Journal of Political Ideologies (1999), 4(2), 219-238

Ideology and its paradoxes:

dimensions of fantasy and
enjoyment
GLYN DALY
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Social Studies, Nene University College,
Northampton, Park Campus, Broughton Green Road, Northampton NN2 7AL, UK
Building on the innovative work of Laclau and Mouffe, and their
conception of ideology as the illusion of an extra-discursive closure, this paper
constructively engages their position from the perspective of psychoanalytic
theory. A main contention is that in focusing exclusively on discourse, Laclau
and Mouffe have tended to overlook the crucial psychoanalytic dimensions of
fantasy and enjoyment which remain, in a certain sense, both before and beyond
discourse. This paper attempts to re-contextualize the operation of ideological
closure in connection with these dimensions. Two broad points are made. First,
a central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through
simultaneously producing the 'threat' to that closure. Second, this 'threat' is
intimately bound up with fantasies about the loss and recovery of enjoyment. On
these grounds, it is argued that notions of otherness and antagonism need to be
re-formulated in respect to the Lacanian Real. Finally, using various examples
from political and cultural life, the paper affirms that all ideology involves a
fundamental phantasmic endeavour to translate the impossibility of society into
the theft of society.
ABSTRACT

The contemporary problem of ideology is situated within an apparent paradox:

while various writers have simply declared an end of ideology, at the same time
this has been accompanied by a certain excess of proof. Indeed, the various
pronouncements concerning the end of ideology appear to amount to a kind of
lengthy death certificate which, as Derrida puts it, attempts to 'declare the death
only in order to put to death'.1 The deaths of ideology are periodically
proclaimed, and ratified, in the hope that ideology will not come back to life; that
it will take its certification seriously and not come back to haunt us. This anxiety
concerning the possible re-animation of ideology, and its potential challenge to
an existing order, is an anxiety which stems from the very ideological attitude
itself. The ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free
terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as
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GLYN DALY

the 'merely ideological'. Thus, as Althusser affirmed, the notion of an end of

ideology is the ideological notion at its purest.2
In this context, Laclau and Mouffe (together and independently) have been
concerned to develop a postmarxist theory of ideology. The traditional approach
to ideology was rooted in a classical philosophical distinction between a world
of essences and a world of appearances. Ideology was seen to belong to the latter
and was generally characterized in terms of attempting to conceal and/or distort
'reality' (the real world of essences). As this distinction (between essences and
appearances) has been progressively deconstructed in the assertion of the
discursive character of reality,3 the notion of ideology has been completely
reformulated. According to Laclau, the ideological does not consist of the
misrecognition or distortion of a positive essence but the opposite: 'the nonrecognition of the precarious character of any positivity, of the impossibility of
any ultimate suture'.4 Or, as he put it more recently, the 'very notion of an
extra-discursive viewpoint is the ideological illusion', such that what 'constitutes
a distorted representation is the very notion of an extra-discursive closure'.5
However, while postmarxism rightly characterizes ideology in terms of its
impossible attempts at discursive^ closure, from a Lacanian perspectiveof the
type being developed by Slavoj Zizek and the Slovenian schoolthis does not
appear to be the whole story. From this perspective, the central point is that the
ideological process is driven by the need to escape the horrifying condition of
lack and trauma in the Real. All attempts at closure, therefore, are the result of
attempting to provide a symbolic coherence and sense of solidity against the
distorting presence of an eternally corrosive Real.6 In this sense, the ideological
might be regarded as an endless (re-)staging of the primordial struggle between
the symbolic-discursive order and the Real.
The limits of the postmarxist conception of ideology could be said to coincide
with the limits of discourse theory itself. Thus the problems lie precisely with the
attempt to conceive closure solely at the level of discourse and the formal
symbolic arena. However, if we approach the question of ideology within a
Lacanian context, then it becomes possible to draw our theoretical focus back
and to explore the way in which discourse itself is interwoven with the
paradoxical dynamics of the imaginary and, in particular, the Real. In this
respect, I would argue that the very operation of discursive closure has to be
more broadly considered in terms of its 'libidinal' effects with the crucial
Lacanian dimensions of fantasy and enjoyment and which exist, in a certain
sense, both before and beyond discourse.
The objective of this paper is to re-contextualize the notion of closure within
a Lacanian-Zizekian framework and thereby to establish a wider perspective for
analyzing the work of ideology. Two main points will be made. The first is that
a central paradox of ideology is that it can only attempt closure through
simultaneously producing the 'threat' to that closure. The second and related
point is that this 'threat' has to be seen within the terms of the psychoanalytic
dimensions of fantasy and enjoyment. This approach will be elaborated in
respect of various examples from contemporary film, culture and political life.
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The impossible domedenying the Real

