imaginary way. (And, indeed, the very conditions of this subordination make clear that it can only ever be imaginary.) On the other hand, however, this impossible task is eminently possible. For, in the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, it is carried out on each and every day. What is nonetheless very specific about the »discourse of capitalism« – and about the »discourse of the university« that it fundamentally supports – is that, in performing this impossible task, the capitalist does not necessarily appear as a »master«; and does not necessarily appear as being »enslaved« and »castrated« (this is why the »master« (S1) (the »discourse of capitalism«) constitutes the hidden »truth« of the »discourse of the university«; and this is why the function of the capitalist, we might surmise, constitutes the hidden »truth« of the »discourse of capitalism«, a »truth« that Marx deciphered in his discovery of the distinction between labor (L) and the commodity of labor-power (LP)). The capitalist’s only role in the »discourse of capitalism« is the production of surplus-value (M´), and if we ignore the (proletarian) labor (L) that is necessary for this production (once it has been combined, of course, with the commodity of labor-power (LP)), it can appear to be nothing more than a simple self-expansion of monetary value (M-M´). The capitalist himself can appear, that is – and is certainly quite happy to appear – as nothing more than the simple and autonomous embodiment of this expansion: »[a]s the dominant subject [übergreifendes Subjekt] of this process [M-C-M´ S. A. & H. R.], in which it alternately assumes and loses the form of money and the form of commodities, but preserves and expands itself through all these changes, value requires above all an independent form by means of which its identity with itself may be asserted. Only in the shape of money does it possess this form. Money therefore forms the starting-point and the conclusion of every valorization process« (C1: 255). Or again:

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»in the circulation M-C-M, value suddenly presents itself as a self-moving substance which passes through a process of its own, and for which commodities and money are both mere forms. But there is more to come: instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it now enters into a private relationship with itself, as it were. It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value, just as God the Father differentiates himself from himself as God the Son, although both are of the same age and form, in fact one single person; for only by the surplus-value of 10 does the 100 originally advanced become capital, and as soon as this has happened, as soon as the son has been created and, through the son, the father, their difference vanishes again, and both become one, 110.« (C1: 256)

As the embodiment of the »übergreifendes Subjekt«, the »self-moving substance«, of monetary value (M-M´), the capitalist, we can surmise, »asserts« his »identity with himself«, »enters into a private relationship with himself«. Rather than appearing as that »enslaved« and »castrated« »master« who performs the impossible task of giving the order to work, of getting the proletarian to produce surplus-value by counting his labor (L) as the commodity of labor-power (LP), the capitalist appears, in his simple monetary form, as the entrepreneurial engineer of this production. This, then, is the particular »entropy« or »loss« that defines the capitalist; and it is an »entropy« or »loss« that exists, of course, as a form »surplus jouissance« (with this jouissance serving as a very significant supplement to the subtraction of surplus-value). The »entropy« or »loss« experienced by the capitalist – the source of his entrepreneurial »surplus jouissance« – has to be seen to pale into insignificance, however, when it is compared with the »entropy« or »loss – the »surplus jouissance« – experienced by the proletarian or student (primarily, of course – as we have just started to suggest, and as we will certainly be continuing to claim in the remainder of this section  – because this »entropy« can be said to operate in the capitalist’s interests; whereas, for those whose labor he commands, it has to be said to acquire a much more ambiguous consistency). Lacan’s many descriptions of »entropy« in Seminar XVII are best comprehended, then, we want to claim, as an implicit  – and explicitly metaphorical (something which Lacan does not recognize enough) – thematization and theorization of the nature of the prole-

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tarian and student subject. These descriptions are metaphorical, we will argue, because while there is no real »entropy« within the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, there is certainly something that can come to look a good deal like it. In its literal sense, the concept of »entropy« is obviously intended to designate, then, that obscure and incalculable quantum of energy that vanishes, gets »lost«, in the very process of its own neatly numerical ordering. Lacan gives the following rather illuminating example: »I defy you to prove in any way that descending 500 meters with a weight of 80 kilos on your back and, once you have descended, going back up the 500 meters with it is zero, no work. Try it, have a go yourself, and you will find that you have proof of the contrary. But if you overlay signifiers, that is, if you enter the path of energetics, it is absolutely certain that there has been no work« (S17: 48–9). »There is«, he continues, »something that disappears in the interval, or more exactly does not lend itself to a return to, to restoring, the starting point«. Or, once more, »this discourse [the discourse of energetics S. A. & H. R.] […] essentially […] gives primacy to everything at the beginning and at the end and neglects everything in between« (S17: 80). How are we to let this example inform, however, the two interrelated instances of the proletarian and the student? What the proletarian does, of course, in the »discourse of capitalism«, is perform a »work«, a labor (he runs up and down a mountain, we might say, with a weight of eighty kilos on his back). Naturally, this labor (L) gives rise, once it has been counted as the commodity of labor-power (LP), to the increment of surplus-value (M´). But once this value has been produced, it can appear – as we have already seen in the case of the capitalist – that we are only dealing here with the mere movement of monetary values (M-C-M´). If the division of the subject (L-LP) is (impossibly) excluded from the very process that it motivates, that is, if the proletarian subject is (impossibly) reduced to the value of the commodity of its labor-power (LP), then it can appear as if money (M) is just buying a commodity (C) in order to miraculously give rise to more money (M´). In the series of monetary »signifiers« that »overlay« the proletarian’s »work«, it can appear – and not least, of course, to the proletarian himself – not that there has been »no work« (for this would be stretching the bounds of credibility), but that this »work« (almost as incredibly) is equivalent to the commod-

