Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject : A Theory of Ideology via Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek [1 ed.] 9780367336691

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Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject

Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject outlines a theory of ideological func­ tion and a range of ideological positions according to which individuals ratio­ nalise and accept socio-economic conditions in advanced consumer capitalist societies. Through a critical examination of the social and psychoanalytic the­ ories of Herbert Marcuse, Fredric Jameson, and Slavoj Žižek, the author extends the understanding of ideology to consider not only the unconscious attachment to social relations, but also the importance of conscious rationali­ sation in sustaining ideologies. In this way, the book defines different ideologies today in terms of the manner in which they conditionally internalise a domi­ nant neoliberal rationality, and considers the possibility that entrenched social norms may be challenged directly, through conscious engagement. It will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in ideology, neoliberalism, psychoanalytic thought and critical theory. Jon Bailes is an independent researcher and writer. He has a PhD in Eur­ opean Studies from UCL. He is the author of Ideology and the Virtual City: Videogames, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism and the co-editor of Weapon of the Strong: Conversations on US State Terrorism.

Routledge Studies in Social and Political Thought

144 Work: Marxist and Systems-Theoretical Approaches Stefan Kühl 145 The Social Life of Nothing: Silence, Invisibility and Emptiness in Tales of Lost Experience Susie Scott 146 A Politics of Disgust Selfhood, World-Making and Ethics Eleonora Joensuu 147 The Lived Experiences of Muslims in Europe Recognition, Power and Intersubjective Dilemmas Des Delaney 148 Ethical Politics and Modern Society T. H. Green’s Practical Philosophy and Modern China James Jia-Hau Liu 149 Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject A Theory of Ideology via Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek Jon Bailes 150 Hegel and Contemporary Practical Philosophy Beyond Kantian-Constructivism James Gledhill and Sebastian Stein 151 A Marxist Theory of Ideology Praxis, Thought and the Social World Andrea Sau For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/series/ RSSPT

Consciousness and the Neoliberal Subject A Theory of Ideology via Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek Jon Bailes

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Jon Bailes The right of Jon Bailes to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bailes, Jon, author.

Title: Consciousness and the neoliberal subject : a theory of ideology via

Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek / Jon Bailes.

Description: 1 Edition. | New York : Routledge, 2020. |

Series: Routledge studies in social and political thought |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019056611 (print) | LCCN 2019056612 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780367336691 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429321153 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Ideology. | Neoliberalism. |

Marcuse, Herbert, 1898–1979--Political and social views. |

Jameson, Fredric,--Political and social views. |

Žižek, Slavoj,--Political and social views.

Classification: LCC HM641 .B35 2020 (print) |

LCC HM641 (ebook) | DDC 140--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056611

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056612

ISBN: 978-0-367-33669-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-32115-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman

by Taylor & Francis Books

For Cihan

Contents

Acknowledgements

viii

Introduction

1

1

An ideology model

7

2

Herbert Marcuse: One-dimensional rationalisation

36

3

Marcuse: The art and politics of revolution

61

4

Fredric Jameson: A postmodern narrative

88

5

Jameson: Reconstructing class consciousness

114

6

Slavoj Žižek: Disavowing the Real

137

7

Žižek: Enacting negation

160

Conclusion Index

187

193

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank a number of people who have helped me in the process of writing this book. For their general guidance throughout the process, I am grateful to Kevin Inston and Mark Hewitson, as well as to Fabio Vighi and Matthew Beaumont for their valuable feedback. I am also thankful for the support of the Centre for Multidisciplinary and Intercultural Inquiry (CMII) at UCL, and I am indebted to many other students and academics I have met, both from UCL and other universities, with whom I have been able to share and develop ideas. At Routledge, I would like to thank Neil Jordan and Alice Salt for their work in commissioning and editing the manuscript. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their support and encouragement, especially my parents, Margaret and Bill Bailes, my mother-in-law, Yüksel Hasan, and most of all my wife, Cihan Aksan-Bailes.

Introduction

What leads us, whether as individuals or groups, to accept the conditions in neoliberal consumerist societies? What kind of ideological support is required to maintain existing systems and institutions? How do different ideological posi­ tions provide that support? This book aims to answer such questions through a theory of ideology that considers the relationship between dominant social demands and responses to those demands manifested in beliefs, assumptions and practices. To meet this aim, it critically examines existing theories of ideology, especially those of Herbert Marcuse, Fredric Jameson, and Slavoj Žižek, and the ideological positions they identify. In many ways, it follows their dialectical and psychoanalytic approach to ideology study and their analysis of social relations. Yet it also challenges these theories, in particular by shifting focus away from the role of the unconscious in ideology, to present a more equal consideration of conscious and unconscious elements. While these theories often treat ideology as a libidinal attachment to existing social relations identifiable through behaviour, rather than consciously articulated principles, this book emphasises a reciprocal relationship between the two. An important concept to this end is ‘rationalisation’, which is used here to describe the link in consciousness between belief and behaviour, or how individuals justify what they do, whether or not it accords with their proclaimed principles. This follows psychoanalytic definitions of rationalisation as a defence mechanism which ‘offers logical and believable explanations for irrational behaviours that have been prompted by unconscious wishes’ (Bateman and Holmes, 1995, p.92). But applied to ideology, rationalisation is not merely justifying specific instances of irrational behaviour, but a general state of adherence to a subject position. In this view, any set of behavioural norms we enact is ‘irrational’, because ultimately there is no indisputable God-given reason for it, only an inexplicable unconscious attachment supported by consciousness. The important question is thus how con­ scious rationalisation sustains libidinal attachment, or how that attachment both overdetermines and relies on a framework of conscious ideas. Rationalisation is then not merely a secondary effect of libidinal attachment, but an intrinsic part of the ideological circuit, susceptible to external influences that, in turn, may influence behaviour. As such, it is pertinent to identify existing ideological positions and their conditional relations to dominant power structures.

2

Introduction

This perspective is not meant to question the core concepts of psycho­ analysis, merely to reconsider how ideology works, and it provides the book with numerous avenues of inquiry. First, there is the relationship between the existing social order and its ‘affirmative’ rationalisations, or ideological posi­ tions that reinforce dominant ideas and behaviour. Crucially, this ‘affirmation’ does not simply signify adherence to some ‘ruling’ ideology or explicit moral investments in current structures, but refers to any belief systems that directly or indirectly justify conformist behaviour.1 Second, the possibility of con­ tingent or indirect affirmation makes it necessary to consider the content of particular ideological positions, or the specific beliefs, assumptions and com­ mitments that connect them to the social order, as well as their contradictions. Third, we can view rationalisation in relation to existing ideology theories, to consider how it reinforces or contrasts them, and what it implies about the functioning of ideology. Fourth, the emphasis on rationalisation also affects how political theory relates to ideology, and it is important to explore the impact this approach has on theories of hegemony and social change. We begin, however, by defining what is actually meant by ‘ideology’ in this study. In simple terms, ideology is what motivates politically significant actions, according to perceptions of cultural norms and societal functioning. But there are a number of additional points to make. First, it is necessary to distinguish between ideology as a general concept, and ideologies as particular sets of beha­ viours and rationalisations. In the former case, this book is concerned with how ideology functions at both the social and psychological level, or how we work as ‘subjects’ within a social reality. Why do individuals have the ideological posi­ tions they do, and what stops them from changing? In the latter case, we can identify the kinds of ideological positions that are prevalent in a social situation in terms of content, that is, what people know and believe, and how that relates to their actions and social expectations. Our contention is that considering the function and content of ideology together provides greater insight into both, in that the function indicates how content is formed, and the content, mediated through rationalisation, helps us understand the structural limits. It is also crucial to clarify what counts as an ideology, or what kind of ideas are ideological. The main factor here is how beliefs and rationalisations function politically, yet we are not only concerned with explicitly political ideologies such as liberalism and conservatism. This notion differs, for example, from Freeden’s point that ‘the concept of ideology will benefit from presenting concrete ideolo­ gies as themselves formed out of unmistakably distinctive configurations of political concepts’ (Freeden, 1996, p.48). What matters for us is whether con­ cepts have significant political effects, regardless of intent, albeit still within sys­ tems of thought and group behaviour that, as Freeden says, ‘will link together a particular conception of human nature, a particular conception of social struc­ ture, of justice, of liberty, of authority, etc.’ (Freeden, 1996, p.76). For us, even ostensibly ‘apolitical’ philosophies such as consumerist hedonism or cynical realism involve conceptions of human nature, liberty and so on, are widespread among particular groups, and have a cumulative political impact. While they are

Introduction

3

not strictly ideologies as value systems that explicitly underpin mass political mobilisation, therefore, they are ‘ideological positions’, which have the structure and political impact of ideologies. Indeed, their impact may be more significant to current social conditions than that of traditional ideologies, making such positions essential to comprehending the ideological climate. Our definition of ideology is also informed by Marxist dialectics and psycho­ analysis, which situate incompleteness and contradiction at the heart of the social order and the psyche. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek are all especially valuable here, in the way they combine both approaches to bridge the gap between individual and social aspects of ideological function. In terms of dia­ lectics, at issue is the tension between maintaining the order and the contra­ dictions and potentials for change that exist within it. In this sense, ideology is either ‘affirmative’ or ‘oppositional’ in that it either promotes dominant expec­ tations or questions them. Marcuse’s concepts of one-dimensional and twodimensional thinking, Jameson’s emphasis on historicising, and Žižek’s notion of the Real beyond the symbolic order all effectively reveal this constitutive division within any ideological field, between the way things are and what they exclude. This perspective is important to understand ideologies not only as clusters of concepts but in how they connect to particular power relations. In terms of psychoanalysis, consciousness presumes an unconscious invest­ ment in the social and language to create a stable sense of meaning. Any ability we have to reflect on our circumstances and selves presumes our ‘interpellation’ as subjects by certain social norms. Yet there is always an aspect of the psyche that is left unfulfilled, and plagues the subject with a potential beyond existing meaning. For Marcuse, this is the socialising side of the Freudian Eros or life instinct, for Jameson it is a ‘utopian’ impulse, whereas for Žižek’s Lacanian theory it is drive, or the gap that defines subjectivity. While there are differences in what these concepts imply, they all signify a lack of closure at the core of subjectivity, and considering ideology in terms of the unconscious enables these theorists ‘to give shape to the complex relationships between private desires and the social totality’ (Tally, 2014, p.61). For us, it also suggests that the integrity of ideologies rests on maintaining a sense of fulfilment, and continu­ ing to repress alternatives. Defining ideology in relation to existing social hierarchies and potentials for change also suggests a certain political stance. Because the concept emphasises the ultimate arbitrariness of dominant ideas, it points towards criticism, con­ tradictions and alternatives, lending itself to opposition to existing social rela­ tions. Yet the partiality of this perspective does not undermine ideological analysis; rather, such partiality is the prerequisite for a view of existing ideolo­ gies that formulates different positions in terms of their relationship to each other and the hegemony of the current social order. In this sense, ideological analysis is more than outlining beliefs or understanding psychology, as it examines the relationship between ideological content, function and social structures. It also assumes an important political value, as part of what Wright calls the ‘three tasks’ of political change: ‘diagnosis and critique; formulating

4

Introduction

alternatives; and elaborating strategies of transformation’ (Wright, 2010, p.8). Specifically, once we identify problems in the existing system and possible solutions, the question of how such changes may occur is a matter of ideology. This approach to ideology is of course only one of many, and not intrinsically more valid than another. But it highlights that any approach has its own ideo­ logical orientation and cannot constitute a ‘neutral’ analysis. At the same time, our analysis departs from the directions that Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek take, particularly in how they theorise potentials for a wide­ spread oppositional consciousness within current social conditions. In our understanding, while they generally evaluate dominant power relations realisti­ cally, revealing the huge scope and adaptability of neoliberal capitalism, their assumptions can lead them to overstate the oppressive unity of the ideological climate. They thus tend to focus on how ideology functions at the unconscious level, suggesting that challenging conscious beliefs is ineffective, because people continue to act in conformist ways regardless of their thinking. Broadly speak­ ing, these issues surround concepts of reification in Marcuse, postmodern frag­ mentation in Jameson, and the primacy of enjoyment in Žižek. In each case, they present a theory of ideology that leaves space for oppositional consciousness and behaviour to develop, but does not satisfactorily account for what may cause it to form or spread. As such, even when these theories identify different ideologi­ cal positions, they often do not analyse them in terms of contestable contra­ dictions in content. For us, this focus on the unconscious can itself be historicised as a reaction to the ubiquity and power of modern capitalism and commodity exchange relations, as well as the ‘crisis’ of Marxism as a revolutionary force, that has been ongoing since the mid-20th century. It is a view of ideology that remains pertinent, but potentially overemphasises certain tendencies over others. Indeed, this time period is one reason for analysing Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek specifically in this study. Their work charts developments in the con­ ceptualisation of ideology from the post-war era to the present, but also represents a certain theoretical continuity in that period, showing how the ideologies of what we now call neoliberalism come to fruition. Moreover, it is not merely their in-depth focus on ideology that is important, but how they situate it in a detailed social theory of consumer capitalism. In crude terms, the three can be seen as the key representatives of each stage in this period, with Marcuse the theorist of the ’50s and ’60s, Jameson the ’70s and ’80s, and Žižek the ’90s and early 2000s (although, more accurately, Marcuse’s work in the ’70s and Jameson’s work from the ’90s onwards are equally significant). Consistent throughout is an attempt to reconfigure ideology to meet social conditions which seem to render simple versions of concepts such as ‘ruling ideology’ and ‘false consciousness’ irrelevant. This is a time in which religion and nationalism become less dominant as guarantees of meaning, as (con­ sumerist) choice and individual expression gradually take precedence. In this way, as neoliberalism becomes dominant, the reasons people may have for adhering to social expectations become more complex and varied, and we can see this shift hinted at and explored in Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek’s work.

Introduction

5

This convergence of social theory and ideology theory also allows us to interrogate the relationship between the material and the psychological in imagining political change. Here, Marcuse’s work embodies the core Frankfurt School concept of ‘administrative society’, in which ideology and even psy­ chological structure largely reflect rationalised logics of capitalist organisation. However, the counter-cultural and anti-war movements of the late 1960s showed that alternative thought and action can still occur, not merely as a result of worsening material circumstances, but as an apparently always present potential. So while Marcuse embraced the moment, his theory had been unable to account for it. When we come to Jameson and Žižek, it is again difficult to see how such an eruption of resistance could emerge, barring some kind of socio-economic disaster or spontaneous act, yet it remains necessary to theo­ rise the possibility of another sustained political eruption and to consider why recent protest movements have not led to such radical upheaval. It is here that conscious rationalisation becomes important, as a way of linking circum­ stances and consciousness conditionally to unconscious psychological attach­ ment. It asks how knowledge and experience of contradictions might test the attachment through our ability to rationalise it. This has repercussions in terms of how we imagine radical social change, in that it implies the possibility of directly challenging affirmative ideologies by exposing them to alternatives. The first chapter of this book develops our theory of ideology further, and explores the role of Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek within it, especially in con­ trast to other possible approaches. It establishes a model of ideology based around three ‘dualisms’, based on four proposals. These proposals establish the social and psychological parameters of ideological function, or how ideologies are structured and the role they play in existing power relations. They enable us to envisage ideology as a baseline of affirmation or rejection of ‘background’ social demands, and the rationalisation of that basic attachment, as well as a field comprised of various unconscious attachments and conscious rationali­ sations. The background is defined here as ‘neoliberalism’, and we explore the mutually influential relationship between it and the positions that emerge from it. We also begin to consider how rationalisation, in particular, may change our approach to ideology in regard to political change. Chapters 2–7 are devoted to Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek in turn, with two chapters focusing on each. The first chapter of each pair analyses the theory of ideology presented by the theorist in question, in terms of how ideology func­ tions and its forms in consumer capitalist societies. These chapters reinforce central concepts of a dialectical and psychoanalytic approach to ideology while critically engaging with their source material through the concept of conscious rationalisation, and end with definitions of different ideological positions drawn from their insights. The second chapters consider how this ideology theory relates to its subject’s wider social theory and concepts of political change. Focused on questions of commodification and culture, agency and political power, these chapters demonstrate how our conception of rationali­ sation can subtly change the way we understand resistance. Without denying

6

Introduction

the dominance of existing social systems, the theory presented here aims to open up avenues for political action that can otherwise seem closed. These six chapters do not intend to give a comprehensive overview of their subjects, nor do they analyse the faithfulness of their work in relation to the major figures they draw on (Marx, Freud, Lacan, Hegel). Their objective is to make a broad point about approaches to ideology, by gradually developing a theory of ideology and definitions of ideological positions, with each of Marcuse, Jame­ son and Žižek providing a broad framework along with particular insights. Finally, the book concludes by summarising the usefulness of the theory to ideological analysis and its potential as a tool of political opposition. It also outlines an ‘ideology map’, or brief descriptions of the different ideological positions developed in the preceding chapters. Its aim is to build under­ standing of what we are discussing when we talk about ideologies in neo­ liberal consumer capitalism, or what different people may believe and how they rationalise the ‘background’ of cultural norms. This map can help us in thinking about how politics works today beyond adherence to clear political ideologies, and what kind of ideas can be challenged in different positions by an oppositional political movement.

Note 1 The term ‘affirmative’ here follows that in Marcuse’s concept of ‘affirmative cul­ ture’, in which the beauty represented by art creates an image of a better world, but one that is only internal to the individual, not an actual potential that can be reached by transforming social relations (Marcuse, 1968, p.70). It thus indirectly ‘affirms’ the existing reality of pain and enslavement.

Bibliography Bateman, A. and J. Holmes, (1995) Introduction to Psychoanalysis: Contemporary Theory and Practice (London: Routledge) Freeden, M., (1996) Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press) Marcuse, H., (1968) ‘The Affirmative Character of Culture’, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by J. J. Shapiro (London: Allen Lane), 65–98 Tally, R. T., (2014) Fredric Jameson: The project of Dialectical Criticism (London: Pluto) Wright, E. O., (2010) Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso)

1

An ideology model

The model of ideology outlined in this chapter is one of ‘dualisms’ that exist in a state of mutual dependence and tension. On one level, this idea refers to the relationship between a dominant ‘background’ rationality and the various ways people internalise it. On another, it refers to the psychological bond between unconscious attachment and conscious rationalisation. Finally, it refers to the way any attachment is either affirmative or oppositional in relation to the background, and what can cause a shift from one pole to the other. Before we consider this concept in detail, and its relevance to theories of political change, the chapter begins with four proposals, which define the model in relation to other theories of ideology. The first three of these propo­ sals generally accord with the theories advanced by Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek, while the fourth marks our shifted focus from the unconscious to ratio­ nalisation. In effect, all of these proposals affirm the idea that ‘ideology is the mediatory concept par excellence’, which links ‘the individual and the social, […] objectivity and the subject, reason and the unconscious, the private and the public’ (Jameson, 2008a, p.ix). Yet we argue that in Jameson’s theory, along with Marcuse’s and Žižek’s, the relationship between reason and the uncon­ scious especially often prioritises the latter, and our aim is to reintroduce a greater sense of mediation between them. The proposals are: • • • •

Ideology Ideology Ideology Ideology

is always present and always political relates to class division and struggle is produced by and produces social relations relies on conscious, contestable beliefs

The first proposal demonstrates that ideological analysis is itself affected by the ideology of the theorist, and there is no absolute truth. Everyone has an ideology, whether or not they are interested in social matters, primarily because their actions and beliefs (tacitly) support or reject the existing social order. The possi­ bility of rejection then indicates that the social itself is a particular (not universal) historical formation that promotes certain values over others. The second propo­ sal views this exclusion along ‘class’ lines to show how, today, the capitalist logic has deep implications for all aspects of social life, and overdetermines the general

8

An ideology model

‘background’ ideology to which ideological positions respond. Thus, as the third proposal makes clear, even if culture appears fragmented and lacking a unifying structure, it is linked by the demands of this logic. But because people do not all internalise social relations in the same way, they generate ideas that exceed it, and even influence the structure itself. This suggests a ‘conditional’ relationship between background and ideological positions, based on justificatory narratives and repression of subordinate ideas. The fourth proposal follows from it: ratio­ nalisations within ideological positions can be contested, and may be con­ tingently committed to the social order.

Ideology is always present and always political The first purpose of this statement is to indicate that ideology is not only a matter of ruling ideas or social domination, but part of all politically significant thought, whether dominant or subordinate (Eagleton, 2007, p.2). Because consciousness emerges through language embedded within particular social relations, any view­ point is implanted in networks of power. Also, while not every action or thought is politically motivated, many have political effects in that they strengthen or disrupt the social order. The fact that viewpoints contradict each other means that some will be dominant and some subordinate, but there is no non-ideological or ‘uncontaminated’ position, even within ideological analysis. However, some posi­ tions may be more self-reflexive or consider social relations in terms of what they repress and their potentials for transformation. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek all suggest that particular subordinate positions represent limits in common assump­ tions that may otherwise be missed. This notion also has political implications, but recognises the contingency of any ideology, including its own. In this way, ideologies can be understood dialectically, as partial views that are incomplete and contain a potential to transform within their own contra­ dictions. Recognising this incompleteness then enables us to view society as a ‘totality’ that is supported by various ideologies but also contingent and antagonistic, promoting certain norms of behaviour at the expense of others. That repression creates hierarchy and prohibits ideas and actions, whose con­ tinued existence points to an alternative totality. The politics of such theory thus tends to identify with what is normally excluded, and indicates that all theorisation of ideology is politically infused, because it either promotes what is repressed, or reinforces current social relations by not considering potentials for transformation. This dialectical approach is key to the theory of ideology outlined in this book and the primary theoretical strand linking Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek. In Marcuse’s work, it is manifested particularly in his contrast between ‘one-dimensionality’, or automatic absorption of dominant ideas, and ‘two­ dimensional’ thinking, which perceives those ideas as expressions of particular and transcendable social forms. As he puts it, the aim is that dialectical phi­ losophy ‘frees thought from its enslavement by the established universe of discourse and behaviour’, and ‘projects its alternatives’. He continues that,

An ideology model

9

although this position remains ideological, its ‘effort may be truly ther­ apeutic – to show reality as that which it really is, and to show that which this reality prevents from being’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.199). The point here is not that reality as it ‘really is’ involves some concrete truth of absolute values, but that it reveals the ideological nature of any view, which is ‘therapeutic’ because it shows that current social conditions are not universal and can be changed. A similar notion is present in Jameson’s concept of History, which is lost when any particular set of dominant values appears universal, because it would otherwise mark the contingency of that dominance and its repression of other values. History implies a continual struggle, where today’s dominant values were once subordinate and could become so again, but is only recognisable through its effects, or social groups that embody the incompleteness of the existing totality. It is not, for Jameson, that there is a correct interpretation of History, but that historicising highlights the attempted ideological closure in any interpretation or narrative. It shows that, while there are only interpreta­ tions, ‘every individual interpretation must include an interpretation of its own existence, must show its own credentials and justify itself ’ (Jameson, 2008b, p.7). In this sense, Jameson’s Marxist method is ‘true’ not because it provides final answers but because it continuously reveals the limits and repressed potentials in interpretations (including Marxist ones). Žižek’s Lacanian theory emphasises how the dialectical relationship is embedded in the psychic structure. Consciousness means entry into language and ideology, because attachment to language means stabilising meaning through particular interpretations of concepts, and with no absolute, external guarantee of meaning, subjects require a ‘fantasy’ that represses this lack. Lacanian psychoanalysis then asks subjects to recognise the lack, or the arbitrariness of meaning, and take responsibility for their own symbolic attachment (see for example: Lacan, 1992, chs.XXII–XXIV). The important point here for Žižek is not that such ideas render all meaning equally ‘false’, but how subjects react to the lack of meaning, and the political consequences that follow. Thus, he explains ‘although ideology is already at work in every­ thing we experience as “reality”, we must none the less maintain the tension that keeps the critique of ideology alive’ (Žižek, 1994, p.17). These theories highlight how ideology is always present, even though it can be split between subjects who are ‘complicit in concealing the radical contingency of social relations’ and those who ‘are attentive to its constitutive character’ (Glynos and Howarth, 2007, p.14). Thus, two-dimensional thinking, Marxist historicising, and confronting the lack in subjectivity all involve ideological sup­ positions. There is no distinction made here, for example, as that made by Althusser between ideology and the ‘science’ of investigation (Althusser, 1969, p.231). In Althusser’s terms, because Marxism is more self-reflexive it is less ideological, whereas in our terms, while some ideologies involve greater degrees of self-awareness or analysis, what makes them ideologies is the core structure of ultimate groundlessness. Our focus is on the political consequences of different views, while acknowledging that political and moral assumptions remain present

10

An ideology model

in the critique. As Porter explains of Žižek’s theory, while ‘we can never be cer­ tain of the terms of our own ideological enslavement’, ‘we can maintain a critical position enabling us to point up and negate the limits of ideologies we encounter in the social field’ (Porter, 2002, p.62). Furthermore, because dialectical theory assumes a critical position towards the established political field, it implies that theories lacking such critical dimensions fail to consider repressed social potentials. In some cases, such theory may even repress the role of ideology itself. In analytic philosophy such as that of Rawls, for example, ideology is a category of irrational fundamentalism in contrast to open-minded, reasonable thought. As he explains in an early text, ‘ideologies, of whatever type, claim a monopoly of the knowledge of truth and justice for some particular race, or social class, or institutional group’, whereas ‘competent moral judges […] are associated with coming to know something, and not by means of characteristics which are the privileged possession of any race, class, or group’ (Rawls, 1999, p.5). He later states that ‘a well-ordered society does not require an ideology in order to achieve stability’ (Rawls, 1999, p.326n), because ‘full publicity’, or complete institutional transparency, can function in its place. Yet, as conscious subjects we take particular, partial posi­ tions, and no matter how many layers of preconception are stripped away, if we do not see these positions as ideological we cannot examine how they intertwine with power relations. Rawls emphasises that ‘a reasonable man’ must try to take his own predilections into account (Rawls, 1999, p.3), but if those predilections are socially dominant assumptions, they may remain unnoticed, and ‘reasonable’ can come to mean that which aligns with established (liberal) thinking (Mouffe, 2000, p.26). With full publicity, meanwhile, there are ideological assumptions regarding its meaning and value, as well as its ideological effects in practice to consider, in terms of how information is presented and prioritised. Even theories that focus specifically on ideology do not always adequately account for power relations. For example, various introductory texts to ‘poli­ tical ideologies’ describe the content of conscious value systems, largely according to established political categories (see: Eatwell and Wright, 1993; Eccleshall and others, 2003; Heywood, 2007; Macridis and Hulliung, 1996; Sargent, 2009; Vincent, 2010). As studies of ideology, these texts historicise and contest political terms, but rarely analyse how their categorisation reflects the social order. They generally distance themselves from Marxist approaches to ideology that create a framework of materialist cause and effect (Eatwell, 1993, p.10), or present oppositions between illusion and reality (Freeden, 1996, p.1). Yet in doing so they jettison the structural elements of Marxism from ideology theory, which contextualise ideological meaning in concrete social circum­ stances. As such, decisions about what qualifies as a political ideology follow common assumptions, such as that cultural and identity issues are more ideol­ ogy forming today than class or economic ones (Heywood, 2007, p.20), or that capitalism and democracy are not ideologies because they ‘can involve notably different forms’ (Eatwell, 1993, p.6), resulting in similar categorisations: liber­ alism, socialism, conservatism, nationalism, ecologism and feminism.

An ideology model

11

These ideologies are of course significant in consumer capitalist societies, but a ‘Marxist’ analysis poses the question of what it means, ideologically, to define the social totality in this way. First, there is the relationship between capitalism and ideology, or the cultural aspects of capitalism. If cultural and identity issues are now predominant, how does contemporary capitalism function ideologically to accentuate these issues, or otherwise structure the horizon of ideological investigation? In some cases, liberalism is understood to have this kind of structuring role, because liberal terms go widely unquestioned and frame what is deemed acceptable and possible. Bellamy, for instance, critically analyses ‘liberalism’s transformation from ideology to a supposedly neutral meta-ideology, capable of providing the ground-rules for all legitimate ideolo­ gical disputes’ (Bellamy, 1993, p.23). Even so, liberal concepts do not cover the whole cultural logic, and many terms that define norms and expectations are more clearly capitalist, such as the way freedom is presented in terms of owning and trading property, or national success is measured in GDP. Here, the ‘neu­ tral meta-ideology’ is a neoliberal economic logic as much as a liberal philo­ sophy, and it is counterintuitive to make the former a subcategory of the latter. We can then question whether established categorisations of ideology are still the most relevant. For instance, a major ideological clash today is that between pluralist ‘identity politics’ and anti-relativist ‘enlightenment values’. Defined as ‘political ideologies’, both positions are most clearly liberal, which tells us little about how they oppose each other. Defining them as separate positions, however, registers this difference while retaining the structural char­ acteristics that make them ideologies. For example, they both still offer ‘an account of social and political reality’ and ‘political ideals aimed at detailing the best possible form of social organisation’ (McKenzie, 2003, p.2), ‘an overt or implicit set of empirical and normative views about (i) human nature; (ii) the process of history; (iii) the socio-political structure’ (Eatwell, 1993, p.7), and attempts ‘to legitimate certain activities or arrangements’ and ‘integrate indi­ viduals, enabling them to cohere around certain core conceptual themes’ (Vin­ cent, 2010, p.18). So why not define ideologies in terms of culturally and politically relevant debates and trends? Even if, as Freeden says, ‘ideology is ubiquitous only inasmuch as it indicates a general type of human thoughtproduct’, rather than ‘all forms of political thought’ (Freeden, 1996, p.135), it is unclear where the line is drawn. A ‘Marxist’ analysis in this respect can identify the political effects of analysing the ideological order in terms that merely repeat dominant conceptions. While any approach is a particular per­ spective, the dialectical approach is valuable in exploring what is repressed, and how different positions relate to a dominant ‘background’ logic. Once this concept of background ideology is introduced, power relations between ideological positions become central to their composition. All ideol­ ogies and discourses attempt to dominate by exercising power at points throughout society, and even the most self-reflexive positions impose their assumptions. As Foucault makes clear, power is dispersed in ‘local and unstable’ states (Foucault, 1978, p.93), and domination is not the reserve of

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the state. This idea is useful in how it views domination outside the realm of explicit political control, as part of other institutions and cultural relations. However, while power is not only the possession of particular groups, it remains important to focus on the exercise of power concentrated in dom­ inating institutions and interests, most notably in ‘the bureaucratic state and the organization of the social order by capital’ (Brown, 1995, p.16). In Fou­ cault’s case, while he acknowledges the role of these institutions in maintain­ ing power relations, de-centralising them from our understanding of power underplays their structuring function. His statement that ‘all other forms of power relation must refer to’ the state, but only ‘because power relations have come more and more under state control’ (Foucault, 1983, p.224), does not fully account for how, in all societies, some background logic of dominance and subordination legitimises norms that overdetermine more localised power relations. As Vighi and Feldner put it, Foucault’s approach suggests a her­ metically sealed universe of discourses that ‘does not contemplate the notion of an immanent exception hinting at the indiscernible wherefrom (vanishing mediator) and the im/possible beyond (the Real of an act) of a socio-symbolic regime’ (Vighi and Feldner, 2007, p.24). While our definition of ideology thus follows Foucault’s concept of discourse in distancing itself from false con­ sciousness and absolute truth, it also seeks to ascertain the macro-political effects of discourses in prescribing the field of discourse itself, and the forms of exclusion they produce.

