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PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY in the CONTEXT of a TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS

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PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY in the CONTEXT of a TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY iN THE CONTEXT OF A TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICS by Leonidas Jason Glynos B.A., The University of Cambridge, 1989 LL.B., The University of British Columbia, 1993 A THESIS SUBMI1TED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF LAWS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Faculty of Law We accept this thesis as conforming to thquied standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRiTISH COLUMBIA September 1994 © 1994 Leonidas Jason Glynos In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without written permission. my (Signature Department of Lkvj The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date II Abstract In contemplating social change in the context of policy development and legal decision-making we are necessarily led to consider what the limits are to such change. And it is not surprising to find this issue gaining widespread currency in contemporary legal and political debates, especially when viewed against the background of the growing number of new social movements: feminism, critical race, anti-poverty, environmentalism, and so on. Our thesis suggests that a psychoanalytic approach can successfully contribute to this critical discussion. In a first approach, our thesis develops some basic psychoanalytic categories, such as ‘fantasy’ and ‘identification,’ to show how Lacan’s view of the subject as a lack yields some surprisingly fruitful insights. What we have in mind here is his view that the subject is not a fully-formed individual with a clear and undisputed will. Rather, I.acan suggests that it is the very absence of a concrete will which defmes the human subject. These insights are further developed in relation to the standard theoretical categories of ‘power relations’ and ‘structural constraint’. We thus demonstrate, for example, how psychoanalytic ideas can further the debates over ideological critique and ‘false- consciousness’. Now, in making our analysis relevant to contemporary political and legal scholarship, we have applied our theoretical framework to the discussion of the rights discourse. We find that many of the impasses centering on the public-private issue; on the formal versus substantive opposition; on the question of whether rights reproduce the 111 capitalist mode of production; can be usefully portrayed in terms of the assumptions that underlie legal positivism and legal postmodernism; and we show how Lacan can provide us with a much-needed alternative account of the rights phenomenon. In this new formulation, rights users are tied directly to the subject-as-lack. And, contrary to a reactionary interpretation of this new formulation which might point to an apparent pessimism and apathy, we find that our narrative opens up the way to a highly productive and passionate ethics. We immediately see the relevance of such contemplations to political and legal strategists. We argue that Justice is impossible in the strictest sense of the term, and that our proposed ethics provides us with a means to cope with this knowledge. We suggest adopting a paradoxical stance in which Justice is conceivable, and in this sense possible, on the basis of a constitutive impossibility. Our thesis demonstrates how the work of Slavoj Zizek, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Joan Copjec, and Renata Saleci, provide us with a panoply of remarkably sophisticated (Lacanian) theoretical tools for the purposes of presenting this paradoxical relationship. iv .Table of Contents Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Acknowledgments viii Abbreviations vi CHAPTER ONE: Setting the Stage for a Lacanian Displacement 1 Introduction 1 A Chapter Itinerary 6 A Thesis Itinerary 7 What is Psychoanalysis: Toward a Science of the Real 9 Law and Psychoanalysis in Context: A Brief Sketch 13 Toward a Lacanian Psychoanalytic Jurisprudence and an Ethics of Transformation 19 Problematizing the Politics of Transformation: Toward an Ethical Discourse of the Analyst 20 A Survey of Psychoanalytic Concepts 25 Lacan’ s Mathemes 25 An Ethics of the Real in the Context of Ideological Interpellation 31 TheSubject 33 Ethics Revisited: Traversing the Fantasy 39 Relevance to the Critique of Ideology 42 Specifying the Lacanian Contribution to Legal Theory in the Context of a Transformative Politics 46 The Subject of Ethics 47 The Function of Law: Justice or Appeasement? 