39

LACLAU WITH LACAN

Comments on the relation between discourse
theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis

Yannis Stavrakakis1

Source: Umbr(a) A Journal of the Unconscious (2000): 134-153.

Prolegomena
At a recent conference devoted to the relation between Lacan and social
theory, the call for papers presented Ernesto Laclau's work as one of the
prime loci in which this relation becomes articulated.2 Does that mean that
Ernesto Laclau is now fully committed to Lacanian theory and sees his intel-
lectual project as an attempt to demonstrate the importance of Lacan for
sociopolitical analysis and political philosophy in a way similar to that of,
say, Slavoj 2izek?3 In order to start answering this question it is necessary to
examine in some detail the intricacies of Laclau's dialogue with Lacanian
theory since, although all commentators of Laclau recognize the existence
of this dialogue, its exact nature and implications are currently the object of
ongoing debate.
Before exploring the status of this dialogue in detail, however, let me very
briefly address some preliminary "historical" or rather genealogical ques-
tions.4 When did this dialogue start and what is psychoanalysis contributing
to the development of discourse theory? Is it one of its driving forces or a
mere "supplement"? Is it correct to infer, for example, that

Laclau's and Mouffe's project of articulating the complexities of a

postmodern politics would have been just as innovative and compel-
ling without their psychoanalytic metaphors. [Is it true that] The
author's central concepts of articulation, antagonism, and radical
impossibility are not especially enhanced by their recourse to
"Lacanianisms" that although carrying with them a certain provoca-
tive charge, do not possess any further polemical value [?]5

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It seems to me that there are obvious problems with this kind of argument.
First, in Laclau's work the confluence between Lacanian psychoanalysis and
post-marxist discourse theory was envisaged from the beginning as a pro-
ject subverting any simplistic logic of supplementarity. Consider the follow-
ing quote from a paper Laclau published in 1986 and in which he clearly
views this confluence as an enterprise beyond any logic of supplement or
articulation: this is a project "conceivable, neither as the addition of a sup-
plement to the former [post-marxism] from the latter [Lacanian theory] nor
as the introduction of a new causal element—the unconscious instead of
the economy. "6 This confluence, in other words, creates a whole new field in
which new concepts and theoretical logics emerge; concepts and logics
which acquire meaning only within this new terrain and thus are not
reducible to neither of the two poles involved in its creation. One obvious
example is the concept of the nodal point as developed in Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy, a central operational category in discourse theory, a
concept developed at the intersection of Lacanian theory and political
analysis:

Any discourse is constituted as an attempt to dominate the field of

discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a centre.
We will call the privileged discursive points of this partial fixation,
nodal points. (Lacan has insisted on these partial fixations through
his concept of points de capiton, that is, of privileged signifiers that
fix the meaning of a signifying chain. This limitation of the product-
ivity of the signifying chain establishes the positions that make
predication possible—a discourse incapable of generating any fixity
of meaning is the discourse of the psychotic).7

This is not to argue, of course, that during the mid-eighties Lacanian theory
is already the main theoretical reference in Laclau's or Laclau and Mouffe's
work. The relative importance of Lacanian argumentation was to increase in
Laclau's subsequent work and this was something that Bellamy could not of
course predict. In that sense the validity of Bellamy's argument is further
undermined today by the fact that it could not take into account the whole
dialogue that took place after 1985—between Laclau and 2izek for
instance—and which left its distinctive mark in Laclau's work—most not-
ably in New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time (1990), which was
actually published well before the publication of Bellamy's critique, and in
Emancipation(s) (1996). It is really a pity that a detailed critique of Laclau's
work and of its relation to psychoanalysis such as the one staged by
Christopher Lane8 suffers from the same, but this time "self-inflicted,"
limitations—"self-inflicted" in the sense that although he writes five or six
years after Bellamy, and recognizes himself that "Laclau and Mouffe's work
obviously has changed over the course of a decade, and Laclau has recently

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begun to focus on the impact of the unconscious on all forms of politics,

groups, and subjectivity" he nevertheless chooses "without disregarding
Laclau's more recent work . . . to limit... [his]... reading to Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy ,. ."9 This is a pity because as Ernesto Laclau clearly
points out in an interview conducted by D. Zeginis and myself in 1993,
although "Lacanian theory played an important role in . . . [his] theoretical
trajectory at least from the beginning of the eighties . . . this influence has
increased during these last years and led to" a very important redefinition of
some of the categories of his theory of hegemony, a redefinition put forward
in New Reflections.™ Now, whether this redefinition constitutes a radical
"Lacanian shift" in Laclau's work, as Anna Marie Smith argues—a shift
which she seems to consider problematic11—or a mere displacement which
leaves intact the supposed incompatibilities between discourse theory and
psychoanalysis as argued by Sean Homer,12 is something which we hope will
be clarified in the course of this paper.
Having established then, in this introductory section, that a serious and
substantive dialogue does exist between Laclau's work and Lacanian theory
and having sketched a first genealogical map of this dialogue, my aim in the
main body of this paper shall be to discuss the exact nature and the stakes
of this dialogue, addressing at the same time the most important criticisms
that have been directed at this dimension of Laclau's work, that is to say, at
its evolving relation with Lacanian theory. Hopefully the terms of this rela-
tion will become clearer in the process, something which will further permit,
in various stages in my argumentation, the articulation of a set of points on
the relation between Lacanian theory and political analysis in general. I
decided to structure this paper in three sections. The first one attempts a
general but brief presentation of the basic links between discourse theory
and Lacanian psychoanalysis. The second section addresses certain issues
related to Laclau's conception of the political in its relation to the Lacanian
real, while the third addresses the whole problematic of the ethical moment
in Laclau's work. However, one should always keep in mind that my account
is not to be construed as in any way a fixed one. Rather, it represents a kind
of snapshot of the relation as it is currently developing, and this is a relation
whose future form is in no way predetermined. For Laclau's project remains
one of the most original and dynamic interventions in contemporary
political theory, especially in the field in which political theory meets
psychoanalysis.

I
At the outset, I would like to dispel a confusion which accompanies many
discussions of the relation between psychoanalytic theory and socipolitical
analysis. We may approach this issue through the question: "What serves to
unite these two approaches?" The most common but totally misleading

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answer is the following: "But surely, the role of the individual actor in
politics." Such a view has been articulated as a criticism of Laclau's and
MoufFe's work by Jane Bellamy:

In order to render more meaningful their invoking of psychoanalytic

terms Laclau & MoufFe would need to be more specific about the
precise nature of the intersection between the social . . . and the
psychic which however fragmented, alienated and deconstructed is
surely a major factor in the implementing of political actions. Their
use of psychoanalytic terms to further elucidate certain ideological
and political phenomena is too broadly deployed to allow for a con-
sideration of the individual psyche as a factor in the operations of
ideology.13

Here, I would like to question the conception of "individual psyche" that

Bellamy has in mind. For her formulation seems to betray a certain resist-
ance to giving up an ultimately essentialist perspective.
What must be emphasized at this point is that, at least for Lacan, this
psyche is nothing other than the pure substanceless subject as lack. Lacan is
extremely clear in this respect:

in the term subject... I am not designating the living substratum

needed by this phenomenon of the subject, nor any sort of sub-
stance, nor any being possessing knowledge in his pathos, his suf-
fering, whether primal or secondary, nor even some incarnated
logos.14