Ideology relates to class division and struggle Having constructed an approach to ideology around a split between domina­ tion and subordination, the next step is to define the content of that split. Here, we again draw on Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek in focusing on class division, and the forms of exclusion inherent in any apparent totality. Social and economic disparity are embodied in groups that control resources, insti­ tutions and political ideas, groups that lack such control, and the way the existence of one is conditional on the existence of the other. That is, there is no such thing as a ruling class without a subordinate class, and vice versa. In terms of ideology, the point is not to interpret consciousness as merely an effect of material forces. It should be understood that ideologies are not determined by class identity, so that particular social positions correspond to specific belief systems, but they are responses to a division which overdetermines social relations. Emphasis on class struggle is an attempt to con­ sider connections between ideology, politics, culture and economics, via a capitalist logic that cuts across the social. Marcuse’s work provides a starting point here, by demonstrating how class frames a general ideological background. He theorises a concept of social ‘needs’ that relate to repressed realities and potentials of production, and historicises the Freudian ‘reality principle’ to suggest that toil and sacrifice is not intrinsic to human experience, but dependent on social circumstances. For

An ideology model

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Marcuse, the current reality principle ‘applies to the brute fact of scarcity what actually is the consequence of a specific organization of scarcity, and of a specific existential attitude enforced by this organization’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.33). In effect, it stops us seeking greater fulfilment even though technologi­ cal developments could enable it, and is thus an ideological construct serving particular class interests. The question is whether the existing social organi­ sation can be repurposed towards the needs of the deprived and exploited. In some ways, as the next chapter shows, Marcuse’s theory overreaches, but he successfully highlights how the material needs of the subordinated reveal the contingency of dominant social priorities. Then, when he later considers how ‘cultural revolution’ in the US merely demands individual freedoms and fails to enact radical change, we can see how this comes from its inability to ques­ tion the dominant principle and class relation. The idea of material contradiction is also central to Jameson’s concept of postmodernism. He shows that the shift to a politics of recognition and dif­ ference, in place of systemic economic concerns, rests on a particular mode of production (late capitalism). In this way, the range of pluralist antagonisms accepted within the political field is constituted on an exclusion, or by repressing the antagonism between the logic of the field and its excess. As with History, for Jameson, ‘class’ does not denote concrete identities; it is the category represented by the relative positions of particular social groups. In fact, he explains, capitalism itself is a representative concept that is ‘either the result of scientific reduction […] or the mark of an imaginary and ideological vision’, but it is still not purely subjective because the laws of capital accu­ mulation and profit really do ‘set absolute barriers and limits to social chan­ ges’ (Jameson, 2000, p.284). Class here is a ‘relational’ concept, identifiable in its effects, where the interests of one group are universalised in production relations, and another group is deprived as a result. Also, for Jameson, class antagonism is that which cannot be resolved without erasing the identities involved. For example, the existence of a ‘proletariat’ and ‘bourgeoisie’ pre­ supposes a relation of domination and subordination, that can only be over­ come by creating a new mode of production. Žižek further clarifies how notions of class restructure the range of recog­ nised political struggles in terms of an open potential beyond the existing social order. Viewing society as a totality split by class struggle draws a line between accepting capitalism as the background to struggle (and fighting for rights within existing systems), and opposing the background (and contesting capitalism itself). Also, the idea that class struggle is less relevant today, because other forms of antagonism have become prevalent, indicates for Žižek not the end of class disparity, but that the exclusion of certain social groups has been largely successful, to the point of making the exclusion itself invisible. A concept of class struggle is then needed to identify this excluded element, and ‘a unique mediating term which, while mooring politics in the economy […], simultaneously stands for the irreducible political moment in the very heart of the economic’ (Žižek , 2008c, p.293). As with Marcuse and

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Jameson, Žižek does not refer to a predefined social group, but to the inevi­ table ‘Real’ excess in any social order, represented by subjects who lack access to rights, opportunities and material goods. To reiterate, this emphasis on class division does not imply that ideology simply reflects economic relations, and Marcuse (to an extent), Jameson and Žižek generally avoid such reductionism. Thought and behaviour are not direct internalisations of the mode of production, and its pressures to produce and consume, but mediate these demands through beliefs, values and assumptions that may structure conformism in ways that are not all explicitly economic. In this respect, our approach to class can be contrasted with The Dominant Ideology Thesis of Abercrombie, Hill and Turner. That is, while we accept their claim that there is no single ruling ideology which morally validates capitalism for all (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 1980, p.9), this does not necessarily mean that ‘subordinate classes are controlled by […] “the dull compulsion” of economic relationships, by the integrative effects of the division of labour, by the coercive nature of law and politics’ (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 1980, p.6). In this view, subordinates reproduce power relations due to their financial need to work, which enters them into relations of mutual dependency with other classes. Yet while this process is certainly relevant to ideology theory, it is presented here as an alternative to ideology itself. For Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, the lack of a singular set of dominant values implies there are no sig­ nificant values, so they do not consider how different ideological positions may support the whole. Instead, people accept existing relations ‘simply because they are there, or because they appear as a coercive external fact’, which does not entail ‘any set of beliefs, attitudes or “false consciousness”’ (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner, 1980, p.166). This perspective turns politics into an expression of material conditions, giving individuals no meaningful ability to reflect on or change their desires and behaviour (Therborn, 1994, p.177). At the same time, by focusing on class we do make an ideological judgement that effectively distinguishes between ‘economic’ and ‘cultural’ concerns. This is not essential for political opposition, but without that distinction it is difficult to mark the structuring role of the capitalist mode of production in ideology forma­ tion. An important point of reference here is Laclau and Mouffe, in that, while our theory aligns with theirs in many ways, they reject privileging class antagon­ ism. We accord with their understanding that all social forms are contingent, and that different logics are anchored in ‘Master Signifiers’ which attempt to uni­ versalise particular meaning. We also follow Laclau’s conception of ideology as ‘the non-recognition of the precarious character of any positivity’, which implies that, since the social requires stability of meaning, ‘the ideological must be seen as constitutive of the social’ (Laclau, 1990, p.92). Yet, significantly, their political project, focused on creating a ‘chain of equivalence’ to unite different struggles (race, gender, sexuality, the environment, workers’ rights), is not necessarily anchored in the mode of production. The identities involved are ‘contingent social logics’ that ‘acquire their meaning in precise conjunctural and relational contexts’, and ‘none of them has absolute validity’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001, p.142).

An ideology model

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Our issue here is not with class antagonism as Laclau and Mouffe define it, as a conflict between particular groups over labour conditions, that represents (in Laclau’s words) ‘one species of identity politics, […] which is becoming less and less important in the world in which we live’ (Laclau, 2000a, p.203). That is, it is clear that struggles over working conditions are not intrinsically radical, nor able to unify political opposition in general. It is also clear that contradictions in the social order are not intrinsically political antagonisms, unless they are perceived and articulated as such. As Laclau says, the ‘forms of determination and relative autonomy’ in a society ‘are always instituted through a complex process of overdetermination and therefore cannot be established a priori’ (Laclau, 1990, p.91). Antagonisms emerge when indivi­ duals identify needs that cannot be met without a shift in power. However, our concept of class (which similarly does not perceive particular groups as a priori representatives of social contradictions) marks how, retrospectively, certain articulated antagonisms constitute the social order in ways that can only be resolved by changing the order to erase the categories of antagonism. Put another way, Laclau and Mouffe distinguish between the raw ‘existence’ of objects, and their ‘being’, which involves articulation of their properties. So, in humanity’s relationship with nature, wood becomes a source of fuel, or a mountain contains valuable minerals, but ‘none of [these properties] follows necessarily from its mere existence’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 1987, p. 85). What should be added here, however, is that while wood does not ‘exist’ as fuel, it not only becomes fuel but (retrospectively) has that tendency. Similarly, class antagonism marks how the logic of the commodity as such creates relations of dominance and subordination throughout society, and groups can be identified as excluded by their position within the mode of production, as the product of systemic tendencies that are visible retrospectively. Class antagonism is thus the difference between a chain of equivalence that confronts intrinsic tendencies towards inequality in capital accumulation, and one that confronts inequalities that are theoretically resolvable within capital­ ism. In other words, it switches radical political aims from ‘recognition’ or ‘affirmative redistribution’ (compensation within the same structure) to ‘trans­ formative redistribution’ (Fraser, 1995, pp.85–86). In Laclau and Mouffe’s terms, we must seek an ‘equivalential articulation between anti-racism, antisexism and anti-capitalism’, which ‘may be the condition for the consolidation of each one of these struggles’ (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001, p.182). But if ‘anticapitalism’ refers to a constitutive social split defined by the mode of produc­ tion, it alters the goals of the whole series by making the mode of production itself an obstacle to challenging racism and sexism. This is not a question of one articulation being more important than others, but how it reconfigures political aims. This concept of class implies that it is not a matter of uniting a plurality of particular articulations, but that the very ‘particularisation’ of these issues is an expression of a (capitalist) logic that represses articulation of its own antagonistic tendencies. As Haider notes, ‘race, gender, and class name entirely different social relations, and they themselves are abstractions that

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have to be explained in terms of specific material histories’ (Haider, 2018, ch.1). Representing them as equivalent articulations maintains them as essential identities, in accordance with capitalism. Without this view of class, Laclau and Mouffe seem to accept that some form of capitalism defines the limits of political change. Mouffe explains that ‘without calling for the sort of total overthrow of capitalism advocated by some Marxists, one can surely acknowledge that some form of anti-capitalist strug­ gle cannot be eliminated from a radical politics’ (Mouffe, 2000, pp.111–112). Laclau, meanwhile, states in a response to Žižek that he can agree with Žižek’s anti-capitalist stance if he means ‘the overcoming of the prevalent neoliberal economic model’ through greater state regulation and democratic control, to avoid ‘the worst effects of globalization’ (Laclau, 2000a, p.206). In these state­ ments, ‘anti-capitalism’ is used to describe opposition to aspects or forms of capitalism (neoliberalism, globalisation), rather than core elements such as mass wage labour. Laclau argues elsewhere that he is not resigned to capital­ ism, but we cannot judge in advance which of many antagonisms might unify the chain of equivalence towards global social transformation (Laclau, 2005, p.235). In contrast, the crucial factor in our theory is still whether the chain opposes capitalism as a mode of production, which implies certain kinds of unifying articulation. One problem with our concept of class is that, because it does not privilege a specific social identity, there is no obvious point around which class politics can develop. As Laclau explains, class unity ‘should be conceived as a set of subject positions’, that are ‘systematically interlinked’, and ‘grounded on a core given by the location of the social agent in the relations of production’ (Laclau, 2000b, p.300). If these subject positions and their location are replaced by abstract notions of needs and exclusion, the subordinate class is dispersed and frag­ mented. As later chapters show, this problem represents a major political chal­ lenge in Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek’s theories. For the moment, the significant point is that this political issue should not undermine the methodological approach to ideology in terms of class and a split totality. The alternative for ideology theory to not consider the excess of capitalism itself, or other potential modes of production, means not analysing the ideological forms it produces.

Ideology is produced by and produces social relations It follows from here that all ideologies are influenced by the social order around them in various ways, and an important aspect of our approach to ideology is to consider how social structure overdetermines ideological con­ tent. In today’s capitalist societies, the ‘order’ can be difficult to define, as it appears to comprise a matrix of identities and ideals that are not dominated by a singular authority. However, we can show how the emphasis on plurality and difference itself functions ideologically to disguise the logic that structures its limits of inclusion and exclusion. At the same time, we can also imagine how ideology exceeds and even challenges this structural influence. It is not

An ideology model

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that individuals in society are purely autonomous subjects, who make rational, informed, political decisions, but neither do consciousness and behaviour merely reflect structural demands. Despite powerful social pressures to con­ form, there remains a potential for doubt and disagreement that may develop into oppositional ideology. Overall, Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek suggest a similar balance, by identi­ fying critical faculties that resist affirmative ideological absorption, but they are not always clear how such faculties persist. For Marcuse, one-dimensional thinking is ingrained in institutional structures, such as how mass media repeat specific interpretations of concepts and exclude others, or how scientific and empirical methods reduce social issues to individual problems. Meanwhile, material factors such as political stability and decent average living standards make conformity and stability seem more rational, and this vested interest is supported by consumerist promises of fulfilment that encourage the individual ‘to continue his performance, which in turn perpetuates his labour and that of the others’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.42). As such, many individuals appear ‘trained’ from the outset, by their position in society and the uniformity of meaning, and one-dimensionality can seem inescapable. Nevertheless, Marcuse theorises potential catalysts that could reopen this closed thinking, such as ‘autono­ mous’ spaces outside commodified production, where alternative cultural forms and politics may be produced, or potential contradictions in the mode of production itself, either due to technological development or raised expecta­ tions of fulfilment that consumer capitalism cannot accommodate. Jameson’s theory of postmodernism outlines similar forms of internalisa­ tion, and emphasises that social fragmentation and the cultural logic of dif­ ference are themselves expressions of a certain economic stability. Individuals encounter fragmented, de-historicised images, interpreted according to differ­ ent mediatised identities, and disconnected from the processes of production or the wider context of information. Furthermore, for Jameson, the post­ modern psyche is fragmented, as individuals begin to compartmentalise con­ tradictory ideas rather than rationalise them according to coherent narratives. It can thus seem that, although Jameson claims postmodernism is ‘only’ a cultural dominant, it structures the experience of most individuals completely. As with Marcuse, he examines how certain cultural forms still imply political ideals, and theorises a utopian politics that begins by focusing on particular contradictions. Yet, at this specific historical moment, he understands that this and other concepts, such as ‘cognitive mapping’, merely reintroduce the possibility of thinking historically. Jameson concedes that a mass radical movement is not currently possible, but we can begin ‘a rattling of the bars and an intense spiritual concentration and preparation for another stage which has not yet arrived’ (Jameson, 2005, p.233). In Žižek’s theory, the question of how late capitalism influences desire tackles a more fundamental issue with subjectivity. Specifically, the subject adheres to an unconscious ideological attachment to the symbolic order which provides partial libidinal satisfaction. What matters is maintaining this

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attachment, and the deep ideological ‘fantasy’ that structures desire around it. As such, the way actions accord with the attachment is a greater signifier of ideology than conscious belief, and social reproduction in capitalism is heavily tied to practices informed by commodity exchange. Modern social demands in permissive societies create pressure on individuals to continually realise exces­ sive ‘enjoyment’ and feel guilt for failing to maximise their potential. This demand removes clear symbolic guarantees, and makes individuals responsible for social problems. To resist these psychological and social conditions, Žižek explains that subjects must confront the base irrationality of their symbolic attachment, so as to recognise the possibility of refusing the prescriptions of dominant relations. It is not that subjects ever escape the influence of cultural norms and material circumstances, but that recognising this lack engenders alternative perspectives and potential modes of behaviour. At times, the ways these theories describe social conditions imply that potentials for change are not currently possible. As the next section shows, a major contention in this book is that greater emphasis on the conscious ele­ ment of ideology is necessary to locate these potentials. For the moment, the important factor is that these theories demonstrate the scope and efficiency of dominance in late capitalism, while reiterating its fundamental lack of closure. Their dialectical perspective cannot accept the existing totality as the limit of politics, either pessimistically, by resigning themselves to the impossibility of meaningful participation, or optimistically, by viewing the choices offered under neoliberal capitalist logic as politically meaningful. Rather, they con­ textualise the particular order against its potentials and contradictions, embedded in power relations, and retain some concept of subjective agency that can potentially act beyond dominant social influences. The importance of even these slight potentials can be marked against theories that emphasise the inescapability of the logic of the existing totality. For exam­ ple, Baudrillard’s concept of ‘simulation’ in ‘The Precession of Simulacra’ may in many ways influence Jameson’s theory of postmodernism, but appears trapped within the logic it describes because it lacks a dialectical dimension. Here, Bau­ drillard contrasts ‘dissimulation’, or deliberate masking of reality through false representation, against the current ‘simulation’ of a reality that no longer exists, and constitutes the effective real horizon (Baudrillard, 1994, p.3). In this sense, there are no ‘ideological’ struggles, and today’s scandals and conflicts only serve to hide that nothing is at stake. It is not that events such as terror attacks and wars do not happen, but ‘they are already inscribed in the decoding and orchestration rituals of the media, anticipated in their presentation and their possible consequences’ (Baudrillard, 1994, p.21). The power struggle they sym­ bolise is merely an image of power struggle, to which all sides contribute. It is undoubtedly correct that much of the conflict visible in today’s media functions as ‘noise’ that obscures an absence of real political possibility and a social order that seems to reproduce itself regardless. However, while, for Baudrillard, the logic of ‘deterrence, abstraction, disconnection, deterritor­ ialization, etc.’ that emerged from capitalism now exceeds and is set against it

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(Baudrillard, 1994, p.22), for us it is still capitalism that propels the mechan­ isms of reproduction, even where it contradicts itself. In Baudrillard’s view, the logic disconnects from the exercise of power, leaving power to merely create the appearance of political stakes. But if mediatised conflicts are simu­ lations that conceal the lack of power struggle, the lack of struggle in turn signifies an uncontested dominance of particular systems over others. Because capitalism is often invisible, power seems to be irrelevant, but it is power that grants it that invisibility, specifically by excluding groups which represent political stakes. Also, mediatised ‘simulation’ struggles are not simply dis­ connected from power relations, but are ways people interpret and react to the relations of domination they experience. For Baudrillard, ‘It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real’ (Baudrillard, 1994, pp.12–13). But there is no such simple distinction. The false reality still conceals relations of dom­ inance and oppression, so ideological analysis that points to these obscured relations remains valuable even in ‘simulation’, as it reveals the lack of closure. The opposite problem to be avoided here is that of exaggerating subjective autonomy. With Giddens, for example, while he rightly criticises Baudrillard’s idea of ‘an autonomous realm of “hyperreality” where the sign or image is everything’ (Giddens, 1991, p.27), the idea of ‘simulation’ in turn indicates problematic assumptions in Giddens’ ‘reconstituted radical politics’, by high­ lighting how modern notions of choice and self-realisation are heavily depo­ liticised. Giddens focuses here on the potentials of high ‘social reflexivity’, in particular a ‘life politics’ based on individuals and groups creating political effects through lifestyle changes that reflect shared ethical interests. This reflexivity is a two-way process, in which external influences affect our understanding of the self, and self-realisation can alter the social reality. Also, although for Giddens, access to choices is a ‘market-governed freedom’ that envelopes the ‘framework of individual self-expression’ (Giddens, 1991, p.197), he emphasises how people of all social levels can still make empow­ ering, life-determining decisions that bring happiness (Giddens, 1994, p.181). The difficulty here is in envisioning any real political impact from such choices, even if they force market shifts, because it is not clear how they become sufficiently large or unified to challenge power structures. While life politics are a form of conscious evaluation and agency, they do not congeal into a common cause but ‘split into a multitude of individual and personal, strikingly similar but decidedly not complementary portmanteaus’ (Bauman, 2008, p.28). For Giddens, there is a sense of ‘mutual responsibility’ among groups across the social strata, and issues such as ‘the pollution of the air, death of forests or the aesthetic despoliation of the environment do not conform to class divisions’, suggesting they can motivate large-scale lifestyle changes (Giddens, 1994, p.194). But the assumption of common interest here is highly questionable, as even with environmental decline, different class groups are affected to different extents, with the wealthy being able to largely avoid nega­ tive consequences. As such, when Giddens recommends a general social

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An ideology model

development towards ethical production, requiring intervention from states and big business (Giddens, 1994, pp.247–248), it is not clear why these institu­ tions would take such steps without pressure from concerted oppositional movements, as opposed to mere appeals to a sense of mutual responsibility. The issue here is not simply that politics needs to be more ‘radical’ than Giddens allows, as even staunchly anti-capitalist theories can overstate sub­ jective over structural factors. For instance, Holloway’s ‘crack capitalism’ thesis exaggerates the impact of minor actions, by identifying any activity not shaped by demands of capitalist production or consumption as a means to create alternative, non-capitalist spaces, from ‘the car worker who goes to his allot­ ment in the evening […] to the young man who goes to the jungle to devote his life to organising armed struggle’ (Holloway, 2010, p.6). In this view, anticapitalist behaviour is so broadly defined it includes many acts that are com­ monplace in capitalist societies without causing disruption. For Holloway, ‘simply trying to be human, chatting to our friends, falling in love, becomes converted by the dynamic of capital […] into an act of insubordination’ (Hol­ loway, 2010, p.251). But capitalism is able to accommodate such activities, and in fact profits from various bonds, such as family support networks or the comradeship of teamwork. What is missing again here is an oppositional con­ sciousness that articulates resistance to challenge the existing hegemony. Alternatively, with their concept of ‘multitude’, Hardt and Negri emphasise how potential social movements and forms of resistance are linked by an underlying cause. In material terms, the multitude emerges from relations of production that increasingly revolve around information, communication and autonomous work, so exploitative labour creates a surplus of intelligence, experience and desire that push beyond competitiveness and individualism. This multitude is a global majority that includes differences but also unifies under common interests, which can ‘provide conditions that make possible a project for the creation of a democracy’ (Hardt and Negri, 2004, p.202). However, since (as Hardt and Negri explain) there is no certainty that a transformative politics will emerge from these production relations, and current power hierarchies remain stable, it is not clear what the nature of the multitude really is. In one sense, its potential is still entrenched in production and trade relations whose language is primarily that of business and profit. In another sense, it describes a range of singular struggles as being ‘immersed in the common web’ (Hardt and Negri, 2004, p.217), but there is no obvious reason why these struggles should find common ground. As such, Hardt and Negri do not outline a radical politics that articulates itself, only ‘an assumed unity and an assumed “natural” propensity to revolt’ (Newman, 2007, ch.6). In this way, the concept of the multitude ‘includes too much – everyone in fact – and the cost of this inclusion is antagonism’ (Dean, 2012, p.78). It remains necessary to recognise fundamental differences between protest movements, to clarify the sides of struggle and what constitutes radical politics. Even where Hardt and Negri address such criticisms by emphasising that ‘the multitude is not a spontaneous political subject but a project of political

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organization’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009, p.169), or the development of a net­ work made through interactions between singular struggles, there remains an assumption that struggles can locate some intrinsic common ground. In par­ ticular, Hardt and Negri focus on ‘love’ as a concept that is present in all political ideas. They understand that narrow forms of love (such as for family, race and nation) or homogenising forms are ‘corrupt’, and that combatting this corruption involves ‘promoting encounters of singularities in the common’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009, p.184). But this notion of corruption implies some uncorrupted love, or a kind of pure political desire that becomes deformed (there are similarities here with Jameson’s concept of Utopia, explored in chapter 4). In other words, the multitude is still made by realising a repressed universal logic, rather than in a battleground of struggles that may be affirmative or oppositional, or fundamentally antagonistic towards each other as much as they are compatible. A propensity remains here (as with Giddens and Holloway) to underplay the relationship between existing social structures and the different ideologies and behaviour that emerge within them. Conversely, for us, it is crucial to consider whether critical positions represent the break with dominant ideas they appear to, and what it takes to make such a break by developing oppositional consciousness.

Ideology relies on conscious, contestable beliefs This statement accentuates the conscious element of ideology as a bridge between dominant social influences and repressed potentials, and is distin­ guishable from the positions of Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek. Their theories tend to treat ideology as no longer being defined by contestable beliefs, amplifying the role of the unconscious so that behaviour and subject positions take priority. Our argument is that conscious motivations behind actions can be identified, and are significant in revealing how individuals attach them­ selves to experienced reality. Even if people know that official values are false and accept the social situation cynically, or even if they follow norms without providing explicit reasons, they still justify their behaviour somehow. Or, where action clashes with professed values and beliefs, it remains important how subjects rationalise that discrepancy. Moreover, where conscious beliefs are considered as secondary effects of unconscious attachment, our aim is to show that they also partially constitute subject positions. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek show how, in late capitalism, the unconscious internalises dominant structures and expectations, so that oppositional ideology becomes a question of stimulating repressed utopian desires, or confronting the irrationality of interpellation. While we do not deny the value of these approaches, we also consider how conscious rationa­ lisation retains integrity against experiences that challenge beliefs and assumptions, and whether such challenges can lead to deeper shifts in unconscious attachment. It is not that ideologies are merely sets of rational ideas that respond to counterargument or persuasion. Indeed, people often

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disregard information that does not conform to what they already believe, or hold beliefs that are not logically supportable. But beliefs and behaviour can begin to change based on information and experiences, suggesting there are limit points for the unconscious structures of attachment. As already noted, Marcuse’s notion of one-dimensionality delineates an extreme ideological reification, which at times implies the total conditioning of consciousness. Yet there is ambiguity in Marcuse’s work overall, in terms of whether one-dimensionality engenders affirmative beliefs, or conditions beha­ viour so that belief is irrelevant. At different points he suggests that people either do not know about social mechanisms or accept them on moral grounds, and that such factors are necessary to maintain the social order, but also that people conform to social expectations despite recognising the con­ tradictions, perhaps due to material stability or because change seems impos­ sible, so belief in the system is irrelevant. From our perspective, these notions may represent different (one-dimensional) ideological positions within a society that can all be analysed through their conditional rationalisations. In fact, Marcuse also considers ideas such as how dominant media narratives unify mainstream political forces by justifying them against a ‘common enemy’. If such narratives are significant, it implies there are conscious ideo­ logical processes being influenced by such information. In Jameson’s theory, the fragmentation of media imagery, and the psyche itself, militates against the formation of coherent narratives and rationalisa­ tions. The logic of the market is widely accepted, invisibly filtering into public consciousness, detaching subjects from traditional belief systems, and defining cultural identities through consumerist media codes. Jameson states that this total economic organisation dispels ‘the last remnant of the older autono­ mous subject or ego’, until what remains ‘is no longer able to distinguish between external suggestion and internal desire’, and is ‘wholly delivered over to objective manipulation’ (Jameson, 1971, p.36). But we can also infer from Jameson that subjects are still inclined to seek coherent narratives in frag­ mented reality, and that even consumer attitudes revolve around cultural beliefs and assumptions. In addition, acceptance of the market involves rationalisations of its role, many of which recognise it as an overall structur­ ing system. As such, the concept of a utopian politics that Jameson develops may be reinterpreted as a means to communicate with such rationalisations. For Žižek, ideology today is ‘fetishistic’, or ‘disavows’ its conformism by projecting it onto an external object, while consciously denying its own investment. Thus, individuals may articulate that they do not believe excessive consumerism is fulfilling, but continue to consume excessively, ignoring that it provides them a libidinal enjoyment in which they are heavily invested. But because of this, ideological critique has little impact – ‘we can no longer subject the ideological text to “symptomatic reading”, confronting it with its blank spots, with what it must repress’ (Žižek, 2008a, pp.26–27), since sub­ jects already accept the gap between their conscious values and behaviour. Such positions may be aware of social contradictions and factually correct, so