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ity of labor-power (LP). The specificity of labor (L) disappears, at least tendentially, into its representation by the commodity of laborpower (LP). Similarly, in the »discourse of the university«, what the student does is carry out a task of »work«. (He runs up and down one mountain, we might say, in order that, in the future, he will be able to run up and down another mountain, not with a weight of eighty kilos on his back, but with a weight, let us say, of forty.) Although this work (a) does not yet give rise to surplus-value, its subordination to the »commodity« of knowledge (S2), which is itself subordinated to the imperatives of the »discourse of capitalism« (S1), will, in the vast majority of cases, allow this surplus-value to be produced at some future point. And, once this value has been produced, it might appear that the only thing that we are dealing with here is the mere circulation of the »commodity« of knowledge (S2). (People might start to speak, for instance, of a »knowledge society« or, just a little less shamefacedly, of a »knowledge economy«.) Rather than being seen to produce a divided subject ($), that is, a subject divided between the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) and the surplus of a »work« (a), the »discourse of the university« can be considered to concern – and not least, of course, by those very divided subjects whose activities are tangled up with it  – a pure subject of knowledge (S2). In that network of »signifiers« that »overlays« the divided student subject ($), the surplus of a »work« (a) tends to disappear into its own »commodification« as knowledge (S2). What all of this means, of course, is that any talk of »entropy« within the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« can only ever be metaphorical. For although there certainly is a tendency, within the »discourse of capitalism«, for labor (L) to be counted as the commodity of labor-power (LP), this counting can never be complete. And, indeed, in the very monetary »signifiers« that »overlay« the proletarian subject’s »work« (M-C-M´), there will always be a sign, a symptom, of this incompleteness: the sign, the symptom, of surplus-value (M´). Similarly, in the »discourse of the university«, there certainly exists a tendency for the surplus of a »work« (a) to be counted as the »commodity« of knowledge (S2), but nothing will ever succeed in fully disguising the fact that what this counting effectively produces is the division of the student subject ($) (the »problem« with this »discourse«, Lacan claims, is that »[a]

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subject has emerged« from it, the »[s]ubject of what? A divided subject in any case« (S17: 148)). In both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university – in contradistinction to the case of »entropy« per se – the very process that conceals a »loss« is only ever capable, then, of simultaneously revealing it. In both of these »discourses«, the »loss of a loss« functions as a sign, a symptom, of the »loss« itself. It really needs to be said here that Lacan himself is not always capable of comprehending this merely metaphorical instantiation of »entropy« in the proletarian and student subject. At times, indeed – and in complete contradistinction of his own previous recognition of the fact that »price« and »knowledge« will never »constitute a work« – Lacan even wants to criticize Marx for effectively failing to register that this »entropy« is complete: »Marx denounces this process [the process of the creation of surplusvalue S. A. & H. R.] as spoliation. It’s just that he does it without realizing that its secret lies in knowledge itself, just as the secret of the worker himself is to be reduced to being no longer anything but a value. Once a higher level has been passed, surplus jouissance is no longer surplus jouissance but is inscribed simply as a value to be inscribed in or deducted from the totality of whatever it is that is accumulating – what is accumulating from out of an essentially transformed nature. The worker is merely a unit of value – an indication for those for whom this term produces an echo55 […] What Marx denounces in surplus value is the spoliation of jouissance. And yet, this surplus value is a memorial to surplus jouissance, its equivalent of surplus jouissance. ›Consumer society‹ derives its meaning from the fact that what makes it the ›element‹, in inverted commas, described as human is made the homogeneous equivalent of whatever surplus jouissance is produced by our industry  – an imitation surplus jouissance, in a word.« (S17: 80–1).

Lacan is committing here a signal error. »The secret of the worker himself«, he says, »is to be reduced to being no longer anything but 55 Lacan is alluding here to the designation, in the French university system, of the number of courses or subjects that a student takes for a degree: unités de valeur.

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a value«; or, once again, »the worker is merely a unit of value«. This can in no way be considered to be the case, however; for – as we have already seen in chapter 1, and as we are effectively repeating here all of the time  – the proletarian »worker« can only give rise to »value« or, more exactly, of course, to surplus-value, precisely because he is not exclusively a »value«. Proletarian labor (L) does have, of course, a value or, more precisely speaking, an exchange-value, the price of the commodity of labor-power (LP). But it only has this value in order to produce more value, surplus-value (M´). And it can only produce this value as the result of a discrepancy, a disjunction, between its exchange-value and its use-value. This use-value is the use-value of labor itself (L), its capacity to produce a greater value than it originally cost as the commodity of labor-power (LP). This use-value produces »value«, then, but is not itself a »value« (or at least not in the sense that Lacan intends. It is a use-value for the capitalist, an ineradicably social usevalue, that is, not merely »a value to be inscribed in or deducted from the totality of whatever it is that is accumulating«. The use-value of capitalism for the capitalist, even though it produces value, can in no way be simply »inscribed in« or »deducted from« that apparently infinite series of »values« that this system erects. The use-value of class struggle, we might say, is irreducible to that very network of monetary »signifiers« that are its own result.) Labor, then, we can conclude, within the »discourse of capitalism«, is not a »value«, but instead the very source of »value«. Or, in stark contrast to what Lacan is claiming in the above quotation, »surplus jouissance« is still, without the shadow of a doubt, »surplus jouissance«. For, as long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, nothing will ever succeed in doing away with that irredeemable surplus of labor (L) that itself gives rise to surplus-value (M´). Capitalism can obviously not abolish its own indispensable reason for being. At least in the passage just cited, then – and in fact at a number of other points in Seminar XVII  – Lacan’s literal understanding of the »entropic« disappearance of the »worker’s« work into the crystallizations of »value« appears to be premised upon nothing more than a fundamental occlusion of what is most socially specific about the »discourse of capitalism«: its recourse, under the ministrations of »value«, to the value-creating capacity of the proletarian’s (and, by extension, also the student’s) labor. It is this effective eviscer-