The Real is that which destroys 'reality' as an intelligible structure. In Zizek's
example, the Real is like the Alien in Ridley Scott's film of the same name,
whose blood literally dissolves the fabric (the reality) of its surroundings.7 In the
same way that the unity of the ship's crew is constituted against the Alien (the
impossible Thing against which the whole of reality is ultimately defenceless),
reality is always constituted as an attempt to establish a basic consistency against
the disintegrative effects of the Real. All forms of discursive closure, therefore,
may be understood as so many attempts to escape all those manifestations of the
Real which traumatize and destroy us: bereavement, anxiety, emotional/sexual
betrayal, and so on.
In this sense, ideology can be seen as a process which constantly re-stages this
underlying struggle between reality and the Real in terms of a final overcoming
of the latter. The supreme 'promise' of ideology is that it will realize a fully
reconciled social order and deliver us absolutely from the Real. It is a promise
contained in all those perspectivesfrom Plato to Marx to 20th-century forms
of liberalism and totalitarianismin which society is conceived in terms of a
pre-existing harmonious order which conforms to ideal principles and/or eternal
laws. The ultimate aspiration of ideology, therefore, is to constitute itself as an
ideology-free matrix of objectivity which is impervious to the distorting effects
of the Real.
This kind of aspiration can be clearly discerned in the project of Habermas
and his ideas concerning the completion of modernity and the ideal of a world
of undistorted communication.8 It is an aspiration which is also present in
contemporary forms of cyberculture. For example: the construction of the World
Wide Web and the attempt to map the ultimate labyrinth of (distorted) communication; the invention of virtual forms of sexuality which promises to overcome
the Real problems of the actual body (the threatened 'body in pieces' prone to
modern viruses/hazards, in contrast to its imaginary unity) and, more generally,
to resolve the Lacanian deadlock of the 'impossibility of the sexual relationship';9 the development of New Age perspectives which, using computer
technology, proclaim to have cracked some sort of 'code' (concealed within the
Bible and/or religious art treasures, etc.) and thereby to have resolved the
problems of encountering the Real of the Other through directly accessing the
word of God/cosmic information in an unmediated fashion.
A contemporary metaphor for ideology might be the alternately flashing
'access denied'/'access granted' on our computer monitors. In numerous representations on film we see how the persevering hero/heroine, hunched over a
computer, is able finally to crack the code and get past the 'access denied' into
the hidden realm of the Other. In this sense, the 'access denied' might be said
to function as a kind of ideological stand-in for the Real. The fundamental
blockage of the Real is re-presented as something which can be resolved/transcended: the 'access denied'i.e. as denied by a vincible someone or somethingcan be overcome.10 In this regard, all ideology is structured in terms of
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eluding any direct (and unbearable) encounter with the Real through a certain
re-staging in which such an encounter is made to appear resolvable. In the terms
of our example, we might say that the work of all ideology is to transform the
unbearable and Real notion of 'access impossible' into a bearable and symbolic
'access denied', i.e. that a final and transparent symbolic order can be accessed
through the overcoming of a vincible x and thereby make the Real accountable
in some particular form (for what would be truly horrific is not that something
was denying 'us' a state of harmony but that nothing was). It is ideology which
denies sovereignty to the Real and, through the work of fantasy, offers a way of
'restoring' the state of lost, or impeded, harmony and of establishing full
compensation for the experiences of (original) loss and impossibility. Thus, what
is really being denied is that this 'access', in terms of a final transparency and
mastery of the Real, is ultimately impossible. This denial is the ideological.
In contemporary British political culture we witness the same kind of
end-of-ideology fantasy being rehearsed. For Blair there is 'no left or right in
economic policy, only good and bad' and that, in general terms, 'we don't need
ideology, we need ideals'.11 Thus what Blair and his associates are presenting is
the classic ideological picture of government as if it were ideology-free; as if
economic, social and political decisions were simply a matter of neutral calculus
and administrative practices. Indeed, what is revealedtaking liberties with
Nietzscheis a kind of will to powerlessness. Ideology always presents itself as
something which is locked into a logic of necessity ('there is no alternative',
etc.) which cannot, or at least should not, be tampered with or deviated from.
In this connection, it is interesting to look at the present construction of the
Millennium Dome as a major symbol of Labour's 'New Britain' and the rather
cheesy motifs of 'Cool Britannia' and 'UK@Now'. The Dome, as a kind of
secular cathedral of the nation, may be said to represent an ideology-fantasystructure par excellence: its express purpose is to house an impossible universality and, in its very architectural abstraction, to provide a seamless roof for a fully
integrated Britain. And this recalls the experience of the Finnish architect, Alvar
Aalto, who on returning to his bomb-damaged library at Viipuri (Vyborg)
described it as a building without architecture.12 Using this analogy, we could
say that with ideology the reverse is the case: the universal dimension of
ideology is like architecture without a definitive building.
However, while the Dome is explicitly part of a 'unifying experience' which
seeks to give consistency to the nation and to represent the ideal of a fully
reconciled society, this merely underlines the ultimate impossibility of such an
undertaking (already there have been fierce debates as to whose history, culture,
religion ..., will be represented in the Dome). This impossibilitythe point of
symbolic exhaustion where the 'object' of nationhood cannot be represented and
remains, as Lacan puts it, 'stuck in the gullet of the signifier'13announces the
presence of the Real in all its effects of trauma and anxiety.
Baudrillard, no doubt, would regard the Dome as a kind of political ark which
keeps afloat the dream of a harmonious UK II. Or in terms of his familiar
argument concerning simulacrum (a copy without an original), the Dome is more
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real than the Real insofar as it shows the true centre of political life to be a
national theme park where politics is reduced to a managerialism underlining the
redundancy of the postmodern museum society' (and so on). From the postmarxist perspective, on the other hand, the Dome can be seen as an exemplary case
of the logic of hegemony in which the particular attempts to embody a certain
idea of the universal: to literally give foundation to the foundation-less, and
accommodate the great Spirit of the Age in Docklands.
However, we can also look at the Millennium enterprise from a Lacanian
angle. Thus the real problem with the Dome is not so much that it is totally
artificial or that it is a thoroughly vain attempt to particularize the universal but,
in a sense, quite the opposite. The real danger (for nationalist ideology) is that
the Dome might become too authentic in its representation of the Nation and
thereby actually succeed in encapsulating, in an unbearable way, what 'we really
are.' In short, the underlying problem for the nationalism constituted around the
Dome is that the latter might bring us too close to our mysterious and elusive
Thing (Kant's Das Ding); an encounter which, as Lacan makes clear,14 would
precipitate radical anxiety and psychical disintegration. And this reflects a
further paradox of ideology: while on the one hand ideology presents the 'object'
of fullness as attainable, on the other it endeavours to sustain a critical distance
in order to avoid any direct encounter with it. In this way, ideology supports the
notion of a realizable fullness through a particular emphasis on the 'other' who
has stolen, or is denying us access to, this fullness.15
Crimes of fantasythe usual suspects
The conventional perception of fantasy is that it is opposed to reality and that
it belongs to the realms of imagination and hallucination. Lacan, however, turns
this perception on its head and asserts that fantasy is 'an image set to work in
the symbolic structure'.16 In this context, fantasy is essentially situated within the
domain of reality itself. Fantasy is drawn into focus at those (nodal) points where
we expect to be taken most seriously in regard to our raison d'etre and the
narration of who we really are and what we really want ('it was in that moment
that I knew I wanted to be ...').
As Zizek has pointed out, fantasy emerges from the very dimension of lack
introduced by the symbolic: that is, the general order of signification which is
ultimately constituted around a traumatic and unrepresentable Real (this is why
the basic experience of the symbolic is always one of doubt and 'out-of-jointness'; that one of our signifiers is missing, and has to be found in order to
establish a final, but impossible, consistency). It is because there exists no
ready-made place for 'us', no automatic process of (socio-sexual) resolution or
harmonious reconciliation for the subject, that fantasy comes into being. Fantasy,
therefore, functions as a basic structuring principle which enables, in the first
place, the formulation of desire within the symbolic order and the establishment
of some kind of identification within the 'empirical' world of infinite possibilities.17 In this way, fantasy is concerned to avoid the abysses of the subject which
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arise through questions of unbearable doubt: who/what am I? what is expected

of me? what does the Other want? However, the paradox of fantasy is that its
success depends ultimately upon its ability to represent its non-realizability as an
external (and not immanent) impediment. In attempting to cope with the horrors
of the Real, fantasy re-stages the encounter in a way which gives a symbolic, and
more manageable, embodiment of these horrors (monsters, social threat, forces
of nature ...)
It is this dimension of fantasy, at work in the ideological field, which tends
to be overlooked in the postmarxist perspective. By incorporating an analysis of
fantasy we can give a different spin to the Laclau-Mouffe argument concerning
the impossibility of society. Thus the central problem is not so much that society
is logically impossible (i.e. the need for a 'them' in order for an 'us') but that,
at the level of fantasy, society is regarded as possible; as something which is
ultimately achievable through a certain overcoming of specified impedances. In
this way, ideology subsists in the fantasy of establishing a final consistency, of
suturing the unsuturable, by providing straw enemies'fictional' embodiments
of a transcendental lack/impossibilitywhich 'if only they could be eliminated'
would enable the realization of harmonious reconciliation.
It is at the level of fantasy that the loss of social harmony is experienced, in
terms of theft and/or sabotage. In the ideological attempt to (re-)create society
as an objective order, various culprits are identified and charged with the loss,
or prevention, of that order. Indeed, every endeavour to constitute Society might
be understood as an ongoing attempt to solve the original fantasy crime: to
identify who has possession of the missing objects which would enable a fully
reconciled social order. In short, Society is always constituted as a kind of
'whodunnit?'.
Here the question of the other presents itself. Laclau and Mouffe show that
antagonism is neither a logical contradiction nor a real opposition.18 On the
contrary, a relation of antagonism is one where 'the presence of the "Other"
prevents me from being totally myself'.19 For example, it is 'because a peasant
cannot be a peasant that an antagonism exists with the landowner expelling him
from his land'.20 From the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, however, this
view of antagonism is not wholly adequate. As Zizek has pointed out, it is not
simply that the presence of the other is preventing me from being fully myself
because every identity is already inherently negated. This is why the Lacanian
mark for the subject is $; a signifier designating the subject's auto-blockage.21 In
a relation of antagonism, then, what happens is that a subject (e.g. a landowner)
attempts to externalize the immanent blockage by making the other (e.g. the
peasant) responsible for this blockage: the fantasy calculation 'if only the
peasants were eliminated I could be totally myself.'
This means that the issue of otherness appears fundamentally split. Just as the
ideal of a universal (and impossible) Order remains ultimately autonomous from
those particular historical attempts to realize it, so too the other is never
encountered, in a naked sense, but only as particular (and 'fictitious') embodiments of the Real. This point can be illustrated in respect to Zizek's demon224