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all there is to interrogate is their point of enunciation, or political repercus­ sions. For us, however, this awareness of contradictions should not be accep­ ted at face value, and both ‘fetish’ and ‘symptom’ are features of all ideology. Fetishistic disavowal still entails rationalising the gap between behaviour and values with appeals (for example that excessive consumption is economically beneficial, or unavoidable) that can be contested as symptoms. Also, different rationalisations may indicate varying levels of ideological investment in existing social relations. Our concept of ideology can be applied to ideological positions, to outline varying justifications for conformism in today’s societies. These are not merely direct moral supports of the social order, but still contain ethical judgements, which view some forms of behaviour as acceptable and some as unacceptable. Clearly, this is not ideology as simple ‘ruling class’ dominance or ‘false con­ sciousness’, as the neoliberal cultural logic has complex functions that engender a range of subjective desires and ideals. But despite this complexity, it is still possible to analyse the contestable assumptions, beliefs and knowl­ edge of all positions that accept existing relations of subordination, and how they rationalise the dominant neoliberal logic in specific ways. This approach counters contemporary ideology theory which often under­ plays notions of ethical rationalisation, especially by defining the predominant ideological condition as ‘cynicism’ that functions based on realistic appraisals of the social situation. An influential account here is Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason, in which he describes ‘a universal, diffuse cynicism’, and explains that ‘the traditional critique of ideology stands at a loss before this cynicism’ (Sloterdijk, 1987, p.3). In ascribing this position to the majority, Sloterdijk assumes a high level of social awareness against which political ideas are generally impotent, which does not consider the possible limits to this sense of resignation. Missing here is any notion that consent and resignation are insufficient terms to capture the various ‘ideas and […] assumptions whose acceptance has served to make […] conditions appear intelligible and tolerable, or less intolerable, or indeed desirable’ (Lukes, 2005, p.132). Or, that ‘resigna­ tion requires explanation’ because ‘something must be interfering with a response that would improve [people’s] situation’ (Wright, 2010, p.277). Stating that individuals are pessimistic and individualistically focused does not fully explain their conditions of attachment to the status quo. This idea of cynicism or resignation as a kind of socially dominant antiideology later emerges in other theories. For example, Fisher argues that the purpose of ‘capitalist ideology’ is ‘to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief ’. He con­ tinues that, ‘capitalism can proceed perfectly well […] without anyone making a case for it’ (Fisher, 2009, pp.12–13). Meanwhile, Eagleton comments that, if everyone in society were a cynic, ‘there would be no need for ideology, in the sense of a set of discourses concealing or legitimating injustice’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.27). But, in Fisher’s case, his last statement contrasts his first in that, because ‘capitalist ideology’ has to conceal that capital does not require

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subjectively assumed belief, it cannot proceed without anyone making a case for it. The illusion of morality must be maintained for the symbolic belief to function, which means that propaganda still circulates, and it is impossible to rule out its influence. Meanwhile, in Eagleton’s case, while he actually argues against the idea that cynicism is ubiquitous, his concept of cynicism does not consider that it must still find ways to accept or deny the worst aspects of society, which is clearly a matter of concealing or legitimating injustice. If ‘cynics would feel no unease about inhabiting an exploitative social order’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.27), we must still explain how they rationalise unease away. This cynicism plays an important role in Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek’s theories. In Marcuse’s case it is less explicit, but present in the idea that people are aware of, and accept, systemic oppression, purely because the economic situation remains stable. Yet we can already infer from other aspects of his work that such attitudes rely on theories of human nature, or political impo­ tence, to rationalise their positions. Jameson connects cynicism to the ‘market ideology’ of the financial class, which supports neoliberal economics not as just and equitable, but as preferable to a planned economy. Or, further down the social ladder, he sees cynicism as a resigned acceptance that simply participat­ ing in social expectations is the best way to stay afloat. Again, for us, these positions imply clear beliefs, such as that the selfishness of human nature cor­ rupts all social planning, or that the current system is permanent or invincible. For Žižek, cynicism that comprehends social systems and considers moral norms to be for the naïve is the predominant ideology today. The only thing cynics do not know is that their critical acceptance of social circumstances is ‘displaced’ and remains deeply conformist. But Žižek also implies that this awareness involves contestable assumptions, such as a deeply pessimistic belief that radical change must be detrimental to society (Žižek, 2009, p.28). Similar to Jameson’s market ideology, this cynicism implies a fear of change based on fundamental ideas about the limits of human progress, rather than some prag­ matic acceptance of social contradictions. A major implication of a theory of ideological rationalisation therefore is that it refocuses questions of political change on a struggle for ideas. That is, if all ideological positions involve contestable assumptions, challenges to the coher­ ence of conscious beliefs may influence attachments and behaviour, if they become sufficiently widespread. Again, it is not that deciphering contradictions in truth claims suggests a process of rational persuasion through open discus­ sion. Rather, it is about marginalised positions slowly gaining recognition and communicative ascendancy. Dominant forces cannot simply announce their dominance, and the psyche cannot be fully compartmentalised, or accommodate any contradiction to pursue enjoyment, without straining its acceptance of the existing order. Eagleton makes a similar point, in seeing that many forms of ideology do not simply accept serious injustices, meaning that people ‘must believe that these injustices are en route to being amended, or that they are counterbalanced by greater benefits, or that they are inevitable, or that they are not really injustices at all’ (Eagleton, 2007, p.27). These are rationalisations,

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some of which are applicable to cynicism, and imply conditions on people’s acceptance of the status quo. Conversely, while Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek conceptualise excess or utopian desires in ideology, suggesting abstract potentials for transcendence, because each sees ideology (now) as a matter of unconscious absorption, or de facto acceptance of dominance without content, this theore­ tical potential can seem less promising. A concept of ideology which fully con­ siders the role of rationalisation perceives it as the mediating factor between unconscious obedience and potentials for change. The way to challenge dom­ inance is still to introduce a sense of contingency into thought, and with it the possibility of transformation, but that requires a confrontation of conscious ideological supports.

Ideology as a series of dualisms From these four proposals, we can imagine the psychological structure of ideology in two interlinked parts – a base unconscious attachment to the existing social order, and a conscious rationalisation of that attachment. At the same time, the way the subject relates to contradictions and divisions in the social order broadly defines the base attachment as either ‘affirmative’ (generally reinforcing existing hierarchies) or ‘oppositional’ (generally sub­ verting existing hierarchies). Again, ‘affirmative’ attachments include a whole range of justifications for behaviour that reproduces the status quo, even positions that criticise the system in some ways, and each one may contradict the others in its content. Furthermore, the distinction between the socially included and excluded, and acceptance or rejection of this division, allows us to view ideology as the dominant background logic in a social order and the different ideological positions that emerge in response to it. But these posi­ tions are not merely effects of the background, because it in turn relies on them, and must sustain their fantasies in some sense. Our ideology model thus involves three dualisms – unconscious/conscious, affirmative/oppositional, background/individual – and suggests that ideological analysis should con­ sider the mutual influence and tension between the sides in each case. At this point, it is perhaps useful to define what we mean by the ‘back­ ground’ logic of the social order. As mentioned in the discussion of political ideologies above, there is good reason to identify that logic in modern con­ sumer capitalist societies as ‘neoliberalism’, to the extent that neoliberal eco­ nomic prescriptions filter into many aspects of culture and construct our social expectations. We have reached a stage where neoliberalism is not so much one form of the dominance of liberal discourse, as the overriding form to which liberal and other ideologies must respond. In this way, the affirma­ tive positions identified throughout this book should be understood as inter­ pretations of the neoliberal background, which may criticise social pressures and contradictions in neoliberalised societies, but still ultimately conform to their expectations and support them in a contingent manner.

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An ideology model

As for the features of a neoliberal ideology, in some ways the term points to what Habermas calls ‘technocratic consciousness’ or a narrowly applied scientific logic that he also refers to as a ‘dominant, rather glassy background ideology’. He explains that this ‘is more irresistible and farther-reaching than ideologies of the old type’, in that it represses major practical problems, obscures domination and subservience, and blocks discussion of social foun­ dations. But, he adds, it is not only ideology, because it is not ‘wish-fulfilling fantasy’ and does not ‘express a projection of the “good life”’ (Habermas, 1971, p.111). This concept applies to neoliberalism to the extent that it func­ tions as an economic logic that reduces all aspects of human interaction to calculations of loss and gain. As Brown puts it, ‘neoliberal rationality dis­ seminates the model of the market to all domains and activities’, viewing ‘human beings exhaustively as market actors, always, only, and everywhere as homo oeconomicus’ (Brown, 2015, p.31). This is only part of the story, however, as we are also concerned with an ideology that continues to propagate moral assumptions and projections of the good life to support this economic rationality. There are elements here of what Kotsko calls a ‘political theology’, according to which neoliberalism goes beyond economic policy and ‘aspires to be a complete way of life and a holistic worldview, in a way that previous models of capitalism did not’ (Kotsko, 2018, Introduction). This neoliberalism provides a set of moral, cultural and political ideals in its perspective, such as its notions of indepen­ dence and personal responsibility, or that society can thrive based on indivi­ duals competitively pursuing their self-interest. Moreover, these ideals have clear cultural implications, related to areas such as family life, racial division and poverty. As Davies points out, the very logic of universal quantification that neoliberalism involves ‘is an implicitly moral agenda, which makes cer­ tain presuppositions about how and what to value’ (Davies, 2014, ch.1). Even making strictly economic calculations presupposes a particular sense of pur­ pose that justifies itself against alternatives. The other aspect of neoliberalism as an ideology is its psychological func­ tion. The central point here is how its particular values of free choice and responsibility combine with the idea that there is no viable alternative to market-driven social organisation. Dean explains how ‘neoliberalism relies on the fantasy of free trade’, which ‘promises than an unfettered market benefits everyone’ (Dean, 2009, p.55). This fantasy tells us that any individual can be a winner in neoliberal capitalism, and failure or corruption therefore indicate flaws in individuals, not the system. This theory draws on Žižek’s notion of an injunction to ‘enjoy’ in neoliberal societies that pervades every part of life. In focusing on permission rather than prohibition, this demand makes individual subjects ‘guilty’ for failing to meet ever rising standards of pleasure (Žižek, 2008b, p.449), but also, because neoliberalism pressures us to realise our potentials in all areas (career, wealth, property, family, social life, health) it pulls us in multiple, incompatible directions. As such, the injunction to enjoy still ‘operates within the framework of a “controlled”, regimented enjoyment

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that has been at the heart of capitalism since its Puritan beginnings’ (Vighi, 2010, p.28). But now, this impossible demand neither asks us to focus on a sole pursuit, such as career, to the exclusion of other directions, nor simply seek balanced moderation, because that signals failure to maximise our cap­ abilities (see: Bailes, 2016; Brown, 2015, p.134; Kotsko, 2018, ch.3). In the following chapters, this concept of irreconcilable neoliberal demands is reinforced by synthesising Marcuse’s concepts of ‘performance principle’ and ‘repressive desublimation’, which describe a dual social expectation of productivity and consumerist leisure, with Jameson and Žižek’s focus on today’s fragmented and bewildering social pressures. We consider how differ­ ent institutional pressures function together to create conflicting demands on individuals, and how various ideological positions interpret them. For us, the combination of contradictory social expectations and the denial of any better alternative system creates a situation in which individuals accept the existing order in a variety of ways. Each form of internalisation prioritises certain ethical considerations over others and rationalises inconsistencies differently. For example, some may focus more on the responsibility to earn private wealth and be financially independent, while others may take the notion of consumerist fulfilment more seriously. Defining such responses in terms of how they relate to the background of neoliberalism both as its effects and its contingent supports, then becomes central to ideology analysis. We can now return to the dualisms outlined above, and how they are influ­ enced by Marcuse, Jameson, and especially Žižek’s Lacanian concepts, but also retain important differences. With Marcuse and Jameson, the idea of a split between affirmation and opposition is present in the contrast between one- and two-dimensional thought, or de-historicised fragments and historicised narra­ tive. That is, despite the apparent weakening of the ego or psychic compart­ mentalisation under consumer capitalist structures, there remains, as Jameson says, ‘an ensemble of human agents trained in specific ways and inventing ori­ ginal local tactics and practices according to the creativities of human freedom’ (Jameson, 1991, p.408). Yet while Marcuse and Jameson recognise different ways in which individuals comprehend social relations, they do not fully inter­ rogate the contingent and productive role of rationalisation. Thus, for Mar­ cuse, although there are ‘countervailing powers’ in today’s society, ‘these forces cancel each other out in a higher unification’, which seems to ‘promote rather than counteract the fateful integration’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.51). Analysis of conformism and systemic reinforcement in affirmative positions overrides that of differences between them or their critical potential. In Žižek’s theory, the category of ‘fantasy’ creates a kind of dual layer com­ prising the basic fact of symbolic attachment and its organisation around a Master Signifier. In effect, any subject position unconsciously links its inter­ pellation to an external command, and adapts to maintain that attachment. The fantasy even includes excuses and scapegoats when experience seems to contradict its ideals (the figures of Jews and communists for Nazis, for exam­ ple). However, the fantasy is unconscious, for Žižek, rather than conscious

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rationalisation, and more clearly an effect of attachment. Certainly, as Žižek says, fantasy cannot precede symbolic attachment, because subjects do not ‘merely fill in, occupy, a preordained place’, and ‘it is the very subjective act of recognition’ that makes it possible to conceive of an external command (Žižek, 2007, p.136). Yet since the Master Signifier is also projected from within the subject embedded in the social reality, the fantasy should also be susceptible to external influences, which have to be consciously rationalised. Thus, whereas Žižek views ideological shifts in terms of negating acts that reveal the fantasy’s contingency, our understanding presupposes an alternative, self-reflexive ideo­ logical position which emerges through conscious experiences and ideas, effec­ tively weakening the fantasy. This new position then overdetermines how the subject reacts to recognising the contingency of the fantasy as such, since sub­ jects are ‘never in the position of the absolute chooser who, faced with the contingency of all possible courses of action, would have no reason to choose’ (Laclau, 1990, p.27). In this way, the attachment that enables the fantasy and rationalisation also depends on the latter’s ability to maintain it in the face of contradictions encountered by the subject. This concept of subjectivity rests on a paradox, according to which a ‘cause’ can be influenced by its own ‘effects’. Essentially, it draws on Althus­ ser’s notion that subjective interpellation has ‘always-already’ occurred, so that subjects neither enter into symbolic relations and then rationalise them, nor enter based on prior rationalisations, but are simply within the circuit (Althusser, 2008, pp.49–50). A similar idea also applies to the dualism between the ideological background and its various interpretations. Ideologi­ cal positions ‘respond’ to the demands of neoliberalism but also function as its supports and have their own contestable assumptions. Or, as Althusser explains in terms of ‘principal’ and ‘secondary’ social contradictions, the structure and the plurality of meanings constitute each other: In plain terms this position implies […] that the principal is not the essence and the secondaries so many of its phenomena, so much so that the principal contradiction might practically exist without the secondary contradictions, or without some of them, or might exist before or after them. On the contrary, it implies that the secondary contradictions are essential even to the existence of the principal contradiction, that they really constitute its condition of existence, just as the principal contra­ diction constitutes their condition of existence. (Althusser, 1969, p.205) In our terms, each secondary contradiction (ideological position) reflects the principal (the neoliberal background), and is connected to other secondary contradictions, which together reproduce the principal. There is mutual dependence between the ‘principal’ logic (or its base acceptance) and its ‘sec­ ondary’ positions (rationalisations).

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Furthermore, this mutual dependence is not a self-contained circuit. Contra Althusser, there is the constitutive ‘lack’ of subjectivity that Žižek identifies, and the fact that the subject’s vision of the social is always an internal pro­ jection, rather than obedience to an actual external logic (Pfeifer, 2015, pp.115–116). For us, the important point here is that while external influences contribute to the fantasy, they are highly varied and contradictory, especially in neoliberal consumerist orders, leading to a range of fantasies and rationa­ lisations in society that clash and introduce each other to alternative influ­ ences. This idea follows what Therborn calls ‘qualification’, which suggests that ‘those who have been subjected to a particular patterning of their capa­ cities, to a particular discipline, qualify for the given roles and are capable of carrying them out’, and yet ‘there is always an inherent possibility that a contradiction may develop between the two’ (Therborn, 1980, p.17). Subjects are not interpellated seamlessly into subject positions, and when they encounter alternatives, they must articulate their assumptions, and even meet their own limits. This point also incorporates Butler’s understanding of the ‘subjection’ of subjectivity as both ‘a power exerted on a subject’ and ‘a power assumed by the subject, an assumption that constitutes the instrument of that subject’s becoming’ (Butler, 1997, p.11). The power relations that constitute subjects do not completely define their scope, as the subject assumes its own power through interpellation, to rationalise its subjection, which may work ‘against the power that made that assumption possible’ (Butler, 1997, p.13). In this way, identifying different ideological positions involves considering their specific modes of affirmation. Throughout the book, we thus develop an ideology ‘map’, by analysing theoretical positions in terms of their core nar­ ratives, beliefs and assumptions. By understanding these elements it becomes possible to theorise the limits of each position’s support for the neoliberal background and the particular way it represses systemic contradictions. These ideological positions include forms of cynicism as well as various other ways people internalise common propositions about the market, democracy, humanity, consumerist pleasures and political alternatives, from versions of political liberalism and conservatism, to ‘apolitical’ responses that may also have major political effects.

Ideology and political change The other major focus of this book is how this ideology model affects con­ ceptions of oppositional politics. While the first of the two chapters dedicated to each of Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek explores how its subject theorises ideology and ideological positions in the existing social situation, the second chapter in each case is concerned with the problems of social change, or how the theorist in question frames these problems and how our approach to ideology may suggest different approaches. In these chapters, the objective is to clarify the powerful forces that reproduce modern capitalism, as defined by Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek, but shift the emphasis of their conclusions by

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highlighting the importance of conscious rationalisation and the consequential battleground of ideas it implies. If the totality appears insurmountable, even with awareness of its contingency, it can be re-presented in terms of the specific mechanisms and conditions which form its ideological supports. Each theorist offers different perspectives in this area, but key recurring themes emerge, which can be roughly defined as ‘commodification’, ‘agency’ and ‘political action’. In the first case, Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek identify various ways in which commodification inherently reduces scope for opposi­ tional ideology. For example, mass commodification of information promotes certain ideas over others, or de-historicises radical ideals, robbing them of their power. In this way, popular resistance seems impossible, since communications channels function according to market demands, and using commodified channels to reach a mass audience both reproduces established structures and forces radical messages to fit dominant media codes. Also, symbolically rebellious acts lack impact in a permissive society that actively encourages and profits from subversion. Aesthetic expressions of resistance simply fail to shock, or are reconfigured in terms of monetary value, losing political con­ text. Any contribution appears to be merely another form of participation in commodity relations, adding to the circulation of information and capitalist processes. We can interpret these efforts (as Žižek does) in terms of what Sohn-Rethel calls ‘real abstraction’, in which ‘the essence of commodity abstraction […] does not originate in men’s minds but in their actions’. Thus, ‘the commodity or value abstraction revealed [by Marx] must be viewed as a real abstraction resulting from spatio-temporal activity’ (Sohn-Rethel, 1978, p.20). In this sense, actions within a commodified sphere reproduce the com­ modity logic regardless of political intent. While these arguments are persuasive, our ideology model suggests limits and contradictions in commodity logic, by emphasising the contrast between ratio­ nalisations. For example, Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek all note capitalism’s reli­ ance on excessive consumerism, which in turn involves an ideological association between fulfilment and consumption that suggests rationalisation of investment in such lifestyles. Or, more generally, if there is correlation between common beliefs and dominant media codes, it implies that mass media content is still influential. It then follows that a greater quantity of radical content (which is not programmatically excluded by the market logic of commodified mass media) could have an ideological and political impact. To use an example from Mandel, the business of publishing Marxist literature does not merely constitute ‘an “integration” of Marxism into the “world of commodities”’, because ‘the bour­ geois social order and the individual consumer by no means have a “value-free” or “neutral” attitude to the specific use-value of “Marxist literature”’ (Mandel, 1975, p.507). This content adds to the structure of capitalist communications, and helps promote an image of free democratic participation, but also enters and influences the field of ideas about what democratic participation can mean. The concept of agency, meanwhile, revolves around Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek’s theories of subjectivity, and the potentials for psychological resistance

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against dominant codes. In Marcuse’s case, the technologically rationalised system traps activity in logics of economic efficiency and productivity, and he argues that the ‘subjective’ understanding that change is required has been separated from the ‘objective’ power of a unified work force. For Jameson, political goals are fragmented into codes that never relate themselves to their constitutive mode of production. Rather, the complex global nature of the system makes it near impossible for individuals to identify their position, or locations of power, within it, leading to lack of direction. With Žižek, there is the potential of a subjective ‘act’ that rejects the laws of the existing order. But the question is what makes subjects take such a decision and how does it relate to class struggle or become politically powerful when revolutionary subjectivity is so fragmented. Ultimately, the overriding concept that dom­ inates all three theorists’ work in this area is the necessity of somehow rein­ vigorating a ‘class consciousness’. The issue for us in all these arguments is the extent to which they present subjectivity as reified or fragmented by dominant forces and material circum­ stances, making it difficult to imagine how conscious agency can contribute to oppositional aims. Marcuse in particular identifies a paradox that social rela­ tions must change to develop class consciousness, but class consciousness is the prerequisite to force this change. Yet in our understanding, some ‘affirmative’ ideological positions imply greater commitment to the existing order than others, so could potentially be more open to class-focused interpretations, if sufficiently exposed to such narratives. Here, Jameson explores the need to invigorate uto­ pian ideals in ideologies in general, which for us hints at a potential to develop alternative political goals. Or, if oppositional agency is viewed in terms of Žižek’s ‘act’, in which subjects take responsibility for their own attachment to social relations, it may be understood that such acts are not merely spontaneous, but result from challenges based on experience and knowledge that counter domi­ nant ideas. As presented, these concepts of change imply a need for prior shifts in consciousness, which seem possible only as a result of some major social crisis that invalidates current thinking. While we accept that material crisis is a key catalyst for widespread ideological change, our theory emphasises how the pro­ cess of shifting consciousness begins in advance. A mass act of taking responsi­ bility for the future, or imagining radical change, comes from challenging conscious justifications for acceptance in the present. The final question in each of these chapters is then what kinds of political action can be possible and effective today. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek all attempt to envisage conditions for oppositional movements, refusing to accept that the current circumstances are permanent or insurmountable. In accor­ dance with these ideas, our analysis considers the difficulties that any radical movement faces, and looks to build on their more ‘optimistic’ elements through the concept of ideological rationalisation. With Marcuse, we focus on a shift in his perspective around the time of the late 1960s’ protest move­ ments, which showed that oppositional ideas could emerge within the reified conditions he had previously defined. Here, he outlines a ‘step by step’

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approach to building radical politics, which involves gradual development of class consciousness and institutional change, in a mutually reciprocal manner. A similar approach returns in Jameson’s theory of Utopia, which considers a need to combine far-reaching goals with accessible everyday politics. Because revolutionary or utopian aims may not be directly communicable, they must be mediated by balancing global ideas with ordinary concerns. Žižek’s work then facilitates consideration of how political refusal to create spaces for alter­ native thought must also formulate a political programme that questions capitalism and liberal democracy. Against some of Žižek’s proposals, we emphasise that formal negation cannot precede content, but endorse his overall aim of developing fragmented opposition into a larger movement that includes varied demands for radical change. The common ground we emphasise is thus a focus on gradual development, or an outwardly progressive ‘spiral’ in which actions slowly change consciousness, which then slowly strengthen actions (Harvey, 2010, pp.227–228). But these proposals are only meaningful if ideo­ logical rationalisation has some form of productive power.

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Eccleshall, R. and others, (2003) Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 3rd edn (New York, NY: Routledge) Fisher, M., (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester: Zero Books) Foucault, M., (1978) The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction, trans. by R. Hurley (New York, NY: Pantheon) Foucault, M., (1983) ‘The Subject and Power’, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. by H. L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, 2nd edn (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press), 208–227 Fraser, N., (1995) ‘From Redistribution to Recognition? Dilemmas of Justice in a “Post-Socialist” Age’, New Left Review, I/212, 68–93 Freeden, M., (1996) Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press) Giddens, A., (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press) Giddens, A., (1994) Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Cam­ bridge: Polity Press) Glynos, J. and D. Howarth, (2007) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Poli­ tical Theory (Abingdon: Routledge) Habermas, J., (1971) Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, trans. by J. J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann Educational) Haider, A., (2018) Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump [ebook] (London: Verso) Hardt, M., (2009) Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University) Hardt, M. and A. Negri, (2004) Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (London: Penguin) Harvey, D., (2010) The Enigma of Capital: And the Crises of Capitalism (London: Profile) Heywood, A., (2007) Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 4th edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Holloway, J., (2010) Crack Capitalism (London: Pluto Press) Jameson, F., (1971) Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) Jameson, F., (1991) Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2000) ‘Cognitive Mapping’, The Jameson Reader, ed. by M. Hardt and K. Weeks (Oxford: Blackwell), 277–287 Jameson, F., (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2008a) ‘Introduction’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), ix–xi Jameson, F., (2008b) ‘Metacommentary’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 5–19 Kotsko, A., (2018) Neoliberalism’s Demons: One the Political Theology of Late Capital [ebook] (Stanford: Stanford University) Lacan, J., (1992) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VII: The Ethics of Psycho­ analysis 1959–1960, ed. by J-A. Miller, trans. by D. Porter (London: Routledge) Laclau, E., (1990) New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso) Laclau, E., (2000a) ‘Structure, History and the Political’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 182–212

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Laclau, E., (2000b) ‘Constructing Universality’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 281–307 Laclau, E., and C. Mouffe, (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radi­ cal Democratic Politics, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Laclau, E., (2005) On Populist Reason (London: Verso) Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe, (1987) ‘Post-Marxism without Apologies’, New Left Review, I/166, 79–106 Lukes, S., (2005) Power: A Radical View, 2nd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Macridis, R. C. and M. L. Hulliung, (1996) Contemporary Political Ideologies: Movements and Regimes, 6th edn (New York, NY: Harper Collins) Mandel, E., (1975) Late Capitalism, trans. by J. De Bres (London: NLB) Marcuse, H., (1962) Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Vintage) Marcuse, H., (1964) One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press) McKenzie, I., (2003) ‘The Idea of Ideology’, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 3rd edn (New York, NY: Routledge), 1–16 Mouffe, C., (2000) The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso) Newman, S., (2007) Unstable Universalities: Poststructuralism and Radical Politics [ebook] (Manchester: Manchester University Press) Pfeifer, G., (2015) The New Materialism: Althusser, Badiou, and Žižek (Abingdon: Routledge) Porter, R., (2002) ‘A World beyond Ideology? Strains in Slavoj Žižek’s Ideology Cri­ tique’, Ideology after Poststructuralism, ed. by S. Maleševic´ and I. MacKenzie (London: Pluto Press), 43–63 Rawls, J., (1999) Collected Papers, ed. by S. Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Sargent, L. T., (2009) Contemporary Political Ideologies: A Comparative Analysis, 14th edn (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning) Sohn-Rethel, A., (1978) Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology (London: MacMillan) Sloterdijk, P., (1987) Critique of Cynical Reason, trans. by M. Eldred (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press) Therborn, G., (1980) The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology (London: NLB) Therborn, G., (1994) ‘The New Questions of Subjectivity’, Mapping Ideology, ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso), 167–178 Vighi, F., (2010) On Žižek’s Dialectics: Surplus, Subtraction, Sublimation (London: Continuum) Vighi, F. and H. Feldner, (2007) Žižek: Beyond Foucault (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Vincent, A., (2010) Modern Political Ideologies, 3rd edn (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell) Wright, E. O., (2010) Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (1994) ‘The Spectre of Ideology’, Mapping Ideology, ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso), 1–33 Žižek, S., (2007) The Indivisible Remainder: Essays on Schelling and Related Matters, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2008a) The Sublime Object of Ideology, 2nd edn (London: Verso)

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S., (2008b) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 2nd (London: Verso) S., (2008c) In Defense of Lost Causes (London: Verso) S., (2009) First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London: Verso)

2

Herbert Marcuse One-dimensional rationalisation

While Herbert Marcuse developed his core philosophical and theoretical insights in the 1930s and 1940s, our analysis focuses mainly on his later works. In his concept of one-dimensionality, his critique of the conditioning of con­ sciousness in post-war consumer capitalism, and the possibilities for develop­ ing alternative thinking he considers, we witness the prelude to the neoliberal present. Many of the features Marcuse identifies in what he calls ‘advanced industrial society’ or ‘late industrial capitalism’ are echoed in the theories of Jameson and Žižek, especially the psychological pressures of consumerism and productivity. Thus, although Marcuse’s life ended just as neoliberalism was becoming politically dominant, his concepts of ideology and repressed social needs remain highly relevant. Nevertheless, this chapter critically interrogates implications in Marcuse’s theory that individuals automatically absorb dominant social demands, making rationalisation little more than an effect of conformity. To understand how these demands are affirmed, it is necessary to explore forms of conscious belief and conditional acceptance that also emerge in Marcuse’s work. With these factored in, the goal of locating and expanding a minority ‘two-dimen­ sional’ or dialectical thought assumes new possibilities. For the most part, Marcuse’s theories of social change bypass consciousness, and explore poten­ tial systemic crises or ways to invigorate repressed unconscious ideals. Yet, we argue, if these prospects are to create the kind of change Marcuse desires, they presuppose forms of oppositional rationalisation. The chapter begins by delineating the features of ‘one-dimensionality’ and some potentials for transcendence Marcuse identifies, as well as possible cat­ alysts for change. One-dimensional thinking works through social practices and administrative systems to reinforce existing social relations, making the particular appear universal, and social change appear unnecessary or dan­ gerous. Here, Marcuse’s social analysis clearly demonstrates an excessive or ‘surplus’ level of repression and scarcity in consumer capitalism, and his theory implies a split between affirmative and oppositional ideology. But his concept of ‘total administration’ is problematic in that it seems to render consciousness impervious to two-dimensional thinking, making direct poli­ tical challenges appear largely useless. Instead, he seeks catalysts for radical

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change in intrinsic tendencies in capitalism, science and human nature, or the unconscious influence of autonomous culture. But if some of these potentials are convincing, their impact still relies on their recognition in mass con­ sciousness, so any transformation must confront this conscious dimension. We then consider how a concept of ideological rationalisation can function alongside Marcuse’s theory, and infer the contents of some ideological posi­ tions from his work. Marcuse stresses that individuals absorb institutional influences without contemplation, are unable to think outside dominant lan­ guage, or reproduce existing social relations through work and consumer behaviour. In our understanding, external influences are not simply absorbed, because they make competing demands on individuals, and different rationa­ lisations reveal varied levels of commitment to the social order. Also, the limits of language in mass media are not purely structural, but involve con­ scious efforts to make certain narratives dominant, and leave a minimal space for oppositional ideas. From this point, we begin to define some affirmative positions by considering contrasting views Marcuse offers regarding accep­ tance of the status quo and the ideological means of social reproduction. Overall, our analysis affirms many of the difficulties of challenging domi­ nant ideas in consumer capitalism that Marcuse identifies. Some of Marcuse’s contributions to ideology theory are still crucial, including his conceptions of instrumentalist rationality, transcendent social needs and a repressive social demand to balance productivity and consumerist ‘desublimation’. But while we defend some of his more contentious positions, we also agree with critics at numerous points, particularly arguments that the tendencies Marcuse identifies as potential facilitators of change appear ineffective. For the most part, these ideas become more plausible when we accentuate the role of con­ scious rationalisation.

