Financial crisis, Social pathologies and 'generalised perversion' : questioning Zizek's diagnosis of the times

Slavoj Zizek's work has been highly influential in the formulation of an emerging consensus among Lacanian social researchers, that we live in a society of generalised perversion whose initial fruits are the corrosion of democracy and the recent financial crisis. This position rests upon a notion of modern subjectivity that connects ‘commodity fetishism’ with clinical perversion in a pathological configuration, so that social theoretical identification of crisis tendencies, evaluative language about moral problems and diagnostic categories from the Lacanian clinic can be combined in a single figure. In this article, we question the series of conceptual links that constitute this position, tracing them from Zizek’s critique in his short work on the global financial crisis and his broader restatement of this analysis in the recent Living in the End Times, through the moment of his announcement of the notion of ‘generalised perversion’ in The Ticklish Subject, all the way back to fundamental propositions outlined in his earliest work. Our argument progresses through three claims. First, we show in the evolution of this position that it leads Zizek to equivocate in his diagnosis of contemporary society between two mutually exclusive categories (‘psychosis’ and ‘perversion’), indicating an antinomy in his work that is resolved in favour of ‘generalised perversion’ on empirical, not logical, grounds. Secondly, we offer a critical resolution of the antinomy through a critique of what we argue is Zizek’s mistaken over-extension of psychoanalytic reason beyond its legitimate scope of application. Finally, we point to some of the political implications of the way that Zizek speculatively resolves his logical difficulties, by analysing the consequences of his claim that generalised social perversion - the problem to be solved - involves a dethroning of the communal ego ideal. A communitarian streak, implicit in the potential conflation of moral denunciation with psychoanalytic diagnosis that the rhetoric of ‘perversion’ invokes, runs through Zizek’s work on capitalism, we propose in conclusion.

A critique of the political theology of Slavoj Zizek

This chapter critiques the political theology of Slavoj Zizek as beset by social theoretical and strategic political problems. Political theology here is a privileged intellectual terrain on which to simultaneously resolve questions about liberating forms of social cohesion in a post-revolutionary political community and about cultural strategy in the radical program. In connection with the Marxist critique of religious ideology, Zizek’s work represents an important contribution to the research program that emerged from the Althusserian approaches to social theory. But although Zizek has the conceptual resources to generate a dialectical theory of the connection between religious ideology and political strategy, he instead opts for a theory of radical rupture with existing forms of life. Detoured through the encounter with Carl Schmitt, Zizek’s doctrine of radical rupture quickly becomes an inverted Schmittianism, freighted with the problems of the militarisation of politics and the arbitrary designation of enemies that he diagnoses in Schmitt, but does not transcend in his own response. Zizek’s figure of the “religious suspension of the ethical” brings the politics of rupture to its most problematic (and baroque) formulations, revealing the fundamental problem of the ideological representation of political structures.

Abismos necesarios para la identificación social : (Decisiones ontológicas en lo social: un debate entre Laclau y Zizek)

En este trabajo proponemos un análisis en torno a un debate mantenido entre Laclau y Zizek en relación a los populismos y el sujeto emancipatorio. Para ello, abordaremos los supuestos principales de la ontología social en sus vínculos con la constitución de las identificaciones populares de Laclau, en su cancelación de todo cierre definitivo de lo social y su consecuente fin del apriorismo, con el objeto de comprender el marco filosófico sobre el que se establece el mencionado debate. A nuestro entender, este enfoque y sus diferencias con los embates de Zizek, plantea un horizonte político, cuya consistencia y contingencia en disputa hegemónica presenta categorías apropiadas para abordar la actual situación política en nuestra región

Sujeto e ideología : Notas para pensar lo político en S. Zizek

Fil: Parra, Fabiana. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

Zizek, Slavoj, Sobre la violencia. Seis reflexiones marginales, Buenos Aires, Paidós, 2009, 288 pp.

Fil: Butierrez, Luis Fernando. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

Jameson Frederic, Zizek Slavoj. Estudios Culturales. Reflexiones sobre el multiculturalismo. Introducción de Eduardo Grüner. Buenos Aires, Paidós, 1998

Fil: Minellono, María Teresita. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

El pensamiento de Slavoj Zizek

Este artículo analiza el pensamiento de Slavoj Zizek, en relación con los conceptos de lo imaginario, lo simbólico y lo real del psicoanálisis lacaniano. Se establecen dos líneas de pensamiento dentro de la propuesta zizekiana: la primera ligada al concepto de lo simbólico y la segunda ligada a lo imaginario-real lacaniano. Esto para establecer las contradicciones inherentes al pensamiento zizekiano, que dificultan o imposibilitan asumir sus teorías dentro de una vertiente contestataria.