Article

COU CHI N G P O L I TI CS: Z IZ EK S

RU L E S F O R R A D I C AL S

Henry Krips
University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Correspondence: Professor Henry Krips, University of Pittsburgh, 1117 Cathedral of Learning,
Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA

A b s t ra c t

Lacans theory of the four discourses and recent work by Slavoj Zizek indicate interesting new
approaches to integrating politics and psychoanalytic theory. In the end, however, both of
these approaches raise more questions than they answer. In particular, Zizeks political
strategies fail at crucial points to differentiate themselves from the existentialist ethic of
authentic gratuitous acts, from which they derive much of their inspiration as well as
rhetorical force. In this paper, I turn to the neglected work of Saul Alinsky for help in
adapting the work of Lacan and Zizek in formulating an alternative psychopolitics, which
grounds its practices in Real political struggles. In particular, abstracting from Alinskys
case studies, I argue that publicity provides the engine that multiplies the effects of
individual acts to the point that they take on social effects.

Ke y wo rds
Lacan; Zizek; Alinsky; psychoanalysis; politics

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2004) 9, 126141.

doi:10.1057/palgrave.pcs.2100005

I n tr oduc ti on

T
his paper is part of an ongoing project to forge an alliance between
what may seem to be strange bedfellows: politics and psycho-
analysis. The thought behind the project is that, despite all of its
flaws, psychoanalysis is one of the better frameworks for understanding and
guiding processes of human change, whereas politics, at least in its radical or

c 2004 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 1088-0763/04 $25.00

Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 2004, 9, (126141)
www.palgrave-journals.com/pcs
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
127

reformist modes, is about creating such change, not merely at the level of
individual human beings (as clinical psychoanalysis tries to do) but instead,
more comprehensively, at the level of the social. It seems natural, then, to look
for a psychopolitics that aims somehow to multiply the effects of psychoanalytic
techniques for the purposes of creating social change.
The recent history of attempts to create such a politics, especially those
associated with the Frankfurt School, is not encouraging, however. But Lacans
(1992) theory of the four discourses (Seminar XVII) and recent work by Slavoj
Zizek point to interesting new ways of integrating politics and psychoanalytic
theory. In the end, however, both of these ways raise more questions than they
answer. In particular, Zizeks political strategies fail at crucial points to
differentiate themselves from the existentialist ethic of authentic gratuitous acts,
from which it derives much of its inspiration as well as rhetorical force. In this
paper, I turn to the neglected work of Saul Alinsky for help in adapting the work
of Lacan and Zizek in formulating an alternative psychopolitics, which grounds
its practices in Real political struggles. In particular, abstracting from
Alinskys case studies, I argue that publicity provides the engine that multiplies
the effects of individual acts to the point that they take on social effects.

Z i zek and O ver- conformity

Zizek argues for a paradoxical political strategy: rather than the traditional
radical strategy of encouraging others to join in a communal act of disobedience
of the Law, he suggests the reverse: the radical political activist should agree
enthusiastically with conservative rhetoric that the Law must be upheld, indeed,
she should exhort her audience to be even more faithful to the letter of the Law
than the law is to itself (Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 147). But how can
such a strategy of over-conformity be claimed as radical (sic)? Zizeks suggestion
seems to be no more than a bad joke: a typically perverse Zizekian inversion,
which attempts to pass off the hyper-conservative strategy of total obedience to
the Law as radical.
Zizek points out that what makes the Law workable/bearable is an
ideological phantasy, a shadowy zone of illicit activities into which even the
most law-abiding citizens enter on occasions when it becomes apparent that the
Law makes such an ass of itself that for its own sake they must make an
exception to it. For example, when Eric Rudolf, the Atlantic Olympic Games
bomber, who subsequently bombed two abortion clinics and a gay night club,
was captured in Murphy North Carolina, after successfully evading Federal
Police for eight years, a local resident of the small, predominantly Christian
fundamentalist Appalachian community where he had been hiding, told a
reporter: He was a man who stood for what he believed inyIf he came to my
door, I wouldve given him food and never said a word (NY Times, June 2nd,
2003, A15). Here, then, we see a devout, law-abiding citizen, for whom, one