One-dimensionality The social conditions Marcuse defines around the concept of one-dimension­ ality establish the dualism in ideology between affirmation and opposition. Marcuse considers how various material and cultural factors, from improve­ ments in average living standards, to the reduction of language, to pragmatic or empirical common sense, create an ideological form that channels indivi­ duals into acceptance without explicit coercion. He also explains how these social changes obscure continued alienation and lack of self-determination, and rely on global oppression and destruction. For us, these observations remain relevant in the neoliberal situation, but we question whether mass one-dimensional consciousness is as impervious to opposition as Marcuse implies, and where two-dimensional thinking that considers potentials beyond the present reality can come from in these conditions. At this stage, our aim is merely to identify the lack of consideration of rationalisation in Marcuse’s theory, making affirmative ideology more a matter of structurally determined practices than conscious justifications.

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In essence, one-dimensional or identity thinking, for Marcuse, is a logic in advanced capitalism that embodies the ‘apolitical’, instrumental reduction of concepts to singular notions by repeated association. It encourages acceptance of what exists, as these particular interpretations are constantly reinforced in everyday life, creating barriers to thought that ‘appear as the limits of Reason itself ’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.14). For example, Marcuse explains, a beautiful model advertising a cosmetic product represents beauty as such, associating beauty with that product, and replication of this idea throughout advertising obscures the fact that an abstract noun (beauty) has far more scope for meaning than an adjective (beautiful) used to describe certain objects (Marcuse, 1964, p.213). Marcuse also describes one-dimensionality in terms of ‘operationalism’, or an obsession with empiricism that only considers issues within specific, narrow parameters. So, a single employee’s complaint about low wages is viewed in terms of that individual’s current financial situation, rather than the level of wages in general. Or, mental health treatment aims at an individual’s ‘adjustive success’ in following social demands, without asking whether the demands are reasonable in themselves (Marcuse, 1962, p.234). In these cases, a local solution may alleviate the personal problem, but it blocks contemplation of wider social causes. For Marcuse, such empiricism is ideological, as it promotes individu­ alism and introduces ‘a false concreteness’ to reality that ‘assumes a political function’ by reaffirming the social order (Marcuse, 1964, p.107). In this way, particular notions appear universal through adherence to empirical data, because unrealised (dialectical) potentials are repressed. According to Marcuse, ideas such as that social progress requires domination over nature, un-pleasurable labour is a social necessity, or human experience is primarily one of oppression, obscure the historical dimension of scarcity, sacrifice and aggression. He argues that such views are in part consequences of scientific rationality, which is no longer concerned with the enlightenment and ‘freedom from fear which it once promised’, but with ‘denouncing the notion of an earthly paradise’ (Marcuse, 1962, pp.65–66), through a ‘neutral’ author­ itativeness that trivialises alternative thinking. It is an instrumental view that understands reality in terms of measurements, categorisations and control, and can perceive nature and people as tools or obstacles relating to specific goals. Within late industrial capitalism, this logic reinforces the priority placed on ‘productivity’, whose destructive effects then become normalised and absolved from moral censure. Thus, despite its focus on knowledge and rational analysis, as opposed to mystic beliefs and explicit moral doctrine, this ideology justifies waste, scarcity and conflict through an appeal to objective necessity. In political terms, it permits validation of virtually any act without guilt, to the extent, Marcuse claims, ‘one man can give the signal that liquidates hundreds and thousands of people, then declare himself free from all pangs of conscience’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.79). At the same time, for Marcuse, ideological conformism reflects a social formation that enables upward mobility and provides a relatively stable poli­ tical system, against which most people have no immediate need to rebel. In

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fact, since dominant concepts of individual and social success rely heavily on one-dimensional thinking, transcendent ideas seem counterproductive. In this situation, the working class ceases to be antagonistic to the system and instead becomes a consumer–producer with an interest in its maintenance. The consumer dimension also compensates for any sacrifices made to enhance productivity, both satisfying basic needs and providing sources of pleasure. Popular culture urges individuals to fill this time with entertainment, as opposed to criticism or political engagement, with promises of gratification that always demand more labour. This work–leisure cycle is irrational, in the sense of its pointlessness, but simultaneously rational for individuals because it grants a level of satisfaction, and refusal is either inconceivable or appears too risky. Marcuse asks, if ‘satisfying goods also include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, why should [people] wish to think, feel and imagine for them­ selves?’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.50). If one-dimensionality is massively dominant, for Marcuse, it is still con­ trastable against two-dimensional or dialectical thought. While some statements he makes imply total reification, such as that today’s ‘culture is more ideological than its predecessor, inasmuch as today the ideology is in the process of produc­ tion itself’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.11), he understands his own critical position as part of a socially repressed consciousness that exists within the same totality. As Kell­ ner says, Marcuse is not ‘a theorist […] who completely rejects contradiction, conflict, revolt and alternative thought and action’ (Kellner, 1984, p.235). Rather, he is clear from the start that there is always a dialectical potential beyond what currently exists, or the ‘interpretation of that-which-is in terms of that-which-is­ not, confrontation of the given facts with that which they exclude’ (Marcuse, 1960, p.x). The one-dimensional absorption of individuals into dominant social goals can therefore always generate exceptions. Marcuse thus effectively marks the dualism in ideology between one-dimensional affirmation that accepts these goals, and two-dimensional opposition that rejects them. What this separation does not explain in itself is how two-dimensional thinking emerges in the circumstances of late industrial capitalism, given the unconscious absorption of one-dimensional thinking. First, it is worth ques­ tioning whether the ideological features Marcuse identifies really are so spe­ cific to this social formation. After all, a particular (interpretation) being elevated to the appearance of a universal is the central aspect of any hege­ monic relation (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001, p.xiii). Conversely, there may be potentials for critical development specific to the current situation that Mar­ cuse does not recognise. Habermas suggests, for example, that since commu­ nication has been separated from the specific ‘value orientations’ of traditional (religious) societies, at least the formal possibility of critical thought should be greater today (Habermas, 1987, p.180). Marcuse instead emphasises the distinct qualities of ideological subjugation in the present, which seem to leave no space for the two-dimensional excess. He acknowl­ edges that dominant language is always one-dimensional in a sense, because it primarily ‘expresses the given […] form of reality’, and adjusts individuals ‘to

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the given universe of discourse and behavior’ (Marcuse, 2001c, p.118). Yet he feels that what is ‘relatively new is the general acceptance of […] lies by public and private opinion’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.89), or the way self-contradicting terms become identified with the general interest or automatically validated by experts. This reproduction of ideology through technical rationality decreases critical capacity, but as such there is no obvious reason why some people manage to resist the ‘lies’, and ideology appears to be defined by unconscious absorption and conformity. In our terms, since dialectical thinking can still emerge, it indicates that people do continue to rationalise their positions and may recognise contra­ dictions. In fact, there is no other way for two-dimensional thinking to develop if the ‘people who speak and accept [dominant] language seem to be immune to everything – and susceptible to everything’ (Marcuse, 1961, p.71). As Reitz says, where Marcuse sees such ‘an almost mechanical reflection of operational and functional material economic concerns in the ideological sphere’, it indicates ‘the integration of individual interests and a paralysis of criticism’ (Reitz, 2000, p.160). In our understanding, therefore, one-dimen­ sionality denotes conformity to contradictory dominant logics through forms of conscious rationalisation which may also have critical elements. For example, if people invest in the idea that consumer goods provide fulfilment, that is a particular belief with limits; if they do not, they are not really ‘sus­ ceptible to everything’, but accept the situation for other (potentially incom­ patible) reasons. The demands in consumer capitalist societies are especially complex – even more so in today’s neoliberal climate, in which the promises of the work–leisure cycle are becoming increasingly unreliable, and fear may begin to replace confidence in the system (Forman, 2017, pp.40–41) – and so invite varied and subtle considerations of fulfilment, risk and inadequacy, which go beyond automatic absorption. Since there is then still a particular that becomes ‘universal’ and anchors justifications of social objectives, that particular can be identified and challenged.

True needs In Marcuse’s terms, there is a repressed potential for qualitative social improvement, but most individuals are unable to see the intrinsic contra­ dictions in the existing system, or imagine a future that resolves those contra­ dictions. For our theory, it is important how Marcuse formulates this potential, because it provides an oppositional narrative that counters dominant thinking. In particular, he centres on possibilities of reducing toil, deprivation and scar­ city, against ideas that such sacrifices are necessary to maintain sufficient pro­ ductivity or repress ‘anti-social instincts’. While Marcuse’s theory of instincts here is not entirely convincing, because he cannot show that there is an intrinsic human potential to liberate our socialising drives and repress aggression, the material potentials he identifies suggest clear avenues for social improvement, and register a class divide (between those who benefit from current conditions,

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and those who do not). Even so, the shift in mass consciousness required to recognise a need for social change is seen by Marcuse as an effect of tendencies within human nature and capitalist development, and the theories he develops around these tendencies reduce the role of conscious agency in social change. For us, conversely, the needs Marcuse identifies could only be realised as part of a counter-hegemonic political movement. The split between what is and what could be, for Marcuse, can be seen in terms of true and false needs. The latter are demands for excess productivity and consumerism that ensure dominance, self-repression and conformism, as opposed to critical self-determination. The ‘truth’ is simply that these demands are contingent and unnecessary, and work towards maintaining the hierarchy in the existing order. Marcuse explains that continuing deprivation, alienating labour and environmental destruction are only needed to maintain established forms of dominance, not civilisation as such. Thus if in the past ‘the rationality of the repression organized in the capitalist mode of produc­ tion was obvious’, it is now ‘losing its rationality’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.22). Elsewhere, Marcuse explains, ‘the distinction between true and false con­ sciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful. But this distinction itself must be validated.’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.xiii) That is, true needs cannot be imposed, but must be comprehended by individuals recognising their exploi­ tation and obscured potentials. Marcuse links these potentials to a critique of the Freudian theory of drives. Specifically, he argues that where Freud sees that civilisation as such entails both physical and psychological repression (of the ‘pleasure principle’ into the ‘reality principle’ of delayed gratification and sacrifice), Marcuse sees this situation as historically conditioned, based on a false assumption of inevitable scarcity. He defines the consequent focus on productivity as the ‘performance principle’, which embodies ‘surplus-repression’, because it demands sacrifice beyond what civilisation requires. If this demand may have been necessary historically in most social formations, for Marcuse, it should not be taken for granted, but rejected in ‘any society which maintains the subjection of man to the instruments of his labor’ (Marcuse, 2001e, p. 197). He notes how produc­ tion and distribution methods have advanced to the point that they could make scarcity obsolete, and a non-repressive reality principle could emerge that revolved around ‘rational exercise in authority […] derived from knowledge and confined to the administration of functions and arrangements necessary for the advancement of the whole’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.33). The conclusion Marcuse draws here, based on Freud’s notion of Eros, is that civilizational needs are compatible with certain ‘instincts’. He explains how the original nature of Eros is ascribed by Freud both an ‘amoral and asocial, even anti-moral and anti-social’ force of individual gratification, and ‘an erotic impulse to civilization’ and social bonding (Marcuse, 1970a, p.19). This duality, for Marcuse, contradicts Freud’s insistence that civilisation must repress instinctual satisfaction, because social bonding in civilisation can also fulfil instinctual demands. He states that Freud’s analysis of the relationship

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between instinct and work contains insupportable assumptions ‘that free libi­ dinal relations are essentially antagonistic to work relations, that energy has to be withdrawn from the former in order to institute the latter, that only the absence of full gratification sustains the societal organization of work’ (Mar­ cuse, 1962, p.140). Instead, Marcuse says, the bonding instinct could harmo­ nise with civilisation to reduce scarcity, struggle and domination, leading to ‘a non-repressive reality principle’ with qualitatively different work relations. He argues that work can take the form of play if its ‘purpose’ is redirected towards gratification of socialisation. Such work would be done because it suited ‘the free play of human abilities’, fulfilling needs through activities that would shape society according to self-determined desires (Marcuse, 1970b, p.41). Marcuse calls this potential ‘non-repressive sublimation’, in contrast to the traditional repressive sublimation of performance, and the repressive desublimation of consumerism, which provides a narrow form of gratification that augments performance. As sublimation, it is not merely a slave to the pleasure principle, but submits the socialising drive to conscious rationality. Marcuse’s attempts to establish grounds for social change are more convin­ cing when he focuses on material factors than on instincts. With the former, there is a clear logic that, since survival is easier in some locations and histor­ ical periods than others, if social toil and sacrifice is not reduced under more favourable circumstances (growing GDP, increased automation), it serves to maintain relations of domination. With Eros, however, scarcity and repression are not only matters of material resources, ideological maturity and technolo­ gical development. Rather, the duality in Eros signifies an internal psychologi­ cal tension that makes scarcity and repression unavoidable, because it produces both social and anti-social desires. That is, if civilisation could satisfy the social aspect of Eros, it would still repress the individualistic aspect, so there is always a lack (or scarcity) of psychological fulfilment. For example, the Oedipus complex represents scarcity of love, as desire for the mother is denied by the father (Alford, 1994, pp.135–136). Marcuse in fact notes that ‘jealousy, unhappy love, and violence […] express the contradiction inherent in the libido between ubiquity and exclusiveness, between fulfillment in variation or change and fulfillment in constancy’ (Marcuse, 2005b, p.186). But, as Alway puts it, he ‘recognizes the contradictory tendencies in Freud’s theory of sexuality but chooses to stress its social, as opposed to the individualistic, elements’ (Alway, 1995, p.77). Non-repressive sublimation depends on privileging one side of Eros over the other, or theorising that fulfilment can come from satisfying only one aspect. Yet, as Žižek’s Lacanian theory will show, fulfilment (or enjoy­ ment) is always partial and always accompanied by a lack. Marcuse’s notion of instinctual fulfilment also contrasts with a historical materialist concept of reducing surplus-repression. He acknowledges that some repression is inevitable, because ‘there can be no such thing as a total abolition of alienation’, which indicates ‘the inexorable struggle of man with nature confronting the human subject and limiting its freedom no matter in what form of society’ (Marcuse, 2001e, p.197). But if the subject is always

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alienated, either not all activity can be socialising, or the content of certain labour remains ungratifying regardless of purpose. As Alford explains on this point, all work curtails freedom to some extent, simply because it represses instant gratification and ‘imposes objective demands upon individuals’ (Alford, 1985, p. 43). Thus, while surplus-repression may be eradicated through social restructuring, Freud’s assumption stands that absence of full gratification is required to sustain the organisation of work. The question is the extent to which existing social conditions enable eradication of scarcity and toil. Mar­ cuse does not provide specifics here,1 and offers conflicting ideas about the potential standards of living if widespread gratification of needs were realised (for example: Marcuse, 1964, p.242; Marcuse, 1962, p.137). But, in any case, there is no material basis to imagine that all work could be repurposed as play. Surplus-repression remains a useful concept for considering social change, as a measure of the exploitation in any order. Yet Marcuse is not always clear about its meaning, such as when he asks ‘whether a state of civilization can be reasonably envisaged in which human needs are fulfilled in such a manner and to such an extent that surplus-repression can be eliminated’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.137). For us, it is always possible to envisage such a civilisation, because surplus-repression is by definition eliminable. Marcuse explains that oppression may have been historically necessary ‘to win the struggle against economic lack, to hasten the mobilization of the workforce and the domina­ tion of nature’ (Marcuse, 2005b, p.188). But that oppression still involves a surplus (or exploitation) in that one group coerces another’s labour to benefit disproportionately from it, and distribution of scarcity is rarely, if ever, equal (Ray, 1998, p.173). Elsewhere, Marcuse implies as much when he explains that terrible conditions in the Industrial Revolution were no less irrational due to the comparatively low level of technical productivity, because ‘a reduction of toil and suffering […] was a real possibility’ (Marcuse, 2001a, p.40). As for what Marcuse calls ideological ‘maturity’, or whether opposi­ tional consciousness can develop, it should be reiterated that what counts as self-determination is a response to specific historical conditions. Opposition is not a fixed condition that requires a certain level of maturity to realise, but a state that continually evolves against existing surplus-repression. Surplus-repression and the distinction between true and false social needs thus establish the class struggle around which oppositional ideology may form. However, Marcuse does not consider how conceptions of needs may develop between systemic contradictions and rationalisations, and thus turns to external or trans-historical influences on subjectivity. His theory of Eros equates to a universal human nature, in which ‘prior to all ethical behaviour in accordance with specific social standards […] morality is a “disposition” of the organism’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.10). He tries to avoid essentialism by explaining that this ‘moral foundation’ and ‘biology’ are themselves histor­ ical, because ‘biological’ needs include cultural needs that ‘sink down’ to become second nature. But in that case he cannot know that certain disposi­ tions of the organism exist ‘prior to all ethical behaviour’. Ultimately, the

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concept of socialising Eros is an attempt to define a locus of social change in the absence of an existing mass political movement (Feenberg and others, 1992, p.47), which leaves him only with ‘hope for the rebirth of rebellious subjectivity from a nature which is older than […] individuation and ration­ ality’ (Habermas, 1988, p.9). Even so, as Kellner says, ‘a Marcusean concep­ tion of subjectivity can be produced without dependence on […] the somewhat biologistic notion of Eros’ (Kellner, 2004, p.96), and we can con­ sider the possibility of influencing one-dimensional thinking through con­ sciousness, while maintaining the evolving dialectical potential of true needs. Realising potentials In terms of how to actually invigorate potentials for change within the situa­ tion of dominant one-dimensional thinking, Marcuse similarly looks beyond consciousness. The possibilities he identifies tend towards one of two cate­ gories: either tapping into the unconscious utopianism of the socialising Eros through a marginal ‘autonomous’ culture, or relying on contradictions in the mode of production itself to affect wants and needs. In our understanding, these ideas are only plausible if one-dimensional thought itself is susceptible to challenge through direct forms of opposition. As shown in the two con­ cepts examined below – Marcuse’s theories of cultural memory and scientific and technological rationality – there remains a need for greater consideration of ideological rationalisation. With cultural memory, only consciousness that already has an appreciation of transcendent potentials appears open to uto­ pian cultural forms. While with science, regardless of the extent of technolo­ gical development, the existing hierarchy continues to block social change until there is a mass conscious challenge to its authority. Marcuse theorises, in relation to his interpretation of Eros, that imagination and shared memory can motivate collective desire and reveal the false con­ creteness of existing social relations. From this perspective, all societies emerge from particular economic and political forces overcoming a prior system, indicating that any society can be superseded. For Marcuse, this reveals the historical failure to transcend instinctual repression due to scarcity and immaturity, but also implies that, in all past revolutions, there was ‘a historical moment when the struggle against domination might have been victorious’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.82), and that seed of possibility can inspire more credible attempts today. The question is then how subjects might ‘remember’ historical potentials when the current social formation militates against dialectical thinking. Marcuse proposes a socio-historical memory, incorporating Freud’s stages of psychological development and concept of phylogenetic cultural inheritance, to consider the stimulation of revolutionary consciousness through historical recollection. He explains that we have an unconscious ‘memory’ of past gratification which ‘generates the wish that the paradise be re-created on the basis of the achievements of civilization’, but the ‘truth value’ of this memory is restrained by the performance principle. He

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continues that the dissolution of the performance principle and surplusrepression should free ‘the forbidden images and impulses of childhood’, reacting against dominant reason and assuming ‘a progressive function’ through new critical standards (Marcuse, 1962, p.18). The issue here is that Marcuse interprets a historical potential in terms of a pre-civilizational state. He imagines an original moment of human gratification that can be ‘realised’ in certain conditions, specifically the current point of civilizational maturity. In doing so, he conflates individual pre-Oedipal memory with an imaginary memory of pre-civilizational fulfilment, and singles out ‘the liberating potentialities of memory and recollection of pleasurable or euphoric experiences rather than the unpleasant or traumatic experiences stressed by Freud’ (Kellner, 1984, p.159). The actual pre-Oedipal experience is not some idyllic paradise, but a state of unfulfilled desire. In Žižek’s Lacanian terms, the sense of a ‘loss’ of pre-subjective completeness is the way subjects perceive the intrinsic ‘lack’ in subjectivity itself. Moreover, civilizational memory either produces a purely imaginary state of harmony, or recalls actual ambiguous potentials in human history, in which ‘emancipatory moments of the past […] necessarily remain intertwined with historically regressive elements’ (Bronner, 1988, p.134). This latter sense requires a consciousness interpretation of what is emancipatory in history and what is not. Marcuse’s theory of ‘recollection’ becomes more plausible later, when he focuses on the successes and failures of history, rather than any pre-civiliza­ tional or pre-Oedipal ideal. He explains that ‘recollection […] is not remem­ brance of a Golden Past (which never existed)’, but a process of ‘reassembling the bits and fragments which can be found in the distorted humanity and dis­ torted nature’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.70). In this case, collective memory is merely the truth that something is repressed, which is understood through historically constituted alternative acts. As Jay explains, Marcuse realises here that ‘what must be remembered are the actual historical experiences and desires of our ancestors, not some imagined prehistorical era of perfect bliss’ (Jay, 1988, p.38). In that sense, it does not matter that emancipatory moments intertwine with regression, because even terror and destruction demonstrate the difference between reality and potential. This memory recalls surplus-repression, free­ doms gained and losses incurred, in ways that may combine with utopian ideas to facilitate political imagination (Jay, 1988, p.41). In taking this direction, however, inspiring historical memory relies on challenging conscious knowledge and conceptions of history. In a way, pre­ civilizational memory is more suited to Marcuse’s theory overall, because it aims to develop utopian ideals through unconscious effects. That is, for Mar­ cuse, historical memory is provoked through means that escape repression and communicate outside reified language, such as ‘phantasy’, which ‘preserves the archetypes of the genus, the perpetual but repressed ideas of the collective and individual memory’ (Marcuse, 1962, pp.127–128). Under the performance principle, phantasy is deemed useless but tolerated within a marginalised realm, where desires can be indulged without encroaching on productivity.

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Marcuse emphasises that phantasy also represents an eternal reminder of the pleasure principle, or the repressed excess of the social order, which constantly nags at reality. Nurturing phantasy then involves an ‘autonomous’ cultural cat­ alyst, because commodified culture is normalising in a way that excludes phan­ tasy. But it remains unclear here how the majority can recognise the utopian potential of autonomous culture even if they are exposed to it, unless conscious rationalisation within one-dimensional thinking is a pre-requisite for art to have the effect Marcuse desires. (This point is developed in the next chapter.) The other major catalyst for change Marcuse imagines is exemplified in his theory of science and technology. For Marcuse, productivity as an end in itself based on manufactured demand means that society functions around a range of unnecessary industries and labour. He argues that, under this logic, science and technology tend towards wasteful and destructive goals, but could be mobilised towards reducing alienation. He recognises that, historically, more advanced technology has led to greater destruction, but compares the current use of technology to its potential to be repurposed towards general human need. He explains that this potential is inherent in technological advancement, because when, in ‘established societies’, ‘all socially necessary but individually repressive labour’ is mechanised, the ‘scientific rationality’ reaches a limit in its aims of quantitative progression (Marcuse, 1964, p.230). At some point, the only further advancement is change in the rationality itself, because productivity can only improve qualitatively. Therefore, Marcuse states, ‘the completion of the techno­ logical reality would be not only the prerequisite, but also the rationale for transcending the technological reality’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.231). The value of Marcuse’s theory here is the implication that scientific rationality is not inherently destructive in its instrumentality. That is, while science’s opera­ tional logic ‘experiences, comprehends, and shapes the world in terms of calcul­ able, predictable relationships among exactly identifiable units’, science is also ‘a specific, socio-historical project’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.164). Its rationality is ‘neu­ tral’, but precisely in its neutrality ‘becomes susceptible and subject to the objectives which predominate in the society in which science develops’ (Marcuse, 1965, pp.202–203). Or, as Feenberg puts it, ‘formally neutral’ scientific ration­ ality is exploited by particular interests and has an inherent bias, because its pure instrumentalism suits the technical aims of productivity, so Marcuse identifies ‘the intrinsic bias in technical reason itself insofar as it emerges from the condi­ tions and requirements of class society in general’ (Feenberg, 1988, p.242). As such, although productivity can be the primary aim of scientific rationality, it is not an essential feature of science (Feenberg, 1994, p.213). Theoretically, if pro­ ductivity for its own sake was replaced by alternative social goals, under a dif­ ferent rationality, science could adapt to new aims and practices. As Marcuse states, ‘pure objectivity reveals itself as object for a subjectivity which provides the Telos, the ends’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.168). In this way, for Marcuse, since science tends towards certain political ends in its neutrality, it must be explicitly politicised to meet alternative aims. For Feenberg, this implies totalitarian political control over science, when it should

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be ‘scientists’ own changing categories and perceptions in a radically new social environment’ that spontaneously redirect scientific purpose (Feenberg, 1988, p.251). Yet, as Marcuse says, if technical neutrality and operationalism cannot resist destructive efficiency, their liberation requires conscious repur­ posing. Also, since science is always intertwined with political contexts, any attempt to deny its politicisation would presume an affirmative ideological function (Carver, 1994, p.83). Furthermore, Marcuse does not suggest direct political control over science, rather that science would find itself in ‘an essen­ tially different experimental context’ (Marcuse, 1964, pp.166–167) of meeting self-determined social demands, which presupposes a political shift that influ­ ences scientific perceptions. Here, as Weber Nicholsen notes, Marcuse’s theory implies that ‘a different attitude toward nature in the broadest sense could […] facilitate different subjective experiences, which could in turn suggest different investigative methods and raise different questions for theorizing and for empirical examination’ (Weber Nicholsen, 1994, p.163). The issue with this idea of scientific development is that Marcuse ties it to a specific point of technological advancement, instead of conscious political effort. First, if some ‘completion’ point is the condition for the current reality to transcend itself, it is inherently incapable of being redirected before that point. In fact, as Alford says, since scarcity signifies humanity’s incomplete dominance over nature, the ‘new science’ can only emerge from ‘the complete subordination of nature’, and Marcuse’s position ‘grants the aura of reconci­ liation with nature to what is actually projected to be humanity’s final victory over it’ (Alford, 1985, p.64). Elsewhere, Marcuse qualifies this idea by describ­ ing ‘optimum conditions’ in which ‘the quantum of instinctual energy still to be diverted into necessary labor […] would be so small that a large area of repressive constraints and modifications […] would collapse’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.139). Yet, with no specific end point, these tendencies would never simply replace dominant rationality because, as Marcuse tells us, elite interests falsely maintain current needs and obscure contradictions. Marcuse also states that the use of science and technology for dominative ends ‘becomes irrational when the success of these efforts opens new dimensions of human realization’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.17), but science and technology always open new dimensions of human realisation, and could always be directed towards different goals. The ‘optimum conditions’ are then not particular points at which technological advancement enables new social aims, but any point at which a mass con­ sciousness seeks to progressively repurpose whatever technology exists. As with Marcuse’s theories of true needs, Eros and historical memory, because he does not consider rationalisation in ideology, he disconnects the potential in scientific rationality from consciousness. Conversely, if we intro­ duce rationalisation into the equation, there are ways in which the purpose of science can be questioned, and shifted, based on gradual challenges to domi­ nant ideas. Feenberg, for example, remarks that a technological revolution must ‘employ the existing scientific-technical rationality transitionally while awaiting a new cognitive dispensation’ (Feenberg, 1988, p.252), and explains

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the possibility of ‘multiplying the contexts and technical systems that interact in any given application to take into account more and more of the essential features of the object’ (Feenberg, 1988, p.253). This idea suggests that it is important to focus on harms caused by existing scientific development and the politics it supports, as well as considering uses of technology that exceed its prescribed purpose. Marcuse only occasionally recognises such attempts, such as where he states that the ecology movement can become radical if it is ‘directed toward the abolition of the very institutions which perpetuate the capitalist environment’ (Marcuse, 2001d, pp.156–157). But the idea can be applied more generally to concepts of true needs and realising human poten­ tials, as we look to politically oppose one-dimensional logics that impose expectations on our lives. In all cases, there is a possibility of imagining alternative social forms, but only to the extent that they can engage with the conscious rationalisation within one-dimensional ideological positions.