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ation of social particularity  – or, once again, this failure to recognize that within the »discourse of capitalism« (and, by extension, of course, the »discourse of the university) »entropy« can only ever be metaphorical  – that explains the unavoidable oddness of some of Lacan’s remarks. Marx does not realize, Lacan contends, that the »secret« of the expropriation of surplus-value »lies in knowledge itself«. But what does it mean to reduce this expropriation to a question of »knowledge«? Well, it means to reverse that very order of determination that we have been arguing for throughout these final sections. Rather than conceiving capitalism as the »secret« of the production of »knowledge«, that is, rather than erecting the »discourse of the university« upon the basis of the »discourse of capitalism«, Lacan is claiming here that this latter »discourse« is a mere effect of the ever-increasing spiral of scientific »knowledge« itself. It is hardly surprising in this context that he comprehends »accumulation«, the accumulation of surplus-value no less, not as a consequence of the depredations of labor, but instead as a consequence of that which allows for an »essentially transformed nature«. And once labor has been shuttled out of the door like this, it is also of course very easy to believe – under the commonplace protection of the banner of »consumer society«  – that there is a something like a simple »homogeneous equivalence« between »production« and »consumption« (an equivalence, an equilibrium, that has only ever existed in the fantasies of the economists56). The fact that »entropy« is only metaphorical – within the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« – should in no way be taken to mean, however, that its effects are merely minimal. Indeed, what we want to argue here  – tying together in this way the threads of all the arguments that we have been making in this book – is that these effects are nothing short of being monumental. For what this »entropy« entails is nothing less than the constitution, and the continuing reproduction, of the ego itself (as a phenomenon that, even if it is conceptually distinguishable from the subject, is nonetheless always inextricably intertwined with it). In the previous section (section 2.1 ii), we have already seen Lacan draw attention

56 This fantasy constitutes the basis of Say’s famous »law«, which Marx subjects to a devastating critique (C1: 208–9).

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to the inescapably social and historical origins of this ego: it dates, he claims, form the »middle of the sixteenth« to the »beginning of the seventeenth centuries«; or, once again, and this time a little less precisely, it is »the ego of every modern man«. Now we can see what it is that essentially has to be seen to underlie these origins: it is the emergence of the »discourse of capitalism« itself (and of that particular form of the »discourse of the university« that it will eventually come to sustain and support). The ego emerges, that is – to put it in very abstract, although nonetheless quite enlightening terms – out of a more or less ineluctable tendency to »entropically« confuse and identify the commodity of labor-power (LP) with the labor (L) that underlies it (or, once the »discourse of capitalism« has given rise to its own specific form of the »discourse of the university«, out of a more or less ineluctable tendency to »entropically« confuse and identify the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) with the surplus of a »work« (a)). The ego comes into existence, we can say, as always already exceeded by its own subjectivity. (For what its supposed self-identity is attempting – and always, of course, ultimately failing – to conceal, in both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, is nothing other than the division of the subject: its division between the two very terms of its ego and its subjectivity proper.) The ego is nothing more, then, than a very specific form of »surplus jouissance«. For what it does is count – and simultaneously, of course, fail to count – that irrevocable surplus of subjectivity, its labor, that itself gives rise to surplus-value. In Freud’s still unsurpassable terms  – terms that we will be seeking to elucidate, in relation to both Marx and Lacan, in the remainder of this section – »the nucleus of the ego is unconscious«. The myth of the subject’s self-identity is not, then, as Lacan himself contends, a product or effect of the »discourse of the master«. For, as we have already seen, the particular form of Vorstellungs­ repräsentanz that is at play within this »discourse« in no way allows the subjects that it determines to conceive of the possibility of their self-representation. (The »master« exists  – and, moreover, knows that he exists  – only through the »slave«, and the »slave« exists  – and moreover, knows that he exists  – only through the »master«.) The Vorstellungsrepräsentanz that is at work within the »discourse of capitalism« (and by extension the »discourse of the university«) cer-

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tainly does, however, allow – and even, in fact, compel – this myth of self-identity to automatically arise. For what happens in the »discourse of capitalism«, we might say – confining ourselves only to the proletarian subject – is that »a signifier represents this subject for another signifier«: money (M) represents a commodity (C) in order to produce more money (M´), surplusvalue. In reality, of course, this act of »representation« – like all acts of »representation« according to Lacan – makes it impossible for the subject (the central commodity C) to represent itself. The subject (C) is only represented by money (M) in order to give rise to more money (M´) (with this increase in money only being explained as a consequence of the division of the subject between its representation as a money-commodity, the commodity of labor-power (LP), and the simultaneous failure of this representation, its definitive transcendence by the actual labor (L) that the subject performs). Reality is one thing, however, and the appearances that it gives rise to – and that in fact serve to substantially constitute it – are another. For it is the fact that the subject is represented as a money-commodity – and only in fact as such a commodity (with the surplus of its labor only appearing as a failure of this representation) – that accounts for the persistent and practical mirage-effect of its self-representation. In the apparently simple chain of money values, the subject can appear to be just one more value, equal to itself and autonomous in its exercise of this equality. The commodity of labor-power (LP) – at least in this practically effective realm of appearances  – can succeed in subsuming the in fact unsubsumable surplus of its labor proper (L). (Similarly, in the »discourse of the university«, it can appear as if the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) is fully subsuming the surplus of a »work« (a), even if this subsumption is always only fractured by the production of a divided subject ($)). If there is something like a »mirror stage«, then, we can conclude – a fundamental underpinning of the subject’s illusory, but nonetheless more or less inextirpable sense of its self-identity – it is here that it has to be ultimately located: in the indispensably social and historical determinations of the »discourse of capitalism« itself. Secondly, then – and on the basis of this account of the »entropic« constitution of the ego as a form of »surplus jouissance« – we can see how Lacan essentially follows Marx (or at least, as we have already pointed out, Marx at his most consistent) by conceiving the »dis-