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
128

presumes, the injunction Thou shall not kill takes the dual form of a binding
religious commandment as well as a civil law, but who, illegally and more or less
openly offers succor to a mass murderer. Not, one presumes, with criminal
intent, but rather thanks to a phantasy that figures Eric Rudolf as somehow
above or at least outside the Law on a mission from God, even but also
figures the Law itself as too stupid to punish the real crimes, crimes against
God abortion, gay sex, and so on which, at great risk to himself, Rudolf
seeks to stamp out through his own criminal acts. In short, we see here how the
Law is supported by what Zizek calls its obscene underside: a gray area of
technically illicit but nevertheless tolerated activities, in which the Law is helped
out, supplemented, when it proves unable to help itself. Such illicit activities
are accompanied by their own familiar rhetoric of justification: Everyone does
it, The Law is an ass, Its the spirit of the Law not the letter of the law that is
important, and so on.
How can this dual system of the Law together with its supporting ideological
phantasy be subverted? An example: consider the keen, young policeman who,
as he leaves the station for his first day on the beat, is admonished by his
superiors to administer the Law without fear of favor. As he exits the door, he
sees before him what he recognizes to be the chief of polices private car, parked
illegally in front of the station, and surrounded by journalists and photo-
graphers waiting to interview the chief about an ongoing high-profile murder
investigation. After a moments hesitation, the rookie takes out his notebook
and to the flash of cameras he books the chiefs car. His horrified superiors rush
out and drag him away. What have you got us into? they ask, Its the chiefs
car. He replies: But Im just doing what you told me no one, you said, not
even the chief of police, is above the Law. They explain that the chief will go
berserk when he sees the parking ticket, and demote them all, but, because of
the public nature of the booking, if they fix the ticket, then all Hell will break
loose they and the chief will be publicly accused of corruption, they will all
have to resign, and so on.
The point of this little morality tale, like the story of the emperors new
clothes, is that, in the wrong circumstances, doing the right thing being honest,
obeying the Law, and so on can be far more disruptive of the Law than any
hidden or even overt illegal act. The story also makes the point that the
subversive nature of an act may have nothing to do with the intentions of its
agent (the rookie merely wanted to please his superiors) or those who encourage
him to act (his superiors certainly did not intend their advice to have such
devastating effects). Rather, the acts subversive nature lies in its foreclosing the
possibility of making an exception to the Law in a situation where the
smooth functioning of the legal institution requires that the Law be broken.
As Zizek makes the point in a different context: Today in our enlightened
era of universal rights sexism and racism reproduce themselves mainly
at the level of the phantasmatic unwritten rules which sustain and qualify

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
129

universal ideological proclamations. The lesson of this is that sometimes,

at least the truly subversive thing is not to disregard the explicit letter of
Law on behalf of the underlying fantasies [what Zizek calls the ideological
fantasies or the obscene underside of the Law] but to stick to this letter
against the fantasy which sustains ity[this is] one of the ways to put into
practice what Lacan calls traversing the phantasy (Zizek, 1989a, Plague of
Phantasies, p. 29).
But here we unfold an ambiguity in Zizeks position. On the one hand, in
some places, Zizek announces his political concern in terms that are personal,
and more specifically ethical, in particular, as a concern with how an agent can
liberate [her] self from the grip of existing social reality, a question that he
answers by advising that she renounc[e] the transgressive fantasmatic
supplement [namely the ideological phantasy that makes exceptions to the
Law] (Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 149). On the other hand, in other
places, Zizek seems concerned with political interventions that have a broader
scope, namely acts by which an agent not only liberates herself but also
actually underminesythe system (of public Law) by unreserved identification
with it (Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 148).
Zizek justifies his equivocation between these two apparently different sorts
of political concerns, by claiming that they intersect. In particular, after
asserting that his concern is with ethical acts that stick to the Law even at the
cost of the Law itself, or, as he puts it, involve precisely the suspension of this
exception [to the Law], he claims that such acts take place at the intersection
of ethics and politics, in the uncanny domain in which ethics is politicized
(Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 148). But this claim will not do. It may well
be, as Zizek claims, that an act of self-liberation from social norms has both
political and ethical dimensions. But that does not dissolve the distinction
between an ethico-political project of self-liberation (a residue of Zizeks
Sartrean interests) and (in more Althusserian/marxist mode) a political project
for creating broader social change. In particular, the distinction between these
two alternatives cannot be finessed, as Zizek tries to do, simply by affirming
that the first entails the second that true self-liberation requires broader
social change (and possibly vice versa).
Why not? Because many of the examples of self-liberation that Zizek cites
lack social ramifications of the sort that are relevant to political projects of
social change. For example, Zizek cites the episode in the film Speed, in which
the hero (Keanu Reeves) is confronting the terrorist blackmailer who is holding
his partner at gunpoint [and] shoots not the blackmailer, but his own partner in
the leg (Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 149). The effect of this apparently
senseless subversive act is dramatic: the blackmailer, as Zizek tells us, is
shocked and runs away. But however dramatic the act, its effects are local not
social. By contrast with Bruce Willis, Keanu Reeves manages only to save the
local situation rather than the truth, justice and the American way.