According to Lacan, then, the subject is not some sort of individual psycho-
logical substratum that can be reduced to its own representation. Once this
is granted the way is open to develop an alternative definition of subjectivity.
If there is an essence in the Lacanian subject it is precisely "the lack of
essence."15 The object of Lacanian psychoanalysis is not the individual, it is
not man. It is what he is lacking.16 It is lack then which is revealed as the
defining mark of subjectivity.
Laclau is taking very seriously this insight in his anti-essentialist con-
ceptualization of political subjectivity. In fact, as a result of his dialogue
with Slavoj 2izek during the late eighties there has been a shift in his con-
ception of subjectivity from Hegemony (where subjectivity is understood in
terms of subject positions) to New Reflections (where the subject as lack
becomes dominant). In Laclau's own words in Hegemony\ "as Slavoj 2izek
has correctly pointed out, there was a tendency of reducing the subject to a
'subject position* (a structuralist conception). Today I tend to distinguish
between objective subject positions and the subject as the subject of
lack."17 Contrary to what Bellamy implies it is this appropriation of the

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Lacanian conception of the subject as lack which gives Laclau the

opportunity of reaching a more sophisticated mapping of political action
beyond any psychological essentialism or reductionism. But why exactly
is that?

First of all because it is lack which makes necessary the constitution of every
identity through a process of identification linking thus inexorably the sub-
jective level to the objective. It seems that Laclau realizes that by introducing
the conception of the subject as lack, and by recognizing the constitutive
split marking subjectivity (the Ich Spaltung), Freudo-Lacanian psycho-
analysis not only radicalizes our understanding of the subject in politics, but
offers a coherent account of the relation between the subjective and the
objective orders, the latter of which pertains to the level of the social. What
permits this confluence is that analytic theory is not only concerned with lack
but also with what attempts to fill this lack and always ends up reproducing
it: "Psychoanalysis is otherwise directed at the effect of discourse within the
subject."18 Here, not only discourse theory meets Lacan but Lacan meets
discourse theory—an encounter he would conclude with his theory of the
four discourses. From this point of view, as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy
have put it, "there is no subject according to Lacan which is not always
already a social subject."19
The key term for understanding this relation between the subjective and
the objective is, of course, "the psychoanalytic category of identification,
with its explicit assertion of a lack at the root of any identity: one needs to
identify with something because there is an originary and insurmountable
lack of identity."20 By locating thus at the place previously assigned to an
essence of the individual psyche a constitutive lack, Lacanian theory avoids
the essentialist reductionism of the social to the individual level and opens
the road to the confluence of psychoanalysis and sociopolitical analysis
since this lack can only be (partially) filled by sociopolitical objects of
identification.
But what is even more important is that Laclau does not remain content
with this schema. In my view he senses that the importance of Lacanian
theory for sociopolitical analysis cannot be reduced to this, albeit important,
subjective level, nor even to the relation between the subject and the social
grasped through the concept of identification. Lacanian theory is equally
concerned with the objective level, the level of the object of identification per
se (Lacanian categories such as the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary
encompass the whole of human experience and not only the so-called "sub-
jective" level, and, of course, concepts such as fantasy, the Other and object
petit a display thoroughly "objective" logics without leading, however, to any
kind of objectivism.) In actual fact, the more insightful suggestion that
Lacan makes with respect to the realm of the objective-social, concerns what
he calls the lack in the Other. As 2izek has put it,

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the most radical dimension of Lacanian theory lies not in recogniz-

ing ["that the Lacanian subject is divided, crossed-out, identical to a
lack in a signifying chain"] but in realizing that the big Other, the
symbolic order itself, is also bane, crossed-out, by a fundamental
impossibility, structured around an impossible/traumatic kernel,
around a central lack.21

The lack in the big Other is the big secret of psychoanalysis, as Lacan calls it
already from his 1958-59 Seminar Something is always missing in the Other;
there is no Other of the Other. The structure of the Other is revealed as a
certain void, the void of its lack of guarantee in the real. Meaning is always
based on semblance; precisely because "there is no last word"; meaning
always indicates the direction toward its failure,22 its failure to anchor itself
on the real. In that sense, it becomes legitimate to argue that Lacan's major
contribution to contemporary theory is "a new picture of the social."23 The
social field is revealed as a discursive field of representation which is articu-
lated on the basis of the repression, the exclusion, the reduction, of an ultim-
ately unrepresentable real; a real which is however resurfacing, making thus
visible the irreducible failure inscribed at the heart of the Other of meaning:
"there is a fault, hole or loss therein [in the Other]."24 Now, where does
Laclau fit in all this?25
What I want to argue is that this lack in the Other effectively translates
into the split character of every object of identification—what Laclau has
described as the ultimate impossibility of society. In a 1983 paper character-
istically entitled "The Impossibility of Society" he argues that "society . . . as
a unitary and intelligible object which grounds its own partial processes is an
impossibility."26 If for Lacan the Woman does not exist, for Laclau Society
does not exist. It does not exist as a given, necessary, extra-discursive founda-
tion, as the depository of fullness and universality; it is only produced as an
object of discourse through processes of identification which attempt to
suture its lack of foundation in the real.
My reference to the concept of suture in the previous paragraph was not
coincidental; it highlights another conceptual link between discourse theory
and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Suture is used by Laclau and Mouffe as
developed by Jacques-Alain Miller and as it implicitly operates in Lacanian
theory in general. It designates a structure of irreducible lack but also high-
lights the continuous attempt to fill this lack:

It is this double movement that we will attempt to stress in our

extension of the concept of suture to the field of politics. Hegemonic
practices are suturing insofar as their field of operation is deter-
mined by the openness of the social, by the ultimately unfixed
character of every signifier. This original lack is precisely what the
hegemonic practices try to fill in. A totally sutured society would be

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one where this filling-in would have reached its ultimate con-
sequences and would have, therefore, managed to identify itself with
the transparency of a closed symbolic order. Such a closure of the
social is . . . impossible.27

For Laclau then society is impossible because the full Other is impossible.
Politics comprise all our fantasmatic attempts tofill-inthis lack in the Other:
"although the fullness and universality of society is unachievable, its need
does not disappear: it will always show itself through the presence of its
absence."28 If, in other words, the full closure of the Other is impossible this
does not mean that it is not signified through its own absence. This is how
empty signifiers are produced—a concept which has acquired central
importance in Laclau's recent texts. The articulation of a hegemonically
appealing political discourse can only take place around an empty signifier
functioning as a nodal point, a point de capiton. Consider, for example, a
situation of radical disorder and social disintegration. As Laclau points out:

in a situation of radical disorder "order" is present as that which is

absent [but desired; it has, in other words, an objet petit a quality]; it
becomes an empty signifier, as the signifier of this absence. In this
sense, various political forces can compete in their efforts to present
their particular objectives as those which carry out thefillingof that
lack. To hegemonize something is exactly to carry out this filling
function.29

We used the paradigm of order but signifiers like "unity," "revolution" etc.
can function in a similar way: "Any term which, in a certain political context
becomes the signifier of the lack, plays the same role. Politics is possible
because the constitutive impossibility of society can only represent itself
through the production of empty signifiers." (ibid.)