Ego weakness Given this need for opposition to challenge one-dimensional thinking, we should better understand the contents of affirmative ideological positions, and how they relate through rationalisation to dominant expectations. Marcuse’s notion of one-dimensionality does not obviously lend itself to identifying different ratio­ nalisations, because he does not closely examine people’s beliefs, moral codes or perception of systemic contradictions. In fact, concepts such as ‘ego weakness’, which we examine here, reinforce the idea that most individuals simply absorb dominant influences. However, we can make inferences here from which to develop our ideology map from Marcuse’s work. As he adapts his ideas accord­ ing to changing historical conditions, or the fluctuating quantity and quality of alternative thinking apparent in society, his theoretical shifts imply varied forms of consciousness. These variations, such as the range of attitudes workers display towards employment, can be understood as forms of one-dimensional but con­ ditional rationalisation. This concept contrasts with the strict one-dimensionality defined by ego weakness, and suggests that people relate to social demands with varying degrees of commitment, with which it may be possible to engage. Marcuse explains that the late industrial capitalist apparatus of production and consumption undermines the centrality of the family, and despite the positive aspects of that change (escape from rigid patriarchy), it weakens indi­ vidual autonomy because the ego does not properly develop. Previously, for Marcuse, the authority of the family in an individual’s life created a struggle for identity, particularly against the father, and a clear private sphere. Conflict with parents strengthened the ego against external influences, but now individuals cannot resist homogenised social imperatives (Marcuse, 1970c, p.50). As such, outside influences, such as ‘gangs, radio and television set the pattern for con­ formity and rebellion’, and failure to adhere to pressure from peers and mass media makes social success problematic (Marcuse, 1962, p.88). The point here is not that ‘Marcuse believed that the decline of the family was weakening the

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link between individuals and the performance principle’ (Geoghegan, 1981, p.59). Rather, the father ‘yields [his] function to younger father figures outside the family, […] who all represent the reality principle far better and far more effectively’ (Marcuse, 2001b, p.89). The weakened ego is conditioned by the performance principle through various institutional demands. The important implications here are that if this ego weakness is a generalised condition, it undercuts any substantial role for conscious ideological rationali­ sation. It represents a mass psychology lacking internal conflict, which means, as Marcuse says, ‘the interactions between ego, superego, and id congeal into automatic reactions’ until consciousness is ‘reduced to the task of regulating the coordination of the individual with the whole’ (Marcuse, 1962, pp.93–94). This notion is not compatible with a theory which aims to highlight a mutually influential relationship between the unconscious and an ego that follows domi­ nant social influences conditionally. But we can also identify signs within Mar­ cuse’s work that individuals consciously process social demands in a way that is significant to their conformist actions. In these cases, conformist behaviour is justified by particular beliefs and ideas overdetermined by social conditions and prevailing discourses, that also still seem to create limits of acceptance. One area we can examine in this regard is the contrasting attitudes to labour Marcuse describes in different texts. In One-Dimensional Man, he explains how workers have integrated their own interests with those of their employers, caring about the fortunes of the company, or even the economy as a whole, and investing in the idea of working harder to maintain overall growth (Marcuse, 1964, p.30). Later, in Counterrevolution and Revolt, he emphasises that indifference among workers is rife, and it matters very little if the work force are committed, because ‘a whole sector of the economy (agriculture) and a large sector of industry depend on government subsidies, [so] bankruptcy is no longer a threat’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.22). Around this time he also identifies ‘a general disintegration of worker morale’ and that ‘the overall breakdown of confidence in the priorities and hierarchies set by capitalism is apparent’ (Marcuse, 2005b, p.187). Rather than taking an interest in the success of the business or economy to justify productivity, workers are inter­ ested purely in earning their living, with productivity an indirect result. The point for us here is that, while in both these cases individuals reproduce dominant relations and the performance principle, and do not obviously con­ template alternative potentials, rationalisation differs. The first example represents a moral justification of productivity, labour and sacrifice as a social good, and suggests that economic growth relies on such commitment. In the second exam­ ple, the performance principle is reduced to a basic commodity exchange – labour for money – with no investment in productivity as an end. Both groups are moti­ vated by personal gain, in that even the first group ultimately works harder because it is more profitable for them. But it can be asked why one group is more invested in dominant ideals of success, while the other is uninterested or satisfied with less. Or, the second perspective may indicate that individuals feel they have little choice but to follow social demands, because alternative options appear to be lacking, or too risky to realise.

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We can also consider that these differing rationalisations exist at the same time, rather than uniformly reflecting changing economic circumstances. That is, some people continue to believe in the morality of productivity even when the economy is weaker, while some never did, and as such these contrasting ideas intermingle and clash with each other in the workplace. According to Marcuse’s concept of ego weakness, to the extent such rationalisations exist they are superfluous, as they merely coordinate the automatic absorption of social goals that functions at a deeper level. Yet the problem with this idea is the implication that the external influences on individuals are consistent and compatible. In fact, these influences include not only gangs, radio and television, but employers, economists, the state and other ideological apparatuses, whose messages may not align. Today especially, the logic of repressive desublimation, in which indivi­ duals are expected to indulge their consumer desires and maintain productivity, is less about finding a satisfying balance and more an endless, guilt-inducing demand to both produce and consume at all times. With all these factors, indi­ viduals must prioritise certain goals over others, leading to different justifications of social expectations. Also, the way that certain rationalisations seem to inter­ nalise these expectations indirectly, as in the second example of workers’ atti­ tudes, suggests that they have a critical and contingent connection to dominant goals, and ego weakness is less total and less homogenous than Marcuse claims. The implication here is that behaviour which reproduces the system, such as wage labour, does not clearly indicate that ideological demands have been uncritically absorbed. It may also be the case that the behaviour itself is not purely affirmative, and carries with it certain oppositional factors, depending on how it is perceived and performed. For example, some work within capi­ talist relations may already fulfil Marcuse’s definition of ‘play’, in that it is fulfilling and helps social bonding. Marcuse says that pleasure taken from alienated labour ‘has nothing to do with primary instinctual gratification’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.201), but such a statement seems to undermine aspects of various forms of work, including his own. As Hyman asks: ‘Are we to under­ stand his oeuvre as a manifestation of repressive sublimation?’ Or, if not, ‘How is it, then, that non-repressive sublimation can exist under the rule of the reality principle?’ (Hyman, 1988, p.161). Effectively, Marcuse’s work was wage labour facilitated by authoritative institutions, yet also caused friction in the system, suggesting that the way individuals approach labour is not a matter of ego-free conformism. This notion may then be relevant to other forms of work that simultaneously contribute to and undermine identity thinking. At one point, Marcuse even sees some modern forms of productivity as potentials in them­ selves, in that they ‘transform the work process into a technical process in which the human agent of production plays increasingly the role of a super­ visor, inventor and experimentor’. In such cases, ‘the work process itself […] becomes, in its rationality, subject to the free play of the mind’ (Marcuse, 1969c, p.23). In short, participation and absorption in dominant processes does not fully explain affirmative ideology, so we can consider the rationalisations involved, and the forms of commitment they represent.

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Language and media If people conditionally rationalise social demands, it follows that the social order relies partly on convincing dominant narratives of existing conditions. In Marcuse’s terms, it is more that the propagation of such narratives through mass media defines the limits of thought, with the actual content being rela­ tively insignificant. Yet aspects of his work indicate not only that there are dif­ fering interpretations of social contradictions, in particular economic disparity, but that narrative content remains relevant. First, if individuals recognise par­ tiality and inconsistency in media coverage, it suggests conscious processing and justification of ideas. Second, the existence of contrasting media narratives implies multiple vocabularies, which are not entirely compatible with each other or reducible to uniform meanings. It is then a question of how certain narratives become dominant in commodified media, which we maintain is not merely a matter of form, but of conscious dissemination of particular political ideas and struggles over language that are crucial to social reproduction. For Marcuse, the way particular representations appear universal in mass communications today is a result of their capitalist structure. He explains that there are no formal blocks on content, as advanced industrial society is not actually fascist (Marcuse, 1972, p.24), but the pluralist framework subsumes difference under dominant interpretations, creating an illusion of freedom. In this way, contrast between ideas is cancelled out in their ‘higher unification’, which promotes pluralist integration (Marcuse, 1964, p.51). As with scientific rationality, the logic of a neutral marketplace of ideas puts minority perspec­ tives at a disadvantage, so although any oppositional group is formally ‘free to deliberate and discuss, to speak and to assemble’, it is ‘left harmless and helpless in the face of the overwhelming majority, which militates against qualitative social change’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.108). Next to dominant ideas, non-conformist thought seems incomprehensible or becomes compromised as it is evaluated through one-dimensional ‘public language’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.110). Opposing ideas are incorporated into that which they oppose (for example, a demand for peace is countered by the idea that the war aims to create peace), and pluralist tolerance is nothing but this incorporation. Furthermore, Marcuse claims, there is political bias inherent in the forms of mass media. In particular, an emotional distance is reinforced through the formatting and presentational style of programmes and publications, which undercuts the gravity of events. Newspapers break information into small pieces, meaning ‘vital information’ is ‘interspersed between extraneous mate­ rial, irrelevant items, [or relegated] to an obscure place’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.111), while advertisements are juxtaposed against horrific news, or interrupt serious broadcasts. Or, a simple consistency of tone, such as a news reader ‘neutrally’ announcing torture and murder in the same manner as stock market fluctuations or the weather, drains the events of anger or accusatory context. In this way, Marcuse explains, even state brutality is no longer praised as heroic, but reduced ‘to the level of natural events and contingencies of daily life’

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(Marcuse, 1968b, p.195). The concept of ‘balance’ in media reporting thus effectively means tolerating destructive acts by granting them the same validity as their criticism. Countering this repressive tolerance then involves politicisa­ tion that takes a more emotional stance and maintains connective links between individual ‘stories’. Marcuse thus suggests systemic restrictions of form and content in media language, with extreme consequences. He explains that, ‘the total mobilization of all media for the defense of the established reality has coordinated the means of expression to the point where communication of transcending contents becomes technically impossible’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.68). In effect, dominant terms actually cannot express dissatisfaction with the social order as such, and people cannot avoid speaking ‘the language of their masters, benefactors, advertisers’, which ‘merges with what they really think and see and feel’ (Marcuse, 1964, pp.193–194). Marcuse is aware that concepts are never fully reduced to a single meaning, and that reification remains an illusion which obscures actual social contradictions. He also continues to note the existence of two-dimensional thinking, especially in the realm of philosophy, in which concepts still in some way ‘transcend their particular realizations as something that is to be surpassed, overcome’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.214). Yet, he says, even though ‘ordinary language still is haunted by the big words of higher culture’, and concepts such as rights and democracy, in commercialised consumption and production people ‘speak a different language, and for the time being they seem to have the last word’ (Marcuse, 1961, p.67). Other points Marcuse makes render these observations less clear, and imply conscious comparison of different ideas and interpretations. For example, he states, ‘it seems unwarranted to assume that the recipients [of dominant lan­ guage] believe, or are made to believe, what they are being told’. Instead, ‘people don’t believe it, or don’t care, and yet act accordingly’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.103). This lack of belief suggests an alternative notion of what is true, and the ability to contrast a narrative against falsifying evidence. If people do not believe dominant narratives, they believe something else. Furthermore, ‘not believing’ and ‘not caring’ are different reactions, even if the behavioural out­ come is similar, because tuning out, trivialising, or cynically justifying contra­ dictions require different rationalisations. It therefore seems that affirmative language does not always resonate publicly, and that ideological acceptance still involves people analysing and judging terms and their meanings. Moreover, structural and tonal neutrality do not fully explain how certain narratives gain ascendancy. In fact, Marcuse describes how a particular media discourse works propagandistically to accentuate the idea of a ‘common enemy’ to unify opinions ‘inside’ society against those ‘outside’ (foreigners or marginalised and exploited groups). Here, an external threat, such as inter­ national communism, allows political parties to converge on policy, leading to a politics that sees any opposition, regardless of aim, as an enemy because it jeopardises unity. As Marcuse says, ‘it is not so much Communism, a highly complex and “abstract” social system’ that is threatening; rather, the idea of

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communism invokes a general hostility, as needs arise, and the concept of the enemy ‘can assimilate many familiar hated impersonations, such as pinks, intellectuals, beards, foreigners, Jews’ (Marcuse, 1970c, p.55). For us, to the extent this narrative represents the ‘public language’, it represents clear and specific arguments for social disparity. It does not emerge from tonal neu­ trality, but from a pathological, moralistic emphasis on fear and hatred. Marcuse even notes how a full range of discourses is rarely tolerated in the media, and states that in ‘the administered language […] a specific vocabulary of hate, resentment and defamation is reserved for opposition to the aggres­ sive policies and for the enemy’ (Marcuse, 1968b, p.196). He explains, for example, how the word ‘violence’ is used selectively to describe anti-estab­ lishment protests, rather than police or army actions, which ‘is a typical example of political linguistics, utilized as a weapon’ (Marcuse, 2005a, p.108). At these points, the enemy narrative is not merely the result of information losing context in media forms, but involves conscious manipulation of lan­ guage to suit certain interests. It also seems that, if the common enemy narrative is a particular (domi­ nant) part of media discourse that only some people believe, it is not fully unifying. For example, it suits populist right-wing positions that seek to blame ‘outsiders’ for social problems, or supports ideas that the current society is a place of tolerance and ‘cultural superiority’ that assimilates dif­ ferences, by depicting the non-consumerist world as a separate realm in which intolerance reigns (Marcuse, 1964, pp.84–85). These positions benefit from the way both media forms and content disconnect interior integration from the ‘backwardness’ of the other, ignoring the relations of exploitation between them. But alternative rationalisations may recognise such connections, so their justifications for supporting the existing order require different media narratives. In this way, mass communications structures must service various ideological positions that may differ at all but the level of affirmation, and if their ‘higher unification’ strengthens the sense of pluralist freedom, the con­ cepts within each remain contrasting. Furthermore, since media structures are formally open, even though certain discourses are barely represented, the boundaries of permissibility are not solidly defined. It is not always obvious what language has an oppositional function, and while one-dimensional dis­ courses are dominant, they cannot simply incorporate or dismiss dissent. Even if there is a kind of symbolic framework that effectively establishes the limits of discussion, it is a developing structure that is shaped by emerging language as much as it overdetermines what people say and think.2

Forms of rationalisation With these concepts of narratives and varied justifications for social con­ formism, we have begun to identify ideological content. The aim now is to define ideological positions and forms of rationalisation, even where affirma­ tive goals appear to be absorbed unconsciously. Marcuse provides various

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possibilities in this respect, in that, even though he sometimes claims that it does not matter what people believe, at other points he suggests that justifi­ catory ideas or moral investments are necessary to sustain society. In our view, these theoretical shifts indicate different ways in which individuals and groups accept the social order, and we suggest that rationalisation is crucial in all cases. The higher unity between positions implies that most people still do not engage with transcendent potentials or fully criticise contradictions in social structures, but the differences between rationalisations, such as in the ways people justify social disparity, denote limits of affirmation. By analysing these justifications, we can begin to outline our ideology map. To start, it is possible to perceive a range of contrasting notions about ideological content from different points at which Marcuse theorises people’s consciousness of social corruption and exploitation. In Eros and Civilization, he states that ‘the individual does not really know what is going on’, due to the ‘the overpowering machine of education and entertainment’, and that, ‘since knowledge of the whole truth is hardly conducive to happiness, such general anaesthesia makes individuals happy’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.94). In other words, at this time, ideological mystification, ignorance and distraction still seem to bind society together. In the late 1960s, Marcuse also indicates a need for moral investment in the system, explaining that technocratic administra­ tion still ‘demands to a considerable extent, belief in one’s beliefs […]; belief in the operative value of society’s values’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.84). Between and after these texts, however, such ideas are less common. Marcuse suggests that people are aware of destructive social tendencies, but they ‘are not com­ prehended as long as they appear merely as more or less inevitable by-pro­ ducts […] of growth and progress’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.225). He also says that it ‘is not that [people] are not aware of what is going on, […] but that, being aware and informed, they do not and cannot respond and react’ (Marcuse, 2001d, p.137). In these cases, oppression and suffering are recognised but accepted as necessary, natural or insurmountable. Elsewhere, Marcuse goes even further, stating that society has translated ideology into the reality of its institutions, workplaces and lifestyles, so that ‘the ideas of reason, equality, happiness, personality etc. have obtained their value in practicable social relations’ (Marcuse, 2001a, p.41). Finally, he claims that ‘the power structure is no longer “sublimated” in the style of a liberalistic culture, no longer even hypocritical […], but brutal, throwing off all pretensions of truth and justice’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.14). At these points, affirmation is purely a matter of con­ formist behaviour, regardless of how it is achieved. These quotes represent a range of ideas in Marcuse’s work, from a social order that thrives on public ignorance or needs to maintain moral support, to one which functions regardless of what people think or whether they recog­ nise its destructive side. In some ways, these fluctuations make it unclear what ideology actually is, for Marcuse, or whether it involves the dominance of particular beliefs or simply reflects social conditions (Kellner, 1984, p.255). In the latter cases, ideology effectively exists outside of consciousness, in the ‘real

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abstraction’ of commodity exchanges – as long as exchange relations continue to fulfil material needs, it has little to do with belief or ideas. In the terms of our model, Marcuse switches between theorising ideology as a dominant background rationality and as the ways people relate to that background, but does not himself recognise this distinction, or consider the relationship between unconscious acceptance and conscious justification. However, if we combine the notions Marcuse expresses, he effectively considers ideology through a range of influences, from economics, to political power and doc­ trine, to psychology. It is not that his theory of ideology ‘credits a psychic factor with causal power far greater than that of economic, social or political factors’ (Geoghegan, 1981, p.50), or that it ‘is too much given to subjective and irrational influences to be relied on’ (Susser, 1988, p.405). Some of his statements even indicate the exact opposite, in that they reduce affirmation to economic conditions. Our aim is then to consider both the economic and psy­ chological factors, or involve all the implications of Marcuse’s positions in a theory that includes material realities and the beliefs that emerge within them. The first question here is how material factors influence ideological posi­ tions that view the existing order as morally right or genuinely able to fulfil needs, as in Marcuse’s idea that workers, once invested in the success of their companies and the economy, may perceive productivity and hard work as good in themselves, or ways of producing social prosperity. Yet this position must still repress or excuse the downsides of increased capitalist productivity, such as waste and exploitation. Or, as Marcuse explains, individuals might internalise consumerist goals as needs, to the point ‘they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.9). In this case, consumerist demands are prioritised over productivity, but the result is still investment in the cycle of labour and leisure. This ideo­ logical position may even be apathetic to politics and wider social demands, but indirectly supports the social order by accepting the idea of fulfilment through consumption, contributing to economic reproduction and not con­ sidering alternative potentials. It rationalises that it is reasonable to focus on personal consumer pleasures and comforts, and that such endeavours are not directly responsible for any major social problems. Second, we can consider how rationalisation also remains in positions that recognise the corruption of official values, or claim to be motivated by nonideological rationality. For example, narratives such as the common enemy and the ‘backwardness’ of foreigners, or even the misfortune of natural dis­ asters, may justify ‘the way things are’ as inevitable. But such narratives repress connections between the local and global social orders (such as how governments in ‘developed’ countries support oppressive rulers abroad, or how the resulting lack of infrastructure in those locations exacerbates the impact of natural disasters). Or, if connections are recognised, they may be deemed impossible to overcome. Marcuse mentions that a common objection to the idea of a revolution in values is ‘that this goal is incompatible with the nature of man’, which ‘testifies to the degree to which this objection has

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succumbed to a conformist ideology’ (Marcuse, 1992, p.38). Here, eradication of exploitation is ruled out through a pessimistic view of a fixed human nature. Alternatively, it could be understood that imperialism and systemic oppression are simply too powerful to resist. In this sense, government and mass media narratives help to reinforce the idea of insurmountable dominance, and provide forms of escapism. In all these cases, it is possible to point to particular beliefs as rationalisations, whether not acknowledging the interconnectivity of global events, accepting a one-sided and ahistorical concept of human nature, or being unable to conceive the possibility of systemic weaknesses. Indeed, there are hints of this last position in Marcuse’s own thought, pre­ cisely because he focuses on the ‘higher unification’ of ideologies, rather than differences between them. His theory groups affirmative ideologies into a single homogeneous block, effectively testifying to the all-encompassing quality of the economic and political system. Thus, where he says that the brutality of the external world must be ‘taken for granted or forgotten or repressed or unknown’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.180), for individuals to internalise the social order, he does not consider how ‘taken for granted’, ‘forgotten/ repressed’ and ‘unknown’ imply different rationalisations. In fact, such notions suggest that some individuals require universal values to explain social contradictions, while others deny their relevance, or fail to notice them altogether, and each of these positions involves its own belief system. In that sense, the strength of ideological plurality is also its weakness, because the social order cannot reproduce itself through a single authoritative ideology but must rely on varied positions which connect to it indirectly. The way these positions rationalise the order affirmatively in turn relies on contestable beliefs that aim to justify or repress its contradictions. If we view these posi­ tions only in terms of their higher unification, this dimension is missed. At this point, based on the ideas we have drawn from Marcuse’s work, we can propose five preliminary positions for a ‘map’ of affirmative forms of internalisation. These are developed further throughout the book, and at this moment only indicate a relevant range of ideas. They are also not entirely dis­ crete categories, and may overlap in various ways, but each suggests a parti­ cular mode of negation, and each implies, but is not limited to, compatibility with certain types of social identity or political leanings. The positions are: 1

2

3

Apologist: based on Marcuse’s idea of the worker who follows the dic­ tates of the performance principle as a moral good, or necessity to reproduce the system; suggesting internalisation of social demands for individual responsibility. Hedonist: describes those who ‘find their soul’ in possessions and con­ sumerist fantasies, and effectively internalise the permissive individualistic ideals of consumer capitalism. Pluralist: a position that views advanced consumerist society as a guarantor of free expression, which must unite against the common enemy. It effectively treats different societies as autonomous rather than systemically connected.

Marcuse: One-dimensional rationalisation 4

5

57

Cynic: the cynic here sees the destructive aspects of modern society as ‘inevitable by-products’ of the social order, or justifies itself according to a concept of human nature that emphasises the unfeasibility of pro­ gressive social change. Defeatist: this is the subject who may be aware of social problems, but feels they ‘cannot respond and react’, leading to resignation based on the view that it is impossible to challenge the system.

These positions remain one-dimensional, in the sense that they are affirmative and do not imagine potentials to radically change society. Yet their co-existence both strengthens the system and creates points of conflict and contestability from which such potentials can be imagined. In particular, most of these positions justify the performance principle (or the neoliberal notion of personal responsi­ bility) indirectly, so that commitment to labour depends on a variety of other contingent beliefs. With hedonism, for example, wage labour often remains necessary to fund consumer pleasures, but it is the promise of fulfilment through pleasure, not productivity, that motivates. As such, hedonism contains a repres­ sed potential, which Marcuse notes as he distinguishes between its affirmative and negative forms – affirmative hedonism accepts the individualistic goals of happiness prescribed by society, and does not differentiate ‘between true and false enjoyment’ (Marcuse, 1968a, p.126), while negative or radical hedonism would recognise that labour and happiness are incompatible, and that con­ sumerist opportunity is stratified by class disparity. At its core, hedonism is thus a generalised belief in realising happiness, and has always ‘been right precisely in its falsehood insofar as it has preserved the demand for happiness against every idealization of unhappiness’ (Marcuse, 1968a, pp.129–130). Affirmative hedon­ ism contains that repressed potential, in that it is primarily a commitment to happiness rather than capitalist productivity, and its conceptions of fulfilment could potentially delink from consumerist ideals. We can apply this thinking to all the ideological positions identified, to consider how they also involve con­ tingent and partial connections to dominant social demands. The conclusion at this point in regard to our ideology model is to stress both the lack of closure in the field of acceptable ideas and the range of ideological positions that affirm the background ideology in different and indirect ways. In the first case, while the background itself overdetermines the norms of discourse and perceptions of its logic, we cannot assume that it is able to pre-empt or fully incorporate the critical excess that inevitably emerges in response to its contradictions. In the second case, these contradictions imply rationalisations that internalise dominant expectations in varied ways, to reconcile them with particular kinds of knowledge and experience. In other words, the tensions in the background rationality mean it cannot be absorbed directly, and each affirmative ideological position involves a critique in its conformism that prioritises certain expectations over others. The question is whether we can expand these critical elements, and what potentials beyond the current rationality they point towards.

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Notes 1 Apparently, Marcuse focused more on case studies and economic trends in his uni­ versity courses (Katz, 1982, pp.168–169). 2 Digital media adds further complexity here, including by giving marginal movements opportunities for mass communication and to contribute to media spectacle. The Occupy movement, for example, had some success in introducing new terms into mainstream discourse (the 1 per cent) and shifting the terms of debate (Kellner, 2017, p.224).

Bibliography Alford, C. F., (1985) Science and the Revenge of Nature: Marcuse and Habermas (Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida) Alford, C. F., (1994) ‘Marx, Marcuse, and Psychoanalysis: Do They Still Fit after All These Years?’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 131–146 Alway, J., (1995) Critical Theory and Political Possibilities: Conceptions of Emancipa­ tory Politics in the Works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas (West­ port, CT: Greenwood Press) Bronner, S. E., (1988) ‘Between Art and Utopia: Reconsidering the Aesthetic Theory of Herbert Marcuse’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 107–140 Carver, T., (1994) ‘Marcuse and Analytical Marxism’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 73–85 Feenberg, A., (1988) ‘The Bias of Technology’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 225–256 Feenberg, A., (1994) ‘The Critique of Technology: From Dystopia to Interaction’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 208–226 Feenberg, A. and others, (1992) ‘Commentaries on Marcuse and Ecology’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 3, 38–48 Forman, M., (2017) ‘Marcuse in the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism: Revisiting the Occu­ pation’, The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Movements, ed. by A. T. Lamas, T. Wolfson and P. N. Funke (Philadelphia: Temple University), 29–54 Geoghegan, V., (1981) Reason and Eros: The Social Theory of Herbert Marcuse (London: Pluto Press) Habermas, J., (1987) The Theory of Communicative Action Volume Two: The Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. by T. McCarthy (Cambridge: Polity Press) Habermas, J., (1988) ‘Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of Rebellious Subjectivity’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 3–12 Hyman, E., (1988) ‘Eros And Freedom: The Critical Psychology of Herbert Marcuse’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 143–166 Jay, M., (1988) ‘Reflections on Marcuse’s Theory of Remembrance’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 29–44

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Katz, B., (1982) Herbert Marcuse and the Art of Liberation: An Intellectual Biography (London: Verso) Kellner, D., (1984) Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Kellner, D., (2004) ‘Marcuse and the Quest for Radical Subjectivity’, Herbert Mar­ cuse: A Critical Reader, ed. by J. Abromeit and W. M. Cobb (New York, NY: Routledge), 81–99 Kellner, D., (2017) ‘Insurrection 2011: Great Refusals from the Arab Uprisings through Occupy Everywhere’, The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Con­ temporary Social Movements, ed. by A. T. Lamas, T. Wolfson and P. N. Funke (Philadelphia: Temple University), 211–228 Laclau, E. and C. Mouffe, (2001) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radi­ cal Democratic Politics, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Marcuse, H., (1960) Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 2nd edn (Boston: Beacon Press) Marcuse, H., (1961) ‘Language and Technological Society’, Dissent, 8, 66–74 Marcuse, H., (1962) Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Vintage) Marcuse, H., (1964) One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press) Marcuse, H., (1965) ‘Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture’, Daedalus, 94, 190–207 Marcuse, H., (1968a) ‘On Hedonism’, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by J. J. Shapiro (London: Allen Lane), 119–149 Marcuse, H., (1968b) ‘Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Societies’, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by J. J. Shapiro (London: Allen Lane), 187–202 Marcuse, H., (1969a) ‘Repressive Tolerance’, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, ed. by R. P. Wolff, B.MooreJnr and H. Marcuse (London: Jonathan Cape), 93–137 Marcuse, H., (1969b) An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon) Marcuse, H., (1969c) ‘The Realm of Freedom and the Realm of Necessity: A Recon­ sideration’, Praxis, 5, 20–25 Marcuse, H., (1970a) ‘Freedom and Freud’s Theory of Instincts’, Five Lectures: Psy­ choanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 1–27 Marcuse, H., (1970b) ‘Progress and Freud’s Theory of Instincts’, Five Lectures: Psy­ choanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 28–43 Marcuse, H., (1970c) ‘The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man’, Five Lec­ tures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 44–61 Marcuse, H., (1972) Counterrevolution and Revolt (London: Allen Lane) Marcuse, H., (1992) ‘Ecology and the Critique of Modern Society’, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, 3, 29–38 Marcuse, H., (2001a) ‘The Problem of Social Change in the Technological Society’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 35–57 Marcuse, H., (2001b) ‘The Containment of Social Change in Industrial Society’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 81–93

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Marcuse, H., (2001c) ‘Beyond One-Dimensional Man’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 107–120 Marcuse, H., (2001d) ‘Cultural Revolution’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 121–162 Marcuse, H., (2001e) ‘A Revolution in Values’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 193–201 Marcuse, H., (2005a) ‘Marcuse Defines His New Left Line’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 100–117 Marcuse, H., (2005b) ‘The Failure of the New Left?’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 183–191 Ray, B. N., (1998) Critical Theory: The Marx-Marcuse Encounter (Delhi: Ajanta) Reitz, C., (2000) Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) Susser, B., (1988) The Grammar of Modern Ideology (London: Routledge) Weber Nicholsen, S., (1994) ‘The Persistence of Passionate Subjectivity: Eros and Other in Marcuse, by Way of Adorno’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 149–169

3

Marcuse The art and politics of revolution

We can now ask what our analysis of Marcuse’s approach to ideology means for his considerations of political change. In terms of how mass commodification defines social needs and obstructs oppositional ideas, Marcuse in many ways pre-empts theories of postmodernism, identifying how consumer culture pro­ duces new concepts of fulfilment through lifestyle choices and leisure activities, and incorporates subversive behaviour into mass entertainment. Yet as the pre­ vious chapter suggests, it is also necessary to consider how people rationalise consumerist demands and their downsides to maintain their attachment in ways that may be indirect and conditional. Moreover, where Marcuse focuses on ‘autonomous’ art as a cultural facilitator of political change, the lack of auton­ omous cultural zones within mass consumerist societies makes it important to imagine how oppositional ideas may function within commodified spaces. In particular, this potential rests on political content which challenges conscious ideological beliefs as well as on the utopian form of high art. Another problem for Marcuse is that individuals throughout society, including leaders themselves, are channelled into cellular administrative roles, dis­ connected from any wider context or effects. It is also difficult to perceive where a revolutionary sensibility might emerge, since, Marcuse shows, the various conditions for a revolutionary subject that were previously embodied in the industrial proletariat are now divided between classes. It appears that the class consciousness of some middle-class intellectuals can work as a catalyst to define a common cause. Yet the way people of all classes still rationalise structural compulsions, making their conformism conditional and flawed (because institu­ tional demands are contradictory), is also crucial to the prospect of class politics, since intellectual opposition requires receptiveness in other groups to spread. A class consciousness must therefore be a matter of connecting fragments of criti­ cism and oppositional thinking that already exist in all classes. Finally, we return to the notion that Marcuse’s theory of ideology makes it difficult to imagine effective radical political action, leading to reliance on sys­ temic tendencies and contradictions. Because his concept of one-dimension­ ality precludes direct confrontations with affirmative ideologies, it is often unclear what politics is possible. An impasse emerges in which institutional change is required for a change in consciousness, but a change in consciousness

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is needed for institutional change. However, Marcuse alters his thinking in the late 1960s, to suggest a possibility of greater political engagement, if protest movements further develop through gradual radical education and institu­ tional reform. For us, the emergence of oppositional consciousness at the time reveals a constant potential within one-dimensional ideologies, so this politics of gradual development is theoretically always possible. This notion is applied to an analysis of Marcuse’s strategies for developing change, with a focus on gradual development that must balance negation of dominant ideas with a positive alternative, and constitutional political action with extra-legal protest. As with chapter 2, the analysis here understands that many of the problems facing political change outlined by Marcuse are still relevant. It also highlights the continued importance of specific concepts, such as that of a pluralist ‘repressive tolerance’, which allows intolerant views to thrive under a veil of neutrality, and defends some of Marcuse’s more contentious positions against accusations that he is either too politically dogmatic, or, conversely, withdraws from political commitment. Even so, some criticisms remain valid, particularly where they argue that the measures Marcuse suggests for political change often appear ineffective. The aim is to reconsider these ideas in the context of our ideology model, to understand how these potentials may be reconfigured.