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
130

It seems, then, that we must separate two questions that Zizek attempts to
run together: (1) the question of how to achieve self-liberation, and (2) the
question of how to achieve broader social change. Zizek, we have seen, answers
the first of these questions by appealing to what he calls an ethical act: to follow
the Law to the extreme point of surrendering the exception-making ideological
phantasy that functions as its support, and in that respect surrendering that
which makes life under the Law bearable and even rewarding: we abandon the
fantasmatic Otherness which makes life in constrained social reality [under the
Law] bearable (Zizek, 2000, Fragile Absolute, p. 158). But, although such
extreme acts may well enable its agent to be born again as it were, they may
have little or no broader social effects. The residual question, then, is the second
one: how a political agent can arrange not for her own personal salvation but
rather for social change, and whether and how Zizeks strategies of over-
conformity to the Law play a role in such a project. In particular, the question is
how a political activist is to arrange for subversive acts (performed by herself or
others) such as the rookie cops booking the chiefs car, which will create havoc
in the social order writ large.
Consider the Oliver North syndrome: the extreme patriot who believes in
truth, justice, the rule of Law, and so on, but nevertheless, in defense of these
ideals, knowingly commits the most scurrilous and illicit covert operations,
justifying them by invoking the phantasy: My country right or wrong,
Someone has got to do the dirty work, and so on. The extreme patriot admits
the transgressive nature of what he does but at the level of phantasy implies that
there is a higher Law love of country which justifies his actions, and
transmutes them from run-of-the-mill dirty tricks and criminal acts into
something golden and transcendentally right and good: a courageous defense of
the spirit of the Law rather than the mundane implementation of its letter.
What is the politically appropriate response for an activist who discovers such
crimes in high places? How can she turn the discovery to political advantage in
subverting the Law or at the very least bringing down its agents? Answer: as in
the case of the rookie cop who tickets his chief, the subversive act involves
publicizing the crimes in such a way that the legal authorities cannot sweep
them under the carpet. The publicity may be couched as a more or less explicit
demand that the criminals in question be apprehended for example, a paid ad
in newspapers from concerned citizens who ask rhetorically Isnt it
outrageous that such and such is allowed to go on? But there are also other
less direct ways in which the activist can proceed, for example, a leak to the
press, a public demonstration, and so on. (Alinsky discusses a range of such
publicity stunts in his Rules for Radicals 1971. Indeed, as Alinsky points out,
often the mere threat of public exposure is sufficient to gain victory for the
activist.)
The authorities will tend to over-interpret such acts of publicity as reflecting
or even creating a public demand that they do something about the crime and,

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
131

in particular, that they ensure that justice is done. In other words, whether or
not the public in fact gives a damn, the publicity will tend to have the effect that
the authorities project onto the public a desire for justice. (A qualification: on
occasions, cool heads will prevail among the authorities, and they will simply
wait for the effects of the publicity to fade. But for whatever reason perhaps a
secret but all too human wish on the part of individual officials to get attention
despite the inherent danger of doing so this do-nothing response often gives
way to a knee-jerk defensive reaction, which signals the authorities lovehate
relation with publicity.)
At first sight, it is hard to see why this publicizing strategy with its implicit
demand that the authorities implement the Law should be effective. In
particular, it is hard to see how it carries any weight with the extreme patriot,
who, unlike the keen young policeman, is steeped in the ideological phantasy,
and thus, whether or not his transgressions are public knowledge, is always and
already prepared to step outside the Law in the name of the law. But as I
indicated, the public demand to observe the Law is directed not to transgressors,
but rather to the officials who, were they left to their own devices, would turn
a blind eye to any such transgressions that work to the benefit of the Law and
the legal system that supports it. But, because of what they perceive as its public
nature, the demand places the officials in a double bind. On the one hand, if
they ignore the demand and make an exception of the transgressions, then they
risk blowing the cover of secrecy upon which the whole structure of the
ideological phantasy depends for maintaining the appearance that justice is
done justice must be seen to be done, even though we all tacitly know that it
is not. On the other hand, by going ahead and prosecuting the transgressors, the
officials also place the whole structure of the Law at risk by suppressing the
criminal acts upon which it tacitly depends.
Here, in short, is a version of what Lacan (Seminar VII) calls the forced
choice, the Highwaymans demand: either give me your money or surrender
your life and thus lose your money in any case. To be specific, because of the
public nature of the accusations against Oliver North, his government superiors
faced the following forced choice. Either follow the Law, put North on trial, but
then risk that their own corrupt complicity with his misdemeanors come out in
court, with the result that not only they will lose their money and jobs but also
place at risk the whole institutional structure of the Law that depends upon such
covert operations. Or make an exception of North, but then blow the open
secret that, when it suits them, they bend the law, thereby destroying the
structure of secrecy that attends the ideological phantasy upon which the Law
depends for its smooth operation.
Faced with such a no-win situation, the forced choice the sensible, the
prudent thing to do is to cut ones losses. For Norths superiors, this forced
choice seems to be the honorable alternative of resigning or at least risking
the loss of their jobs by going to trial. Why? In all probability, it seems, their