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course of capitalism«, and the »discourse of the university« that it sustains and supports, in terms of a rather devastating deprivation of the proletarian and student subject’s knowledge. We have already seen that in the »discourse of the master« the »slave« stands in possession of knowledge (S2) in a number of different ways. (He is only working for the »master« because his work is informed by a certain knowledge, »know-how« or »savoir-faire«; this knowledge results from his partial ownership of or full identification with the means of production; and it is fundamentally underpinned by another form of knowledge, one that functions as an ineluctable form of »surplus jouissance«: the knowledge that, as a »slave«, »laborer« or »worker«, one is working only for the »master«.) What we need to understand, then, is the way in which, in the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, the worker comes to be deprived of precisely that knowledge that previously served to constitute the very core of his being. This deprivation of knowledge is obviously most clearly expressed in that »quarter turn«, that ninety-degree rotation, that defines, for Lacan, the transition from the »discourse of the master« to the »discourse of the university«. For what happens in this transition is that knowledge (S2) moves from its former position as the »work« of the »Other« (in the top right hand corner) to its new position as the »desire« and »agency« of the »master« itself (in the top left hand corner). Knowledge, in the »discourse of the university«, is no longer the knowledge of the worker. (For this worker has been reduced, as we have seen, to the mere embodiment of the surplus of his »work« (a).) Instead, it is the knowledge of the »master«, in a double sense: knowledge itself (S2) is in the position of »mastery«, but it is only held in place there by the hidden »truth« of the »master« itself (S1). This hidden »master«, as we have already suggested, is the »discourse of capitalism«; and this is what Lacan is implicitly claiming, we would contend (thus sifting out all of those ambiguities in his work that we have here been describing), when he once again discerns a fundamental homology between this »discourse« and the »discourse of the university«: »what happens between the classical master’s discourse and that of the modern master, whom we call capitalist«, he states, »is a modification in the place of knowledge«; »the proletarian has been dispossessed of something«, and of nothing less than his knowledge, »[c]apitalist exploitation effectively frustrates him of his knowl-

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edge by rendering it useless« (S17: 31–2). Or again, in response to a question from the students about where the proletarian is to be located within the »discourse of the university«: »[h]e can only be in the place that he has to be in, on the top right-hand side. In the place of the big Other, don’t you think? Very precisely, there knowledge no longer has any weight. The proletarian is not simply exploited, he has been stripped of his function of knowledge. The so-called liberation of the slave has had, as always, other corollaries. It’s not merely progressive. It’s progressive only at the price of a deprivation« (S17: 149). What does it mean, however, to say that both the proletarian and the student have been deprived of their knowledge? Well it means, we want to argue, three main things (which can once again be closely counterposed to that state of affairs that exists within the »discourse of the master«). In the first place, then, it means that, if one is working within the »discourse of capitalism« or the »discourse of the university«, this is not because one possesses a certain knowledge, »know-how« or »savoir-faire«. Instead  – and obviously only in the majority of cases57 – if one is working within these »discourses« it is because one has succeeded in integrating oneself into the knowledge, »know-how« and »savoir-faire« that they themselves both determine and require. Knowledge does not emanate from the worker, but from that system of imperatives to which he must more or less inescapably choose to submit. In the second place – and as a clear consequence or presupposition of this last point – if the worker is deprived of his knowledge, this is only because he has been previously deprived of his ownership of the means of production. It is the deprivation of the means of production that accounts for the deprivation of knowledge. Or, once again, it is the »discourse of capitalism« that essentially underlies the »discourse of the university«. In the third place – and perhaps most importantly – this deprivation of knowledge is made worse, compounded, by its conversion into the appearance of knowledge. In the »discourse of capitalism«, we might

57 It is still possible, of course at least for the moment, to work within the »discourse of the university« without fully subordinating oneself to its fundamental requirements. But the knowledge produced by this work will always have to question itself about the place that it occupies with regard to precisely these requirements.

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say, the proletarian knows that he is being paid for his labor (L); but this is not in fact the case: for what he is being paid for is the price of the commodity of his labor-power (LP). Similarly, in the »discourse of the university«, the student knows that he possesses knowledge (S2); but this is not in fact the way things are: for what possesses knowledge is that hidden »mastery« of the »discourse of capitalism« (S1) that keeps it in its place. The proletarian and the student do not know, then, we can conclude (or, as we will later start to suggest, only know unconsciously) that they are working for a »master«. Or – in the terms that we are introducing here, and that Lacan anticipates at a number of points in Seminar XVII – the ego »knows a bit about it« only »insofar as it is not known« (S17: 30); and only insofar as it does not know »what is [really] doing the work« (S17: 35). Thirdly – and following on rather neatly from this account of the deprivation of the proletarian and student subject’s knowledge – we can now see what it is that has to be seen to constitute the particular form of impotence that is at play within the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«. Lacan’s descriptions of this impotence can appear, at first sight at least – and in addition to that series of ambiguities that we have already disentangled (and that we will continue to disentangle in the parentheses that we introduce into the following quotation) – to be a little confusing. For, on the one hand, he certainly wants to suggest that impotence essentially disappears from these two »discourses« and, on the other hand, he just as certainly wants to suggest that it is only ever reinforced within them, in the form of what he now calls »unassailability« (an »unassailability« that, like impotence, is seen to fundamentally protect impossibility). »We have to begin«, Lacan tells us: »by seeing why it is that the master’s discourse [for which we should read, of course, the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« S. A. & H. R.] is so solidly established, to the point where few of you, it seems, judge how stable it is. This stems from something Marx demonstrated – without, I have to say, emphasizing it – concerning production and which he calls surplus value, not surplus jouissance […] Something changed in the master’s discourse at a certain point in history [or, at a certain point in history, we should say, the »master’s discourse« changed into the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« S. A. & H. R.]. We are not going to break our

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backs finding out if it was because of Luther, Calvin, or some unknown traffic of ships around Genoa, or in the Mediterranean sea, or anywhere else, for the important point is that on a certain day surplus jouissance became calculable, could be counted, totalized. This is where what is called the accumulation of capital begins […] Don’t you feel, in relation to what I said before on the impotence of conjoining surplus value [or, more precisely put, a surplus product, surplus-value only being itself a product of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« S. A. & H. R.] with the master’s truth, that ground is being won here? I am not saying that it is the most recent step that is the decisive one, but the impotence of this conjunction is all of a sudden emptied. Surplus value combines with capital – not a problem, they are homogeneous, we are in the field of values. Moreover, we are all up to our necks in it, in these blessed times in which we live […] What is striking, and what no one seems to see, is that from that moment on, by virtue of the fact that the clouds of impotence have been aired, the master signifier only appears even more unassailable, precisely in its impossibility. Where is it? How can it be named? How can it be located? – other than through its murderous effects, of course. Denounce imperialism? But how can this little mechanism be stopped?« (S17: 177–8)