Consumerism As chapter 2’s analysis of mass media suggested, the logic of commodification helps to generate conformist desires. We can expand on this point by con­ sidering how that logic is culturally codified in mass consumerism, one of the major social demands in late industrial capitalist societies. Marcuse shows that individuals absorb consumerist goals due to the actual benefits they confer and their pseudo-utopian promises, all of which obscure the toil and destruction required to maintain them. He also notes that, because indivi­ duals become dependent on these benefits, the system must continually create new, enticing goods that promise increasingly greater fulfilment. As such, in Marcuse’s terms, a systemic failure to supply the demand it creates may be disastrous, as consumer needs have become so deeply ingrained. But, from our perspective, it is necessary to understand that people accept consumerist pressures in various ways and to various degrees, and of identifying how expectations connect to these beliefs. According to Marcuse, consumerism is a part of capitalist total adminis­ tration which represses dialectical potentials by creating ‘needs’ that demand continuation of dominant forms of production. It offers pre-packaged, tem­ porary pleasures as rewards for performance, with promises of satisfaction that fix individuals in the cycle of exploitation and distract consciousness from alternatives. For Marcuse, these consumer demands become biological, in his historical sense, and he explains that the ‘consumer economy and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form’ (Marcuse, 1969b,

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p.11). It is not the goods themselves that are repressive, but their existence as commodities. In fact, because everything, including politicians, is promoted and sold as a commodity in markets dominated by major corporations, ‘the “inherent” quality of the merchandise ceases to be a decisive factor in its marketability’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.15). Desirability, participation and brand association become paramount, and individuals knowingly make decisions based on the image connected to products. Furthermore, for Marcuse, since consumerism partially fulfils the needs it creates, it grants a sense of inclusion and appears as a rational social goal. In this sense, modern life can seem compatible with instinctual desires for libidinal gratification, which ‘makes the very notion of alienation questionable’ (Mar­ cuse, 1964, p.9). Yet, Marcuse explains, this fulfilment is ‘repressive desu­ blimation’ that permits only a particular sexual gratification that actually contracts the libido. It is also still constrained by the performance principle, that is, the reality principle includes a regulated allowance of pleasure. This satisfaction replaces consideration of alternative forms of fulfilment, such as may come from reducing toil and waste, or increasing socialisation. As Mar­ cuse says, ‘innumerable gadgets […] divert [people’s] attention from the real issue – which is the awareness that they could both work less and determine their own needs and satisfactions’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.91). Thus, individuals are still alienated from certain potentials by consumerism, but the experience of pleasure and relatively high living standards does not appear as alienation. Any sense of dissatisfaction is supposed to be fixed by further consumption, and class antagonism is repressed. In this basic form, Marcuse’s theory suggests mass acceptance of consumer goals based on economic realities and libidinal promises, as opposed to ideolo­ gical rationalisations. However, he also makes observations which imply that individuals internalise consumer demands differently and conditionally. First, as far as there is actual belief in the libidinal fulfilment of consumerism, it relates to Marcuse’s concept of ‘hedonism’, or a position that sees individual happiness through consumerist gratification as the ultimate life goal. Other rationalisa­ tions, however, seem to require additional or alternative beliefs. For example, Marcuse explains that the partial gratification granted by repressive desublima­ tion also causes aggression, which is given an outlet through propaganda direc­ ted at a foreign other, or ‘national Enemy’ which ‘is distorted and inflated to such an extent that he can activate and satisfy aggressiveness’ (Marcuse, 2001c, p.98). Or, he claims that ‘the fetishism of the commodity world is wearing thin: people see the power structure behind the alleged technocracy and its blessings’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.21), as well as that the higher living standard relies on ‘misery, frustration, and resentment’, and that the waste, exploitation and ‘constant slaughter’ required to maintain it are ‘too obvious to be effectively repressed’ (Marcuse, 2001f, p.169). In effect, the system reproduces itself despite growing awareness of contradictions in consumerist living, as even if disparity increases and economic structures become visible, the concepts of value and the com­ modity form remain unquestioned. In these cases, alternative forms of

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affirmative ideology appear necessary, whether ‘cynical’ acceptance that con­ tinues to affirm the status quo because any change risks making things worse, or ‘defeatist’ rationality in which people even repress the contradictions of con­ sumerism by consuming, Indeed, as Žižek’s concept of ideology will show, con­ sumerism continues to offer libidinal enjoyment even when recognised as the cause of social ills. But, it may also be that as awareness of capitalist contra­ dictions increases, people think about political change more. As Marcuse’s notion of counterrevolution implies (Marcuse, 1972), it requires greater effort to repress alternatives and defend affirmative narratives from a politics that puts the commodity form itself at the heart of the crisis. Despite hinting at these different forms of ideology, Marcuse does not sug­ gest that conscious rationalisation can affect investment in consumerist demands. Again, any potentials for change in his theory come from intrinsic material contradictions in the consumerist system. He thus demonstrates the dependency of the social order on certain structural and ideological elements. For example, he explains how the economy depends on consumers internalis­ ing manufactured needs, causing expectations and promises to rise con­ tinuously, and that, while greater demand should increase production, systemic fluctuations cause cutbacks and job losses, which decrease purchasing power (Marcuse, 1969b, p.82). He then argues that disparity between wages and demand could foster ‘transcending needs which cannot be satisfied without abolishing the capitalist mode of production’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.16). But in these cases, his understanding of ideological absorption, in which ‘mutilated experience’, ‘false consciousness’ and ‘false needs’ are second nature, appears to undercut such possibilities, because failure to satisfy manufactured demand may simply provoke aggression. The danger is that, ‘precisely through the spread of [the] commodity form, the repressive social morality which sustains the system is being weakened’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.50). As such, a lack of con­ sumerist satisfaction may put repressive desublimation beyond performance principle control, resulting in an authoritarian response. In our terms, however, it is possible to interpret these material potentials in various ways, with the scenario Marcuse describes being only one possibility, coming from the most extreme internalisation of consumer goals. In other words, many people may internalise consumerism less directly, through justifi­ cations such as escapism, freedom, necessity or moral good, and these forms of one-dimensional consciousness could react in different ways to crisis and eco­ nomic shifts, or even to ideas that connect mass production to deprivation, freedom of choice to oppression, and individualism to social fragmentation. For example, the beginnings of such rationalisations are visible in ethical con­ sumerism, indicating that pleasure and material satisfaction are not people’s sole concerns. Although this ethics is still often an operationalist notion of individual consumer responsibility, such as the ‘choice’ of eco-friendly or organic brands, or may act as a way to assuage guilt, it demonstrates the pre­ sence of the downsides of consumerism in mass consciousness. While this knowledge is usually not politicised, and even feeds back into the apparently

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objective properties of value rather than questioning them, it suggests a shift in expectations that may be expanded further into a general critique (how con­ sumerism itself causes problems). In particular, it may be possible to redirect the notion of ethical consumerism away from choice towards reduction, by introducing ideas about the overall excess of production and waste. Then, since consumerist capitalism relies on people’s investment in excess consumption (and the associated waste and violence) to maintain growth, it is to an extent vulnerable to these pressures. Ultimately, mass opposition to excess consumer­ ism might only develop within an economic crisis, but it requires a political movement to begin beforehand, and gradually grow into a significant force.

Art Another major question surrounding commodification is the extent to which oppositional ideas can find space and become influential within commodified mass communication. If consumer capitalism commodifies all areas of social life, then even radical politics needs to work within its processes. Yet, for Marcuse, there is still a role for autonomous cultural expression, which remains two-dimensional by avoiding mainstream channels. He also argues that this culture cannot simply attempt to shock in a way that functions in line with consumer permissiveness, but must take an intellectualised form that invigorates alternative thinking. In this way, Marcuse’s theory of art demon­ strates a strong political aim, but his politics of autonomy and more abstract forms seem unable to find an audience beyond an already existing opposi­ tional sensibility. It is therefore necessary to imagine ways in which commo­ dified media may convey more radical messages, which becomes more plausible when we consider the possibility of challenging conscious rationali­ sations. Here, not only the utopian form of art but also the political content of culture is significant, and can retain some power even when commodified. Marcuse emphasises the radical value of high bourgeois art in that it militates against the assimilation of social norms and its ‘transcendence of immediate reality shatters the reified objectivity of established social relations and opens a new dimension of experience’ (Marcuse, 1978, p.7). Such transcendence negates the appearance of a closed totality, because its estranging form goes beyond language to an ‘aesthetic dimension’ that renders everything contingent. But the power of this art depends on its existence outside the realm of profit, from where it creates a contradiction, even though, historically, autonomous positions themselves have been born of social inequality and minority privilege (Marcuse, 1964, p.65). Conversely, for Marcuse, when cultural works are commodified, they become normalised, or reduced to the realities of advertising and exchange value, which strengthens the image of permissive consumer pluralism. Thus, Marcuse states, although ‘the words, tone, colours, shapes of the perennial works remain the same, […] that which they expressed is losing its truth, its validity’ because they no longer stand ‘shockingly apart from and against the established reality’ (Marcuse, 1965, p.197).

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Elsewhere, however, Marcuse concedes that art’s utopian value may survive commodification. He states that even bourgeois works were ‘created as com­ modities for sale on the market’, which ‘by itself does not change their sub­ stance, their truth’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.88). He also says that estranging art remains ‘authentic’ as it indicts ‘the totality of a society which draws every­ thing, even the estranging works, into its purview’, and adds that economic structures ‘determine the use value (and with it the exchange value) of the works but not what they are and what they say’ (Marcuse, 1978, p.31). Yet Marcuse also explains here that the messages and ideas that such works pro­ vide cannot become popular, because popularity by definition means appeal­ ing to mass tastes formed by anti-intellectual culture, or using dominant language that cannot create estrangement. As such, even if the power of art is retained in commodification, it only functions as a niche interest. The issue here, for Marcuse, is that the estranging effect requires an intel­ lectual dimension, to avoid becoming harmlessly incorporated. He thus criti­ cises the ‘cultural revolution’ in the US as a form of mindless acting out, and explains that it ‘diverts mental and physical energy from […] the political arena’, because it ‘transfigures economic and social into cultural conditions’ (Marcuse, 2001e, p.158). This hip anti-conservatism mimics the anti-intellec­ tualism, overt sexualisation and onus on individual liberty within the con­ sumerist system. Its tactics of offence and obscenity fail to separate it from various forms of mass entertainment, and it is mostly absorbed with approval or indifference, only really opposing the traditional elite – including high art. Even when it is critical, Marcuse argues, it mainly expresses frustrations that reveal the misery of life but not its potential transcendence, and thus merely brings temporary relief before restoring normal relations (Marcuse, 1972, p.115). Overall, this anti-art culture is weaker politically than high art itself – it is also only tolerated within the realm of phantasy, yet lacks the potential of art to transcend these circumstances, because ‘the gap which separates Art from reality […] can be reduced’, only if ‘reality itself tends towards Art as reality’s own Form’ (Marcuse, 2007, pp.145–146). Without these revolutionary ten­ dencies, anti-art remains affirmative. Even so, whilst these cultural expressions tend towards private liberation, they also hint at alternative sensibilities. In fact, because they are cultural and creative they produce new forms and language that may disrupt dominant concepts and contain seeds of qualitatively different social needs. In An Essay on Liberation, Marcuse states that ‘satire, irony, and laughing provocation become a necessary dimension of the new politics’, and that ‘the cynical defiance of the fool’ is a means of ‘demasking the deeds of the serious ones who govern the whole’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.64). He also highlights forms of slang and linguistic deformation emerging from marginalised groups, which suggest estrangement and a differentiated consciousness and identity. Yet he still argues that the potential of such culture is dependent on it becoming intellectualised to avoid incorporation (Marcuse, 1972, p.131). It is not, then, that Marcuse is ‘asking one to oppose undesirable reality by retreating into

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the world of the fool’, which only makes the dominance of powerful forces more secure (Lukes, 1985, p.141). Rather, Marcuse explains that when oppo­ sition lacks mass support, it is ‘sucked into the very world which it opposes’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.64), and he elsewhere comments that if resistance only satirises or mocks the establishment, ‘the fun falls flat, becomes silly in any terms because it testifies to political impotence’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.50). The fool is merely an alternative sensibility that may help inspire radical thinking. Marcuse’s aesthetic turn is thus an attempt to reinvigorate oppositional politics, not escape from it, as critics such as Lukes and Reitz maintain. Reitz explains that Marcuse postpones ‘an end to the cultural alienation of the artist and intellectual “until the millennium which will never be”’, and since this ‘paradox is taken to express permanent opposition, rather than real (his­ torically surmountable) contradiction, it is not dialectical at all’ (Reitz, 2000, p.227). But Marcuse actually says that, ‘since the tension between idea and reality, between the universal and the particular, is likely to persist until the millennium which will never be, art must remain alienation’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.103). That is, ‘authentic’ art points beyond any social reality, or presents a fantasy that implies constant potential for change. In this sense, art and the critical intellectual are alienated from existing social norms by definition, and that alienation makes them dialectical. For Lukes, meanwhile, Marcuse’s ‘inward’ turn is problematic because art’s negative potential does not neces­ sarily lead to progressive politics. He concludes that ‘affirmative art […] must remain until a safer environment is created for the “aestheticization of poli­ tics”’, ‘because the visions of authentic art cannot be trusted’ (Lukes, 1985, pp.163–164), adding that any ‘integration of politics and aesthetics […] will owe its chance to “politicians”’ who ‘retained an obligation to instrumental interests’ (Lukes, 1985, p.165). Yet, for Marcuse, aesthetic negation equates to non-repressive sublimation, which implies a politics of increased socialisation. It is not pure, indeterminate negation, and does not require the (oppressive) political control of art that Lukes recommends. The issue with Marcuse’s theory is rather whether autonomous and estran­ ging art can escape its designation as harmless, apolitical fantasy. Since its marginal position reinforces its own externality, and limits its potential to act on affirmative ideology, it is unclear how the utopian potentials of art or sub­ cultures can expand. Indeed, Marcuse explains that consumer demand ‘expresses the lawful and even organized effort to reject the Other in his own right, to prevent autonomy even in a small, reserved sphere of existence’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.245). But as the spread of commodification reduces auton­ omy, the already distant potential of estranging art only becomes less sig­ nificant (an idea reflected in Jameson’s theory of postmodernism, in which the commodity form has infiltrated life to an even greater degree). By emphasising autonomy, Marcuse forces oppositional culture into an easily segregated and shrinking ‘special reservation’. As Bronner says, if ‘art estranges itself from society and its reality principle, it also alienates itself from the very possibility of a discourse to determine its emancipatory potential’ (Bronner, 1988, p.127).

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Furthermore, Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensional consciousness implies that any intellectualised culture would be ignored by the majority, because ‘society has been closing the mental and physical space in which this culture could be under­ stood in its cognitive substance’ (Marcuse, 1965, p.195). It seems more likely that art would be understood in the ‘affirmative’ role he outlined earlier, in which the aesthetic dimension is perceived as a temporary reprieve from the inevitable suf­ fering of reality, rather than a potential for transcendence (Marcuse, 1968a, pp.80–81). It is not then surprising when he states that, ‘in the present, the subject to which authentic art appeals is socially anonymous’ (Marcuse, 1978, p.32). But if so, art can only preach its political value to the already converted, and Marcuse ‘succeeds in establishing the unique nature of the aesthetic only at the cost of renouncing its basis and effectiveness in reality’ (Raulet, 2004, p.123). Any oppositional potential in culture then appears to rest on its ability to resist determination by market forces and escape its autonomous enclosure, to communicate in a way that takes it beyond ‘a higher truth available only to the happy few’ (Feenberg, 2005, p.94). Culture must somehow bring its negating qualities to the commodified sphere, despite the great obstacles such a move entails. As we have seen, Marcuse suggests that utopian elements in art are not completely erased in commodification, although it is counterproductive to tune them towards mass appeal. But he also considers that even one-dimensional prescriptions and consumerist promises of fulfilment may contain certain uto­ pian elements. For example, he explains, when the human form is used in advertising, ‘the plastic beauty may not be the real thing, but they stimulate aesthetic-sensuous needs which, in their development, must become incompa­ tible with the body as instrument of alienated labor’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.76). Idealised images stimulate aspirations that the advertised products fail to satisfy, and although the outcome may be frustration, or an obsessive focus on the object, and although, unlike high art, these desires do not inspire creativity and imagination, it demonstrates the capability of reified consciousness to do more than simply absorb consumerist messages. From this starting point, we can imagine further possibilities. In particular, Marcuse’s suggestion that what cultural works ‘say’ is not fully determined by their position in commodified production is still only concerned with their form, rather than their political content. As Kellner says, in focusing on form, ‘Marcuse seems to underemphasize […] conservative-ideological elements in high culture’ and ‘underestimates the political potentiality of art which is part of a process of cultural revolution’ (Kellner, 1984, p.358). That is, he assumes that even in high art with reactionary political content the estranging form is more potent, and that more familiar cultural forms that express radical ideas are effectively nullified. Yet if ideology is not a matter of unconscious absorption, we can consider that content, as well as formal estrangement, can communicate against the grain of affirmative rationalisations. The question remains whether such content can become popular without being diluted, because it must be translated into everyday terms, but it still appears worthwhile to try and gradually increase radical ideas in commodified media, by

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challenging conscious narratives. As Geoghegan argues, Marcuse ‘under­ estimated the power of works of art not simply despite but even because of their mass diffusion’ (Geoghegan, 1981, p.77). In effect, even if only the minority of an audience receives a transcendental or progressive political message, that diffusion is politically useful. Commodified media is still manufactured according to sales potentials, and for the most part remains familiar and de-intellectualised, but there are no hard rules governing creative expression or interpretation. Marcuse says that any chance of change in consciousness ‘is fatally reduced by the fact that the leftist minority does not possess the large funds required for equal access to the mass media’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.65). This point suggests that the problem for radical ideas is primarily one of access and presence, and in the context of today, we can think in terms of digital media and the kinds of opportunities they offer, which even blur the line between autonomous and commodified culture. In fact, Marcuse continues that ‘without the continuous effort of persuasion, of reducing, one by one, the hostile majority, the prospects of the opposition would be still darker than they are’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.65). These words, which embody Mar­ cuse’s optimism in the late 1960s, imply an accumulative value in continual criti­ cism of existing relations, and suggest the possibility of challenging conscious rationalisations.

Administration and responsibility Turning from consumerism to the logic of production, the situation Marcuse defines follows Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, in which ‘the definite social relation between men […] assumes […] the fantastic form of a relation between things’ (Marx, 1990, p.165), cutting individuals off from each other, and the wider social purpose and effects of their labour. In the ‘administered society’, for Marcuse, people at all levels of society receive specific responsi­ bilities through their jobs, based on narrow or operational demands. Repro­ ducing the system is therefore largely a matter of the administrative routines of work, rather than explicit ideological demands. Yet, for us, there is still rationalisation underlying this fragmented compulsion, meaning that limits exist in the relationship between practices and justifications, and conscious­ ness may shift from affirmative behaviour to refusal. For example, systemic contradictions are rationalised away with notions such as personal responsi­ bility, which turns social problems into individual failures. Challenging these ideas by focusing on structural issues, while also relating them to everyday problems, is thus necessary to developing oppositional consciousness. Without this possibility, even the radical minority are merely fulfilling a certain func­ tion within existing social relations. Marcuse describes various ways in which late industrial capitalism reproduces itself through social fragmentation. The operationalism of the administrative society represses global ideas, whether those of revolution or calculated, rulingclass exploitation. Instead, each person has an administrative role to fulfil. Even the elite are less a group that propagates superior culture or morality and more

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the individuals who oversee and promote productivity. As Marcuse puts it, the standardisation of production and consumption ‘are not a conspiracy, […] cen­ tralized in any agency or group of agencies’ but ‘diffused throughout the society’, from local community and peer groups, to media, corporations, and government (Marcuse, 1968b, p.191). Processes are compartmentalised and the people who make decisions, ‘if they are identifiable at all, do so not as these individuals but as “representatives” of the Nation, the Corporation, the University’, often una­ ware of the ‘institutions, influences, interests embodied in organizations’ (Mar­ cuse, 1964, p.205). Society functions according to the aggregate result of many singular technical judgements, which follow demands for profitable efficiency. In this structure, Marcuse explains that people no longer view authorities as leader figures, in the Freudian sense of a symbolic ‘primal father’. That is, indi­ viduals no longer live in thrall to a particular ethos enforced by a specific power; leaders are functionaries, valued as competent supervisors of productivity with whom people identify to the extent they ‘still deliver the goods’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.131). In fact, Marcuse claims, as aggression in advanced industrial society increases, the populace actually wants leaders to execute the systemic violence that sustains false needs, and even pressures governments into destructive acts (Marcuse, 1970a, pp.58–59). More generally, leaders and elites must conform to the same instrumentalist measures of fitting in, or ‘adjustive success’, as everyone else. According to one-dimensional thinking, individuals are responsible for succeeding or failing in their defined roles, or for seeking the expert advice that enables them to improve. As such, when leaders fail, it is likewise due to their personal inadequacy to maintain dominant structures. Operational demands and systemic administration seem to override ethical reasons for doing particular jobs, as individuals do not fulfil their adminis­ trative roles due to moral or political ideals. As Marcuse puts it, ‘duty, work, and discipline […] serve as ends in themselves, no longer dependent on rational justification in terms of their actual necessity’ (Marcuse, 1958, pp.262–263). Or, if there is wider justification of the technical rationality that directs behaviour, it is merely that ends and means ‘are determined by the requirements of maintaining, enlarging, and protecting the apparatus’ (Marcuse, 1970a, p.54). According to our ideology model, however, individuals also justify the existing apparatus and their participation in the ends and means. Even a simple reason such as ‘just doing my job’ without questioning how it affects others (and with its parallels to ‘only following orders’) is supported by ethical assumptions that enable individuals to prioritise their employment over other concerns, not merely a matter of executing objective processes. Leader figures, meanwhile, are not only treated as efficient administrators. As Marcuse says, ‘In its emphasis on the sensuous “image”, on the “sex appeal” of the political leader, the American system has mastered […] the depth dimension of satisfactory submission beneath the political dimension’ (Marcuse, 2001f, p.170). As such, there is still a libidinal investment in the image of the leader, and some ideal or desire that goes beyond maintaining stability.

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It is also worth considering that operational demands are not always con­ sistent, so functionaries have to consciously decide how to prioritise certain tasks over others. Especially in influential spheres such as politics or finance, choices must be made that are not self-evident purely on questions of efficiency and profit (for example, short-term gains may counteract long-term growth). Therefore, the interests and ideologies of the leaders and elites still affect social development, or redefine the meaning of dominant social goals, whether in ways that attempt to ensure elite privilege or according to other beliefs. In this way, just as operational imperatives direct the behaviour of individuals, the interests and ideological beliefs of individuals direct the demands of the system. There is an excess of rationalisation over operationalism that makes it possible for individuals to exe­ cute demands in different ways, and it may even be that certain rationalisations can lead to refusal, or decisions that go beyond operational expectations. At the same time, the ‘neutral’ instrumental logic of operationalism effec­ tively contains its own ideological justifications, in the sense that it enables individuals to deflect from systemic contradictions by blaming human error and corruption for problems. But these rationalisations are susceptible to ana­ lysis precisely because of this blind spot around such inconsistencies. We can take as an example here two major ‘establishment’ narratives in the economic crisis of 2007–2008. The first of these depicts the global crisis as a kind of nat­ ural disaster, effectively affirming the universality of the system and the impossibility of controlling its fluctuations. The second focuses on individuals, whether greedy bankers, incompetent economists or irresponsible borrowers. Turning to Žižek, he explains that this blame narrative was often genuine, as opposed to a cynical attempt to protect the system, and it was ‘truly surprising […] how easily the idea was accepted that [the crisis] was an unpredictable surprise’, and that ‘those who promised continuous growth did not really understand what was going on’ (Žižek, 2009, p.9). But where people accept ineptitude or dishonesty as the main cause, they miss how operational ration­ ality itself effectively demanded the actions that caused these agents to desta­ bilise the financial system. That is, whether this narrative comes from a moralistic defence of the system (in which capitalism and liberalism do still function as leader substitutes), or from cynicism (the bankers’ behaviour only became undesirable when it threatened economic growth), it does not connect the crisis to contradictions in the performance principle itself, or see the system as inherently problematic in the sense that the greater efficiency of profitmaking it requires undermines its own stability. These affirmative ideologies rationalise the effects of the contradictions through a superficial cause, with beliefs and assumptions that obscure the deeper issue. An effect of these ideologies is to exaggerate individual agency, and both apologists and cynics thus become conscious agents of the social order, com­ mitted to ensuring that any complaints against the status quo aim merely at minor improvements in personnel and efficiency. In contrast, in highlighting the systemic organisation of individuals, Marcuse shows that political change means resisting the exploitative demands of capitalist production as such. Yet

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his concept of ideology overemphasises structural causation, so that, barring systemic failure, it seems people will continue to execute operational demands without contemplation. As he says, the material basis of ‘a rupture with the continuum of domination and exploitation’ is ‘in the aggravating economic stresses of the global system of corporate capitalism’, which include inflation, crises, intensified competition, waste and destruction (Marcuse, 2001d, p.114). But although such conditions are ultimately crucial for major social change, they do not necessarily cause oppositional thinking so much as amplify the various oppositional ideologies that have already developed. If a radical pol­ itics is to come from crisis, it depends on people beginning to consciously accept notions of more systemic contradictions beforehand. If, as Marcuse states, a revolutionary transition involves not only technological advancement and internal contradictions, but also ‘the growth of the political organization of the laboring classes’ (Marcuse, 1958, p.19), an oppositional politics is required that mediates between individual responsibility and systemic contra­ dictions, in communication with conscious agents who are capable of evolving rationalisations.