II
In a review article for a Greek journal,30 and also in his contribution to a
volume that was recently published in German,31 Thanos Lipowatz stages
a critique of E. Laclau's project which is articulated within the context of a
certain psychoanalytic framework.32 As I understand it, Lipowatz's primary
objection is that Ernesto Laclau overstresses the importance of the political
(and of the related elements of antagonism and contingency) to the point
that the political acquires in Laclau's discourse an absolute, omnipotent, and
thus imaginary status.33 In order to help diffuse this misunderstanding, it
might be useful to distinguish between, on the one hand, a theorist's decision
to explore the dimension of the political (recognizing at the same time its
interaction with other dimensions of our experience) and, on the other, the

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attribution to the political of such an imaginary status. For it is apparent

that, in E. Laclau's work, the political is always explored in its relation to the
social, the level of sedimented practices and institutions (i.e. the level of
social construction).34 For him, the political is the moment in which the
social is disrupted, thereby ushering in new identificatory attempts to re-
institute it by means of imaginary/symbolic rearticulations (played out in the
context of hegemonic struggles attempting to suture the lack in the Other).
The moment of the political is always examined in relation to the order of
the social it dislocates and to the new social order articulated as a result of
its irruption. In that sense, the political is never omnipotent, nor absolute.
If Laclau's work focuses on the intricacies of the political dimension this
is because this dimension has been historically repressed in theoretical
discourse by various forms of social essentialism.
To be more precise, Lipowatz's criticism regarding the use of the political
is twofold. He argues that, by overstressing the political, Laclau neglects two
other dimensions: (1) The material infrastructure of society, the economy,
as well as other distinctive discursive domains (the cultural dimension etc.).
(2) The ethical dimension. I will deal with thefirstcriticism in this part of the
paper and I shall leave the second one for the final part. In these two parts
of my paper Lipowatz's argumentation will also serve as a general frame
permitting the discussion of other critical readings of Laclau's project in its
relation to Lacanian theory.
I have the impression that thefirstcriticism is based on a confusion which
can be easily resolved, and which can be traced either to a misunderstanding
by Lipowatz of the concept of the political in E. Laclau's work, or to a
disagreement in the manner in which it is deployed. Lipowatz seems to con-
ceive the political in the traditional sense, as one discourse among others (the
religious, the economic etc.) and is thus led to the conclusion that, in
Laclau's work, the importance of this discourse is overstressed in relation to
all the others. But the political, as understood by Laclau, is quite definitively
not a discourse. What we find at the discursive level, the level of the social
(which includes all the discursive domains mentioned by Lipowatz) is what
we usually call politics, that is to say, ideological discourses, political institu-
tions, etc. The political, on the other hand, is outside (but always in inter-
action with, and thus "inside") this socially constructed field. The political is
what disrupts this discursive field and leads to its continuous rearticulation.
Hence, in Laclau, the moment of the political and the space of the social
(incorporating various discursivefieldsincluding our religious, economic and
political constructions) belong to distinct and incommensurable orders.
In mainstream political science, for instance, politics and political reality
are associated with citizenship, elections, the particular forms of political
representation and the various ideological families. Politics is conceived as
constituting a separate system, the political system, and is expected to stay
within the boundaries of this system: people, that is to say, politicians, social

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scientists and citizens, expect to find politics in the arenas prescribed for it in
the hegemonic discourse of liberal democracies (these arenas being the par-
liament, parties, trade unions etc.), and also expect it to be performed by the
accordingly sanctioned agents.35 Although this well-ordered picture is lately
starting to show signs of disintegration, with the politicization of areas pre-
viously located outside the political system, politics can only be represented
in spatial terms, as a set of practices and institutions, as a system, albeit an
expanding one. Politics is identical to political reality and political reality,
as all reality, is, firstly, constituted at the symbolic level, and, secondly,
supported by fantasy.
Not surprisingly then, it is one of the most exciting developments in con-
temporary political theory, and one strongly promoted by theorists such as
Laclau and Mouffe, that the political is not defined as reducible to this dis-
cursive field of politics: "The political cannot be restricted to a certain type
of institution, or envisaged as constituting a specific sphere or level of
society. It must be conceived as a dimension that is inherent to every human
society and that determines our very ontological condition."36 When we limit
our scope within politics we are attempting a certain domestication/
spatialization of the political, we move our attention from the political per se
(as the moment of the disruption and undecidability governing the
reconstruction of social objectivity) to the discursively constructed field of
politics and "society" (defined as the result of this construction and
reconstruction, as the sedimented forms of objectivity).37 This sedimentation
of political reality (as a part or a subsystem of the social) requires a forget-
ting of origins, a forgetting of the contingent force of dislocation which
stands at its foundation; it requires the symbolic and fantasmatic reduction
of the real. In fact, with reference to Lacanian theory, Laclau's work permits
the following conclusion: the political seems to acquire a position closely
related to that of the Lacanian real; one cannot but be struck by the fact that
the political is revealed as a particular modality of the real: the political
becomes one of the forms in which one encounters the real.
Let me sum up some of the ideas presented up to now in this paper.
Underlying Lacan's importance for political theory and political analysis is
his insistence on the spilt, lacking nature of the symbolic, of the socio-
political world per se, what becomes in Laclau's work the ultimate impossi-
bility of society. Our societies are never harmonious ensembles. This is only
the fantasy through which they attempt to constitute and reconstitute them-
selves, to suture their constitutive impossibility. Experience shows that this
fantasmatic desire can never be fully realized. No social fantasy can fill the
lack around which society is always structured. This lack is re-emerging with
every resurfacing of the political, with every encounter with the real. In
Laclau's vocabulary, we can speak about the political exactly because there is
subversion and dislocation of the social (including the field of politics). The
level of social construction, of human creativity, of the emergence and

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development of socio-political institutions, is the level in which the possibil-

ity of mastering the real makes itself visible but only to be revealed as a
chimera unable to foreclose a moment of impossibility that always returns to
its place. Given this context, the moment of the political should be under-
stood as emerging at the intersection of our symbolic reality with this real,
the impossible real being the ontological horizon of every play between
political articulation and dislocation, order and disorder, politics and the
political.38
Let us return now to the critique of Lipowatz. Lipowatz is particularly
insistent that by overstressing the political Laclau neglects the level of the
economy. He suggests that Laclau's radical critique of economism leads him,
improperly, to privilege the political over the economy. In fact, his argument
is articulated in a rather traditional way—one which highlights the
"material" infrastructure of the economy as something that limits the polit-
ical. The same confusion to which I referred earlier is at work here. Laclau is
in no way a solipsist. In fact, Laclau is arguing that this material element is
present and always articulated in our discourses, discourses that are not
reduced to a "combination of speech and writing" but are seen as incorpor-
ating "both linguistic and non-linguistic elements,"39 a move reminiscent of
Lacan's insistence on the materiality of the signifies This is not only true of
the economy but of all discursive fields. And while it may be true that the
economy may limit our political discourses, the discursively constructed field
of politics (and vice versa) within a framework of discursive interaction,
the economic space itself as a discursive construction40 is always subject
to the structural causality of the political; it is limited by the political qua
encounter with the real.
Our economic constructions, systems, and institutions are themselves sub-
ject to disruptions and dislocations and are always rearticulated through
hegemonic and not algorithmic processes governed by "matter" itself (as if it
were possible to gain direct, unmediated access to it). Indeed, it woxild seem
that Lipowatz himself accepts this fact when he speaks about the interven-
tion of the real in economic life, equating it with the moment of dislocation
or crisis of an economic system which leads to the formation of a new eco-
nomic order. This fact can mean two different things. Lipowatz suspects that
it means that the real is not present only in the political but also in the life of
economic discourses. This is, of course, true if we understand the political in
the traditional sense as only another discourse (reducing it thus to politics).
There exists, however, a second logical possibility which is exactly what we
find articulated in Laclau's work: as we have already pointed out, the polit-
ical, far from being imaginary, is a certain way of approaching, of encircling,
the real and the structural causality that it instantiates vis-a-vis all discursive
fields, including the economy. In this view, therefore, Lipowatz's example
about the presence of the real in the economic space, instead of forming the
basis of a critique, in fact serves to vindicate Laclau's argumentation.

