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Subject to Failure SUBJECT TO FAILURE by Ryan Robert Mitchell A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (January, 2008) Copyright ©Ryan Robert Mitchell, 2008 Abstract My project here is to look at how uncovering those unconscious and phantasmatic identifications in the social field can lead to the possibility of altering subjectivity or, at the very least, tracing how subjects are formed through structure and how they are psychically linked to ideological structure. This thesis suggests that subjection is never total or complete and that when viewed from an awry or skewed perspective, particular discourses and modes of subjection are revealed to be neither permanent, true nor necessary—we can always open up new spaces of subjectivity and discourse and through the practice of ‘tracing’ structure we can discern how we are determined and at which points structure constrains or enables us. My work is an effort to supplement theories of discourse analysis/ideology critique with psychoanalytic concepts, and more specifically, the psychoanalytic category of fantasy to discuss the ways in which discourses are provided with coherence and how subjects are tethered/binded to discursive fields. In my discussion of the non-discursive, I will be drawing from the Freudian concept of unheimlich, or the uncanny, to discuss the ways in which discursive fields become disrupted by repressed or “foreign” elements. I contend that the subject always exceeds structure, and for this reason, there is always room for resistance within discursive fields. ii Acknowledgements There have been many people who have supported me with this project throughout the years, and it is my wish that each one of them knows that I am sincerely grateful. To list each one of these people would fill a few volumes so I have chosen only to thank those who have been directly involved with the writing of this work. I have not forgotten any one of you! I would like to start my thanking both of my advisors, Richard Day and Frank Pearce, for being both available and supportive of me as a slipped in and out of this project. I have been fortunate to have them both on my side. Emile de Rosnay should be thanked for helping me understand the nuances of various obscure French verbs. He has also been “helpful” with my pronunciation of various French theorists. Jenn Westcott should also been thanked for always being gently incredulous that I was about. I would like to acknowledge Rachel Melis for helping me with my final drafts and being engaged with my work. Most importantly, I want to thank her for getting mad when I needed someone to get mad. I would like to make a special acknowledgement to someone who is probably more relieved than I am that I am finally done: Enda Brophy. Enda has been an inspiration for me not only as an academic but also as a friend. My one hope is that I can one day return the support and understanding he has shown me over these last few years. This one is for you, m’man! To end, I would like to dedicate this work to my parents for being unconditionally supportive of what I have been doing these last few years. Although I am sure they are both overjoyed that I finally finished, I’m also certain that they are also a little sad that they can no longer tease me about “finishing my thesis.” I can, however, promise them that I will provide them more to fret about in the future! iii Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ iv Chapter 1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2 Subjectivity .................................................................................................................... 16 Chapter 3 Interpellation ................................................................................................................. 50 Chapter 4 Fantasy .......................................................................................................................... 73 Chapter 5 The Uncanny ................................................................................................................. 93 Chapter 6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 109 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 114 iv Chapter 1 Introduction The most certain chances of liberation are born in what is most familiar. Was it ever otherwise? …the living reality of non-adaptation to the world is always crouched, ready to spring. Since neither gods nor words can manage to cover it up decently any longer, this commonplace creature roams naked in railway stations and vacant lots; it confronts you at each evasion of yourself, it touches your elbow, catches your eye; and the dialogue begins. You must lose yourself with it or save it with you. Raoul Vaneigem—The Revolution of Everyday Life It is perhaps surprising, and unlikely, that the beginnings of the Paris May 1968 “revolution” started in the departments of Sociology and Psychology at Nanterre (Touraine, 1971: 132-133). No doubt these students were the product of the high structuralist theory that dominated French academic life for the better part of the sixties. As a reaction to the individual- oriented post-War philosophy of Existentialism, structuralism sought to incorporate structural- linguistic concepts in the scientific study of social and cultural phenomena, in an attempt to understand the universal structure of such objects as minds, myths and cultural codes. Many students felt that the antihumanist curriculum of structuralism, which sought to remove agency from subjects and reduce them to moments within either discourse or language, was far removed from the everyday life of the students themselves. They worried that these academic faculties were merely set-up to reproduce the standing order by supplying the next generation of bureaucratic mandarins and statisticians of bio-power. One of the participants of the events of May 1968, Maurice Brinton, explains: The students saw that the sociology they were being taught was a means of controlling and manipulating society, not a means of understanding it in order to change it. In the process they discovered revolutionary sociology. They rejected the niche allocated to them in the great bureaucratic pyramid, that of 'experts' in the service of a technocratic Establishment, specialists of the 'human factor' in the modern industrial equation (Brinton, 2004: 226). 1 The students saw the university itself as one of the prime Ideological State Apparatuses (Althusser, 1970) that was being railed against abstractly within the classroom. One of the central figures of May 68, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, was one of the Nanterre Sociology majors involved in the boycott of the end of year examinations. He was also involved the publication of the pamphlet “Why do we Need Sociologists?” which questioned the imposed and conferred systems of ‘official’ and ‘sacrosanct’ knowledge within the university system (Gombin, 1976: 129). In response to the stultifying environment of the university departments and lecture halls, the students beautified the walls of Parisian universities, shopping arcades and bureaucratic buildings with graffiti in an attempt to reclaim and “own” their education. The walls of building became the chalkboard inthe streets that were being turned into a living classroom. If one knows anything about this period, or the work of the Situationist International, then its the slogan: “Beneath the paving stones: beach!”1 An especially resonant and evocative metaphor, this slogan has lent itself to the title of a SI coffee-table book as well as the appropriation by radicals decades after 68. This metaphor of the paving stone and beach is open to multiple interpretations, but the most obvious lends itself to a conception of “false consciousness” and the idea of a “pure experience” beneath crass over-coding and mystification of the individual. Although it is beyond the paving stones of the overcoded city, the beach is also often a repository for refuse from the industrial world—washed up medical waste, used condoms, dirty syringes, shards of broken beer bottles from the previous night—a place where one should watch one's step. Additionally, beyond the surface of the sand, there are things buried deep below that will always remain a mystery to us. 1 Sous les paves: la plage! 2 Measured by the yardstick of, say, 1919 Russia or even 1789 Paris, the “revolution” of May 1968 was a failure in the sense that it failed to overturn the ruling order and replace it with a new order. What did change, however, was the notion that radical change could be effected only in the streets. Now, it seemed, one also needed to get into to the bedrooms and skulls of the participants in a revolution, into their everyday lives. As a result, many antihumanist theorists of the ‘end of man’ had to re-work their
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