Revolutionary classes Developing such communication means identifying where in society opposi­ tional thinking already exists, and where it might emerge. This is a question of class consciousness, but, Marcuse explains, there is no longer an industrial working class that represents a revolutionary subject, and the constitutive elements of such a subject (central role in production, consciousness, material need) are now split between classes. It thus appears that an inter-class move­ ment is necessary, which it is difficult to conceive because of this separation of factors. As such, while we use Marcuse’s class categories as a guideline, it seems more important to theorise potentials for class consciousness in small sections of each class both within and outside consumer capitalist societies, based on the possibility of confronting affirmative rationalisations. That is, no particular subordinate class is positioned to take power, and any possibility of radical change involves establishing a cross-class movement with opposition to systemic class disparity as its core. Marcuse tries to identify a class-based revolutionary subject that could recognise its alienation and struggle for progressive change. Traditionally, this class is the overworked and undernourished mass of labourers within the centres of power, but in advanced consumer capitalism the working class has become integrated into a society that satisfies its immediate needs, and unable to develop consciousness of its alienation. Therefore, while the working class remains for Marcuse ‘the objective factor’ of revolution, because it still represents a critical mass of people who operate the means of production, it lacks both the ‘sub­ jective factor’ of political consciousness and the vital material need for change. The ‘subjective factor’ instead now rests with a minority of ‘nonconformist young intelligentsia’, or individuals emerging from inside the system who gain a

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universal view through formal education. Vital need, meanwhile, is found in ‘the ghetto population’ and ‘the “underprivileged” sections of the laboring classes in backward capitalist countries’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.56). This group exists in late industrial capitalism because it still relies on poverty-wage labour and creates an increasing excess of non-labourers. Marcuse describes such people as ‘the exploited and persecuted of other races and other colors, the unemployed and the unemployable’. Because they are rejected by the system, they have an immediate need for better living standards, and ‘their opposition is revolutionary even if their consciousness is not’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.256). The problem is that none of these revolutionary factors coincide in a single subject. Marcuse states that the working class is ‘the only class which, by virtue of its function in the productive process, is capable of arresting this process, and of redirecting it’ (Marcuse, 1969c, p.327). But without material deprivation or revolutionary consciousness, it is ideologically conservative. The middle-class intelligentsia, meanwhile, has radical demands, but lacks the power to replace the working class as revolutionary subject. For Marcuse, it can provide a ‘preparatory function’, which means, ‘it is not and cannot be a revolutionary class, but it can become the catalyst’ (Marcuse, 2005a, p.84), demonstrating that alternatives and non-conformism are possible, to inspire a larger force. Marcuse points to the 1960s student movement as an example, in that it made connections with labour movements, and through refusal brought ‘to the fore the new historical Subject of change, responding to the new objective conditions, with qualitatively different needs and aspirations’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.52). It is also protected to an extent, because authorities usually cannot react too violently to an intellectual or student class that is supposed to be the next generation of administrators (Marcuse, 1969b, p.59). But as such it remains distinct from the unemployed underclass, which is operationally expendable because of its lack of role in the production process, and therefore subject to violence, imprisonment and ghettoisation. Politics based on class struggle cannot then focus on a single group, and must aim at connecting potentials in each class into a larger movement. The difficulty is how to make such connections, given the lack of oppositional consciousness outside the intellectual class. For Marcuse, ‘the forces of emancipation cannot be identified with any social class which, by virtue of its material condition, is free from false consciousness’. But, he adds, ‘they are hopelessly dispersed throughout the society’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.125). The point to make here is that, while the separation of revolutionary factors Marcuse identifies usefully outlines the social situation, there may be greater fluidity between classes than this description allows. That is, the revolutionary factors within each class may be less uniform than he suggests, which reduces their internal unification, but implies that the potential for class consciousness is more evenly distributed throughout the social spectrum. So, on one hand, the characteristics Marcuse associates with each class may not be so clearly definable. For example, the privilege of middle-class intellectuals may also dilute their commitment and reintegrate them into the establishment in

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the medium term, so it is not that students are as invested as the underclass in terms of ‘the depth of the Refusal’, which ‘makes them reject the rules of the game that is rigged against them’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.6). The rules are not rigged against the student class in the same way (materially), and the access to education that defines the intelligentsia splits it between conformism and rejection. In effect, the intelligentsia is either not a class, but part of a class that refuses full integra­ tion, or is a class with two mutually exclusive interests, one of which is maintain­ ing its privileged position. At the same time, the needs of the underclass are also not necessarily revolutionary, because in some cases the existing system may seem able to meet them. Late industrial capitalism can adapt to include (or exclude) different groups, and formally allows social mobility, so the political needs of individuals within the underclass remain ambiguous. Marcuse explains of the working class that they ‘do not crave a new order but a larger share in the pre­ vailing one’, and that ‘their uniformity is in the competitive self-interest they all manifest’ (Marcuse, 1982, p.151). This interest could apply for elements of the underclass as well, to the extent that individualistic desires to become part of society appear achievable. Finally, even the power of the working class is uncertain, because it is no longer a specific group with a clear potential. Marcuse recognises that it has expanded beyond purely physical production, so a revolutionary working class now will be one ‘in which the blue collar labor will only be a minority, a class which will include large strata of middle classes, and in which intellec­ tual work will play an increasing role’ (Marcuse, 2001g, p.200). Yet in that case, the working class is not defined by its type of labour, level of wealth, or even education, but purely its status of being employed. It is not a class as in a group with a ‘unity of interests and experiences that once at least theoreti­ cally resulted from sharing the same position within the production process’ (Alway, 1995, p.88). It is not distinct from elements of the intelligentsia, and their ‘subjective factor’, or even from administrative elites. As Marcuse states, ‘the managers are thoroughly tied up with the vested interests, and as perfor­ mers of necessary productive functions they do not constitute a separate “class” at all’ (Marcuse, 1982, p.156). But with this expanded definition of the working class, Marcuse shifts ‘the basis of revolutionary agency from the economic to the political sphere’ (Alway, 1995, p.87). The ‘objective factor’ of revolution becomes not a class, but a general majority. On the other hand, if this loss of discrete class distinctions appears to fragment revolutionary potentials, by diluting individual class characteristics, it may make it easier to envisage radical political connections between groups within different classes. Such connections would be class politics in that they would organise to eradicate the relationships of domination and subordina­ tion inherent to the capitalist mode of production. This possibility highlights a need to understand how forms of ideological rationalisation may to some extent relate to particular classes, including positions with oppositional ten­ dencies. For example, it may be that working- and middle-class groups are more likely to be apologists for the system, or to cynically defend their own

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interests, while underclass groups are more likely to focus on escapist hedon­ ism, and it becomes necessary to connect these positions together based on the contradictions and alternatives they repress. In this way, the dispersal of oppositional thinking is not ‘hopeless’, but a potential for radical ideas to span class boundaries. Currently, most individuals within each class group are affirmative in their thinking – even many of the intelligentsia are resigned to the existing situation. Nevertheless, the affirmative ideologies in these groups are susceptible (to varying extents) to contradictory ideas and experiences. Indeed, intellectualised class consciousness can only be a catalyst if some forms of affirmative consciousness are open to it, having in some way already articulated their deprivation or lack of fulfilment. While Marcuse recognises that the revolutionary consciousness of the intelligentsia is only the starting point for a collaborative movement, it is important to recognise the potentials in rationalisations in all classes, which are developed by, and can develop, radical consciousness. It is a question of the ‘diffusion’ of potential critical and dialectical thinking, and ‘how localised campaigns undermine and sub­ vert the system in ways it cannot as yet suppress’ (Miles, 2012, p.121). A final point to consider is that an interclass movement cannot be merely national, but must connect internationally with other movements that resist domination. In this respect, Marcuse analyses the anti-colonialist movements of his time, and identifies a connective potential due to their more traditional working-class sensibility. As he explains, for such movements, the proletariat is still ‘the human basis of the social process of production’, and provides ‘popular support for the national liberation fronts’ (Marcuse, 1969d, p.31). He also sees that resistance outside of the centres of capitalism in general can affect imperialist expansion, by reducing the flow of wealth, leading to disarray and dissatisfaction within. Later, he notes how the US increasingly enforces its power abroad through militaristic means, ‘where indigenous ruling groups are not doing the job of liquidating popular liberation movements, […] because the system is no longer capable of reproducing itself by virtue of its own economic mechanisms’ (Mar­ cuse, 1972, p.13). In such cases, anti-war sentiment grows, causing protests that are countered through curtailment of freedoms, and more aggressive propa­ ganda, in turn leading to further economic strain, and overstretch of power, which undermine official values and the supply of consumer comforts. Marcuse effectively describes two separate processes here: economic dis­ ruption that could be caused by any sufficiently large resistance, and the building of an international opposition that must link compatible forms of resistance. He does not make this distinction, perhaps because there were clear grounds for solidarity with the anti-colonial liberation movements of his time. But, as Geoghegan says, he therefore did not really consider generally what ‘could possibly unite the disparate elements of the Great Refusal in political activity’, nor ‘precisely how these forces were to be co-ordinated both prior to and during a revolutionary upsurge’ (Geoghegan, 1981, p.91). That is, to form significant opposition, local and global movements cannot merely share an adversary, or simply be disruptive. Also, it is not clear how, for

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Marcuse, resistance movements from ‘developing’ nations could embody a transcendent revolutionary consciousness, given his claim that only late industrial society enables civilizational maturity. As Offe explains, it would be contradictory for him to identify ‘the starting points for a “post-technical” culture and society […] precisely in those Third World countries that have been spared the process of industrialization’ (Offe, 1988, p.219). Marcuse is clear that neo-colonialist resistance must find ‘support in the “affluent society” itself ’ (Marcuse, 1967, p.4), and is not merely a means to overstretch established powers. Yet, such support requires local and global movements to connect ideologically, over an inclusive form of class consciousness, which assumes a certain ideological range and flexibility.

Motivating change So far, we have highlighted the role of ideological rationalisation in con­ sumerism and production, the possibilities of using media and culture as vehicles for oppositional ideas, and a need to link class interests. At this stage, it remains necessary to theorise the details of a radical politics. Marcuse is committed to envisaging political approaches that may realise dialectical potentials, but without a theoretical focus on ideological rationalisation he often still thinks in terms of sudden revolutionary upheaval, or major, spon­ taneous shifts either in material production or consciousness. At times he recommends a form of withdrawal into intellectual preparation, but changes his outlook in response to the late 1960s protest movements, which demon­ strate the presence of oppositional consciousness. Here, he hints at an approach to revolutionary politics based on gradual and reciprocal shifting of sensibilities and structures, which escapes the impasse he reaches elsewhere. He also formulates a concept of ‘negative education’, which suggests that dialectical thinking can have an impact on existing subversive potentials. This is compatible with our theory, at least to the extent it is reinterpreted as the possibility of challenging conscious aspects of affirmative ideologies. For Marcuse, revolutionary politics is necessary because it is possible, in that people are actually and unnecessarily deprived, and first requires that people believe in that possibility. In line with Bloch’s concept of concrete Utopia, he stresses that utopian possibility is a conceivable reality based on technological advances that ‘deprives “utopia” of its traditional unreal con­ tent’, so that ‘what is denounced as “utopian” is no longer that which has “no place” […] but rather that which is blocked from coming about by the power of the established societies’ (Marcuse, 1969b, pp.3–4). The pejorative under­ standing of Utopia – that qualitative social improvement is unrealisable, and any alternative is regressive – is maintained only by affirmative ideology. Failure to combat this idea and imagine utopian potentials then only strengthens the current reality. According to Marcuse, a programme of resis­ tance is required that is ‘free of all illusion but also of all defeatism, for through its mere existence defeatism betrays the possibility of freedom to the

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status quo’ (Marcuse, 1970b, p.69). Elsewhere he says that, even if no road to success is visible, leaving only a politically impotent refusal of conformist behaviour, it is better than ‘defeatism and quietism’, and ‘even if we see no transformation, we must fight on’ (Marcuse, 1970c, p.94). The importance to oppositional politics of refusing the existing reality is clear, but less so is what it actually means to ‘fight on’ in difficult circumstances. Marcuse recommends a ‘great refusal’ of that which is, as well as rejection of action (such as anti-intellectual cultural revolution) which can be co-opted back into affirmative thinking. At one point, he justifies withdrawal as a tactic, claiming that although it ‘may indeed lead to an “ivory tower”’, it ‘may also […] lead to something that the Establishment is increasingly incapable of tol­ erating, namely, independent thinking and feeling’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.129). He adds that, ‘where radical mass action is absent, and the Left is incomparably weaker, its actions must be self-limiting’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.133). The question here is how this ‘ivory tower’ differs from marginalised autonomous art, in the sense of being tolerable within a designated zone of phantasy. When refusal is put in terms of self-isolation, it further reduces the limited profile of resistance. Utopian belief seems more abstract and less relevant or desirable (Bundschuh, 2004, p.157), and ‘the dialectics of nature, society, and thought [become] an academic rather than a transformative practice’ (Reitz, 2000, p.242). Marcuse may be correct that action for the sake of action can be counter­ productive, so that sometimes a step back is required to develop critical tools. This remains a relevant perspective, and is in fact advanced again by Žižek years later. Yet, as we will see, Žižek’s notion of refusal is formulated more as a rejection of everyday binary political choices to create space for alternative thought and action, whereas Marcuse’s withdrawal is more a temporary retreat from the possibility of connecting existing sentiments of dissatisfaction together. Indeed, given Marcuse’s concept of ideology, it feels like a resigned waiting for some monumental social shift to change mass consciousness, so that until those conditions arrive all that can be done is to withdraw into theory. As such, any political activism in the meantime ‘will seem pathetically inadequate’ (Geoghegan, 1981, p.37), and Marcuse’s call may create a ‘grow­ ing sense of total impotence’ (Bernstein, 1988, p.26). Marcuse notes the pro­ blems of withdrawal when it comes to withdrawing from theory, explaining how New Left countercultures ‘destroyed themselves when they forfeited their political impetus in favor of withdrawal into […] abstract anti-authoritarian­ ism and a contempt for theory as a directive for praxis’ (Marcuse, 2005e, p.185). But he does here not consider the reverse situation, in that theory must also communicate with existing forms of practice. Marcuse’s position changes in his work from the late 1960s, in the period between his one-dimensional man thesis and this call for withdrawal, when various political and cultural movements demonstrated that people were capable of oppositional thought and actions. Here, Marcuse identifies forms of progressive activism and ideas of a light, playful society with an emphasis on freedom, imagination and alternative sensibility. He explains that if such

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demands grew until they could not be ignored, they may trigger a wider change in consciousness that connects the aesthetic dimension of imagination and concrete politics. In this case, he says, ‘the needs and faculties of freedom […] emerge only in the collective practice of creating an environment: level by level, step by step’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.31). The focus is on linking existing political groups (where they show signs of alternative sensibilities) and organic development. This politics of gradual, reciprocal development is more in tune with our ideology model, in that it suggests gradually changing consciousness. As an alternative to points at which Marcuse stresses the paradox that institutions must change to develop consciousness, but consciousness must develop to demand institutional change (Marcuse, 1970b, p.80), the step by step approach seeks simultaneous gradual advances in all areas. For Marcuse, this potential relates to specific social conditions, in which oppositional sentiment is visible and could develop into a political movement. However, it could be seen as a general possibility that counters notions of automatic ideological absorption, especially since it emerged only a few years after Marcuse outlined total administration in One-Dimensional Man, and a way of maintaining a commit­ ment to radical politics in concrete form. In particular, it may be asked how this new sensibility developed, as it apparently had to come from one-dimen­ sional thinking, with the implication that this potential was always present. As Miles explains, this rupture shifts the concept of social change from time (the eventual succession of the old society by a new one) to space (the specific forms of political and ideological resistance that exist in different places), making revolution a force that is ‘co-present within the existing society which gradually transforms it radically but from within’ (Miles, 2012, p.125). It is then a ques­ tion of working with this potential, and (as we shall see with Jameson) of bal­ ancing utopian ideals with everyday political language. In this way, a step by step politics augments a theory in which the limits of consciousness can be steadily challenged. At one point, Marcuse says that, ‘unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about the change’ (Marcuse, 1964, p.xv). Our concept of ideology focuses on this ‘unless’, or the implication that a combination of political awareness and imagination could have an impact on social conformity. In terms of the practicalities of gradual development, Marcuse envisions a need for intellectual leadership around ‘utopian possibilities’, as opposed to disorganised, ‘spontaneous’ uprising. That is, if instinctive individual desires and non-affirmative thought are to shift towards revolutionary sensibilities, they require direction by two-dimensional thinking that highlights potentials for an alternative social order. Marcuse frames this organisation as a kind of negative education, which reveals the contingency of existing relations and the inherent possibility of imagining new ones. This ‘counter-education’ is dis­ tinguished from the reifying doctrines of educational institutions that ‘serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior’

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(Marcuse, 1969a, p.114). The aim is that ‘the distinction between rational and irrational authority, between repression and surplus-repression, can be made and verified by the individuals themselves’ (Marcuse, 1962, p.206). In many ways, this education is precisely the dialectical approach needed to challenge affirmative conscious rationalisations. The focus on negation disrupts universalised assumptions not merely to replace them with other absolute ideas, but to invigorate notions of self-determination. Such negation represents a rela­ tively open engagement, but is not, as some argue, a retreat from politics. According to Reitz, Marcuse ‘reduces social and educational philosophy to aes­ thetic philosophy’ (Reitz, 2000, p.234), so it is necessary ‘to compensate for cri­ tical theory’s aestheticist deficits through renewed inquiry into class structure and material social forces’ (Reitz, 2000, p.237). Yet, for Marcuse, negative edu­ cation aims to reveal potentials in existing social relations or possible reversals of actual social problems. It involves criticism of media discourses, promotion of suppressed information, distrust of politicians, and organised protest and refusal (Marcuse, 2001b, pp.77–78). He is not, then, as Martineau says, ‘taking refuge in revolutionarism’ (Martineau, 1986, p.97), or only interested in subversion, rather than challenging for power. While Marcuse says that we must negate the current order without knowing exactly what would replace it, the point is that ‘the question as to which are “real” needs must be answered by the individuals themselves’, but only when dialectical consciousness becomes ascendant, other­ wise ‘their answer to this question cannot be taken as their own’ (Marcuse, 2001a, p.52). The goal is to create an organic opposition which must disrupt onedimensional institutions so that it can develop, but is not purely destructive because its goals and values ‘must be visible already in our actions’ (Marcuse, 2005d, p.123). This is not liberation without political goals, but a way of making political goals a collective responsibility, by mediating between negation and alternatives (something we will consider again in the chapter 4 with Jameson’s concept of Utopia). Marcuse promotes ‘a reconceptualization of politics, society, and economy’, and ‘it is clear what the result of theorization is supposed to be: judgment and action’ (Carver, 1994, p.76). Even so, the concept of negative education should still clearly acknowledge its own prescriptive role, in that revealing social potentials inevitably means suggesting alternative ideals, partially dictating the desires of those it edu­ cates. In this sense, it may help to emphasise a more reciprocal relationship between educator and student than Marcuse tends to allow. It is not quite that Marcuse is an intellectual elitist and believes that the insights of intel­ lectuals should always be followed (Kellner, 1984, p.314). After all, he does not respect education and intellectualism as such, as he notes that it often has affirmative bias, and suggests that radical educators could come from all classes (Marcuse, 2001f, p.178). But there is something in this point. As Balbus puts it, Marcuse effectively sees students as ‘sensuous social actors’, and educators as ‘rational social theorists’, which overlooks the alternative ideas students already have to be receptive to (re-)education (Balbus, 1994, p.111). That is, it is easy to assume that a student’s ideas are not dialectical

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enough, and for educators to project their ideas about the kinds of ‘real needs’ that should emerge from critical thinking onto them. Teachers may not consider that some needs expressed by students are already ‘real’, as they define when students are sufficiently liberated from dominant thinking that their ideas become ‘their own’. Perhaps then, to avoid any one-directional implications, the concept of ‘education’ could be reframed as ‘conversation’ between subjects with differing experiences of alienation and oppression. If negation in consumer capitalism ultimately focuses on class disparity and the mode of production, the range of social problems experienced by students may expand teachers’ understanding of the manifestations of disparity and the kinds of solutions they require. At the same time, this opens a question about leadership and organisation, and in that capacity it does seem that educators have a responsibility. Mar­ cuse explains that New Left countercultures ‘destroyed themselves when they forfeited their political impetus in favor of withdrawal into a kind of private liberation […], of an abstract anti-authoritarianism and a contempt for theory as a directive for praxis’ (Marcuse, 2005e, p.185). In other words, this kind of refusal, not politically directed or based in theory, cannot become revolu­ tionary. More recently, as theorists discuss the legacy of Marcuse in the con­ text of movements such as Occupy, the issue remains. Certainly, the spontaneity of such movements gives them a sense of ‘authenticity’, and within them ‘it is possible to see the attempt at becoming, at self-creation in and against the objective world of capital and instrumental reason’ (Garland, 2017, p.59). But still, many of these activities ‘are signs without organization. […] The intellectuals are mostly bystanders, and the activists have returned to largely uncoordinated local protests’ (Aronowitz, 2017, p.348). Forman explains how Occupy, lacking in critical theory, ‘failed to avail itself of ana­ lytical categories that would be helpful in shedding light on the deep-seated structural conditions at the origin of the current crisis’ (Forman, 2017, p.50). In this case, while theorist-educators do not themselves have to assume lea­ dership roles, they surely have to promote the need for leadership and a clear political programme in movements. One way of exploring this idea is through a renewed concept of the party, which we will return to with Žižek in chapter 7. Here, it is important to reiterate that conversations between educators and activists who exist in any given moment must develop, and that intellectual forms of ‘refusal’ can never fully retreat into theory.

Points of contestation Having considered how a movement may develop structurally, we can also envisage the forms of political participation required. Again, there is a split in Marcuse’s work here between a focus on sudden revolutionary change, and a commitment to longer-term processes. In the first case, Marcuse struggles to identify likely causes for change, and although the difficulties he identifies for oppositional politics cannot be ignored, his particular approach to ideology

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restricts him to suggestions that appear merely hopeful, including a brief con­ sideration of minority ‘dictatorship’ that ultimately appears implausible. In the second case, Marcuse explores forms of political participation that are more in tune with a gradual development of oppositional ideology. Here, while it is never a matter of simply working within established political structures, it seems possible that a combination of internal and external pressures may have a mutually reinforcing effect. In fact, it seems less likely that a radical move­ ment will be crushed by the state if activism has already established sympa­ thetic connections within major political and cultural organisations. Even so, for us, these prospects rest on a concept of conditional ideological conscious­ ness, rather than automatic ideological absorption. Marcuse’s work shows us that the difficulty for any genuinely disruptive oppositional politics is surviving the ideological and legal backlash against it. Mainly, he argues that such politics must go beyond the norms of political participation if it is to represent any kind of transformed sensibility, since party politics cannot be transformed from within, and everyday political activities such as voting, writing letters and joining sanctioned protests only testify ‘to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have changed their content and lost their effectiveness’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.98). Effective protest must employ unauthorised measures, and risk confrontation with state power, ‘unless opposition becomes a harmless ritual, a pacifier of conscience, and a star witness for the rights and freedoms available under the status quo’ (Marcuse, 1970c, p.89). Yet while opposition cannot keep resistance strictly legal, because part of what it resists is the established law, if the majority does not recognise the right to illegal resistance through civil disobedience, the state retains widespread support. Radical movements must somehow reverse the understanding that systemic violence reflects the general interest and oppositional disruption reflects particular interest. A major problem in reaching this goal is that a minority movement cannot control its representation in commodified media. As such, affirmative ideologies may still welcome a legal violent response by the establishment, to protect their demands for consumer pleasure, formal pluralism or continued social disparity, after which a minority movement would struggle to organise at all. Marcuse warns that ‘once fascism is installed, it may well destroy any revolutionary potential for an indefinite time’ (Marcuse, 1972, p.29). This possibility appears to lead radical opposition into a dead end, since any protest that is not a ‘harmless ritual’ provokes disproportionate response that quickly suppresses it. Even the non-defeatist must accept that any radical political strategy is a gamble with slim chances of success. However, Marcuse explains, the ‘risk of increasing repression […] has never been a reason to stop the opposition. Otherwise, all progress would be impossible’ (Marcuse, 2005c, p.103). He adds that what might be called ‘adventurism, romanticism, imagination […] is an element necessary to all revolution’ (Marcuse, 2005c, p.116). Nevertheless, even if this attitude of defi­ ance is necessary, on its own it is not a solution.

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In much of his work, Marcuse is unable to escape this deadlock. Yet while it really is difficult to imagine a means for radical politics to succeed, the situation may appear worse because he does not think of ideology in terms of gradually shifting rationalisations. Instead, he returns to the paradox that neither social structures nor mass consciousness can change without the other changing first. Here, Marcuse cannot see how ‘the emergence of these new needs can be con­ ceived at all as a radical development out of existing ones’, and he asks whether, ‘in order to set free these needs, a dictatorship appears necessary’ (Marcuse, 1970b, p.76). With total administration and indoctrination, it seems only a sys­ temic failure or enforced revolution can make people question their needs. This move is justified, for Marcuse, because some people are denied rights and cannot gain them through official democratic channels, so their need ‘presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.124). In that sense, dictatorship is the expansion of rights to those cur­ rently excluded, opposing the existing ‘repressive tolerance’, whose formal neu­ trality in a situation of inequality ‘protects the already established machinery of discrimination’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.99). In effect, a more substantial tolerance requires intolerance, or deciding what to tolerate, because no society can simul­ taneously tolerate transcendent and repressive ideas. Despite the liberating aims of this ‘dictatorship’, it is not a plausible escape from the paradox of change. In terms of content, there are similarities here with Marcuse’s concept of education. So, even though it misses the point to say that ‘to foreclose on tolerance is precisely to cut oneself off from […] criticism and refutation’ (MacIntyre, 1970, p.91), Marcuse still again effectively privileges the educator over the student. For example, he argues that tolerance of Hitler by the Weimar Republic led to the Second World War and the Holocaust, and ‘the definition of this movement as not deserving democratic tolerance is more than a personal value judgment’ (Marcuse, 2005b, p.89). But if this demonstrates necessary limits to tolerance, not all ‘repressive’ ideologies are as outwardly aggressive as fascism, and in many cases the ethical lines would be less clearly defined. Also, in practical terms, there are no means for a minority dictatorship to impose itself within the social conditions Marcuse describes. As Lichtman asks, ‘How can any such minority make a revolution? If it were possible, wouldn’t it be unnecessary; if necessary, impossible?’ (Lichtman, 1988, p. 205). Marcuse later recognises that ‘the systematic withdrawal of tolerance toward regressive and repressive opinions and movements could only be envisaged as results of large scale pressure’, which would ‘presuppose that which is still to be accomplished’ (Marcuse, 1969a, p.115). He also says that smaller scale move­ ments could only prepare the ground, and subsequently that, ‘the alternative to the established semi-democratic process is not a dictatorship or elite […] but the struggle for a real democracy’ (Marcuse, 1969b, p.136). The imposition of a new politics still requires a popular democratic will. If we are to build this ‘real democracy’, it implies breaking the impasse in a different way – somehow confronting ideological and legal difficulties without attempting to force major changes in either institutions or consciousness. But

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such potentials appear realistic only if the gap between one-dimensional and two-dimensional thinking can be bridged by confronting conscious ideologi­ cal beliefs. In this vein, we can examine some proposals Marcuse puts for­ ward for publicly justifying non-legal protest. First, he explains, there is ‘a universal higher law’ that ‘goes beyond the self-defined right and privilege of a particular group’. As such, oppositional movements can ‘appeal to human­ ity’s right to peace, to humanity’s right to abolish exploitation and oppres­ sion’, which are ‘demonstrable as universal rights’ (Marcuse, 1970c, p.105). Another alternative is ‘to assert that actually we are the ones who are defending existing positive laws’, that is, if ‘we defend civil liberties, we are in fact defending the laws of the Establishment’ (Marcuse, 1970c, p.106). Here, protest consciously breaks laws to protect the claimed values behind those laws. The first of these suggestions is less convincing, since even the most brutal resistance groups could theoretically invoke a ‘higher law’, and no particular claim to represent universal interests is self-evident. The second idea of defending positive law by breaking it is more dialectical, in that it focuses on contradictions between official values and lived reality, if it can create dissonance by appealing to beliefs and values that condition indivi­ duals’ affirmation of the social order. Marcuse also suggests courses of action that may begin from an oppositional minority, using different forms of political participation and communication to increase numbers. For example, at points in his later work he considers political participation through official channels, to create minor institutional changes. He explains that the possibility of socialism first requires ‘a radical transformation of bourgeois democracy […] within the framework of monopolistic state capit­ alism’. Therefore, even if opposition can manage nothing but ‘the smallest and most discredited means of protest: demonstrations, pickets, even [writing] letters’, they count because ‘the larger the number, the quantity, the more difficult to disregard this kind of protest’ (Marcuse, 2001f, p.174). He also introduces the concept of a ‘long march through the institutions’, or working within the system to learn the techniques of education, media and economics while retaining resistant consciousness (Marcuse, 1972, p.55) (which again suggests ideology is not merely a matter of systemic practices, if individuals can retain oppositional consciousness within them), and states that actions usually condemned ‘as reformist, economistic, bourgeois-liberal politics can have a positive impor­ tance’, because ‘late capitalism boasts a diminished tolerance threshold’ (Mar­ cuse, 2005e, p.189). Marcuse does not clarify why at these specific points the tolerance of late capitalism is diminished, or letters and demonstrations are more effective. But, more generally, we can consider that such strategies help temper the problems that radical protests confront, by granting them more legitimacy, and reducing ideological support for state violence. In summary, when Marcuse considers political change from the perspective of ideology as automatic, unconscious absorption, it exacerbates the already major difficulties for oppositional politics to emerge. Only when we introduce the possibility of viewing ideology not only in terms of its baseline unification,

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but also through various rationalisations, and consider the aspects of Mar­ cuse’s work that are compatible with this theory, does the development of oppositional politics seem more plausible. In particular, it appears necessary to combine legal and illegal means (civil disobedience), based on a narrative that, initially, attempts to demonstrate the system’s radical incompatibility with its professed values. For example, dominant conceptions that view paid work as an individual responsibility to achieve independence and pay taxes, or that promote concepts of meritocracy and social mobility, can be con­ trasted with a reality in which there is unemployment and opportunities are unevenly distributed. It is also crucial to consider the social needs that these values should represent, and what kind of ideas must be resisted in order to nourish those needs. Marcuse’s theory remains hugely useful in these respects, in presenting this social critique as a systemic issue, from specific arguments about automation and the increasing irrationality of alienated labour, to more general concepts of antagonisms whose resolution implies systemic change. But it appears that mass consciousness can be changed only by gradually exposing ideological rationalisations to alternative, historicised information and ideas, including through commodified channels – a continual, multi­ faceted project based on ever present potentials.