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Indeed, I would like to suggest that this line of approach reveals some com-
mon ground shared by the two theorists that could serve as the basis of
further dialogue.
This is not to say, however, that Lipowatz's argument is wholly misplaced.
It is true, for example, that the use of the concept of antagonism in Hege-
mony and Socialist Strategy implies an antagonistic relation between two
forces that fight the imaginary (fantasmatic) construction of each other. In
that sense, an emphasis on antagonism as the defining moment of the polit-
ical may be construed as privileging the imaginary dimension. The concept
of antagonism thus seems, by its very nature, open to such a criticism. This
was pointed out by £izek who, in "Beyond Discourse Analysis,"41 attempted
to solve it by distinguishing the radical-real antagonism from the common-
place meaning of antagonism which clearly does not correspond to, and is
not consistent with, Laclau and Mouffe's intuition: "We must then dis-
tinguish the experience of antagonism in its radical form, as a limit of the
social, as the impossibility around which the social field is structured, from
antagonism as the relation between antagonistic subject-positions: in Laca-
nian terms, we must distinguish antagonism as real from the social reality of
the antagonistic fight."(253)
Ernesto Laclau himself went even further in his attempt to remedy this
problem. In the same interview to which I referred earlier (given under the
auspices of the Greek journal DIAVAZO) he points out that:

There was a certain ambiguity in the way the category of antagonism

was formulated in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Today I
believe that the constitution of the other as antagonistic already
presupposes a certain discursive inscription—in other words con-
ceiving the other as an enemy presupposes a prior identification of
ourselves with a particular position within the framework of the
Symbolic order [It also presupposes, in most cases, the imaginary-
fantasmatic construction of both antagonistic poles]. That's why
in my more recent work I moved my attention to the category of
"dislocation" as a level prior to that of "antagonism."42

Indeed the introduction of the category of "dislocation" in New Reflec-

tions as a central—perhaps the central—concept in Laclau's theoretical cor-
pus constitutes a major breakthrough which not only deals with Lipowatz's
concerns but clearly signals a turn in Laclau's work which brings him even
closer to Lacanian theory; and this because dislocation, by replacing
antagonism as the kernel of the political, can only be understood as an
encounter with the Lacanian real par excellence. Both are unrepresentable;
both are at the same time traumatic/disruptive and productive. Dislocations
are traumatic in the sense that they "threaten identities" and they are pro-
ductive in the sense that they serve as "the foundation on which new identities

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are constituted."43 Similarly, the traumatic real always disrupts all attempts at
symbolization; and yet it never ceases to call for new symbolizations. It is
clear that the emergence of this concept of real dislocation as the kernel of
the political is one of the most important products of Laclau's dialogue with
psychoanalysis and one which directly links his argument on the impossibility
of society with the irreducibility of the real in Lacanian discourse.
If our account is accurate, if that is to say, dislocation qua encounter with
the impossible real functions, in Laclau's work, as both the cause and the
limit of social identity formation, then it is extremely difficult if not impos-
sible to see why Sean Homer still attempts to reduce Laclau's argument to a
negotiation of subject positioning which neglects "the subject's relationship
with the real itself."44 If however Homer criticizes Laclau on the grounds that
he remains attached to a supposedly non-Lacanian post-structuralist mode
of argumentation, others make exactly the opposite argument. Laclau has
become too Lacanian for their taste. This "suspicion" has created a lot of
confusion, especially among those who had already categorized Laclau
as a "Derridean." Many scholars seem overly keen, yet unable, to discern
Laclau's loyalty. In the final instance, so the operative question goes, is he
loyal to Derrida or to Lacan?
Needless to say, this is usually played out as a zero-sum game. Derridean
and Lacanian theories seem to some academics as totally incompatible
bodies of thought; what is also considered as an impossible task is to work
simultaneously with both of them—which is clearly Laclau's choice. Judith
Butler for example cannot see how it is possible to articulate the Derridean
idea of the "constitutive outside" with the Lacanian logic of lack. It is true
of course that Laclau's conception of identity makes use of both these
insights. Thus, in New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time, he refers to
the Derridean idea that "an identity's constitution is always based on exclud-
ing something and establishing a violent hierarchy between the two resultant
poles [man/woman, black/white etc.]" according to which "the second term is
thus reduced to the function of accident [to a mere supplement], as opposed
to the essentiality of thefirst."45Here, the whole point of the deconstructive
move is to show that the excluded pole is, in fact, a "constitutive outside,"
that the accident is essential/necessary for the constitution of the identity of
any essence, of any totalizing political discourse. Consequently, every iden-
tity is split since exclusion, the condition of its possibility, is also its condi-
tion of impossibility. In his work in the nineties Laclau tends to approach
this split through Lacanian theory. As I have tried to show, identity construc-
tion is understood as a process of identification in the psychoanalytic sense
of the term presupposing a "truly constitutive lack."46 This interimplication
of Derrida and Lacan is exactly what seems to confuse Butler: "If the "out-
side" is, as Laclau insists, linked to the Derridean logic of the supplement,47
then it is unclear what moves must be taken to make it compatible with the
Lacanian logic of "lack."

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For Butler the problem is that while the supplement is "outside" of posited
identity but inside the field of the social, the Lacanian real (which is directly
related to the logic of lack) "is permanently outside the social as such" and
thus outside the scope of socio-political analysis.48 Butler's point raises an
important issue regarding the blend of Derridean and Lacanian theory in
Laclau's work. It also raises more general issues such as the relation between
the "inside" and the "outside" and the status of the real in contemporary
theorization. Hence it deserves our immediate attention. I can think of three
ways to address Butler's point; they are the following:
1. The first one has to do with her representation of the difference
between the Derridean and the Lacanian moment in connection to Laclau's
political theory. Simply put, in Laclau's work, contrary to what Butler's
point implies, it is evident that the Derridean logic of the constitutive outside
is understood as stressing the "outside" quality much more than the Laca-
nian logic of lack and of the objet petit a do. The constitutive outside "is an
'outside' which blocks the identity of the 'inside' (and is, nonetheless, the
prerequisite for its constitution at the same time)"; here "denial does not
originate from the 'inside' of identity itself but, in its most radical sense,
from outside."49 In Laclau's more recent texts the main focus is the, so to
speak, "internal" conditions of possibility for the constitution of meaning
and identity formations. What would surprise Butler is that to do that Laclau
turns to Lacanian theory, precisely because the real limits of the symbolic are
shown "internally": "any system of signification is structured around an
empty place resulting from the impossibility of producing an object which,
none the less, is required by the systematicity of the system."50 For Laclau,
and here the Lacanian influence becomes even more explicit, this impossibil-
ity is a real impossibility51 while the impossible object embodying the absent
systematicity of the system is "Jacques Lacan's objet petit a" an object pres-
ent within the socio-symbolic field "through its absence."52 In other words,
the limits Butler attributes to Lacanian and Derridean theory vis-a-vis their
negotiation of the "inside" or the "outside" can be easily displaced with
effects which seem disruptive for her either/or argument. In fact, it is this
either/or mode of argumentation itself which has to be problematized now.
2. The second problem then with Butler's argument—which directly
follows from the first—is her strict differentiation between the logic of
the "inside" and the logic of the "outside" irrespective of which of the two
poles is attributed to Lacan or to Derrida. This is also a central point in
Linda Zerilli's much more sophisticated negotiation of Laclau's relation to
Lacanian theory.53 Zerilli argues that while in Lacanian theory the limits of
identity are internal, in poststructuralism the antagonistic limit of every
identity is an external limit: "every identity encounters opposition in the
form of other identities, other perspectives and opinions."54 As we have seen,
this seems to be a quite accurate mapping of the theoretical terrain on which
Laclau's argument operates. Now, although Zerilli does not totally discard

