Postdoctoral Fondecyt Research Project: “Towards a Radical Conception of Politics: A Critical Analysis of Zizek’s Theory of the Act”

Is it possible to conceive of a type of politics that breaks from the constraints imposed by a given “objective” political situation? In other words, is it still possible - within the context of apparently undisputable “objective rules” - to conceive of a kind of politics that defines itself as going against such rules, as proclaiming the “impossible”? Or rather are we definitively posed, with good reason, in the realm of pragmatic-technocratic or, at best, deliberative politics? This research project seeks to explore these questions by critically assessing the thesis of radical politics developed by the Slovenian theorist Slavoj Žižek, using examples taken from Chilean contemporary politics as a methodological strategy to problematize Žižek's thesis. Žižek's thesis of radical politics asserts the idea of a political act as one that, despite originating with regard to a situation, cannot be accounted within the given horizon of what appears to be 'possible' in such a situation. Furthermore, it is an act that is both assumed as impossible within the horizon of a situation and one that comes to radically change such a horizon, posing in a reversible way its own conditions of possibility. Žižek's theory of the act, controversial as it is, has fuelled an intense debate because it directly opposes dominant conceptions of politics such as Habermas/Rawls’ deliberative thesis and Laclau/Negri’s post-Marxist approaches. My contention is, however, that it is one of the most innovative attempts to theorise the problem of conceiving of a type of politics that is liberated from ideological misconceptions, which, since Althusser, has revolved around political theory. Moreover, Žižek's theory of the act directly aims to rethink how to make possible an emancipatory type of politics in a time in which social inequality and exploitation are, not only a constant, but also an increasing feature of the global order. It is therefore a worthy theory that deserves theoretical attention. This research project will be focused on two of the most controversial aspects of Žižek's theory of the act, i.e. the ontological and normative implications that such a conception presents for contemporary political theory. On the ontological implications, the research project will explore the question of how “radical” can a radical conception of politics be. In other words, it will assess whether Žižek’s proposal can be assumed as successful in overcoming not only Althusser's totalising early conception of ideology but also Žižek's own reinforcing notion of ideology. My aim here will be twofold. First, I will seek to critically reassess the theoretical conditions that Žižek has to assume in order to conceive of a radical act. Second, I will assess to what extent Žižek's endeavour gives rise to an “authentic” political act, i.e. one that, traversing ideological fantasies, inaugurates a new “emancipated” symbolic order. My hypothesis here is that a radical or emancipatory act cannot be thought of in relation to changes affecting the elements represented in a given symbolic situation alone, even if these changes essentially alter those elements. Rather, what would define the possibility and character of a radical act (and the new symbolic universe that it gives rise to) is a positioning of the elements of the situation with regard to what we can call, following Žižek-Lacanian terminology, the “Real” of the situation, which must be, in someway, touched or represented by the act. This would open the possibility of both a radical or emancipatory political act and a new emancipatory (not exploitative) arrangement of the elements of a new situation. For this purpose, the research project will critically contrast both Žižek’s theory of ideology and of the act with Althusser's early and late works as a background. This is the task for the first year of this project. The second part of this research project aims to problematise the normative aspects involved in Žižek's theory of the act and is guided by the question of how “radical” radical politics should be. In other words, I will explore the challenges that Žižek's theory of the act poses for the democratic ethos that dominates contemporary political theory, particularly with regard to the problem of violence (revolutionary and/or totalitarian). My hypothesis here is that a radical or emancipatory act can only be tentatively thought of from a current normative point of view. This is because any normative approach cannot avoid being attached to (and in some sense trapped in) the “language” of a given a situation, which the act, if successful, will radically change. In this sense, the normative assessment of a radical act, with regard to the idea of democracy, can only be properly made a posteriori, when the new conditions of possibility will have already been posed by the act. For this purpose, this research project will develop a critical analysis of the normative implications (risks and consequences) and challenges that Žižek's theory of the act presents to deliberative, (à la Habermas and Rawls) as well as to post-Marxist radical (à la Laclau and Negri) approaches to democracy. This is the task for the second year of my research. The methodological approach used in this research project is inscribed within the wide tradition of Critical Theory. This implies the development of a dynamic assessment that will seek to “intervene” in Žižek’s theses. In that way, the aim is not only interpretative but essentially creative. The expected outcomes of this research project are threefold. First, the production of a critical assessment of ontological and normative aspects of Žižek’s theory of the act. Second, the enhancement of the field of theorisations on radical politics. Finally, to contribute to the broadening of the understanding of contemporary Chilean social disruptive political phenomena by observing them from a perspective of radical politics. I will accomplish this by dealing with and furthering the new possibilities opened by Žižek’s theory of the act but at the same time seriously confronting shortcomings and alternative theorisations asserted by rival approaches.