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stration of the ideological role of 'the Jew' in Nazi Germany: 'Society is not
prevented from achieving its full identity because of Jews: it is prevented by its
own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it "projects" this
internal negativity into the figure of the "Jew".'22
In this context we can see that the 'other' (in this case the 'Jew') is always
a retroactive construction of Otherness as such: the 'other' functions as a
particular historical embodiment of a transhistorical Real (i.e. the 'Jew' as a
representation of negativity, blockage, antagonism, etc.). A crucial dimension of
ideology, therefore, is its identification of those who are responsible for loss and
immanent blockage as a way of supporting its fantasy of ultimate unity. In this
regard, ideology is concerned to constitute the 'other' of Otherness in such terms
that the 'threat' it poses is presented as something which can be effectively
overcome within the closure itself.23
This process is clearly evident in contemporary British politics. At the same
time as articulating a discourse of 'New Britain' and national inclusivism, Blair's
government has also been concerned to identify its various categories of threat
and otherness. These categories come by way of the 'usual suspects': single
mothers, welfare 'scroungers7'fraudsters', and Jack Straw's 'squeegee merchants', 'beggars' and various street-based 'undesirables' who offend the sensibilities of theatre-goers. The point is that these identities are not simply 'present'
in their capacity as Other (as implied in Laclau and Mouffe), nor are they
denying the realization of social harmony. On the contrary, these identities first
have to be constituted as 'other': that is, as stand-ins for universal social
blockage.
In this way, the vision of a cosmopolitan national unity in contemporary
Britain is one which simultaneously produces its 'other' identities, not only as
a threat to that vision but as a threat staged as something which can be
effectively dealt with. In this context it is instructive to look at the (supplementary) development of the so-called 'New Deal' programme for 'rationalizing' the
welfare state; or what Blair calls 'compassion with a hard edge'. The Deal is part
of a new ethos which combines certain elements of the New Right perspective
with classical and authoritarian dimensions of social democracy. Thus, for
example, the stereotype of the single mother, as an incarnation of modern social
evil, is being laundered through a more acceptable work ethic: 'We want single
mothers ... at least to visit a Job Centre not just stay at home waiting for the
benefit cheque every week ...>24 Moreover, under the terms of the Dealand
continuing the logic of the previous administrationscertain categories of the
unemployed will now be obliged to undertake 'training' (a work simulation) or
face immediate cessation of benefits.
Within the discursive framework of the Deal, therefore, disaffected groups
like single mothers and the unemployed (among others) are constituted in such
a way that they are made already responsible for the structural failure of
liberal-democratic-capitalism and, indeed, Society. To this effect, we might say
that the Deal involves an invisible contract in which welfare services are
provided to such groups as long as 'they' remain a 'class-in-itself culpable for
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social failure25 (and thereby give embodiment to Otherness as such). In this way,
the image of a unified Britain is sustained through the very ideological constitution of 'other' identities and their 'threat'.
In this connection it is interesting to look at the recent debates surrounding the
so-called 'underclass'. The potency of this term derives from its status as a
floating signifier. In nebulous fashion the underclass has been variously linked
to categories of poverty, crime, drugs, urban violence, anti-social behaviour, and
so on: ultimately constituting an equivalential unity around 'not us'/'non-society'. From the New Right perspective of C. Murray26, the underclass is
represented as a kind of evolutionary waste product (low IQs a recalcitrant
propensity to crime, laziness, non-conformity, etc.), whose continued parasitism
is denying harmony. At the other end of the political spectrum, by contrast, B.
Campbell argues that the cause of social blockage (especially in its manifestations of crime, urban violence and lack of cooperation between the sexes), is
rather a 'lawless masculinity' in which men qua men are revealed as 'the
refuseniks of the community'.27 The point is, however, that both perspectives are
constituted ultimately as variants of the same kind of ideological fantasy in
which a particular embodimentgenetic sloth/masculine wrathis made responsible for the lack of social reconciliation.
If we can speak of the 'underclass' as a unity for a moment, with all its
populist (mis-)representations, then it is crucial to understand the way in which
it has been constructed as an object of the public gaze. This gaze reveals what
Lacan would call a relation of extimacy (extimite)2* to the underclass: that is to
say, the more intense the process of shunning/shaming the underclass the more
it serves to underline a basic fascination with 'them'. In contemporary culture
this is evidenced in the development of an increasing number of popular
television programmes (and videos) devoted to the dramatic representation of
crimes and misdemeanours in the social arena (Crimewatch, Caught on Camera,
Eye Spy, Police Camera Action, Crime Beat, etc.). A central motif of these
programmes is the way in which the gaze is voyeuristically directed toward
actual (and therefore 'neutral') footage of those incidentsof violence, vandalism, joy riding, road rage, and so onin which the 'other', seemingly without
reason or justifiable motive (and almost always without a face), is captured and
demonstrated in their embodiment of drive and 'excess'. The horror-fascination
exhibited here is, of course, finally, a horror-fascination with the drives and
excesses which circulate within ourselves and which only find their (ideological)
limit through the external imposition of the socio-symbolic order itself.29 And
this is why for Lacan the relation to the other is always one of extimacy; as
'something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me'. 30
In this context, we could also establish a connection between Lacan and the
political theory of Hobbes concerning the essentially constitutive role of disorder
(i.e. order, in its highest abstraction, as a way of avoiding the trauma of a war
of all against all). What the Lacanian perspective adds to Hobbes is that not only
is order driven by the need to escape the conditions of a state of nature (the Real)
but that Order, in a sense, always remains fascinated with its own causes/origins
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and the very excesses (of the 'natural state') it has had to forgo as a condition
of its constitution. In this way, the media is concerned to represent the
Hobbesian state of nature as it is happening all around 'us'. Moreover, it is a
process which, in the sense of Virilio,31 continues to speed up in an attempt to
eliminate the gap between the actual (transgression) and its representation and
thereby to effect some sort of mastery over the event. It is perhaps this which
is behind the development of the new technology of electronically tagging
'offenders' (the attaching of a kind of underclass chip) such that it becomes more
easy to monitor the other and to access their hidden excess.
Here we witness something of a reversal of the New Right critique of
'dependency culture'. What this critique attempts to conceal is that it is society
which is actually 'parasitic' on its non-society. Or to put the argument in
different terms: non-society is kept in a state of contractual (and permanent)
'debt' and in such a way that society can actively seek recompense for a
fundamental experience of loss.32 From a Lacanian perspective, this experience
essentially concerns the loss, or theft, of enjoyment.
The sins of enjoyment
Laclau and Mouffe reject the idea of a 'beyond' of discourse (conceived in terms
of the play of differences) as this would tend to affirm the existence of an
objective order which, in any case, would have to be articulated within the terms
of discourse.33 However, from the psychoanalytic perspective, it is clear that
there is an alternative way of theorizing this beyond which does not involve the
reinstatement of any 'extra-discursive'. In this way, a notion of beyond can be
formulated not only in regard to the categories of the Real and fantasy, but also
in the sense of a non-discursive 'substance'. This substance, which is of central
(indeed ontological) concern to psychoanalysis, is jouissance or enjoyment.
According to Lacan, enjoyment cannot be understood simply in terms of
pleasure,34 but is much closer to a kind of satisfaction through suffering (thus,
for example, psychoanalysis identifies an obscene enjoyment in acts of duty and
sacrifice). In general terms, enjoyment might be understood as a kind of
existential electricity which not only animates the subject but which also
threatens to destroy him/her. And, in this sense, enjoyment is always both before
and beyond the symbolic field; it drives the symbolic but can never be fully
captured by it. If the inert body of Frankenstein's monster is the intelligible
symbolic structure, then lightning is the raw substance of enjoyment which
declares life in all its primary drives and desires.
The relationship between the subject's enjoyment and its symbolic constitution is therefore always precarious and potentially traumatic. Although enjoyment animates the subject's being, this enjoyment cannot, finally, be integrated
or symbolically realized. Indeed, a condition of entry into the socio-symbolic
order is the sacrifice of a certain excessive enjoyment (one of the most important
of which is the assumption/imposition of a gender role as against polymorphous
drives). This loss of enjoyment, moreover, is perceived to be embodied in an
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elusive Thinga missing object of desirewhich exercises a constitutive, and

