Glyn Daly

Conversations with Zizek

Introduction. 1. Contexts and horizons: Opening the Space of Philosophy. 2. The Madness of Reason: Encounters of the Real Kind. 3. Subject of Modernity: Virtuality and the Fragility of the Real. 4. Tolerance and the Intolerable: Enjoyment, Ethics and Event. 5. Miracles do happen: Globalization(s) and Politics

Ideology and its paradoxes: Dimensions of fantasy and enjoyment

Abstract 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 fr...

Radical(ly) political economy: Luhmann, postmarxism and globalization

This paper is concerned with a reactivation of the dimension of the political in political economy. The question of politicization is explored in connection with recent theoretical reflection on postmarxism and the systems theory of Luhmann. A main contention is that, in contrast to naturalistic perspectives, there is no pre-given object of political economy. Rather the objectivation of the economy has to be considered in strictly hegemonic terms; terms that, I argue, are the condition of possibility for a politicization of political economy. On these grounds, the paper advances an alternative approach to political economy that may be considered radical insofar as it does not attempt to conceal the fundamental dimension of the political. This approach will be developed further in the context of contemporary themes and debates surrounding the question of globalization and the potential openings for hegemonic intervention by the left. Here again the status of the political is taken to be paramount.

Politics of the political: psychoanalytic theory and the Left(s)

How does Lacanian theory inform our understanding of politics? What inferences can be drawn from such theory for the prospects of radical intervention? This paper explores the ways in which two central perspectives—that of Žižek and the postmarxism of Laclau and Mouffe and the Essex School—have sought to develop and operationalize Lacanian thought in a political context. It will be argued that the tensions that exist between these perspectives cannot be reduced to degrees of emphasis and/or analytical objectives. Rather they reflect basic philosophical and theoretical differences over the interpretation of such notions as totality, necessity, suture, traversing the fantasy, and so on. These differences have precipitated distinct views as regards the authenticity and effectiveness of political action and the nature of political logics. Put in other terms, what is at stake is a politics of the political.

Ology Schmology: A Post-Structuralist Approach

This article represents an intervention in the debate over ontology and epistemology conducted recently in Politics. Taking a post-structuralist stance it seeks to reformulate the nature of the relationship between the ontological and the epistemological and to demonstrate that this has important consequences for the way in which the question of politics is approached.