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the relevance of the Lacanian "internal" limits, it is clear from her argumen-
tation that she considers the external limits more important and certainly
closer to Laclau's schema. That's why she seems puzzled with Laclau's posi-
tive reception of 2izek's point regarding the priority of the internal limits;55
according to her interpretation Laclau's argument clearly presupposes the
priority of the external limits.
What I want to suggest at this point is that this strict differentiation
between the "inside" and the "outside," the "internal" and the "external," in
all its different forms—some of them being more justified than others—is
made possible by the foreclosure of the whole field of Lacanian theorization
that focuses on the question of extimiti (external intimacy). Far from simply
playing this zero-sum game by conveniently occupying one of the two poles
of the supposed antithesis, Lacanian theory attempts to subvert the whole
opposition: the neologisms extimite "expresses the way in which psycho-
analysis problematizes the opposition between inside and outside.... For
example the real is just as much inside as outside."56 The limits imposed by
the real—a real which always remains outside the symbolicfield—areshown
internally, are marking this symbolic from within. To this point we will
return shortly. For the time being let us just observe that already from the
early eighties Laclau and Mouffe seem aware of this paradoxical link
between the internal and the external and thus it is not legitimate to reduce
their position to the priority of the external limits. For example in Hegemony
they argue that although "strictly speaking, antagonisms are not internal but
external to society,"57 "the limit of the social must be given within the social
itself as something subverting it, destroying its ambition to constitute a full
presence.
In my third point I will try to show that the Lacanian real is the only thing
that matches Laclau's (and Mouffe's) description, the only thing which albeit
radically external has the force to disrupt the social internally. Before doing
that, however, I suspect that we can now formulate a significant conclusion.
What is generally ignored when Laclau's link to Derridean and Lacanian
theories is reduced to a zero-sum game is a third possibility: that Laclau is
neither Derridean nor Lacanian but mostly Laclauian. After all, Laclau's
theoretical and political trajectory begins before the poststructuralist revolu-
tion and the dynamic emergence in the humanities of Lacanian discourse. It
is his peculiar theoretical and political adventure that leads Laclau to the
elaboration of certain conclusions and to the articulation of specific ques-
tions which create the conditions for a meaningful dialogue with both
Derridean and Lacanian theories—but also with other philosophical and
theoretical traditions. Needless to say, this dialogue has been productive both
for Laclau's work—which centers around the development of a contempor-
ary post-foundational political theory of hegemony—and for research
related to both thefieldsof Deconstruction and Lacanianism and there is no
obvious reason why one should restrict the openness of this dialogue—at

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least there is none presented in Butler's or Zerilli's argument. Of course there

is no doubt that within the framework of this dialogue the relative gravity of
Lacanian theory is gradually increasing but this fact cannot be interpreted
according to a zero-sum logic.
3. As I have tried to show, the whole relation between the "inside" and the
"outside" is directly linked to the status one attributes to the Lacanian real.
In fact, Butler's point is founded on a misrepresentation of the relation
between the symbolic and the real in Lacanian theory. In a nutshell she seems
unable to see that while lack exists because the real is not reducible to the
symbolic—exactly because it constitutes an exteriority—this does not mean
that lack belongs to the unrepresentable real; lack is marking the symbolic
internally, arising at its intersection with the real. In fact, it is necessary to
address this point at the most basic level; I suspect that we can do that by
turning to another objection raised by Judith Butler in connection to the
status of the real and our symbolic use of it in theoretical discourse. If
Laclau's argument is related to the Lacanian logic of the real then it is
important to address this point and examine his response to it.
Butler argues that "to claim that the real resists symbolization is still to
symbolize the real as a kind of resistance. The former claim (the real resists
symbolization) can only be true if the latter claim ('the real resists symboliza-
tion' is a symbolization) is true, but if the second claim is true, the first is
necessarily false."59 What Butler is in fact reiterating here is the well known
paradox of Epimenides who, as a Cretan himself, claimed that "All Cretans
are liars." If this statement is true then he is also a liar but if he is a liar then
his statement cannot be true. In both cases the paradox is irresolvable. Yet,
what these paradoxes point to is exactly the real lack in our symbolic media,
the real limits of any process of symbolic signification and resolution. And
although we can never symbolize the real in itself, it is possible to encircle
(even in a metaphorical way) the limits it poses to signification and represen-
tation. Although it is impossible to touch the real, it is possible to encircle its
impossibility, exactly because this impossibility is always emerging within a
symbolization. Hence Lacan's position: "I always speak the truth. Not the
whole truth, because there's no way to say it all. Saying it all is literally
impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth
holds onto the real."60 Beyond the imaginary ideal of absolute knowledge,
"Truth is nothing other than that which knowledge can apprehend as know-
ledge only by setting its ignorance to work."61
In that sense, Butler's claim is rather misleading because the statement
"the real resists symbolization" is not a symbolization of the real per se but
a symbolic expression of the limits it poses, a recognition of its structural
causality as it is revealed in its relation to the world of symbolization.62 In
this light, if the question is "How do we know that the real resists symboliza-
tion in the first place?" the answer must be "Exactly because this resistance,
this limit of symbolization, is shown within the level of symbolization itself."

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Psychoanalysis is based on the idea that the real is shown in certain effects
persisting in discourse. As Laclau has put it, there is no direct way of signify-
ing the limits of signification "the real, if you want, in the Lacanian sense—
. . . except through the subversion of the process of signification itself. We
know, through psychoanalysis, how what is not directly representable—the
unconscious—can only find as a means of representation the subversion of
the signifying process."63
But Butler's point entails one more misunderstanding. It seems to imply
that Lacanian discourse elevates the real to the status of a Taboot Here
iiiek's formulation a propos of historical analysis is very important: "Lacan
is as far as it is possible to be from any 'tabooing* of the real, from elevating
it into an untouchable entity exempted from historical analysis—his point,
rather, is that the only true ethical stance is to assume fully the impossible
task of symbolizing the real, inclusive of its necessary failure."64 In the face
of the irreducibility of the real we have no other option but to symbolize; but
such a symbolization can take at least two forms: (1) a fantasmatic one which
will attempt to repress the real and to eliminate once and for all its structural
causality. Psychoanalysis favors the second and more complex one: (2) the
articulation of symbolic constructs that will attempt to encircle the real
limits of the symbolic. Moreover, this is by no means wishful thinking, for
democratic discourse is one example of such a move to which I will devote
thefinalpart of this paper.