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
132

jobs are lost in any case, so the prudent course of action is an exercise in
damage control: let justice be seen to be done, and thus at least preserve
the system to which they are dedicated and that made their jobs possible in the
first place. Of course, a trial, the resultant sacking of officials, and so on
tarnishes the system to some extent. Nevertheless, the Law survives, indeed, can
take credit for having the resources to eliminate its own rotten apples.
Furthermore, because of the publicity, the alternative of fixing the case against
North and letting him off, seems to have far more drastic consequences, namely,
outing the ideological phantasy and thus destroying the limited secrecy that it
needs in order to do its work of supporting/supplementing the system of Law
and Order.
We see here how the introduction of publicity drastically alters the situation:
without it, the prudent option for the authorities would be the cowardly,
dishonorable act of quietly making an exception of North, whereas the ethical
indeed heroic act would be to self-destructively but honorably stick to the
letter of the Law and make an example of him. But publicity turns these options
around 180 degrees: the prudent act becomes the otherwise heroic option of
resigning and/or trying North and his accomplices, whereas, it seems, the truly
heroic act becomes the otherwise prudent act of letting Oliver North off the
hook. Why? A common sense of fair play and justice (although not the letter of
the Law) demands that North be let off the hook. After all, although not totally
an innocent party to the covert operations, he merely did the dirty work that
was necessary for defense of the Law, and which the authorities unofficially
encouraged him to do. Nevertheless, because of the publicity surrounding the
situation, to let him off the hook is tantamount to destroying the illusion upon
which the smooth running of the Law depends. It follows that to let him off is to
do no less than give up the integrity of the institutional basis of the Law in the
name of its spirit (although not its letter) and so, it seems, falls on the side of the
ethical rather than the merely prudent. (In a similar way, one might say, to
confine punitively innocent children to home is more prudent than the
alternative of heroically aquiescing to their just demand that they see the
Emperor in public, when one knows that in all probability they will blow the
open secret upon which the ideological phantasy that supplements the Law
depends, namely that the Emperor is naked.)
And, indeed, in the Oliver North case, the authorities response was the
prudent option of a trial on reduced charges, a conviction and a light sentence.
And because the ReaganBush adminstration was tainted with the aura of guilt
that surrounded North and related scandals, heads rolled. In that limited
respect, then, one may say, the subversive gesture of publicizing Norths
activities was successful. Although (and this is a point to which I return) from a
more traditional radical point of view, one might complain that the subversion
did not go far enough: a short-term victory in so far as heads did roll, but the
ideological phantasy was preserved justice was seen to be done thus

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
133

enabling the system if not all the characters who ran it to be preserved in not too
tarnished a state.
This conclusion leads one to re-evaluate Zizeks strategy of over-conformity
to the Law. In the examples that Zizek considers, all of which fall
under the heading of projects of self-liberation, such over-conformity
coincides with the ethical. But in the examples that I am considering, over-
conformity coincides with the merely prudent, rather than with the ethical.
Why? Because in my examples the political agents strategy is not a matter of
herself over-conforming to the Law but instead involves creating publicity in
order to position over-conformity as the prudent course of action for others. It
follows that if her strategy succeeds it is not because those others achieve self-
liberation through choosing to over-conform. On the contrary, we have seen,
the success of her strategy depends upon those others acting prudently rather
than ethically, and because of the wider havoc that the prudent act brings in its
wake.
The general structure of the subversive strategy that I am suggesting here
involves a political agent (the first party) issuing a demand in the name of the
public (the second party). The demand in question is that a third party, who has
the power to bend/make exceptions to the Law, sticks to the letter of the Law in
connection with an act, which, although technically criminal, is carried out to
facilitate the smooth running of the Law in its institutional manifestations. This
demand places the third party in a double bind that takes the form of a forced
choice. On the one hand, if they accede to the demand then they disrupt the
smooth running of the Law (the rookie cop tickets the police chief, who goes
berserk and sacks his underlings; Oliver North is found guilty and heads roll).
On the other hand, if the third party refuses the demand, and makes an
exception to the Law, then, because of the public nature of the demand, the
ideological phantasy that tacitly supports the workings of the Law is brought
into the light of day, and so, like a vampire, is rendered ineffective (the chief is
made happy by fixing his ticket but at the cost of blowing the open secret that
the police are corrupt, the extreme patriot is granted immunity but at the cost of
blowing the open secret that government officials make deals to protect the
guilty, and so on).
But why, one might ask, is the latter alternative so terrible? If everyone
knows that the officials are corrupt, then where is the harm in them acting
out that corruption in the full glare of the public gaze? Answer: Because
the ideological phantasy through which the general run of law-abiding
citizens produce pleasure depends upon such corruption remaining an open
secret, thus enabling them to play at sustaining the appearance of legality
while themselves indulging in illicit behavior tax evasion, speeding, and so
on.1 The claim, then, is that without such pleasure, the Law itself will falter
for lack of broader public interest in sustaining it. It follows that the forced
choice, the prudent choice that minimizes loss, is to sacrifice those who are