potentially fatal, attraction for the subject. In this way, the 'cut' of the
socio-symbolic order (from the Real) is one which, in its very lack, seeks to give
body to a Thing, a Thing whose transhistorical presence is manifested in so
many historical quest objects. The point is, however, that the Thing can never
be fully represented or delivered to us, only alluded to. Christian discourse, for
example, with all its rituals, obligations, celebrations and sacrifices, ultimately
refers to something which escapes the discourse and which can only be alluded
to in the ecstatic suffering of Christ. In this way, Calvary becomes the domain
of excessive enjoyment, the place of Real communion with the Thing itself.35
What tends to be overlooked in discourse theory is the way in which
discourses are themselves structured and animated through a 'libidinal economy'
of enjoyment. For example, what gives stability to Christian discourse, in all its
passion and conviction, is the way in which enjoyment is organized as Christian.
And in this way, the lost enjoyment is presented as recoupable through allusion
to a religious Thing: an ultimate experience of epiphany, salvation,
purification.... Moreover, while the Thing (by definition) has no discursive
presence, its 'presence' is nevertheless constantly alluded to and is acutely felt
in terms of an object of ultimate consummation. In this sense, it becomes
possible to affirm a certain notion of 'beyond' which, precisely because of its
extimacy, is constitutive of the discursive order.
Building on the work of J. A. Miller,36 Zizek shows how the phantasmic
potency of the Thing is crucially revealed through the ideological constitution of
antagonisms. This can be illustrated in respect to the question of nationhood. At
a certain point, the attempt to determine national identity (discursively) in terms
of an enumerated set of featurescustoms, rituals, consumption habits, sense of
humour ...ultimately exhausts itself in the tautological reference to a 'way of
life', a way of life which alludes to the organization of the nation in terms of a
shared relation towards an impossible/unrepresentable Thing of enjoyment. On
these grounds, Zizek shows that what is at stake in racism and ethnic antagonisms is a certain theft of enjoyment: 'we always impute to the "other" an
excessive enjoyment: he wants to steal our enjoyment (by ruining our way of
life) and/or he has access to some secret perverse enjoyment'.37 In this context,
a basic paradox emerges such that 'our' Thing (our way of life) is perceived as
not only inaccessible to the Other but also threatened by him/her. And thus what
'we conceal by imputing to the Other the theft of enjoyment is the traumatic fact
that we never possessed what was allegedly stolen from us'. 38
In terms of the underclass-Other, then, it is precisely 'their' perceived
excessesthe invasion/de-gentrification of public spaces, the capacity for idleness, lack of hygiene, vulgar/illegal consumption habits, promiscuous sexual
practices (especially those of the 'single mother'), and so onwhich are seen as
defiling the sanctity of the Thing and thereby depriving society of the vital
element of enjoyment which would enable its full constitution. At the same time,
however, in acting as a stand-in for immanent blockage (for Real impossibility)
the 'underclass' functions as the very condition for the ideological conception of
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society in terms of a potential unity. It is through an embodied representation of