55 On Authority 57 On the MaterialistlPoststructuralist Opposition 59 On Superegoic Repression and the Desire of Rights 64 Lacan as a Poststructuralist: Strategies, Power Relations, and Structural Constraint 67 Power Relations 69 Structural Constraint 70 Conclusion 74 Notes to Chapter One 76 CHAPTER TWO: Doing Theory 85 The Logic of the Signifier: Toward a Science of Discourse Analysis 85 Sample Readings 98 Gay Rights and Gay Strategies 98 Undecidability and Identification: Politicizing the Legal Categories of Homosexuality and Pregnancy 102 Emptying the ‘Family’ 103 Postmodernism as the Limit of Modernism: Variations on a Theme 107 On the Onto-epistemological Issue 107 Fixity versus Nihilism: Anatomy of a false dichotomy 115 . V On Power, Resistance, and Structural Constraint 121 On the (im)possibiity of Justice 127 On Discourse, Ideology, and False-Consciousness 132 Notes to Chapter Two 135 CHAPTER THREE: The Law and Politics of Rights and Identities 137 Rights Discourse: The Traditional Debate 137 The Critique of Rights 137 Does Public State Neutrality Mean Invisibility of Private Inequalities’ 139 Rethinking the public/private and politicallsocial dichotomies 141 Formal versus Contextual Approaches to Resolving Equality Issues 145 Taking a Closer L.ook 146 7Do Rights Reproduce the Form of the Capitalist Mode of Production 149 Individualism: Alienating or 7 Not 151 Abstract Indeterminacy: Beyond Good and Evil 154 Reification and Objectivity 157 Conclusion 159 Rights and the Logic of Desire 160 Identity Politics 172 The Process of Identification 172 Identity and Power: Structural Constraints Revisited 177 Identifications in Legal Discourse 180 On Representing Interests 184 Notes to Chapter Three 187 CHAPTER FOUR: The Real as an Internal Moment of the Political 194 The Political: From Communitarianism to Liberalism to Radical democracy 194 Three Lacanian Orders: Im -- Sym -- Re 195 ...And Their Relation to the Political 198 Utilitarianism 204 Specifying the Radical Democratic Anti-Utopian Utopia 214 Role for the Progressive Legal Scholar 224 Problematizing Strategy and Targeting a Radical Democratic Artegy 236 Notes to Chapter Four 244 Concluding Remarks 249 Selected Bibliography 253 Appendix: Lacan’s Graph of Desire 261 Notes to Appendix 267 vi Abbreviations BE Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Beyond Emancipation’ (1992) 23(3) Development and Change 121. BNL Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Building a New Left: An Interview with E. Laclau’ (1988) 1 Strategies: J. Theory, Culture, and Politics 10. CIP Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Community and Its Paradoxes’ in Miami Theory Collective, ed,, Community at Loose Ends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991) at 83. E Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits: A Selection, Jacques-Alain Miller, ed., Alan Sheridan, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977). EP Zizek, Slavoj, For they Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor (New Yoric Verso, 1991). ES Zizek, Slavoj, Enjoy Your Symptom! (New York: Routledge, 1992). FC Lacan, Jacques, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, Jacques-Alain Miller, ed., Alan Sheridan, trans. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977). HSS I.aclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (L.ondon: Verso, 1985) IS Laclau, Ernesto, ‘The Impossibility of Society’ (1991) 15(1/3) Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 24. LA Zizek, Slavoj, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991). LTA Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Letter to Aletta’ in his New Reflections on the Revolution ofOur Time (London: Verso, 1990) at 159. MPI ‘Introduction’ in Laclau, Ernesto, ed., The Making of Political Identities (London: Verso, 1994) at 1; and Laclau, Ernesto, and Lilian Zac, ‘Minding the Gap: The Subject of Politics’, in Laclau, Ernesto, ed., The Making ofPolitical Identities (London: Verso, 1994) at 11. NR L.aclau, Ernesto, ‘New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time’ in his New Reflections on the Revolution ofOur Time (London: Verso, 1990) at 3. vu PLM Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Politics and the Limits of Modernity’ in Ross, Andrew (for the Social Text Collective), ed., Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988) at 63. PM Laclau, Frnesto, ‘Psychoanalysis and Marxism’ in his New Reflections on the Revolution ofOur Time (London: Verse, 1990) at 93. PR Laclau, Frnesto, ‘Power and Representation’ in Poster, Mark, ed., Politics, Theory, and Contemporary Culture (N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1993) at 277. PWA Laclau, Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe, ‘Post-Marxism Without Apologies’ (1987) 166 New Left Rev. 79. RP Mouffe, Chantal, The Return ofthe Political (London: Verso, 1993). SO Zizek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object ofIdeology (London: Verso, 1989). TDS Laclau, Ernesto, ‘Theory,
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