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
134

publicly shown to be guilty, thus preserving the appearance of obedience to the

Law and along with it the ideological phantasy through which exceptions are
made.
A final comment: from a more traditional radical perspective, the
political strategies that I have presented here may seem half-hearted
compromises. By deploying the processes of publicity, they may well succeed
in embarrassing local authorities and perhaps even win a victory or two in the
short term, but in the long run they leave intact, indeed consolidate, the more
global system, including the system of publicity, that is the real enemy.
Alinskys work is helpful in answering this objection. He points out that
political purists, who focus too strongly on the global to the exclusion of the
local, risk raising the bar for what counts as political so high that no political
acts are possible: The [political] moralists, constantly obsessed with
they[purity of] the means used by the Have-nots against the Haves..are
passive but real allies of the Haves. They are the ones Jacques Maratain
referred to in his statement, The fear of soiling ourselves by entering the
[impure] context of history is not a virtue, but a way of escaping virtue
(Alinsky 1971, pp. 2526). Alinsky goes on to argue that the ends by which the
success of a particular political struggle is to be judged are not predetermined by
some grand ideological vision of what is wrong with society (capitalism, the
failure of family values, and so on). Instead, he argues, such ends are determined
locally, indeed emerge and are articulated as part of the political struggle itself.
Which is not to deny the importance let alone the existence of global political
struggles. But it is to deny that such struggles are a privileged let alone exclusive
site of the political.
The political strategies that I have discussed so far hardly do justice to the full
range of political acts. In particular, they do not include the key political
processes of empowering individuals politically activating them to the point
that they can make the sorts of demands that will put pressure on their
oppressors. Furthermore, they are restricted to strategies for getting rid of the
representatives of the Law (police officers, public officials) and thus leave out of
account radical political acts, which set out to undermine the Law itself, and
in particular to traverse the ideological phantasy that supports the Law. (Zizek,
we have seen, classifies such radical acts under the heading of the ethical, but
for reasons that I discussed above, this categorization seems inadequate.) Also
left out of account are real political acts (real here in the sense of realistic
rather than in the Lacanian sense of Real) for which the aim is far more
modest: not to get rid of the representatives of the Law, let alone of the Law
itself, but rather to keep them firmly in place, and exploit their weaknesses in
order to achieve more limited, realistic aims: for example, to desegregate a
factory work force, to stop a new housing project, to achieve equal pay for
women workers, and so on. In the final section of this article, I discuss the latter
category of real political acts, with a view to showing that they conform to

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
135

Lacans discourse of the Analyst. In doing so, I turn in more detail to the work
of Alinsky.

A l i n s k y a n d R u l es fo r R a d i c a l s

Alinsky divides political campaigns into two stages. The first stage involves the
empowerment of individuals as political agents. The second stage involves
strategies by which such agents achieve their political goals. Alinsky describes
the second-stage strategies in terms of 13 rules for radicals, which include (as
rule four) what Zizek calls overconformity to the Law: Make the enemy live
up to their own book of Rules (Alinsky, 1989, p. 128). In what follows,
however, I restrict my discussion to the first-stage empowerment strategies.
For Alinsky, the key figure in the empowerment of individuals as political
agents is the political organizer. How does the organizer set about this task? He
does so by first transforming the individual gripes of the individuals who invite
him to help them, into a set of common issues or agenda around which a
politically active collective can be formed. This transformation is not so much a
matter of uncovering pre-existing political issues, which are implicit in the
sporadic historical acts of resistance by the individuals in question, let alone
present as fully formed ideas that they have in mind consciously or as part of
some mysterious political unconscious. Rather, the transformation in question
is a matter of giving shape to and reconstituting individual complaints as what
the individuals in question come to recognize retrospectively as expressions of
their own oppression, and then adapting those expressions as bases for a
political agenda around which a collective political agency and acts of resistance
can be mobilized. (Of course, the process of forming individual bystanders into
a politically active collective is not independent of the process through which
they act politically. In a similar way, a group of soldiers may be finally forged
into a fighting unit in the heat of battle, rather than by the hours of preliminary
training on the parade ground.)
I illustrate Alinskys ideas by considering a case history that he presents.
Alinsky is invited by a group of Canadian Indian leaders to consult with them
about their problems, which grow out of a diffuse, loosely connected, and
historically extended range of discriminatory practices by the white man.
Initially, Alinsky makes the suggestion that the Indians should organize
politically across tribal lines as well as enlist sympathetic liberal elements in
the white community to their cause. The point in making this suggestion is not
simply to impose upon his clients his own concept of how things are and of
what to do. On the contrary, Alinsky is all too well aware that, even if the
suggestions that he makes are correct, the act of simply imposing them upon the
oppressed, however well intentioned, risks continuing their oppression in
another form. Rather, the point of making the suggestions is to stimulate his
clients to produce phantasy material upon which he as an organizer can work as