a culpable underclass, and their sins of enjoyment, that the fantasy of a
harmonious salvation is sustained. Thus what ideology attempts to conceal is that
it is the socio-symbolic order itself which, in seeking to constitute itself against
the vortices of the Real (where nothing is lacking), introduces the dimension of
lack through an original prohibition of, and drive towards, a final consummation
with an enjoyment-Thing. The ebb and flow of enjoyment, therefore, only comes
into being through the perception of its loss (or threatened loss). The reckoning
of such loss, and the identification of those to whom the demands for retribution/
compensation must be addressed, is a central imperative of ideology.
The excess of enjoyment is the central theme of David Fincher's remarkable
film Seven. Two detectives, Mills (Brad Pitt) and Somerset (Morgan Freeman),
set out to investigate a series of brutal murders which have been orchestrated by
John Doe (Kevin Spacey) as a 'sermon' on the seven deadly sins: Sloth, Wrath,
Gluttony, Lust, Pride, Envy and Avarice. Doe's victims are chosen on the
grounds that they embody a particular sinful excess and are subsequently
dispatched in an elaborate and even Epicurean manner (often involving classical
references). The punishment killings are interwoven with various aspects of the
city (appearing as a rain-soaked labyrinthine structure) which is itself alive with
a kind of feral jouissance: circulating sounds of traffic and sirens; echoing voices
of terror and threat; the structural reverberations of the subway which literally
rocks the world of Mills and his wife (Gwyneth Paltrow). What is revealing,
however, is the way in which the film expresses greater fascination with certain
sins rather than others. In the opening sequences, the audience is drawn with
trepidation inside a dilapidated abode (an 'ogre's den') in which an obese man
lies, dead, face down in a plate of food: the execution of Gluttony. Very little
sympathy is afforded to the victim, especially in the way he is subsequently
delivered up to the voyeuristic gaze as an amorphous mass of flesh on the
pathologist's slab.
Particular retribution, however, is reserved for the punishment of Sloth. The
character representing Sloth (a drug dealing 'low life') is immobilized on a bed
for an entire year and is tortured by Doe with an almost maternal administration
(an obscene simulation of the mother/child anxiety)the daily routine of
maintaining basic hygiene, preventing infection, etc.in order to maximize pain
and trauma. And does this not suggest something about the operation of torture
in general? That is to say, torture (and particularly 'official' torture) is not so
much concerned with extracting confessions/information, but rather involves a
preoccupation with jouissance itself and the 'need' to master it: to reduce the
other to a set of primal screams which are beyond 'the human' and which
demonstrate the very excess which has to be regulated by the state.
On finding Doe's Sloth-victim, the detectives approach the 'corpse' when it is
suddenly re-animated with a hair-raising primal scream and a look of wild-eyed
ecstatic horror redolent of religious revelation and of speaking in tongues
(except, in this case, without a tongue ...). This is the point at which jouissance
is revealed as that which cannot be communicated, that which remains an
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impossible uncontrollable force, driving the 'corpse' towards a final consummation with death and sending everyone, and the symbolic order itself, into a
complete panic.
It seems as no coincidence that the two sins which are given greatest
prominence are actually represented by figures from the underclass. And, in this
context, the film clearly demonstrates the extimate nature of enjoyment. For as
J. A. Miller has argued, the hatred of the other's enjoyment is ultimately a hatred
of our own enjoyment.39 The image of the other's enjoyment is so compelling
precisely because it symbolizes the Lacanian 'in us more than ourselves' which,
as Zizek puts it, 'prevents us from achieving full identity with ourselves'.40 In
this sense, the other is always someone who gives body to the very excess of
enjoyment which, in our innermost being, denies us homeostasis. The allure of
the other's enjoyment, therefore, is ultimately an experience of that which the
discursive order attempts to repress/master but which always returns in the Real.
From this perspective, the various sin executions in Seven can be seen as so
many attempts by Doe to eliminate excess and thereby overcome the basic
occlusion to a phantasmic reconciliation. More specifically, however, the particular horror-fascination expressed with regard to Sloth and Gluttony can surely
be contextualized in terms of a kind of Californian Protestantism. That is to say,
these particular sins of excessive enjoyment appear as the repressed counterpoints to the work ethic and an increasing preoccupation with body-image. Thus
it is always within the terms of the (historical) discursive order, and its
(transhistorical) failure to resolve the excess of enjoyment, that the beast finds
its name and is carefully nourished by us.
From a Kantian perspective it is interesting to look at how the character of
John Doe can appear as an ethical figure. Kant's crucial contribution to moral
philosophy was to show that ethics cannot be grounded in any a priori sense.
The 'good' to which any ethical system refers is not an exterior but, on the
contrary, is always constituted within the terms of the system itself; or as A.
Zupancic puts it, 'the good is only good "after" the moral law'.41 Against the
classical philosophical problematic of attempting to establish a prior notion of
the good, Kant asserts that what is ethical is rather the rigorous application of
the moral law itself (however defined) as a categorical imperative. What is
ethical is a certain (tautological) consistencythe duty to do one's duty42in
which individual motivations (the 'pathology' of particular pains and pleasures)
is made wholly subordinate to the universalist application of the law.
From this point of view, Doe can clearly be regarded as an ethical figure. Doe
conceives himself as purely an instrument of moral law and its divine retribution.
Indeed, he immerses himself so thoroughly in the categorical imperative that he
endeavours to eradicate all trace of any particular location in the socio-symbolic
order: slicing off his finger tips so that he can leave no prints; denying any past
or personal history; naming himself 'John Doe' which, of course, is a generalized sobriquet (in U.S. vernacular) for an unidentified corpse.
However, it is in the very embodiment of the Kantian moral law'whose
voice makes even the boldest sinner tremble and forces him to hide from its
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gaze'43that Lacan locates the 'obscene, ferocious Figure' of the superego;44 a

beast of enjoyment. Thus what Doe attempts to conceal is precisely the surplus
enjoyment he takes in personal sacrifice and stoically carrying out his duty. What
Doe exemplifies is not the immediate gratification of a mindless thug, but rather
the obscene satisfaction derived from carrying out complicated and ritualized
killings/torture as part of a divine mission and as an instrument of the Other's
will (in this case, God) which cannot/should not be denied. In this sense, Doe
is revealed as a classic pervert who tries to hide his enjoyment behind his
perceived ethical obligation; to use the categorical imperative as a way of
obfuscating the superego imperative to enjoy. This expresses the classic ideological alibi: 'I was not there as a being of enjoyment but as a functionary of
duty.' And this is precisely Zizek's point against Arendt45 and her conclusions
regarding the Nazi routine of extermination. That is to say, the bureaucratization
itself became 'a source of an additional jouissance'j46 the extra satisfaction
gained from carrying out the daily torture and humiliations as part of an orderly
procedure and even 'welfare' programme (for example, the separation of the
weak from the strong through periodic beatings, exercise regimes, etc.). Thus, in
contrast to Arendt's notion of the 'banality of evil', we might say that what
Zizek identifies is exactly the opposite: the evil of banality.
Doe's enjoyment, of course, is centrally organized through Christian mythology. There are two main scenes where this is particularly in evidence. The first
is when he appears in the police precinct, covered in blood as if with the
stigmata of Christ, and surrenders to the detectives (his 'disciples'). The second
concerns the denouement of the film. In obscene proximity to Calvary, the
detectives escort Doe to a desolate hill overlooked by high-tension towers, and
await the arrival of a parcel containing the decapitated head of Mills' wife: an
object of horror which has, in a sense, already arrived in its announcement of the
traumatic presence of the Real.47 Mills is transformed into Wrath (the last sin)
and 'over-kills' Doe shooting him several times; an enraged execution which,
however, renders Mills impotent and testifies to the consummation of Doe's
enjoyment. In staging his own execution, Doe literally enjoys himself to death.
As Zizek has pointed out, the superego emerges at those points at which the
public law fails; functioning as the law's necessary supplement.48 It is because
the politico-legal framework cannot deliver the unity of Society that the
superego dimension of ideology seeks reparation from the culpable classes: for
example, it is because the welfare state cannot found universal harmony that its
superego guardians seek their pound of flesh from the 'fraudsters'. In this way,
the character of Doe seeks to punish his victims, not because of any legal
transgression but because they do not conform to the imaginary unity, the
ego-ideal, of a God-fearing community. Doe becomes the superego manifestationdriven by the desire for holistic consummation in the relentless pursuit of
sinwho acts on behalf of the law; filling in for its failures.49 In his punitive
obsession with sin, Doe actually lays bare the 'sin' of enjoyment which is at the
source of his categorical imperative. The ultimate transgression of Doe is that he
renders visible the obscene obverse of the law itself; he confronts us with our
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own excesses of the superego which, as Lacan makes clear, both constitutes the
law and threatens its destruction.50
In this context, it is interesting to look again at the electoral defeat of the
Conservatives in Britain. What became intolerable was precisely the way in
which a certain excess of enjoyment, behind the public face of Conservative
ideology, was rendered increasingly visible. Against official declarations of
political accountability, governmental discipline and moral regulation (viz.
'Back to Basics'), what the various exposes revealed was an obscene superegotistical universe of petty corruption, nepotism, sexual scandal, double standards
(etc.), which became popularly characterized as 'sleaze': in our terms, a
primordial slime of enjoyment seeping through the edifice of public duty and
rotting the symbolic networks of the Conservatives' credibility. This exemplifies
the perspective shift which Lacan characterizes in terms of the structure of the
Mebius band.51 Thus the very principles which initially worked in favour of the
Conservativesan easy manner with high finance, esoteric networking,
longevity in government (natural rulers, etc.)now fell under a different light
and began to work as reasons for their removal. And what should not be
overlooked here is that it was not any revelation concerning the duplicitous
nature of the Conservatives (this is a perennial complaint against politicians
generally), but rather that their ideology could no longer effect any kind of
concealment of this duplicity. In other words, their 'sin' concerned a crucial loss
of appearance.52 To this effect, we might say that the Conservative Government
lost its Kantian purchase on universalist ethics/public duty and its ideology was
shown to be impotent in regard to the primary directive of maintaining a
phantasmic consistency against the excesses of enjoyment: in short, the categorical imperative was revealed as superego. By contrast, what Blair has managed
to do is to restore a 'proper' (Kantian) distanciation between the senses of public
duty and private enjoyment.
This adds a crucial dimension to the postmarxist view of ideology and its
relation to the category of misrecognition. That is to say, ideology involves not
only a misrecognition of a discursive infinitude, but also a misrecognition of the
essentially metastable character of enjoyment. In this regard, ideology always
functions as a way of gentrifying our mode(s) of enjoyment; of establishing our
special relationship to the Tiling in terms of a certain mantle of historical
necessity (the various missions to civilize, convert, bear arms, pass judgement,
and so on).53 Through ideology the subject is bestowed a kind of authenticity as
a 'universal witness'. At the same time, however, the subject always remains
split between the (primordial) drives of enjoyment and the (hegemonic/gentrifying) forms of ideological-discursive inscription; a split which gives rise to a
fundamental anxiety which persists in the question 'am I really that?'.