Now, in one sense, at least, Lacan is certainly correct to suggest that, in both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, the »conjunction« of »impotence« is »emptied«, that »the clouds of impotence« are »aired«. For, as he himself points out, the »product« (or, as we will see, one of the »products«) of the »discourse of capitalism«, surplus-value, links up with the »truth« of the »mastery« of this very »discourse«: »surplus-value combines with capital  – not a problem, they are homogeneous, we are in the field of values«. Similarly, in the »discourse of the university«, we might say, the »product« (or, once again, one of the »products«) of this »discourse«, knowledge (S2), links up with the »truth« of that fundamental »mastery« (S1) that determines it, and which is none other than the »mastery« of the »discourse of capitalism« itself. The whole value of Lacan’s transcription of the »discourse of the university« is to show, however, that it is not knowledge (S2) that constitutes the real »product« of this »discourse«, but instead the very barring or division of the subject ($). And if we really want to talk about impotence it is with the relationship between this subject and

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the hidden »truth« of »mastery« of the »discourse« (S1) that we should be concerned. (For Lacan of course defines impotence, as we have seen, as traversing in this way the bottom storey of the »discourse«, in the form a non-relation, »barrier« or »block« between its two terms.) If we start to think about this relationship, then, we can see – in significant contrast to what Lacan himself says – that it preserves impotence at the very same time as it appears to do away with it, that is, that there is both a relation and a non-relation, a »barrier« and a »non-barrier«, a »blocking« and an »unblocking« between and of precisely these terms. (It is perhaps for this reason, we would suggest, that, in addition to talking about the abolition of impotence, Lacan is also compelled to introduce, and to place alongside it, the entirely new notion of »unassailability«.) For how, we should inquire, in the »discourse of the university«, does the divided (student) subject ($) link up with that »truth« of »mastery« (S1) that ultimately determines it? Only by counting the surplus of its labor (a) as the »commodity« of knowledge (S2), only by living in denial of – and in this way perpetually continuing to reproduce, of course – its very division as a subject. And similarly, in the »discourse of capitalism«, how does the divided (proletarian) subject link up with the »masterful truth« of that very »discursive« framework that determines it? Only by counting the surplus of its labor (L) as the commodity of labor-power (LP), only by living in denial of – and in this way perpetually continuing to reproduce, of course – its own division. In both the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, then, the »barrier« of impotence is crossed only on the condition that it is simultaneously maintained. For it is the very (and apparent) omnipotence of the ego, we might claim – drawing this conclusion from everything that we have previously stated  – that confirms it in its irrecusable impotence. The impotence – or, in Lacan’s terms, »unassailability« – of the »discourse of the university«, and by implication, of course, of the »discourse of capitalism«, functions to protect its impossibility because, in both cases, the ego itself carries out the impossible task of counting the subjective surplus of its own work. The »production« of a divided subject – consistently with the descriptions that Lacan provides of the positions within his »discourses«  – is also, tendentially, its »loss«. We can put all of this a little differently by saying that it is precisely the emergence of the »discourse of capitalism« – and of the »discourse

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of the university« that it serves as the support of – that constitutes, for the very subjects produced and presupposed by these »discourses«, nothing less than the irreducibly specific experience of fantasy (as opposed, that is, to that non-specific and non-experienced fact of fantasy that bathes the whole hierarchical ordering of the »discourse of the master«). For what is it that sustains the »discourse of capitalism« if not the fundamental fantasy of the (proletarian) subject, the fantasy of an equivalence or identity between the surplus of a labor (L) and the commodity of labor-power (LP)? And what is it that sustains the »discourse of the university« if not the fundamental fantasy of the (student) subject, the fantasy of an equivalence or identity between the surplus of a work (a) and the »commodity« of knowledge (S2) (it is the right hand side of this »discourse« that contains, of course, the exact terms of the Lacanian fantasy ($ ◊ a), and we can now see that this fantasy essentially functions by subsuming – and always, at the same time, failing to subsume; for the experience of fantasy is only constituted at the same time as its limit, its symptom  – its second term under the very instantiation of the »agency« and »desire« of the »discourse« itself (fantasy is a response, we might say, to nothing less than the »desire« of the Other). And this experience of fantasy is only compounded in the »discourse of capitalism« by the disappearance of that strict partition between »surplus jouissances« that we have already seen to define the »discourse of the master«. For if the »master« was defined by the »surplus jouissance« of consumption, and the »slave« by the »surplus jouissance« of production, then in the »discourse of capitalism« both of these »surplus jouissances« must be seen to cross and overlap. The capitalist, as we have seen, partially consumes surplus-value; but he is also, if he wants to keep the capitalist ball rolling, compelled to throw it back into production. And the proletarian, as we have also pointed out, produces surplus-value; but he is also, in order to realize it and, even more importantly, in order to perpetuate his own existence, compelled to consume those very products whose sale will ultimately give rise to it. The proletarian can fantasize about the equivalence or identity between his labor (L) and the commodity of his labor-power (LP) precisely because – on a wide social scale, of course – he appears to be working for his own benefit, producing, that is, for nothing more than his own consumption.