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
136

a step in the process of activating them politically. How does Alinsky carry out
this work? I look for an answer to this question in his account of his interchange
with the Indian leaders:
Indians: Well, we cant organize.
Me: Why not?
Indians: Well, you see, if we organize that means getting out and fighting the
way you are telling us to do and that would mean that we would be corrupted
by the white mans culture and lose our own values.
Me: What are those values that you would lose?
Indians: Well, theres creative fishing.
Me: What do you mean, creative fishing?
Indians: Creative fishing.
Me: I heard you the first time. What is this creative fishing?
Indians: Well, to begin with, when we go out fishing, we get away from
everything. We get way out into the woods.
Me: Well, we whites dont exactly go fishing in Times Square, you know.
Indians: Yes, but its different with us. When we go out, were out on the
water and you can hear the lap of the waves on the bottom of the canoe, and the
birds in the trees and the leaves rustling, and you know what I mean?
Me: No, I dont know what you mean. Furthermore, I think that thats just a
pile of shit. Do you believe it yourself?
This brought a shocked silence, Alinsky reports. He then goes on to tell us
an interesting aftermath of the interchange. The National film Board of Canada
filmed his interview with the Indians, and it was screened subsequently at a joint
meeting between white Canadian development workers, the Indian leaders, and
Alinsky. The development workers, Alinsky tells us, kept looking at the floor,
very embarrassedy.and giving sidelong looks at the Indians. [But] after it was
over one of the Indians stood up and said: When Mr. Alinsky told us we were
full of shit, that was the first time a white man has really talked to us as equals
you [the white development workers] would never say that to us. You would
always say Well I can see your point of view but Im a little confused, and
stuff like that. In other words you treat us like children (Alinsky, 1989,
pp. 111112).
How are we to understand this interchange? According to conventional
liberal wisdom, the Indians are subject to a legal ideological fiction of equality
with the white population, an ideology that, by devaluing Indian difference,
works to the advantage of the white people. In the context of this conventional
wisdom, the Indians appeal to their difference emerges as a weak and, one
might argue, rather desperate bid to unmask and oppose the legal ideology that
oppresses them, and thus gain some minimal political leverage in a situation
that does them no favors.
I reverse this analysis, by suggesting that an even more pernicious ideological
phantasy is at work here, hints of which surface in the white mans occasional

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
137

admissions to see Indians are different, which in turn, echo a colonial

tendency to infantilize the colonized. In short, the real ideological phantasy at
work is of inequality and difference, a phantasy that structures the practices of
white man and Indian alike, and which exists as an open secret that both
oppressor and oppressed unite in sharing and keeping under their respective
bonnets. The advantage that this arrangement has for the white man is obvious.
But it also has advantages for the Indians, allowing them to apply for and gain
some small compensation for their abject status. Such gains provide the
harmless little victories, which the system allows the oppressed, and which,
together with the pleasures of cynicism of seeing through the open secret
end up by giving everyone an investment in the system (Zizek, 1989b, Sublime
Object, chapter 1).
By pressing on the question of what exactly are creative values, Alinsky
brings this ideological phantasy to the surface of discourse, where it appears not
only in the content but also in the form of the Indians remarks, namely the form
of their reluctance to clarify the name of their difference, thus protecting it
from criticism. Alinsky immediately presses home the advantage that this move
gives him, by making a grand interpretation of the ideological phantasy that he
has exposed: I think that thats just a pile of shit. Do you believe it yourself?,
thus pointing directly, even brutally to the contradiction, which he has exposed
within the Indians commitments between what they act upon (their difference)
and what they secretly believe (their equality). The effect of the interpretation,
he tells us, is to reduce those who hear it to shocked silence.
But, of course, this dialectical reversal is only part of the story of what is
going on in the interchange between Alinsky and the Indian. In addition,
through the course of the interview and its framing moments, Alinsky is busy
establishing a transferential relation with his clients. He starts this process, as
does the analyst, with a deception: he is the subject supposed to know, a
deception that feeds into his clients desire to know. But as often happens with
the analyst, the deception quickly becomes rather transparent. Alinsky tells us
that already in his first meeting with the Indians it is obvious that they are
skeptical of what he has to contribute: So we invite this white organization
from South of the border to come up here and he tells us to get organizedy.
This skepticism, in turn, opens a space in which Indian attitudes to Alinskys
intervention may develop in various unproductive directions: for some, perhaps
as a predilection to tear down what seems to them merely another instance of
the white mans Law (the hysterical response); for others, perhaps as a desire to
find out of what one white man knows, and then use his knowledge against his
own kind (the obsessive response), and so on.
What then moves the interchange beyond Alinskys initial deception and the
Indians skeptical reaction, through the crunch time when Alinsky presses the
awkward question of creative values, and performs his insulting dialectical
reversal, thats just a pile of shit? Answer: a nascent transferential