in
We can move now to address Lipowatz's second fear, that is to say, that
Laclau neglects the ethical dimension, and that the primacy he attributes to
the political, with all its contingent and "negative" connotations leads to a
relativism or a nihilism that endangers every democratic project. First of all,
it has to be stated that in no way is Laclau neglecting the moment of ethics,
especially in the context of his radical democratic project.65 Thefinalchapter
of Hegemony as well as a number of his papers, including "God Only
Knows"66 and "Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity,"67
to name just a few, are especially concerned with these issues. Thus, the only
way to make sense of Lipowatz's point is to read it as a disagreement with
the particular way that Laclau deals with these issues. Lipowatz's fear seems
to be that by stressing the irreducibility and constitutivity of the political and
the contingent Laclau demolishes every rational foundation for ethics and
democracy thus endangering its future prospects.
Similar points have been made by Bellamy and Butler. Bellamy's concern
is articulated at the subjective level: "Can certain forms of political com-
promise (a collective 'we' that must be formed out of diversity and conflict)
be usefully characterized as the overcoming of psychic conflict . . . ?"68
Butler's concern is articulated at the social level. Her fear is that stressing the

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irreducibility and constitutivity of "antagonism" (or, more properly, "dis-

location" qua encounter with the real) may "preclude the very possibility of
a future rearticulation of that boundary which is central to the democratic
project that Zizek, Laclau and Mouffe promote."69 The fear behind all these
statements is common; it is that the stress on the political and dislocation,
precludes the possibility of presenting a more or less stable (present or
future) ground for ethics and democracy, that it undermines their universal
character and the possibility of any final reconciliation either at the subject-
ive or at the social level.
Now, it is true that for Laclau such a reconciliation is impossible. No
ethical project, not even democracy, is guaranteed in advance. But this is a
pragmatic, political, and also theoretical, recognition substantiated by our
long-term historical experience. It is not an ethical point per se; and yet, no
adequate ethics can be formulated without its acknowledgement. In that
sense, Laclau does not neglect the ethical element, nor the importance of
democracy; rather, he attempts to ground both on the recognition of the
political, of the central impossibility of the social.70 This is an ethics articu-
lated not around a certain conception of the Good (which in traditional
ethical discourse is conceived as guaranteed in advance, thus masking the
central impossibility of the social) but around real lack. The ethical stand-
point that underlies Laclau's work seems to be very close to what Zizek has
called an "ethics of the real." The ethics of the real entails a recognition of
the irreducibility of the real and an attempt to institutionalize social lack.
Thus it might be possible to achieve an institution of the social field beyond
the fantasy of closure which has been proven so problematic, if not cata-
strophic. In other words, the best way to symbolize the social might be
one which recognizes the ultimate impossibility around which it is always
structured.
This "celebration" by Laclau of society's ultimate impossibility caught
Chris Lane's attention in the article published in the Journal for the Psycho-
analysis of Culture and Society that I mentioned earlier.71 Although he is
mainly referring to Laclau's work in the eighties some of his points still
require a certain attention. First of all Lane doesn't seem to be questioning
the descriptive part of Laclau's argument. He too acknowledges that "alien-
ation [and the impossibility of cohesion] may be subjectivity's condition par
excellence." (117) He also concedes that the demand for cohesion and social
harmony is but an unrealistic fantasy. His problem with Laclau's argumenta-
tion is Laclau's decision to value (in an ethical sense) and promote the
recognition of the real of society, of the impossibility around which it is
structured: Why "does the left continue to advance contingency and alien-
ation as if both were not simply a psychic condition par excellence but also a
reason for celebration? Why does the argument that society is radically
incomplete and now alarmingly fraying generate a certain optimism[?]"(116)
According to my reading Lane is questioning the value of recognizing the

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effects and the structural causality of the real in society. But what are his
reasons for doing so?
For Lane, Laclau's argumentation does not clarify "what is psychologic-
ally at stake in accepting society's impossibility, a premise which, taken ser-
iously, may be intolerable for the most theoretically informed subject and
surely traumatic for many political activists"(107). Furthermore, as "the
condition of accepting incompletion is for many quite intolerable"(115) it
follows that "the benefits of using politics to expound this alienation seem
. . . strategically doubtful. "(117) In other words although Laclau's descrip-
tion is true and the recognition of the impossibility of society is possible
(even according to Lane it is not impossible for all of us but only for many of
us) it should be abandoned because and only because it is difficult, because it
does not engender "social satisfaction"(108); because it goes against certain
psychic and social forces that constitute our present status quo, forces that
resist political transformation (108). Going against them "entails a psychic
labor that is debilitating to—and perhaps incommensurate with—the present
organization of society" (115). But is this difficulty a reason sufficient
enough to lead us to conformism, to the identification with the "eternal"
foundations of the present status quo, to the legitimization of the foreclosure
of the real of society? I believe not.
First of all this status quo is equally intolerable and unjust, the pursuit of
harmony and satisfaction around which it is structured cannot eliminate the
encounters with the real which, faced with such rigid fantasies, takes the
form of violent eruptions (from this point of view Auschwitz and the Gulags
are but results of this play between the real and the pursuit of Harmony, and
Lane is mistaken when he argues that "we cannot assume that embracing
radical democracy . . . will . . . lessen political turmoil"(116) although this
cannot be guaranteed in advance). It may not be easy, and Laclau never said
it would be, but the status quo has to be changed and can be changed.
Historical transformation is possible and it is unfair to use Lacan in order to
prove it impossible, especially as he firmly opposed any idea of adaptation
that he saw as reducing psychoanalysis to an instrument of social control, as
a complete betrayal of psychoanalysis regarded as an essentially subversive
practice.72
As Dylan Evans argues in a recent article published in Radical Philosophy,
Lacan warns us against the tendency to eternalize present-day situations.
Besides, although, on the one hand, "Lacan's admonitions about the dangers
of seeing the present in the past can equally serve to warn us of the difficul-
ties involved in imagining the future," on the other hand, "the impossibility
of mapping out the future according to some grand metahistorical narrative
might lead, not to political inaction, but to a series of intelligently fought
tactical battles."73 Isn't that exactly what Ernesto Laclau is also trying to do?
Moving beyond the metahistorical catastrophic narrative of harmony
towards an ethics of the recognition of the irreducibility of the real? Of

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course such an ethics is situated, so to speak, beyond the pleasure principle,