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Fourthly – and in close connection with the foregoing analysis of fantasy – we can now see what it is that constitutes the specific form of Urverdrängung of the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«. For what both these »discourses« primordially repress, for the (proletarian and student) subjects working within them, is the very awareness – or, as we have already suggested, the knowledge – that this work is done for a »master«. (This is why, of course, the »master« occupies, in the »discourse of the university«, the position of the »hidden«, »undisclosable« or »unsayable« »truth« of the very »discourse«.) It is precisely the primordial – and continuing – repression of this awareness that compels it to return, however, in an unconscious form, as nothing less than unconscious knowledge. And we would even go further than this and suggest that it is precisely the primordial – and continuing – repression of this awareness that constitutes the experience of »the unconscious« per se. For »the unconscious« is only experienced, as we have already tried to make clear, when it is brought into the light – or, more properly speaking perhaps, the half-light – by an (obviously only apparently) countervailing force; when it is brought into the half-light by the experience and the failure of the apparent self-identity of the ego itself. If »the nucleus of ego is unconscious«, in Freud’s still unsurpassable terms, this is because the experience of the ego constitutes the irrevocable condition of possibility of the experience of »the unconscious«. The one is the »other side« of the other, in exactly the same way – and drawing now all the consequences from this – in which Lacan speaks of the »discourse of capitalism«, and the »discourse of the university«, as the »other side« of psychoanalysis. Fifthly and finally, we can carry out a formalistic reduction of all of the above by saying that, in the »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university«, the three registers of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real (which were spherically united, we will remember, in the »discourse of the master«) have to be seen to quite unequivocally split apart, whilst always at the same time remaining inextricably intertwined. We have already discussed at great length the way in which capitalism can be defined as a combination of these registers. But it is now possible to reduce this combination to a simple formula (once again taking as our basis for this Marx’s »general formula for capital«):

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(S)M − C(LP)(I) − M´ (L) (R) Similarly – and not surprisingly, given that it is supported by this »discourse of capitalism« – the »discourse of the university« can be rewritten as follows: I →R S $ The »discourse of capitalism« and the »discourse of the university« break apart that »closed sphere« of satisfaction that fundamentally defined the »discourse of the master« (and constitute, in the process, the divided subject of »the unconscious« ($)). »We have to struggle against the collusion of this image with the idea of satisfaction whenever we encounter anything that forms a knot in the work in question, which is the work of bringing things to light via the paths of the unconscious. It is the obstacle, the limit, or rather it’s the hard road on which we lose our bearings, and where we find ourselves blocked« (S17: 31).

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Abbreviations Louis Althusser FM For Marx LAP Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays OI On Ideology Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar RC Reading Capital Etienne Balibar PM The Philosophy of Marx Sigmund Freud BPP Beyond the Pleasure Principle CD Civilization and its Discontents EI The Ego and the Id GP Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego F »Fetishism« FI The Future of an Illusion ID The Interpretation of Dreams MM Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays NIL New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis OP An Outline of Psycho-Analysis SE »Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence« SH Studies on Hysteria U »The Unconscious« Jacques Lacan AP »Aggressiveness in Psychoanalysis« DC Discours aux catholiques JLS Jacques Lacan Speaks MS »The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience« MT My Teaching RDL »Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation: ›Psychoanalysis and Personality Structure‹« RJH »Response to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s ›Verneinung‹« SPL »Seminar on ›The Purloined Letter‹« S1 The Seminar. Book I. Freud’s Papers on Technique, 1953–1954 S2 The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955 S3 The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses, 1955–56 S5 Le Séminaire. Livre V. Les formations de l’inconscient, 1957–1958 S7 The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959–60

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S8 S11 S16 S17 S18 TR

Le Séminaire. Livre VIII. Le transfert, 1960–1961 The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964 Le Séminaire. Livre XVI. D’un Autre à l’autre, 1968–69 The Seminar. Book XVII. The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 1969– 1970 Le Séminaire. Livre XVIII. D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, 1971 Le triomphe de la religion

Georg Lukács HCC History and Class Consciousness. Studies in Marxist Dialectics Karl Marx C1 C2 C3 CCPE CHDS CHPR CSF EBLB EJME EPM JQ LC LFGY RIPP TF WPP

Capital. Volume 1 Capital. Volume 2 Capital. Volume 3 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy »Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State« »A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction« Class Struggles in France 1848–1850 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte »Excerpts from James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy« »Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts« »On the Jewish Question« Letters on ›Capital‹ »Letters from the Franco-German Yearbooks« »Results of the Immediate Process of Production« »Theses on Feuerbach« »Wages, Price and Profit«

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels GI The German Ideology CM The Communist Manifesto MECW42 Marx and Engels’s Collected Works. Volume 42 Ellen Meiksins Wood DAC Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism

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Quentin Meillassoux Nach der Endlichkeit. Versuch über die Notwendigkeit der Kontingenz Aus dem Französischen von Roland Frommel 224 Seiten, Broschur ISBN 978-3-03734-024-0 € 20,00 / CHF 30,00

An der Wurzel des modernen Denkens liegt die Frage nach der Beschränkung der universalistischen Ansprüche der menschlichen Vernunft. Seit Kant wacht ein universelles, »transzendental« genanntes Subjekt über die Notwendigkeit der Naturgesetze und weist die Kontingenz der empirischen Erfahrung zu. Quentin Meillassoux entwickelt in diesem, seinem ersten Buch ein anderes Verständnis der Kritik, das grundlegend verschieden ist von der Lesart, mit der die Moderne sich ausgehend von Kant zufriedengibt. Er weist nach, dass nur eines absolut notwendig ist, nämlich die Kontingenz der Naturgesetze selbst. Diese ganz neuartige Verknüpfung der einander entgegengesetzten Modalitäten – Notwendigkeit und Kontingenz – versetzt das Denken in einen Bezug zur Welt, an dem sowohl die klassische Metaphysik als auch die »kritische« Trennung von Empirischem und Transzendentalem zerbrechen. »Es ist nicht übertrieben zu behaupten, dass Quentin Meillassoux in der Philosophiegeschichte einen neuen Weg eröffnet, welcher der kanonischen Aufteilung Kants in ›Dogmatismus‹, ›Skeptizismus‹ und ›Kritik‹ nicht folgt. Ja, es gibt absolute logische Notwendigkeit. Ja, es gibt radikale Kontingenz. Ja, wir können das, was ist, denken, und dieses Denken ist keineswegs von einem vorausgesetzten konstituierenden Subjekt abhängig.« (Alain Badiou)