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
138

identification between Alinsky and the Indians. Alinsky establishes this in three
ways. First he makes a joke of the difference between himself and the Indians:
Well, we whites [just like you] dont exactly go fishing in Times Square, you
know. Second, in calling the Indians replies a pile of shit, he pays them the
courtesy of swearing at them, thus treating them as fellow men, instead of
infantilizing them (he talked to us as equals, they say subsequently). Third,
the clincher, but also the most risky: Alinsky demonstrates that not only does he,
like the Indians and indeed everyone else, see through the official lies (the Law/
lore) of the Indians difference from white man, but also, unlike other white
men, he, like the Indians themselves, is prepared to openly talk about the lies as
lies: Furthermore, I think that thats just a pile of shit. Do you believe it
yourself?
Of course, there is considerable risk for the Indians in Alinsky seeing through
and publicly denouncing their lies. In particular, he threatens to deprive them
not only of a political strategy but also of a source of pleasure in their dealings
with the white man, namely the masquerade of exaggerating their own
incompetence. This masquerade takes the classical (feminine) form of the
hysterical phantasy, in which the subject doubly befuddles the Other, who is
positioned as the subject supposed to know: first, by asking the Other a question
to which he, and no one else, knows the answers in this case What is the
nature of the difference of the Indian from the white man second by
pretending to be even less able to answer the questions than he is, Alinsky
threatens this hysterical structure of deception by telling the Indians that he sees
through their lies. Furthermore, as in the child in the story of the Emperors new
clothes, he shows himself willing and able to blow apart the open secret at the
heart of the ideological phantasy. And, because he is a representative of the
white man, Alinsky constitutes a plausible channel through which other white
men will twig to the open secret from which the Indians derive at least some
of the little pleasure that they milk from the situation of their own weakness,
namely the pleasure of fooling the white Other by making him treat them as
more weak and stupid than they are.
By threatening to blow this open secret, Alinsky forces the Indians
to go in one of two directions if they are to preserve their phantasy
and the related production of pleasure: they must either take Alinsky into
their inner circle where the open secret can circulate freely among the
cognescenti, safe from the white mans ears and the ears of the other Indians.
Or they must take the more drastic course of destroying him. The former is the
only realistic option, which, in turn, further consolidates the transferential
identification.
In short, Alinsky emerges as not only a white man, and thus an outside
persecutory authority figure who can be blamed when things go wrong, but
also, at the level of the transferential phantasy, as an insider, and therefore as
one who can be trusted. And this dual identity, with the pleasurable returns that

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
139

it helps to maintain through aiding in the continuation of the ideological

phantasy, keeps the conversation going despite the insults that punctuate
Alinskys discourse after the first heady moments of courtship and deception
have passed and he gets down to the serious business of crafting changes in his
audience. (Alinsky goes on to point out that the organizers role usually involves
such ambiguous self-identifications. But, unlike Freud, Alinsky fails to
recognize, indeed, denies one might even say disavows - the erotic dimensions
of his role: the fact that the organizer, like the analyst, is the seductive suitor but
also the beloved, whom the clients love to hate and hate to love Alinsky, 1989,
pp. 98108.)
We are now in a position to relate Alinsky techniques to Lacans discourse of
the Analyst (Seminar XVII). Alinsky makes clear that the Indians refuse to
accept his initial interpretation of what they need to do, namely organize across
tribal lines and enlist the white liberal community into the ranks of their
struggle. Indeed, this initial advice merely precipitates a smokescreen of
defensive maneuvers and resistance in the form of rationalizations which
appeal to Indian cultural difference, and which threaten to derail the whole
exchange from the outset (Alinsky, 1989, p. 110). Rather than delicately and
paternalistically tiptoeing around the politically sensitive issue of differ-
ence, Alinsky responds to the Indian persiflage with an aggressive line of
questioning, capped off by a profanity, Thats just a pile of shit. This strategy,
he tells us, is totally purposeful: If I had responded in a tactful way, saying
Well, I dont quite understand what you mean, we would have been off for a
ride around the rhetorical ranch for the next thirty days. Here profanity became
literally an up-against-the-wall bulldozer (Alinsky, 1989, p. 112).
And Alinskys bulldozer is no less than the Lacanian cut, administered to
short circuit the potentially endless flow of rationalizations (what Lacan
calls S2) that are used to defend the master signifier (S1), which in this
case is the pregnant but formally meaningless phrase creative values that
anchors the discourse of the Indians, and gives it an appearance of meaning, an
appearance, which, we have seen, is sustained by a tacit agreement the open
secret not to interrogate its meaning too closely. In other words, the cut
separates S1 from the S2 in which it is embedded, and from which it derives
support. In order to administer the cut, within the phantasy setting of
his exchange with the Indians, Alinsky takes on the role of the Lacanian
objet a the stumbling block against which the Indian subjects stub their toes as
they rush in pursuit of their unconscious desires. Correspondingly, the Indians,
as addressees of the discourse, take on the role of the Lacanian split subjects, $,
who wear their unconscious desires on their sleeve for others if not always
themselves to see.
Here, then, all the elements of the Lacanian discourse of the Analyst are
gathered together. In particular, we see that, for the Indians, Alinsky takes on
the role of the analyst at the various levels that Lacan pictures in his condensed