and although it does not produce a satisfaction compatible with the present
organization of desire it is nevertheless based on the psychoanalytic assump-
tion that there can be an ethically satisfactory position to be achieved in
encircling the real, the lack as such,74 instead of attempting to bypass it in an
imaginary/fantasmatic way (following the footsteps of the failed strategies of
traditional ethical discourse). Besides, and this is something that Lane
doesn't take into account, even if this ethical project goes against the socially
acceptable phallic enjoyment (jouissance) entailed in filling the lack around
which our world is structured, Lacan, towards the end of his teaching,
speaks of another jouissance—female or feminine jouissance—which values
this lack per se as something that entails a different kind of enjoyment.
This whole ethical standpoint is evident in Laclau's democratic project.
Here, the lack in the Other, the impossibility of the social, is approached
through the irreducible gap between the need for a universal point of refer-
ence (i.e., for a force which acts in the name of the whole community, thus
symbolically instituting society as a more or less coherent whole) and the
particularism of all social forces.75 This gap, far from being an "un-ethical"
obstacle to achieving democracy, is exactly what makes democracy possible:
"the recognition of the constitutive nature of this gap and its political insti-
tutionalization is the starting point of modern democracy."76 It is this recog-
nition that makes democracy ethically superior and differentiates it from
other fantasmatic, that is to say, potentially "totalitarian" political myths
(the democratic institution of elections, for example, provides society with a
needed uniting guiding force without, however, recognizing in that force a
source of final or even long term harmony, and this is how "a society that is
impossible . . . produces . . . coherent political strategy or a collective will."
(LANE: 110). But, and this is worth stressing, this "superiority" does not, and
cannot, guarantee its future hegemony. Just as Derrida has argued that
"incalculable justice requires us to calculate."77 So too the ethics of a real
democracy requires constant struggle and resolve.
On the other hand democracy is not a political Utopia, we see it function-
ing around us, we can see arrangements that institutionalize social lack (in a
lesser or greater extent) functioning around us and it is our ethical duty to
help them hegemonize the social terrain. It is at this point that strategy
comes into play. Strategy, contrary to what is revealed in Lane's 1996 argu-
mentation, is not here to help us accept and legitimize a status quo that we
consider, and with good reasons, dangerous, unjust, fantasmatic, and
unethical. It is here to help us change it. Lane doesn't seem to understand
that this change which is entailed in Laclau's radical democratic project has
nothing to do with "the myth of a common culture" (112). He even asks: "to
what extent are advocates of 'radical democracy' able or willing to entertain
the profound argument that 'emancipation,' representing the free and har-
monious coexistence of diverse individuals and groups, is psychoanalytically

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impossible?" (110). Isn't this the wrong question to ask someone who, four
years earlier, has concluded an article entitled "Beyond Emancipation"
with the following words: "we can perhaps say that today we are at the end
of emancipation and at the beginning of freedom"78 clearly locating his
ethico-political project beyond any idea of a final harmonious reconciliation?
Ironically, Anthony Elliott attacks Laclau for exactly the opposite reasons.
To Elliott, Laclau's position (while, at least, "logical in Lacanian terms")
"leads to the positing of an inevitable human condition which is the no-exit
of lack and antagonism,"79 precluding thus "any substantial concern with
the creativity of the psyche" (ELLIOTT: 189). Elliott seems to attribute
Laclau's position to the acceptance of Lacan's "reactionary position on psy-
chic reality" (144) which also "obliterates the creativity of the psyche" (153).
In fact Lane's question should be addressed to Elliott. It is Elliott who
doesn't recognize that the fantasy of a creative imaginary (here Castoriadis's
influence is evident) enhancing ego-autonomy is psychoanalytically impos-
sible. What they both ignore is that the recognition of this impossibility can
become the nodal point for a progressive radical democratic project. This is
an insight that marks discourse theory throughout and constitutes Laclau's
contribution to the exploration of the importance of Lacanian theory for
contemporary political theory and to the global struggle for deepening
democracy.

Notes
1 I would like to thank Ernesto Laclau, Thanos Lipowatz, Jason Glynos, Oliver
Marchart, Juliet Flower MacCannell and an anonymous reader for their comments
on earlier versions of this paper. One of these earlier and much shorter versions
appeared in Oliver Marchart, ed. Das Undarstellbare der Politik, Vienna: Turia
& Kant, 1998 under the title "Laclau mit Lacan. Zum Verhaltnis von Politischer
Theorie und Psychoanalyse" Some of the material included in this paper comes
from my new book Lacan and the Political, London/New York: Routledge: 1999.
2 To give another example, Elizabeth Jane Bellamy argues that, "In recent years, there
have been encouraging signs of an increasing willingness to renew the relevance of
psychoanalysis for ideology critique. In particular Jean-Joseph Goux, Slavoj feek,
and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe all deserve credit for attempting, to
one degree or another, to contextualize psychoanalysis within the ideological,"
"Discourses of Impossibility: Can Psychoanalysis be Political?" in Diacritics 23:1
(1993):24 (my emphasis).
3 We refer, of course, to Ernesto Laclau's work during the lastfifteenyears, especially
after the publication of his deconstructive reading of the Marxist tradition under-
taken in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, co-authored with Chantal Mouffe
London: Verso, 1985.
4 Genealogical in the sense of tracing the turning points in Laclau's theoretical trajec-
tory, turning points which mark his text throughout. In that sense, our approach is
textual and not biographical and within this context the signifier "Laclau" refers to
a chain of theoretical interventions. In other words, we are aiming at clarifying
the terms of a particular theoretical debate and not to articulate some kind of
biographical apologia.

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5 Bellamy, op cit:34.
6 Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, London: Verso,
1990:96
7 Laclau and Mouffe, op cit: 112.
8 Chris Lane, "Beyond the Social Principle: Psychoanalysis and Radical Demo-
cracy, " Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 1:1 (1996).
9 Lane,o/>. cit: 105-106.
10 Laclau, "Interview with Yannis Stavrakakis and Dimitris Zeginis" in Diavazo 324
(in Greek), 1993:58.
11 Anna Marie Smith, Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary,
London: Routledge, 1998:81.
12 Sean Homer, "Psychoanalysis, Representation, Politics: On the (Impossibility of
a Psychoanalytic Theory of Ideology?" The Letter 7 (1998):20.
13 Bellamy, op. cit. :34-35 (my emphasis)
14 Jacques Lacan, tcrits, trans. A. Sheridan, London: Tavistock/Routledge,
1977:126.
15 Gilbert Chaitin, Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996:196.
16 Jacques Lacan, Replies, tr. P. Kalias, Athens: Erasmos [in Greek]; 1978:26.
17 Laclau, op cit.: 1993:58.
18 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book HI The Psychoses, 1955-6, ed. J-A. Miller, tr.
with notes Russell Grigg, London: Routledge, 1992:135
19 Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Title of the Letter, tr. with
introduction F Raffoul and D. Pettigrew, Albany: SUNY Press, 1992:30.
20 Ernesto Laclau, "Introduction" in E. Laclau, ed., The Making of Political
Identities, London: Verso, 1994:3.
21 Slavoj 2izek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, London and New York: Verso,
1989:122.
22 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar, Book XX. Encore, On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits
of Love and Knowledge, 1972-3, ed. J-A. Miller, tr. with notes Bruce Fink, New
York. Norton. 1998:79.
23 Steven Michelman, "Sociology before Linguistics: Lacan's Debt to Durkheim" in
Pettigrew, D. and Raffoul, F. eds, Disseminating Lacan, Albany: SUNY Press,
1996:129.
24 Lacan,op. cit: 1998:28.
25 According to Linda Zerilli, Laclau doesn't really seem to fit here; although she
provides a very intelligent account of Laclau's negotiation of universality and
recognizes that the Lacanian real is relevant to discourse theory she also points
out that "the issues it raises concerning the status of the subject cannot be
substituted for the issues raised by antagonistic social and political relations"
(Linda Zerilli, "This Universalism which is not One" in Diacritics 28:2 [1998]:13).
Zerilli's point as I take it is that by stressing the Lacanian real one risks the
danger of "psychological reductionism," since this real concerns psychic reality
and not the realm of the political (Zerilli, op. cit., 1998:13-14). It is clear from
our argumentation so far that Zerilli's point is not taking into account the fact
that the Lacanian subject is not a reductionist conception of subjectivity, and,
most important, that the real in Lacan is not a category limited to the subjective
level.
26 Laclau, op. cit.: 1990:90.
27 Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit.: 1985:88.
28 Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s), London: Verso, 1996:53.
29 Laclau, op. cit: 1996:44.