Isabell Lorey, Roberto Nigro, Gerald Raunig (Hg.) Inventionen 1 Gemeinsam. Prekär. Potentia. Dis-/Konjunktion. Ereignis. Transversalität. Queere Assemblagen 280 Seiten, Broschur ISBN 978-3-03734-153-7 € 26,90 / CHF 40,00

Das einflussreichste Theoriegefüge des ausgehenden 20. Jahrhunderts ist in die Jahre gekommen: Entstanden im politischen Kontext und den sozialen Milieus der 1960er und 1970er Jahre, war der »Poststrukturalismus« keine Schule, und seine ProtagonistInnen arbeiteten nicht notwendigerweise zu den selben theoretischen Fragen. Er war vielmehr eine intellektuelle Hoch­konjunktur, die mit tiefgehenden Umformungen der Lebensstile und Wissensformen, mit neuen diskursiven Ordnungen und sozialen Praxen einherging. Viele seiner bedeutenden AutorInnen, unter ihnen die Theorie-Stars Foucault, Deleuze und Derrida, sind heute nicht mehr am Leben. Umso leichter gelingt es in unterschiedlichen Zusammenhängen, ihre Theoriebildung zu vereinnahmen, zu dekontextualisieren, zu entpolitisieren, nach Jahrzehnten der Hegung an den subkulturellen Rändern politisch zu zerreiben oder im akademischen Mainstream zu verharmlosen. Der erste Band der Reihe Inventionen präsentiert aktuelle Positionen poststrukturalistischer Theorie und versucht eine Neu­zusammensetzung ihrer Ströme. Deren Basis ist die Wieder­aneignung zentraler Begriffe der zeitgenössischen politischen Philosophie wie Potenzialität, Ereignis, Transversalität oder Assemblage. In der Zusammensetzung dieser Begriffe und der mit ihnen verbundenen Theoreme soll ein erster Schritt getan werden, jenes neue Begriffsgefüge zu entwickeln, das über das Label des »Poststrukturalismus« hinausgeht. Mit Beiträgen von Christoph Brunner, Antke Engel, Katja Diefenbach, ­Maurizio Lazzarato, Isabell Lorey, Boyan Manchev, Erin Manning, ­Brian Massumi, Angela Mitropoulos, Antonio Negri, Roberto Nigro, Stefan ­Nowotny, Jasbir Puar, Gerald Raunig, Judith Revel, Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez und Thomas Seibert.

Isabell Lorey Figuren des Immunen Elemente einer politischen Theorie 336 Seiten, Broschur ISBN 978-3-03734-151-3 € 26,90 / CHF 40,00

Die republikanischen Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Plebejern und Patriziern bilden ein Urszenarium politischer Theorie. Anders als die klassische Altertumswissenschaft versteht Isabell Lorey die »Ständekämpfe« als Kämpfe zweier politischer Ordnungen um eine neue Konstituierung, und anders als in der zeitgenössischen politischen Philosophie (etwa bei Agamben) erhält der homo sacer bei Lorey eine widerständige immunisierende Funktion. Diese Neuinterpretation der römischen Geschichte dient als Hintergrund für eine umfassende politische Theorie der Immunisierung. Es sind im Wesentlichen drei Figuren des Immunen, die diese Theorie ausmachen: Bei Thomas Hobbes entwickelt sich eine herrschaftssichernde Figur des Immunen, die die Einzelnen in der politischen Gemeinschaft über die Abwehr des Bedrohlichen schützt. Neben dieser Figur der »juridischen Immunität« entsteht im 18. Jahrhundert eine zweite herrschaftssichernde Figur, jene der »biopolitischen Immunisierung«. Hier dient nicht mehr nur die Abwehr des bedrohlichen Anderen, sondern auch seine Domestizierung und Inkorporation der Immunisierung einer politischen Gemeinschaft. Die Geschichte der Plebejer liefert schließlich den Hintergrund für eine dritte Figur und deren Aktualisierungen: Im Exodus und in der Konstituierung durchbricht die »konstituierende Immunisierung« die auf Herrschaftserhalt ausgerichteten okzidentalen Immunisierungsdynamiken.

Alain Badiou Über Metapolitik Aus dem Französischen von Heinz Jatho 194 Seiten, Franz. Broschur ISBN 978-3-935300-39-1 € 19,90 / CHF 30,00

Badious ›Metapolitik‹ setzt sich dezidiert von einer politischen Philosophie ab, die sich lediglich darauf beschränkt, die allgemeinen Bedingungen politischer Urteilsbildung zu analysieren und sie schließlich, in kantischer Tradition, zu einem »geschwätzigen« Meinungsaustausch degradiert. Sein Verständnis von Politik als »Wahrheitprozedur« rührt nicht zuletzt daher, dass er die militante politische Aktion und den Widerstand zum Ausgangspunkt seiner Überlegungen nimmt. Neben einer grundsätzlichen Kritik am Verständnis von Politik und politischer Theorie stellt er in den Aufsätzen dieses Bandes u.a. Überlegungen zum Egalitarismus, zur Massenbewegung und zur revolutionären Praxis an, und dies in Auseinandersetzung mit wichtigen Autoren wie Althusser und Rancière, deren Rezeption im deutschsprachigen Raum noch eher zögerlich ist. In der Verbindung einer radikalen Philosophie der politischen Handlung und des Widerstands vor ontologischem Hintergrund ist »Über Metapolitik« ein anregendes und zugleich anstößiges Buch, gerade für eine derart vom Paradigma der Kommunikation bestimmten Diskussionslandschaft wie die deutsche.