Couching Politics
 Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
140

schema of the discourse of the Analyst. In particular, Alinskys remarks play the
role of the mi-dire, which, while appearing to function as one half of a
dialogue with the Indians, in fact, disrupts the Indians speech, by refusing to
take for granted its presuppositions. Thus Alinskys questions play something
like the role of the classical analysts silences or the Mmmm?!s the half-
spoken/unspoken punctuations of the patients speech, which disrupt the
otherwise smooth flow of phantasy. It is through such disruptions that the
Indians ideological phantasy is brought to the surface not necessarily in the
content of what they say but rather in its form, namely their reluctance to admit
that they too do not believe what they are saying.
This tabling of the phantasy is represented in Lacans schema for the
discourse of the Analyst by the top line, which takes the form of the symbol for
phantasy, albeit in reversed form: ao4$. (The significance of the reversed
form is that the phantasy is present in distorted or edited form, namely
as the transferential relation between speaker and addressee.) This top
line is doubly appropriate, since it also indicates that, as speaker, the analyst/
organizer/Alinsky occupies the position of the objet a; and, as addressee, the
patient/client/Indian occupies the position of $. By contrast, the bottom line of
the schema, namely S1 # S2, represents the Lacanian cut, whereby S1 is
separated from S2.

Conclusion

We have seen that Lacans work contributes in two ways to a new

political practice. First, his theory of the forced choice between the
prudent and the ethical act provides a framework within which two
forms of political activity can be understood. On the one hand, Zizek
argues, the ethical act of overconforming to the Law and thus giving
up traversing the ideological phantasy corresponds to the radical political
act of an agent distancing/liberating herself from the framework of the Law.
Zizek seems wrong, however, to make the further claim that such acts are
radical also in a more traditional sense of subverting the framework of the Law
at a social level. On the other hand, the prudent act (what Lacan calls the
forced choice) corresponds to the pragmatic retreat into which the political
activist seeks to lead her oppressors, thereby gaining a political victory at the
cost of allowing her oppressors to preserve their ideological phantasy and
salvaging the Law.
But Lacans work also contributes more directly to a new political practice.
In particular, through considering the work of Alinsky, I have argued
that Lacans version of the Freudian cure, as represented in the discourse
of the Analyst, incorporates techniques that are directly applicable to
the political strategies that an organizer uses for activating political agents.
In this way, Lacans work restores the political dimension to cures for madness

Henry Krips
Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
141

that is so evident in the prehistory of Freuds talking cure, but from

which Freud distanced himself rhetorically. Many questions remain, however:
firstly, a more detailed examination of Freuds case histories for signs
of a nascent political practice (elsewhere I argue that the Little Hans case is
key in this respect), secondly, an exploration of the relation between
Lacans account of political work in groups with the work of other
post-Freudians, such as Bion, and thirdly (in the light of Zizeks failure to
deal with this question satisfactorily) a return to the question of the radical
political act that subverts the framework of the Law. But these questions must
wait for another occasion.

A b o u t t he a ut h o r

Henry Krips is Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh.

His books include The Metaphysics of Quantum Mechanics (1990, Oxford)
and Fetish: an Erotics of Culture (1999, Cornell). He is working on a
new book on the intersection of psychoanalysis, politics and the contemporary
media.

Re fe r e n c es

Alinsky, S. (1989). Rules for Radicals. New York: Random House.

Lacan, J. (1992). The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VII.
In. Porter, D. (trans.). New York: Norton.
Zizek, S. (1989a). The Plague of Fantasies. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (1989b). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.
Zizek, S. (2000). The Fragile Absolute. London: Verso.

Couching Politics