The Critique of Ideology Revisited: A Zizekian Appraisal of Habermas's Communicative Rationality (Contemporary Political Theory, 2008, 7, 53–71)

Since the advent of a post-structuralist ethos, the assertion of a notion of truth, conceived as an infallible point d'appui from which a given social order could be evaluated as ideological or non-ideological, seems no longer possible. As Rorty has pointed out '[we can now] see ourselves as never encountering reality except under a chosen description as...making worlds rather than finding them'. However, we could still legitimately ask whether or not an inevitable condition of the 'post-modern world', that is, a world deprived of a manifest intrinsic meaning, is the renouncement of the assumption of a certain notion of an objective truth for a critique of ideology. I will suggest in this essay that a way to respond to this question is by revisiting Habermas's theory of communicative action, viewed through the lens of the theory of ideology formulated by Slavok Zizek. Furthermore, the main thesis of this work is that by using the notion of the Real or 'primordial repressed' taken from a Zizekian reading of Lacan, it would allow the production of a critique of ideology in which the truth — the unmasking of the extra-ideological place — becomes possible as a hypothetical objective category.

El carácter traumático del consenso en torno al “Modelo Chileno”: una investigación sobre la elite política democrática post-Pinochet

This article proposes a revising of the consensus on the post-Pinochet "Chilean model" (democratic stability and neoliberal economy), reached by the political elite that took office in March 1990. Following a "symptomatic" interpretation -such as that offered by Althusser y Balibar (1970)- of a series of semi-structured interviews, it is argued that the consensus, far from being exclusively an exercise of political rationality, is primordially based on a traumatic process of reconstitution of a political generational discursive identity, which took place after the coup d’Etat of 1973. Furthermore, the 'traumatic consensus', as an expression of a political generation that rejects the conflict, would be one of the explicative keys of the specificity of the Chilean model. This, in turn, raises questions about the perdurability and convenience of such a consensus, in a neoliberal context in which social conflicts are not only not disappearing but also seem to be sentenced to increase. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, Coloquios, 2008, [En línea], Puesto en línea el 14 janvier 2008. URL : http://nuevomundo.revues.org//index11502.html. Consultado el 05 juin 2008.

The Social from the Concept of Illusion in Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli and Bacon (Cinta de Moebio 28: 29-38, 2007)

The epistemological tradition set up by Plato has been permanently reading as a ‘way of doing philosophy’ in which the dualisms: reality versus illusion, on the one hand, and individual versus the social, on the other, would present not only in an explicit and incommensurable opposition to modern conceptions that assert the overcoming of such distinctions, but also as a monolithic bloc within which every new thing added seems to be no more than a “footnote” to that already said by the Greek philosopher. This work, offering a rereading of the notion of illusion in some authors of such a tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon), far from reaffirming the “mainstream” suggests that it is within the own Plato’s aegis in which the Platonic dualism begins to crack as a consequence of the permanent presence of the ‘social’.

Notas acerca de la determinación de lo ideológico y verdadero en Teoría de la Ideología (Revista Ciencia Política, v.25, n.2, 2005)

The requirement of assuming a given category of the true for the determination of the ideological -the condition of true knowledge- has always been a basic premise of the classic theory of ideology. The emergence of a "poststructuralist ethos", however, has meant the explicit denying of such condition, becoming the main theoretical challenge to those authors who insist in using the notion of ideology in "post modern" times. This work assesses the classic answers given to the determination of the ideological as well as the contemporary theories elaborated in response to the challenge posed by post-structuralism, within the descriptive and negative research program on ideology distinguished by Geuss (1981). The paper finally proposes a re-conceptualisation of the notion of ideology which, acknowledging the permanence of the `necessity' of the true, places the praxis of the individuals as the main "locus" for both the ideological delusion and the critical emancipation.