Anxiety and antagonism

A major contribution of psychoanalytic theory has been its identification of the
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different forms of encounter between the universal and the particular in terms of
fantasy and traumatic failure. The notion of subject, for example, cannot be
equated with any concrete or historical subject-position.54 On the contrary, the
subject is precisely that which cannot be fully constituted through subject-positions; a universal (de-)constitutive void ($) which ultimately resists all forms of
particularistic interpellation. Similarly, the Other is always given a particular
embodiment through the artifice of ideology as a way of coping with the Real
(see above). This constitutive splitbetween the universal and the particular
also pertains, moreover, to the phenomenon of antagonism and, as such, lends
it a considerable ambiguity.
As has been noted, what is overlooked in the Laclau-Mouffe formulation of
antagonismin which 'the presence of the Other prevents me from being totally
myselfis that every subjective identity, regardless of any antagonistic encounter, is already marked by an inherent blockage. In a relation of antagonism there
is always a split between the particular contents of an antagonism (the historical
conflict) and its symbolization of universal antagonism as such; or what Zizek
calls 'pure antagonism'.55 From this perspective the central postmarxist assertion
that antagonism is the limit of objectivity56 needs to be qualified. If the relation
of antagonism is always splitbetween its concrete manifestation and pure
antagonism as suchthen its connection with the order of objectivity is not
simply a negation as Laclau and Mouffe appear to suggest.57 As we have seen,
antagonism also functions as an integral supplement to any order (for example,
the role of the 'Jew' as a positive support for the image of the Aryan
community). Indeed we might say that an objective order is really threatened
when it fails to secure a credible embodiment of its own negation.
The ambiguity of the relation of antagonism, moreover, may be seen to be
further extended in respect to the Lacanian notion of anxiety. As Copjec has
remarked, anxiety is 'the most primitive of phenomena' as that which nothing
precedes and whose cause cannot (ultimately) be determined.58 More especially,
the condition of anxiety (as a dimension of pure antagonism) is that which the
subject tries to avoid at all costs, even through antagonism.59
This may be illustrated in respect to the contemporary phenomenon of
so-called false memory syndrome. In recent forms of regression therapy the
subject is 'encouraged' to find a culprit (usually a parent or relative whose
alleged abusive behaviour has been repressed in the memory) who can be
identified as the cause for a set of symptomsfor example, depression, eating
disorders and/or lack of confidenceand thereby effect some sort of resolution
through focused anger, emotional relief, projected goals, and so on. This reveals
a double operation. In the first place, the antagonism, constituted through the
retroactive identification of the culprit responsible for the symptoms, can clearly
be seen as a way of avoiding the trauma of lack; for what would be truly
terrifying is not the idea that somebody (even a 'loved one') was responsible for
a particular pathology but, on the contrary, that the subject would be left with
a cause-less set of symptoms which could not be explained or domesticated in
their symbolic universe.60 At the same time, however, the antagonism also
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becomes a way of resolving the anxiety of an excessive presence: the subject's