Louis Althusser Materialismus der Begegnung Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Franziska Schottmann 144 Seiten, Broschur ISBN 978-3-03734-112-4 € 18,00 / CHF 27,00

Der Band versammelt späte und unvollendete Schriften Althussers, die zu den eigentümlichsten und verstörendsten Texten gehören, die das Denken des späten 20. Jahrhunderts hervorgebracht hat. Im Leben des marxistischen Philosophen markieren sie einen schmerzhaften Bruch: Sie sind Teil eines Denkens der Krise, das eine radikale Philosophie der Praxis zu entwerfen sucht. Bekämpft, verdrängt und gerade darum stets gegenwärtig, zieht sich ein untergründiger Strom durch die Geschichte der westlichen Philosophie. Von den antiken Atomisten über Spinoza und Machiavelli bis zu den Zeitgenossen Derrida und Deleuze arbeitet ein Denken der Leere, des Zufalls und der Abweichung, das jede Wesensphilosophie, ja Philosophie überhaupt im Prinzip unmöglich macht und schließlich auch den dialektischen Materialismus überwinden soll. Die Ausgabe dieser erstmals auf Deutsch zugänglichen Schriften macht die Brüche und Anstrengungen nachvollziehbar, die in den Begriffen dieses neuen und zugleich ältesten Materialismus liegen. Althussers Differenzierung zwischen »Materialismus der Begegnung« und »aleatorischem Materialismus« bezeugt die produktive Kraft eines einzigen beharrlichen Gedankens, der das Denken bricht: »Weder wird je ein Würfelwurf den Zufall aus löschen – noch wird je der Zufall einen Würfelwurf vereiteln.« Das »Porträt des materialistischen Philosophen« gibt einen Vorgeschmack auf das Abenteuer eines Denkens, das im »Wilden Westen« nach Auf- und Umbruch sucht…

Eric L. Santner Zur Psychotheologie des Alltagslebens Betrachtungen zu Freud und Rosenzweig Aus dem Englischen von Luisa Banki 224 Seiten, Broschur ISBN 978-3-03734-129-2 € 22,90 / CHF 34,50

Eric L. Santner hat mit »Zur Psychotheologie des Alltagslebens« ein inhaltlich wie methodisch maßgebendes Buch geschrieben. Es präsentiert eine vorbildliche Verbindung freudscher Texte mit philosophischen Grundfragen der Moderne, die Santner am Leitfaden des »Sterns der Erlösung« von Franz Rosenzweig entwickelt. Mit Rosenzweig eröffnet Santner die Frage, ob nicht der Alltag in der Moderne, unter der Herrschaft eines von traditioneller Einbindung und selbstverständlichem Ethos befreiten Über-Ichs, selbst eine permanente Fehlleistung ist bzw. eine fehlgehende Orientierung bietet, die das Subjekt in der zwanghaften Position untoter Erfahrungsarmut gefangen hält. Dagegen setzt Santner eine Subjektposition inmitten des Lebens, eines Lebens, das nicht mehr unbewusst durch das Versprechen einer Ausnahme gestützt wird, sondern sich ausnahmslos auf das Alltagsleben einlässt. In nur scheinbar paradoxaler Umkehrung ist es gerade die Annahme der Unverfügbarkeit des Wollens, Sprechens und Handelns, die Verantwortung ermöglicht. Diese Verantwortung bildet das Alltagsleben. So findet Santner in Freud eine theologische Dimension und in Rosenzweig die Analyse der Psyche, um mit ihnen gemeinsam eine Basis gemeinschaftlichen Lebens zu errichten, die der Totalität moderner Heilsversprechungen entgeht.

Kathrin Thiele The Thought of Becoming Gilles Deleuze’s Poetics of Life 200 p., paperback ISBN 978-3-03734-036-3 € 20,00 / CHF 30,00

A concern for this world lies at the heart of discussing the relation between philosophy and ethics. Kathrin Thiele elaborates in this book that in such endeavor one has to argue against two common misperceptions. Instead of understanding philosophy and ethics as abstraction from the world, she shows in what sense both are constructive of it; and instead of following the opinion that the poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze cannot contribute anything to the debate at stake, she shows that his whole work is speaking but one formula: ›ontology = ethics‹. While this formula might estrange at first, the author, by approaching it through the conceptual figure of becoming, not only manages to carefully develop the Deleuzian thought-universe via its coordinates Spinoza, Bergson, and Nietzsche, but shows in her argument as well that the substitution of becoming for Being is no insignificant matter but rather the preparation for a new thought of ontology as an ontology of becoming and – as such – for a new thought of ethics as a poetics of life. ›Indirection‹ is the movement of becoming into this world, brought forth here as the most compelling dimension of Deleuze’s thought. Such a position dares to conceive of thought as practice without collapsing the gap that always persists between thinking and acting.

Mark Potocnik, Frank Ruda, Jan Völker (Hg.) Beyond Potentialities? Politics between the Possible and the Impossible 216 p., paperback ISBN 978-3-03734-152-0 € 22,90 / CHF 34,50

Nearly the whole history of political thought is spanned between two poles: one of founding, establishing and justifying a stable and just order on one side and one of justified transformation, necessary break with the same order on the other side. Between institution and emancipation, reform and revolution in politics the question of possibility is always arising. Are there possibilities to change the order of society? Are there possibilities of a different justice? Where to find and how to define them? Are they already installed in the situation, or do they have to be actively created? Or does one have to rethink collective emancipation in a way that it does not rely upon given possibilities? The question of possibility is raised in philosophy itself in different terms: as a question of potentiality and potentials but also as a question of impossibilities of changing political order. In recent political discussions this question is more present than ever and is newly posed in a fundamental way by thinkers such as Agamben, Badiou, and Deleuze, or Lacan and Žižek. The present volume assembles articles that investigate this question and the new guise it took from different perspective and highlight its relevance for contemporary political thought. With contributions from: Alain Badiou, Friedrich Balke, Bruno Bosteels, Lorenzo Chiesa, Felix Ensslin, Peter Hallward, Mark Potocnik, Frank Ruda, Jason E. Smith, Jelica Šumi¬, Jan Völker.