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30 Thanos Lipowatz, "Book review for E. Laclau's New Reflections on the Revolution
of our Time" in Synchrona Themata 49 (in Greek), 1993.
31 Thanos Lipowatz, "Das Reine Politische, order eine (post) Moderne Form der
Politischen Mystic" in O. Marchant op cit, 1998. (A Greek version of this paper is
forthcoming in the journal Axiologika.)
32 Lipowatz is almost unknown in the Anglo-Saxon academic arena. He is however
one of the first to link Lacanian theory to political theory and political analysis
already from the early eighties. See, for example, Diskurs und Macht. J. Lacans
Begriffdes Diskurses. Ein Beitrag zur politischen Psychologic, Marburg: Guttandin
und Hoppe, 1982; Die Verteugnung des Politischen. Die Ethik des Symbolischen bei
J. Lacan, Weinheim: Quadriga, 1986; and Politik der Psyche, Vienna: Thuria und
Kant 1998.
33 Needless to say, within our psychoanalytic framework the term "imaginary" used
this way usually entails a very critical connotation.
34 Laclau, op. dr.: 1990:35.
35 Ulrich Beck, The Reinvention of Politics, tr. M. Ritter, Cambridge: Polity, 1997:98.
36 Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political, London: Verso, 1993:3.
37 Laclau, op civ. 1990:35.
38 None of these poles exists as a self-contained or autonomous entity. Disorder
always disrupts a field of partial fixation and order and is never itself absolute; it
always leads to a new order, a new structuration of the social. Reality cannot
master the real and thus is always limited; on the other hand, however, the real
cannot eliminate reality: its presence can only be felt within reality when this
reality is disrupted and the desire for a new symbolization is starting to emerge.
39 Laclau, op civ. 1990:100
40 In this regard, see G. Daly "The Discursive Construction of Economic Space:
Logics of Organization and Disorganization" in Economy and Society 20:1 (1991).
41 2izek, "Beyond Discourse Analysis" in E. Laclau op. civ. 1990:253.
42 Laclau, op civ. 1993:58
43 Laclau, op civ 1990:39
44 Homer, op civ. 1998:21.
45 Laclau, op. civ. 1990:32.
46 Laclau, "Introduction" in Laclau Ernesto, ed., The Making of Political Identities,
London: Verso. 1994:3.
47 Laclau, op a*.: 1990:84, n. 5.
48 Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter, New York: Routledge, 1993:194.
49 Laclau, op civ 1990:17.
50 Laclau, op civ 1996:40.
51 Laclau, op. civ 1996:40)
52 Laclau, op. civ 1996:53.
53 Zerilli, o/?. c/r.: 1998.
54 Zerilli, op. civ 1998:14,
55 Zerilli, op. civ. 1998:12.
56 Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, London:
Routledge, 1996a:58.
57 Laclau and Mouffe, op. civ 1985:125.
58 Laclau and Mouffe, op. civ 1985:127 (my emphasis).
59 Butler, op. civ 1993:207.
60 Jacques Lacan, Television, trans. D. HoUier, R. Krauss and A. Michelson, October
40(1987):7.
61 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits, op. civ 1977:296.
62 These limits are transposed all the time as symbolizations replace one another, but

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this ontic dimension does not change the ontological causality of the real which
does not stop inscribing itself through the failure of symbolization. The causality
of the real inscribes itself within symbolization by not ceasing not being written,
that is to say by remaining always outside the field of symbolic and fantasmatic
representation and thus being capable of dislocating them by showing their
internal lack, by revealing the fact that it cannot be domesticated.
63 Laclau, op cit: 1996:39).
64 Slavoj Ziiek, The Metastases of Enjoyment. London: Verso, 1994:199-200.
65 In this respect, we also beg to differ from Linda Zerilli's view that the question of
ethics is "foreign" to Laclau and Mouffe's political theory. (Zerilli, 1998:14)
66 Ernesto Laclau, "God only knows" in Marxism Today (December) 1991.
67 Ernesto Laclau, "Universalism, Particularism and the Question of Identity" in
October 6\ (\992).
68 Bellamy, op. cit: 1993:35.
69 Butler, op. cit: 1993:206-207.
70 Stavrakakis, "Ambiguous Democracy and the Ethics of Psychoanalysis" in
Philosophy and Social Criticism 23:2 1997. (In German: "Die Doppeldeutigkeit
der Demokratie unddie Ethik der Psychoanalyse" in RISS 29/30 [February] 1995).
71 Lane, op cit :\996.
72 Evans, "Historicism and Lacanian Theory" in Radical Philosophy 79 (1996):4.
73 Evans, op. cit: 1996:38. In that sense Lacanian theory opens itself to the element
of historicity. Under this light Anna-Marie Smith's criticism of Laclau's recent
work is deprived of all its premises. Her main point is that by turning to Lacanian
theory, which according to Smith does not permit any consideration of historical
specificity and variability (Smith, 1998:75), Laclau "tends to embrace an increas-
ingly formal conception of hegemony . . . [a] tendency [which] is problematic
because it suppresses a historically specific analysis of the success and failure of
rival political discourses." (Smith, 1998:177). It seems that this whole criticism is
founded on an outdated critique of Lacanian theory, a critique which, surprisingly
enough, is also shared by Stuart Hall when he states for instance that "the trans-
historical speculative generalities of Lacanianism" deny its usefulness in the
analysis of historically specific phenomena (Hall, 1988:50-51). Lacanian theory is
thus declared unable to provide a plausible understanding of history; this is the
argument reiterated by Smith and forming the foundation of her critique of
Laclau's recent work.
Atfirstthis critique seems plausible: Isn't psychoanalysis always implying a neg-
ation of history, with its acceptance, for example, of the universality of the Oedi-
pus complex? On the contrary; at least not for Lacanian theory. As Dylan Evans
has shown, "a close reading of Lacan's texts shows that these and other features
of the psyche are presented by Lacan as phenomena that arise at specific moments
in history.... By grounding psychic structure in historical processes, Lacan makes
it clear that no account of subjectivity, psychoanalytic or otherwise can claim an
eternal ahistorical validity" (Evans, 1997:142). Already in 1946, in his article
"Propos sur la Causaliti Psychique" Lacan suggests that "*the Oedipus complex
did not appear with the origin of man (insofar as it is not meaningless to attempt
to write the history of this origin), but alongside history, "historical" history, at
the limit of "ethnographic" cultures. It can clearly only appear in the patriarchal
form of the family institution..." (Lacan in Evans, 1996:37) Simply put, Lacan is
open to historical analysis. Furthermore, as Joan Copjec and Slavoj 2i2ek have
shown, he introduces a novel conception of historicity directly relevant for polit-
ical analysis (Joan Copjec, Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists,
Cambridge, Ma.: M.I.T. Press, 1994; Zi2ek, Enjoy your Symptom, New York:

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Routledge, 1992). In that sense, one could argue that it is not really Lacan who
neglects historicity but Smith's critique of Laclau which neglects the insights of
Lacanian theory vis a vis historicity.
74 Jonathan Scott Lee, Jacques Lacan, Amherst: The Univ. of Massachusetts Press.
1990:176.
75 Laclau, op. cft.:1991:59.
76 Laclau, op. civ. 1994:8.
77 Jacques Derrida, "Force of Law, The 'Mystical Foundation of Authority," in
Cardozo Law Review 11:5-6. (1990):971.
78 Ernesto Laclau, "Beyond Emancipation" in Development and Change, 23:3
(1992):137 (my emphasis).
79 Anthony Elliott, Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition, Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992:191.

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