over-identification with the incestuous object of desire. This anxiety of presence
can be discerned in Lacan's case of Aimee whose obsessive identification with
Huguette Duflos resulted in a direct assault on the latter. In this context, the
antagonism is not simply a negation but rather a desperate attempt by the subject
to (re-)constitute itself at a 'safe' distance from the Thing. And this returns to
our earlier point concerning the positive dimension of antagonism as a necessary
support for the ideological fantasy of being reconciled with the Thing but with
the built-in proviso that we do not come too close to it.
The constitution of the other, conceived as that which 'prevents me from
being fully myself, might be regarded as the first of all fantasies insofar as it
provides a 'cause' for the subject's immanent blockage. At the same time, the
other also functions as a way of resolving the anxiety of over-identification. And,
in this respect, antagonism does not simply designate a relation of denial. On the
contrary, what needs to be emphasized is the degree to which antagonisms are
enjoyed; the degree of satisfaction which the subject derives from sustaining a
particular antagonism. This is exemplified in the avoidance of what Hegel refers
to as the loss of the loss, such that the subject clings to a concrete antagonism
precisely because of the satisfaction afforded in the fantasy 'if only x were not
preventing me I could achieve my dream'.61
It is in the context of the connection between antagonism and enjoyment,
moreover, that an even more radical dimension can be discerned: the dimension
of the death drive. Let us take Laclau and Mouffe's example of the millenarian
movements in which the social space has become radically polarized around a
basic rural-urban antagonism. There exists not one but two opposed 'societies',
and when the peasant millenarians move to eliminate what they regard as urban
social evil the ensuing 'assault on the city is fierce, total and indiscriminate'.62
Here there appears to be something in the very intensity of the assault which, in
a sense, reveals a certain 'surplus' beyond the specific antagonism as such; a
surplus which reflects the pure metastable enjoyment of the death drive. In the
manner of John Doe, is there not a certain element of 'enjoying the antagonism
to death'; a kind of will to annihilation as an ultimate resolution? This same kind
of phenomenon is also present in various types of martyrdom, suicide bombings
and even orgiastic hooliganism: examples which might be said to bear witness
to a fundamental death drive circulating beneath the antagonism.63 Using
postmarxist terminology, we could say that the logic of equivalential exclusion
becomes so extreme that the antagonistic distanciation contracts and, so to speak,
flips over to reveal a strange logic of 'inclusion': the subject's desire for ultimate
consummation and satisfaction. And, in this regard, ideology may be seen to
play a particularly ambiguous role in both conjuring with the death drive and, at
the same time, protecting the subject from it.
Conclusion
According to Laclau 'it is not possible to threaten the existence of something
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without simultaneously affirming it'.64 However, the argument of this paper also
stresses the importance of the opposite register. Thus the central paradox of
ideology is that it cannot affirm a notion of unity without simultaneously
producing the idea of a threat to that unity. The ideological effect of closure,
therefore, should not be seen exclusively as a discursive operation. Such an
effect is rather the result of a broader process in which antagonisms and
otherness are articulated as a positive support for the fantasy of a consummate
encounter with the Thing of closure.
At the same time, it is evident that the driving force behind closure is the
attempt to resolve a fundamental experience of lack: the renunciation of
enjoyment as a condition of possibility for the constitution of the socio-symbolic
order. In this way, ideology endeavours to resolve what might be called an
existential out-of-jointness through a phantasmatic translation of lack into a
particular experience of loss and the historical determination of those deemed
responsible for the loss/theft of enjoyment. An integral dimension of ideology,
therefore, is the constitution of the 'other' as a culpable (and vincible) stand-in
for the traumatic Real of immanent blockage.
This perspective casts new light on the relation of antagonism. The crucial
point is that antagonisms are not simply external but also involve a certain
dimension of interiority and, as such, exemplify the Lacanian notion of extimacy. What the subject fears most is not the antagonism itself but, on the
contrary, the removal of the antagonism leading to a direct confrontation with
'what is in me more than me'. In this way, antagonisms are ideologically
constituted as a way of resolving the unbearable anxiety of the Hegelian loss of
the loss and sustaining a critical distance between the subject and the Thing-object of excessive enjoyment. Moreover, through the regulation of this critical
distance ideology constitutes its 'universalism' through a certain misrecognition
of enjoyment: concealing the superegotistical drives of its order and presenting
the subject as being in an authentic orientation with the Thing as the bearer of
an ultimate destiny.
In his satirical take on continental philosophy, Woody Allen concludes: 'not
only is there no God; try getting a plumber on the weekend.' In this context we
might say that psychoanalytic theory makes a similar contribution to the central
postmarxist assertion that society does not exist. That is to say, the extended
version should be: 'not only is there no society, try getting compensation from
those who've stolen it.' It is this ludicrous supplement which not only attests to
the traumatic truth of the basic statement but which also enables us to reformulate the problematic of ideology in terms of the fundamental dimensions of
fantasy and enjoyment.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Mari Makinen (University of Lapland) and Gary Pollock (The
Manchester Metropolitan University) for their comments and support.
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Notes and references

1. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 48.
2. L. Althusser, For Marx (London: Verso, 1965).
3. G. Daly, 'Postmodernity and Marxism', in A. Gamble et al. (Eds.), Marxism and Social Science (London:
Macmillan, 1999).
4. E. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990), p. 92.
5. E. Laclau, 'The death and resurrection of the theory of ideology', Journal of Political Ideologies, 1, 3
(1996), pp. 201-220.
6. S. iek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989), p. 45.
7. iek, ibid. p. 79.
8. This also, curiously, reflects the position of R. Rorty in his Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989)see G. Daly, 'Post-metaphysical culture and politics: Richard Rorty
and Laclau and Mouffe', Economy and Society, 23 (May 1994), pp. 173-200, for a fuller discussion of
Rorty. For Rorty, 'truth' is essentially a neutral matter of 'whatever wins in a free and open encounter'
(ibid., p. 67); it is a matter for seminarians who, in a sense, already agree on the language and the rules
to be used. Ideology becomes principally a question of linguistic (re-)adjustment free of any real
conflictuality and beyond what Lyotard calls the differend. This is why Rorty feels that contemporary
Western (liberal) society 'may have had the last conceptual revolution it needs' (ibid., p. 63). Thus,
through the celebration of a postmodern liberalism, Rorty is brought into close proximity with the
ontological order of F. Fukuyama's 'end of history' thesis developed in his The End of History and the
Last Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992). And here there exists a clear contiguity between the free flow
of truth/communication theses and Bill Gates' notion of a 'friction-free capitalism'. This denial of
'friction' is the ideological.
9. In this connection it is also interesting to look at the preponderance of fitness centres with their overtly
sexual connotations (with names such as Tight Places and Hard Guys). The 'solution' to the deadlock is
provided through the very excess of physical rigour as a substitute for the sexual event itself. In a kind
of Leninist approach to the erotic, the centres allow for a certain 'leap-frogging' of a fundamental stage
of encounter, such that the participants can move directly to a collective sharing of the hetero/homo-erotic
post-coital gaze (the satisfaction provided through 'that's what they'd look like after sex ...'). And perhaps
this is also characteristic of a certain type of 'post-modernism' and the obsessional desire to avoid the
event; a post-modernism which aims at always reaching the stage of interpretation in an event-less horizon
( la Baudrillard) and is satisfied with an infinite deferral contained in the notion of 'to come'.
10. This can also be seen in terms of another re-staging of the game of fort!/da! in which lack and absence
come to be symbolized as part of an achievable fullness.
11. T. Blair, address to French Assembly, 1998.
12. M. Spens, Viipuri Library: Alvar Aalto (London: Academy Editions, 1994).
13. J. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1994), p. 270.
14. J. Lacan, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 73.
15. This reflects Laclan's point that there is no radical other except as it is manufactured through fantasy. In
this respect, the other must always remain a covetous thief in order to sustain the 'value' of the Thing and
our special relation to it. John Schlesinger's Marathon Man illustrates the point. In the denouement to the
film the Nazi war criminal Szell (Lawrence Olivier) confronts the latter generation Jew (Dustin Hoffman)
for the prized possession of a set of diamonds (amassed from the holocaust). When the Hoffman character
refuses to be bargained with and contemptuously throws the diamonds to the foaming subterranean waters,
a fatal conflict ensues in which Szell is swept away to his death. In this context, what is unbearable for
Szell is not that the other is denying him access to the object of his desire, but rather the denial of the
denial: that the other demonstrates that not only has he no wish to possess or steal the object of desire
but, even worse, treats it as wholly undesirable, he returns its 'value' as merely an excrescence which leads
to a shattering of Szell's innermost fantasy (the worst kind of other is the other who refuses to be an
'other'). What Szell encounters is not so much an antagonism with a covetous other but rather a certain
'other within' whose very excess (an insatiable desire) inevitably consumes him.
16. J. Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London: Tavistock, 1977), p. 272.
17. S. iek, The Plague of Fantasies (London: Verso, 1997), p. 7.
18. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985), pp. 122-127.
19. Laclau and Mouffe, ibid., p. 125.
20. Laclau and Mouffe, ibid., p. 125.
21. iek, op. cit. Ref. 6, p. 72 and p. 175.
22. iek, ibid., p. 127.

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23. In Nazi ideology, for example, the 'final solution' stages the attempt at a final resolution of the trauma of
the Real.
24. T. Blair, Labour Party Conference, 30 September 1997.
25. Groups who 'embrace' their exclusion and become a class-for-itselfas with 'new age travellers',
Gypsies, the 'opt-out' eco-movements ...and, so to speak, refuse to be other, present an even greater
'threat' and often come up against the full force of the state's repressive apparatuses.
26. Various articles and interviews, but see R. J. Hernstein and C. Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: Free
Press Paperbacks, 1994).
27. B. Campbell, Goliath (London: Methuen, 1993), p. 322.
28. Extimacy, or extimit is a neologism created by Lacan in order to combine the notions of exteriority
(exterieur) and intimacy (intimit). Thus the Real is extimate precisely because it can be experienced as
both radically exterior (e.g. an 'act of God') and unbearably intimate (e.g. a personal loss).
29. The same kind of horror-fascination can also be witnessed in respect to the 'over-class'. It is precisely
because the aristocracy and the rich and famous are beyond the normal confines of the law and social
structures that they exert such interest. In the case of populist rupture the ancien rgime are invariably
represented as betraying the people, and 'Society', precisely because of their 'decadence' and their surplus
enjoyment in their alternative rituals and traditions. In the case of Lady Diana Spencer, on the other hand,
an opposite shift in perspective can be seen which is indicative of the Lacanian Mebius band: i.e. a
geometric figure which appears to have two sides but, in fact, possesses only one and thus whose
contrasting dimensions of 'inside' and 'outside' are actually continuous and depend entirely on perspective. While on the one hand, Lady Diana's 'two-dimensional' qualities were treated as an opportunity for
merciless ridicule, after her untimely death it was precisely her 'simplicity' (as opposed to the
'sophisticates' of the aristocratic classes) and somewhat naive devotion to a sense of care and social duty
which has become integral to her symbolic reconstruction as an iconic embodiment of a (lost) national
fullness. In this way, Lady Diana has become the mourned object of lost enjoyment (the mourning of
which is itself a source of satisfaction and enjoyment).
30. Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 71.
31. P. Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology (New York: Semiotext(e), 1986).
32. We might understand this as a kind of supplementary clause which is written on the back of every social
contract (a clause which licences the ideological bailiffs). And in this regard, it gives a more radical edge
to Bourdieu's notion of a social economy of differing levels of cultural capitalsee P. Bourdieu,
Distinction (London: Routledge, 1984). The point is that such a social economy is ultimately driven by
'original debt'.
33. Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref 18, pp. 126-127.
34. Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 184.
35. This illustrates the point that any direct encounter with the Thing itself (invested with an extimate excess
of enjoyment) would by definition result in traumatic dislocation and a shattering of the symbolic
framework. In this way, the pleasure principle functions as a way of maintaining a critical distance from
the Thing in order to prevent the dissolution of the subject (Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 58).
36. J. A. Miller, Extimit (unpublished lecture, 1985).
37. S. iek, Tarrying With the Negative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 202-203.
38. .iek, ibid., p. 203.
39. Miller, op. cit., Ref. 36.
40. iek, op. cit., Ref. 37, p. 206.
41. A. Zupani, 'The subject of the law', in S. iek (Ed.), Cogito and the Unconscious (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1998), p. 56.
42. S. iek, The Indivisible Remainder: Essays on Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996), p.
170.
43. I. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (New York: Macmillan, 1993), p. 83.
44. Lacan, op. cit, Ref. 16, p. 256.
45. H. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking Press, 1963).
46. iek, op. cit., Ref. 17, p. 55.
47. In this respect, Mills is not the 'true' addressee. Doe's real address is to the universal (for we all know
what's in the parcel).
48. S. iek, The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), pp. 54-57.
49. This can be illustrated with respect to the long-term conflict in Northern Ireland. While the violence is
routinely condemned in public by politicians on all sides, there is (almost) always a certain supplement
along the following lines: 'While we support the democratic-legal process and regret all forms of sectarian
violence, we also have to be aware that this situation is totally unacceptable to our community and its
traditions....' This supplement reveals the 'obscene' superego support to the public ideology. In this

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50.
51.
52.
53.

54.

55.
56.
57.
58.
59.

60.

61.
62.
63.

64.

regard, the coded message to those who belong is that what unites the community and its traditions'our
shared way of life'is far too precious to be solely entrusted to the law. What really cements the
community is precisely this 'beyond' of the lawthat which cannot be given a declarationat the level
of superego enjoyment.
J. Lacan, Freud's Papers on Technique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 102.
See Ref. 29.
The same phenomenon can be seen at work in the sexual scandal surrounding Clinton. Moreover, the
brouhaha surrounding an alleged predisposition towards oral gratification is one which lends a particularly
illicit dimension, in the American psyche, to the President's (over-)enjoyment of his office.
The point is that while our relation to the Thing (our civilization) is regarded as a universal good, at the
same time it is perceived to be fundamentally inimitable; it is only 'us' (the particular qua the particular)
which can truly embody the universal. See G. Daly, 'Politics and the impossible: beyond psychoanalysis
and deconstruction', Theory, Culture and Society forthcoming.
Laclau and Mouffe have tended to collapse this distinction (Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 115).
In a later work, however, Laclau refers to the subject in terms of its 'lack of being' (Laclau, op. cit., Ref.
4, p. 44), but it remains unclear as to whether this represents an endorsement or only a partial borrowing
from the Lacanian theory of the subject.
S. iek, 'Beyond discourse analysis', in Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 252.
Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 125 and Laclau, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 17.
Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref. 18, p. 126.
J. Copjec, Read My Desire (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 118.
This argument was originally developed by Lacan in relation to the issue of phobia: thus a subject will
'choose' a phobia in preference to the more radical danger of anxietysee J. Lacan, Le Seminaire. Livre
IV. La Relation D'Objet (Paris: Seuil, 1994), p. 345. However, I think this argument can also be extended
to the field of antagonism.
And this is underscored by the 'common-sense' assertion that there are only two answers to the question
'have you been abused?': 'yes' or 'I don't know'. Thus what is being posited is a kind of antiverificationism (the impossibility of any falsification) which permanently sustains the possibility for a
positivistic account (to overcome 'access denied'); which, of course, is the promise of ideology.
iek, for example, shows how in the case of long-suffering family devotion, the mother is prepared to
sacrifice everything except the sacrifice itself (iek, op. cit., Ref. 6, p. 216), as it is precisely this sacrifice
which sustains a certain maternal satisfaction.
Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref 18, p. 130.
It should be made clear that, strictly speaking, the death drive has nothing to do with a 'literal' (or
biological/genetic) conception of death. Rather, the death drive emerges as 'a will to create from zero, a
will to begin again' (Lacan, op. cit., Ref. 14, p. 212). It emerges because of the 'tyranny' of the signifying
chain and the desire to escape its unceasing, and ultimately vacuous, plenitude into what might be called
a geometry of origins (i.e. to find a clean edge for the subject's orientation).
Laclau, op. cit., Ref, 4, p. 27.