Bibliography Alway, J., (1995) Critical Theory and Political Possibilities: Conceptions of Emancipa­ tory Politics in the Works of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas (West­ port, CT: Greenwood Press) Aronowitz, S., (2017) ‘Where Is the Outrage? The State, Subjectivity, and Our Collec­ tive Future’, The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Move­ ments, ed. by A. T. Lamas, T. Wolfson and P. N. Funke (Philadelphia: Temple University), 343–366 Balbus, I. D., (1994) ‘The Missing Dimension: Self-reflexivity and the “New Sensi­ bility”’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 106–117 Bernstein, R. J., (1988) ‘Negativity: Theme and Variations’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 13–28 Bronner, S. E., (1988) ‘Between Art and Utopia: Reconsidering the Aesthetic Theory of Herbert Marcuse’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 107–140 Bundschuh, S., (2004) ‘The Theoretical Place of Utopia: Some Remarks on Marcuse’s Dual Anthropology’, Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, ed. by J. Abromeit and W. M. Cobb (New York, NY: Routledge), 152–162 Carver, T., (1994) ‘Marcuse and Analytical Marxism’, Marcuse: From the New Left to the Next Left, ed. by J. Bokina and T. J. Lukes (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas), 73–85 Feenberg, A., (2005) Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe and Redemption of History (New York, NY: Routledge)

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Forman, M., (2017) ‘Marcuse in the Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism: Revisiting the Occupation’, The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Contemporary Social Move­ ments, ed. by A. T. Lamas, T. Wolfson and P. N. Funke (Philadelphia: Temple University), 29–54 Garland, C., (2017) ‘Negating That Which Negates Us: Marcuse, Critical Theory, and the New Politics of Refusal’, The Great Refusal: Herbert Marcuse and Con­ temporary Social Movements, ed. by A. T. Lamas, T. Wolfson and P. N. Funke (Philadelphia: Temple University), 55–65 Geoghegan, V., (1981) Reason and Eros: The Social Theory of Herbert Marcuse (London: Pluto Press) Kellner, D., (1984) Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) Lichtman, R., (1988) ‘Repressive Tolerance’, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Pro­ mise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 189–211 Lukes, T. J., (1985) The Flight into Inwardness: An Exposition and Critique of Herbert Marcuse’s Theory of Liberative Aesthetics (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses) MacIntyre, A., (1970) Marcuse (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins) Marcuse, H., (1958) Soviet Marxism: A Critical Analysis (New York, NY: Columbia University Press) Marcuse, H., (1962) Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Vintage) Marcuse, H., (1964) One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon Press) Marcuse, H., (1965) ‘Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture’, Daedalus, 94, 190–207 Marcuse, H., (1967) ‘The Question of Revolution’, New Left Review, I/45, 3–7 Marcuse, H., (1968a) ‘The Affirmative Character of Culture’, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. by J. J. Shapiro (London: Allen Lane), 65–98 Marcuse, H., (1968b) ‘Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Societies’, Negations:

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P. Wolff, B.MooreJnr and H. Marcuse (London: Jonathan Cape), 93–137 Marcuse, H., (1969b) An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon) Marcuse, H., (1969c) ‘Revolutionary Subject and Self-Government’, Praxis, 5, 326–329 Marcuse, H., (1969d) ‘Re-examination of the Concept of Revolution’, New Left Review, I/56, 27–34 Marcuse, H., (1970a) ‘The Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man’, Five Lec­ tures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 44–61 Marcuse, H., (1970b) ‘The End of Utopia’, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 62–82 Marcuse, H., (1970c) ‘The Problem of Violence and the Radical Opposition’, Five Lectures: Psychoanalysis, Politics, and Utopia, trans. by J. J. Shapiro and S. M. Weber (London: Allen Lane), 83–108 Marcuse, H., (1972) Counterrevolution and Revolt (London: Allen Lane) Marcuse, H., (1978) The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics (Boston: Beacon)

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Marcuse, H., (1982) ‘Some Social Implications of Modern Technology’, The Essential Frankfurt School Reader, ed. by A. Arato and E. Gebhardt (New York, NY: Con­ tinuum), 138–162 Marcuse, H., (2001a) ‘The Problem of Social Change in the Technological Society’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 35–57 Marcuse, H., (2001b) ‘The Individual in the Great Society’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 59–80 Marcuse, H., (2001c) ‘Political Preface to Eros and Civilization, 1966’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 95–105 Marcuse, H., (2001d) ‘Beyond One-Dimensional Man’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 107–120 Marcuse, H., (2001e) ‘Cultural Revolution’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 121–162 Marcuse, H., (2001f) ‘The Historical Fate of Bourgeois Democracy’, Towards a Cri­ tical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 163–186 Marcuse, H., (2001g) ‘A Revolution in Values’, Towards a Critical Theory of Society: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Two, ed. by D. Kellner (London: Routledge), 193–201 Marcuse, H., (2005a) ‘Liberation from the Affluent Society’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 76–86 Marcuse, H., (2005b) ‘Democracy Has/Hasn’t a Future … a Present’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kell­ ner (Abingdon: Routledge), 87–99 Marcuse, H., (2005c) ‘Marcuse Defines His New Left Line’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 100–117 Marcuse, H., (2005d) ‘On the New Left’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routle­ dge), 122–127 Marcuse, H., (2005e) ‘The Failure of the New Left?’, The New Left and the 1960s: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Three, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 183–191 Marcuse, H., (2007) ‘Art as a Form of Reality’, Art and Liberation: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse Volume Four, ed. by D. Kellner (Abingdon: Routledge), 140–148 Martineau, A., (1986) Herbert Marcuse’s Utopia, trans. by J. Brierley (Montreal: Harvest House) Marx, K., (1990) Capital Volume I, trans. by B. Fowkes (London: Penguin) Miles, M., (2012) Herbert Marcuse: An Aesthetics of Revolution (London: Pluto) Offe, C., (1988) ‘Technology and One-Dimensionality: A Version of the Technocracy Thesis?’, trans. by A-M. Feenberg, Marcuse: Critical Theory and the Promise of Utopia, ed. by R. Pippin, A. Feenberg and C. P. Webel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 215–224

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Raulet, G., (2004) ‘Marcuse’s Negative Dialectics of Imagination’, Herbert Marcuse: A Critical Reader, ed. by J. Abromeit and W. M. Cobb (New York, NY: Routledge), 114–127 Reitz, C., (2000) Art, Alienation, and the Humanities: A Critical Engagement with Herbert Marcuse (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) Žižek, S., (2009) First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London: Verso)

4

Fredric Jameson A postmodern narrative

Chronologically, the analysis of Fredric Jameson in this chapter and the next overlaps with the late work of Marcuse, before moving into the era of neoliberal­ ism’s dominance. This shift to what Jameson calls ‘late capitalism’ poses new problems, but in many ways they continue from those outlined by Marcuse. We are especially interested here in the ‘postmodern’ cultural logic that Jameson theorised throughout the 1980s, and its ramifications for ideology theory, but also in his overall critical project, and the ‘historicising’ approach to cultural analysis that he clarified in the 1970s and continues to develop today. The main thrust of this project is to reinvigorate the political and the temporal within a socio­ economic form that dissolves meaning and appears too complex to comprehend. The first aim here is to affirm Jameson’s view of postmodernism as the cultural expression of a particular ‘totality’ in history, with the idea that this logic of ‘late’ or neoliberal capitalism remains dominant today. We also sup­ port Jameson’s notion of ‘the dialectic’ as a requirement to see everything at once, not only from the view of human history, but also in terms of how that relates to specific social formations and everyday politics, and maintaining the tension between synchronic and diachronic perspectives (the sense of social unevenness that remains even in attempting to define a period). In this sense, our concept of ideology can be seen as a small contribution to the impossible task of viewing all the angles at once. At the same time, our focus represents a departure from Jameson, with its own repercussions for political potentials. That is, while Jameson explains that postmodernism cannot fully erase his­ tory from culture, his theory tends to solidify around the dominant traits of fragmentation and depthlessness, rather than the details of how we relate to them. Jameson’s treatment of ideology in postmodernism sees that ‘conscious ideologies and political opinions’ have ‘ceased to be functional in perpetuat­ ing and reproducing the system’ (Jameson, 1991, p.398). He assumes a loss of political meaning, so all that can be done in the present is to demonstrate the possibility of dialectical thought in the hope that future subjects redevelop a capacity for it. Our approach, conversely, considers how conscious ideological rationalisation continues to play a part in the functioning of dominance. The first section of this chapter examines Jameson’s use of periodisation to situate postmodernism and the late capitalist totality within a series of modes of

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production. In many ways, Jameson’s definition of postmodernism expands from Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensionality, with increased fragmentation, commodification and de-historicisation. Jameson emphasises the system behind the apparent randomness of postmodern culture, and how it obscures alternative potentials, which, as with Marcuse, effectively splits the social according to affir­ mative and oppositional (dialectical) consciousness. However, as postmodernism uniquely flattens everything into image and style, there appears to be no space to express oppositional logics. The repercussions of this point become visible in Jameson’s concepts of History, Narrative and Utopia, which aim at re-con­ textualising the present in terms of the past or future potentials to reveal the contingency of the social order and develop imagination. The question is how to reintroduce these temporal dimensions into language, politics and culture, and we emphasise the continuing narratives and ideals in postmodern consciousness, which suggest grounds for radical ideas to challenge affirmative ideological positions. From there, the objective is to show how different narratives, beliefs and ratio­ nalisations support late capitalism and point to its antagonisms. For Jameson, disconnected and superficial media discourse and imagery are reflected in the psyche itself. Yet we maintain that media representations still appeal to particular values, and that recipients always attempt to construct coherent narratives around their experience which can exceed prescribed ideas. We then define particular affirmative ideological positions (with which oppositional politics must interact) from Jameson’s work. These positions can generally be seen as ways that people react to the market as the background reality of the neoliberal totality, or how they respond to the cultural expectations of postmodern difference and pluralism. For Jameson, they are de-historicised images that merely reproduce consumer partici­ pation, or forms of cynicism that (tacitly) accept the existing order without illusion. For us, late capitalism relies on the conscious justifications in these positions, which often represent indirect or conditional forms of commitment. As with our analysis of Marcuse’s work, we attempt to show that Jameson’s theories already imply potential for an oppositional political movement. We sup­ port Jameson’s Marxist dialectical approach and his concepts of History and Utopia as ways of revealing political possibilities, and argue against notions such as that his concept of ‘totalising’ claims to represent a historical referent or implies the exclusion of other progressive discourses. However, we concur with criticisms that highlight Jameson’s over-emphasis of the dominating aspects of the totality, which focuses too exclusively on higher level phenomena. For us, there are still ‘functioning’ ideologies that rationalise the capitalist system in different ways, according to their own beliefs and contradictions, which indicates that a general capacity to produce and receive historically situated concepts remains.

Postmodernism Jameson identifies the current ‘postmodern’ cultural logic and ‘late capitalism’ (a term borrowed from Mandel to describe the phase that succeeds monopoly

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or imperial capitalism) as a global totality that erases historical experience and absorbs other cultural logics. For Jameson, this logic is a cultural dominant, but the ‘totality’ also contains elements of previous and anticipatory cultures, and we can therefore consider what is excluded from it, or the contingent assumptions that support it. However, the way Jameson defines postmodernism as a distinct period within a series of historically developing modes of production often seems to make these subordinate elements redundant, as they are powerless to escape absorption into the logic of globalised commodifica­ tion. As with Marcuse’s concept of one-dimensionality, oppositional forces are present, but it is unclear how they function in the conditions described. At this point, we thus emphasise that a periodising analysis should pay greater atten­ tion to the limitations, gaps and contradictions within the dominant logic. Postmodernism, for Jameson, is a cultural logic distinguishable from modern­ ism in various ways. He identifies its ‘constitutive features’ as ‘a new depthless­ ness’, based in ‘a whole new culture of the image or the simulacrum’, plus ‘a consequent weakening of historicity’, and ‘a whole new type of emotional ground tone […] which can best be grasped by a return to older theories of the sublime’, and relates all these notions to ‘a whole new technology, which is itself a figure for a whole new economic world system’ (Jameson, 1991, p.6). Jameson explains that postmodernism is a ‘spatial’ logic, in which temporality is reduced to manu­ factured consumerist cycles, such as the seasons of sport or fashion that ‘simulate formerly natural rhythms for commercial convenience’ (Jameson, 1998a, p.59). Outside these cycles, the present is merely updated through disembodied media ‘events’ that fade away as the next occurs. The only time is the current moment as ‘history, historicity, the sense of history, is the loser: the past is gone, we can no longer imagine the future’ (Jameson, 2016). Everything, including politics, becomes ahistorical commodified culture that deals in exchange value, spectacle and ‘intensities’ of feeling, whose absence of context causes a ‘waning of effect’. Images do not evoke emotion or social and existential anxieties, and the ‘auton­ omous’ modern subject dissolves into superficial group identities. All these features correspond to the spatial expansion and growing com­ plexity of capitalism. As Jameson puts it, postmodernism is ‘the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world’, and ‘the underside of culture is blood, torture, death and terror’ (Jameson, 1991, p.5). The idea of cultural and aesthetic freedom, and the everyday assumptions and practices associated with it, thus represent a paradox in postmodernism ‘between an unparalleled rate of change on all the levels of social life and an unparalleled standardization of everything’ (Jameson, 1998a, pp.57–58). Nothing that emerges in this system is really new, in the sense of changing the system itself, and the mass of constantly refreshing consumer styles relies on its stability. For Jameson, to view this production of difference as non-systemic is itself a symptom of late capitalism. That is, it is a feature of late capitalist logic to not view itself as a system at all, obscuring that even ‘a system that constitutively produces differences remains a system’, and need not resemble the object it produces (Jameson, 1991, p.343).

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In many ways, Jameson’s view of postmodernism resembles Marcuse’s ana­ lysis of socio-economic conditions. Mass consumption, planned obsolescence, global communications, visual technologies and standardisation of life are epiphenomena of a prosperity in capitalist centres afforded by global expan­ sion. As the system becomes increasingly complex, it creates a deeper dis­ connect between local lived experience and globally outsourced exploitation and oppression. If it has been difficult to understand the global and systemic meaning of our local experience at least since imperialist times (Jameson, 1991, p.411), today multiple levels of abstraction between production and consump­ tion make the system impossible to comprehended in full even when subjected to critical analysis. Indeed, the central point within Marcuse’s work, for Jame­ son, is that ‘the consumer’s society […] has lost the experience of the negative in all its forms’, and that without that contrast, a ‘genuinely human existence’ is impossible (Jameson, 1971, p.108). But, like Marcuse, Jameson still views late capitalism in terms of class division, so marginalised groups remain that ‘repudiate the very concept of a postmodernism as the universalizing cover story for what is essentially a much narrower class-cultural operation’ (Jame­ son, 1991, p.318). Postmodern notions of cultural democracy and power poli­ tics based on identity recognition repress issues around the ownership of production, but the realities of economic deprivation guarantee their return. Jameson’s concept of postmodernism reveals clear differences, at least in the culture of today’s dominant capitalist societies, compared to their earlier forms. It demonstrates that postmodernism is not merely a stylistic shift in art (Shum­ way, 1989, p.189), but reflects social changes in globalised manufacturing, con­ sumerism, identity politics and media technologies. Whether postmodernism really represents ‘a whole new economic world system’ is debatable, but this claim is in part rhetorical. Jameson explains that defining the current cultural paradigm in contrast to a past paradigm requires an ‘inaugural narrative act that grounds the perception and interpretation of the events to be narrated’. He also claims to ‘have pretended to believe that the postmodern is as unusual as it thinks it is’ (Jameson, 1991, p.xiii), so that it can be viewed as a distinct historical moment. Despite this periodisation, then, there is no clean break between mod­ ernism and postmodernism, as various causal factors at different historical points contribute to the present. As Jameson says, social formations contain ‘several modes of production all at once, including vestiges and survivals of older modes of production […] as well as anticipatory tendencies’ (Jameson, 1983, p.80). It is necessary to ‘respect both the methodological imperative implicit in the concept of totality or totalization, and the quite different attention of a “symptomal” analysis to discontinuities, rifts, actions at distance, within a merely apparently unified cultural text’ (Jameson, 1983, p.41). This idea of totalisation as method is useful for us in that it views the present as a system split by points of exclusion. It also shows that although there is still analytical value in treating different levels of the social, such as economics, culture and politics, separately, it is necessary to understand them as ‘semi­ autonomous’ and mutually influential. Seeing the whole as interconnected is

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not a purely symbolic exercise, since these levels really are not separate in any absolute sense, but neither is it a claim that ‘the totality is real’ and that all phenomena we perceive are merely its expressions (Roberts, 2000, p.79). Rather, it remains an abstraction, which is ‘as false as it is true’ (Jameson, 1990, p.87), because there is no specific, identifiable form of connection between levels either. As such, while totalising promotes a particular interpretation of social conditions, that does not mean that ‘the quest for totalization functions to regenerate structures of domination’ (LaCapra, 1982, p.90). First, Jameson distinguishes totalising from totalitarian absolutes, in that it never involves a ‘privileged bird’s-eye view of the whole’, because it is impossible ‘for individual and biological human subjects to conceive of such a position, let alone to adopt or achieve it’ (Jameson, 1991, p.332). Second, some form of dominating assumption is inevitable in any theoretical method, even an ‘anti-totality’ view, because it still excludes its opposite and reinforces a particular ideology. The question for a totalising theory is how it represents the whole, and for Jameson the aim of defining the capitalist totality is ‘to demonstrate that it cannot be reformed, and that its repairs […] necessarily end up strengthening and enlar­ ging it’ (Jameson, 2011, pp.146–147). A shared, non-totalitarian politics can be built on such ideas. From our perspective, the issue with Jameson’s theory of postmodernism is rather that, despite his insistence that it is ‘only’ a cultural dominant with var­ ious ‘symptomal’ rifts and discontinuities, he tends to focus on its dominating qualities exclusively, repressing its internal conflicts and antagonisms. He explains that, while not all cultural production is postmodern, ‘the postmodern is […] the force field in which very different kinds of cultural impulses […] must make their way’ (Jameson, 1991, p.6). If all historical dominants create such a ‘force field’, it seems that only postmodernism engulfs all subordinate culture in its de-historicising logic, annihilating the autonomous sphere. Capitalist globalisation also means there is no geographical outside, and no existing alternative social form. Jameson states that today’s capitalism ‘eliminates the enclaves of precapitalist organization it had hitherto tolerated and exploited’, leading to ‘a new and historically original penetration and colonization of Nature and the Unconscious’ (Jameson, 1991, p.36). The commodity form has expanded to the point that the natural environment is viewed in terms of its exchange value, and value relations are reproduced unconsciously through everyday behaviour. Commodification colonises the physical and psychological areas from which non-dominated expression could emerge, and the ‘vestiges’ and ‘anticipatory tendencies’ are viewed according to its logic (Homer, 1998, p.109). These statements are more than rhetorical devices, as they frame Jameson’s approach to political change. In our understanding, even to the extent oppositional ideas are repressed or incorporated, their content may affect how people experience commodifica­ tion and social problems. Conversely, in Jameson’s terms, the diachronic, uneven movement of history itself has reached a point (for the foreseeable future) at which it reabsorbs its own contradictions. If, in general, a cultural

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logic achieves dominance by representing itself as universal, it seems that the postmodern logic really defuses oppositional thinking and becomes universal in effect. It is true, as Jameson says, that the lack of existing major alternatives to late capitalism makes it theoretically problematic to provide a ‘solution’ to its dominance, and that doing so would mean underestimating the problem (Helmling, 2001, p.4). It may even be necessary to overstate systemic uni­ formity to reinvigorate ‘historical understanding’ in critical analysis (Watkins, 2006, p.25). But it should still be possible to historicise the conditions of late capitalism as a totality without depicting them as either wholly colonising or ready to succumb to some oppositional force (Buchanan, 2006, p.36). Jame­ son warns that it is problematic to propose a closed system, because it creates a ‘winner loses’ logic, in which the successful theorist finds there is no pur­ pose left for critical negation (Jameson, 1991, p.5). Yet he still tends to present dominance as ‘too totalizing’ (Best and Kellner, 1991, p.274), which renders inconceivable any space that postmodern logic fails to absorb, or any subject that can resist it (Kellner, 1989, p.29). The caveats about synchronic period­ isation that Jameson offers are rarely actually considered in the bulk of his analysis in terms of the obstacles and limits of the totality. For us, it is necessary to assess cultural logics throughout in terms of how they negatively affect dominance and the conditions of its acceptance.

History and narrative Jameson looks to re-contextualise the present in relation to history, or as part of a narrative that includes the fluctuations and latent potentials in society. The point here is not to reveal some ‘true’ history, but that a certain (Marxist) interpretation reveals the contingency of existing norms. The truth, for Jame­ son, is the ever-present possibility of historicising, and that the narrative he employs is valuable because it highlights the contradictions of systemic deprivation, exclusion and oppression. The question is how this historicising can be effective in postmodernism, if mass culture fragments and flattens out all narrative, and Jameson sets out to decipher how narrative may be rein­ troduced at all in these conditions. But through his theories of textual analysis and different levels of ‘political unconscious’ in ideological expression, we stress the continued mutual influence and reliance between conceptions of society, history itself and competing explanatory narratives that a commit­ ment to historicising helps to identify and challenge. Jameson’s concept of Marxist historicising aims not simply to construct a chain of empirical events, but to form a narrative of ‘the collective struggle to wrest a realm of Freedom from a realm of Necessity’ (Jameson, 1983, p.3). In these terms, ‘Necessity’ has parallels with scarcity in Marcuse’s theory, in its widest sense as the cultural, psychological and technological ‘maturity’ of humanity at any historical point. Its limits prevent Freedom, but Freedom itself is defined by Necessity, in that the desire for transcendence takes shape based on experienced limits. Thus, History is not an objective reality, but what structures

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people’s understanding of the past and future, and the contrast between what is and what could be. As Jameson puts it, ‘history is not a text, not a narrative, master or otherwise’, but ‘an absent cause, […] inaccessible to us except in tex­ tual form’ (Jameson, 1983, p.20). It acts as ‘a structural limit on consciousness and agency’ (Homer, 2006, p.78) that can only ever be represented, in ways that reflect the particular concepts and expressions available to a society. Jameson’s literary theory is then an attempt to gain insight into the historical limits and desires encoded in the ideological expressions of texts. In his early work, Jameson calls this ‘metacommentary’, which involves identifying in an interpretation ‘a particular narrative trait, or seme, as a function of its social, historical, or political context’ (Jameson, 2008d, p.147). In effect, different interpretations always contain unexamined ideological assumptions that can be revealed. As such, Jameson later says, a Marxist method of historicising that avoids final meaning is ‘the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpreta­ tion’ (Jameson, 1983, p.1), and exists within other methods as a repressed rea­ lity of their relationship to ‘collective struggle’. It shows the ‘political unconscious’ behind all expression, which can be read at three different levels – those ‘of the political (immediate historic events), of the social (class and class consciousness), and of the economic (the mode of production)’ (Jameson, 1990, p.8). The first level involves reading the text as a symbolic act which confronts a political issue that only retrospectively becomes observable as an ‘absent cause’ (Jameson, 1983, p.66). At the second level, the text expresses a wider collective or class discourse, which is viewed as a single ideological utterance, or ‘ideologeme’, in a larger dialogic range of voices, perceivable through its oppositional relationships (Jameson, 1983, pp.72–73). In the final level, the dynamics of several modes of production are identified within the text, and ‘make up what can be termed the ideology of form’ (Jameson, 1983, p.84). Here, the text is contextualised as an expression of a moment within an overall history of changing and overlapping master narratives. This method is important for imagining alternative potentials because it examines ideology within contingent and temporary relationships of dom­ inance and subordination, and therefore questions the Necessity that maintains such dominance. It is not to be interpreted as some metaphysical principle, even defined as the horizon of interpretation, as it is ‘always situation-specific and singular’ (Jameson, 2011, p.19). It may seem that Jameson either ‘allows that Marxism must jostle for position in the theoretical marketplace’, or ‘he asserts the superiority of Marxism’, which suggests ‘there is less room to be open to the possibilities of other methods’ (Boer, 2006, p.64). But the point, as Boer concludes, is that if a range of interpretations is viewed as a plurality of equal positions (or choices), the Marxist method analyses the historical condi­ tions of that specific plurality. As such, Marxism is merely another ideological ‘master code’, like any explanatory narrative,1 but one that can always de­ finalise any particular interpretation through historicisation. Furthermore, it is not only the ability to historicise that is important, but the particular historical narrative it constructs. The concept of History as Freedom

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versus Necessity appears evident at a basic level (as the clash of limits and desires), but also represents an aim to conceive social antagonisms in the present through actual forms of marginalisation. In this sense, for Jameson, ‘History as ground and untranscendable horizon needs no particular theoretical justifica­ tion’, because ‘its alienating necessities will not forget us, however much we might prefer to ignore them’ (Jameson, 1983, p.88). Because Necessity and Freedom are only meaningful in their (ideological) representation, Marxism inevitably highlights certain types of Freedom and Necessity over others (Homer, 1998, pp.65–67). Yet, Jameson recognises both that the narrative of class struggle is an idealised abstraction through which he chooses to construct a dialectical history, because interpretation always contextualises its object within ‘a social field dominated by some central contradiction’ (Jameson, 1987, p.20), and that this choice is not purely subjective, because class disparity and wage labour are ‘symptoms’ of social reality (Jameson, 2009a, p.277). The difference between this Marxism and other narratives is the extent to which it reveals potentials for political Freedom from existing forms of Necessity. It does not take the place of all other interpretations, when it may be ‘that a feminist or psychoanalytic reading of a text is more appropriate and more powerful in some cases’ (Best, 1989, p.365). That is, Marxism is not a choice of discourse over others but a way of relating others to a concept of class struggle to resist narrow contextualisation. Moreover, the Marxist method shows how any overarching narrative, or even the attempt to avoid narrative altogether, is historical and ideological. For example, Spivak notes that post­ modern art can historicise the past, rather than effacing it, because its appro­ priation and juxtaposition of past styles ‘can be read as a questioning of the identification of continuist narratives of history with History as such’, or a reminder that History is not ‘a transcendental signifier for the weight of authority (or the authoritative explanation)’, and ‘has no literal referent’ (Spivak, 1999, p.331). However, Jameson not only avoids claiming any literal referent of history, he also asks why we should view history in a particular way. This shows that any theoretical method, including his own, has a particular (repressed) purpose. In effect, for us, all methods embody one of three narrative forms: a narrative that focuses on structural causes of social disparity; a nar­ rative that focuses on inequalities within established structures; and a pluralist anti-narrative that does not interrogate the systemic production of different ideological positions or its own (Jameson, 1990, p.27). None of these approa­ ches are wrong, but they have different political effects, among which class struggle functions as a rallying point for radical change. (If there is a contentious issue in Jameson’s theory here, it is in the way he presents his structural analysis in contrast to any moral judgement. As Eagleton argues, Jameson’s work includes moral language to explain why he ‘should object to poverty or unemployment, or […] why he finds the utopian impulse so precious’ (Eagleton, 2006). So, while it is important to criticise the moralising of particular symptoms of capitalism, rather than the system itself, there is no absolute, non-moral reason why we should seek to deliberately further the cause

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of Freedom over Necessity. In fact, as with Eros, aspects of Freedom may even undermine civilizational ties. Thus, for example, where Jameson explains that ‘violence pornography’ in action films ‘is not to be seen as a form of immorality at all but rather as a structural effect of the temporality of our socioeconomic system’ (Jameson, 2003, p. 718), it is unclear how a purely structural analysis could turn that mere observation into a critique of capitalism.) If Jameson’s theory of historicising is central to our theoretical assumptions, the question remains how it functions in postmodernism. In Jameson’s terms, historical representation becomes doubly problematic in late capitalism, in that not only is History an absent cause, but its representation in narrative is frag­ mented, and postmodern logic has penetrated the general unconscious. It is already necessary, Jameson explains, to represent the global society allegorically, which ‘happens when you know you cannot represent something but you also cannot not do it’ (Jameson, 2007, p.196). Yet, as with art in Marcuse’s theory, such allegory is effectively a code to which only the minority ‘un-colonised’ mind might respond. It thus seems to Jameson that there is little to be done other than attempt somehow to maintain the possibility of dialectical thinking for some unknown future moment. For us, conversely, the historicising approach may, in some way, communicate with elements of narrative that remain in the apparently colonised unconscious. Indeed, the concept of political unconscious that Jame­ son introduces prior to his postmodern theory shows how all texts are narrative, ideological resolutions to unconscious social issues. Postmodern texts (and ideologies) should then not only be representative of an overall culture of frag­ mentation and de-historicisation, but readable in terms of the specific rationali­ sations through which they interpret the social situation. The different levels of political unconscious that Jameson defines are useful in this respect, if we emphasise their mediation, as different aspects of ideology. Jameson sees all the levels as detectable in any text or ideology, but tends to consider them separately (Homer, 1998, p.55), while our aim is to focus on the mutual influence between them. In particular, the third level of modes of pro­ duction and the general contingency of ideology takes precedence in Jameson’s work, rather than specific ideological resolutions. However, we can compare the first level, which produces ‘aesthetic or narrative form’ to create ‘imaginary or formal “solutions” to unresolvable social contradictions’ (Jameson, 1983, p.64), to particular rationalisations of social experience. At this level, specific beliefs may be analysed to understand more fully how they affirm or reject existing class relations. This first level contributes to class struggle through the rationalisation of social contradictions, just as the historical development of class struggle overdetermines the narratives themselves. Multiple ideologies pull the dominant logic in different directions and act as its supports, while the logic influences the form of those supports. In terms of postmodernism, ‘depthlessness’ is then itself an ideological resolution, which obscures how ideologies continually mediate between the levels of political unconscious, and reconcile global ideas with individual experience through narratives.

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Utopia As with History, Utopia is a means of perceiving dialectical temporality and the contingency of the present in relation to alternative social formations, this time by projecting potential futures. The central issue Jameson identifies here is how to communicate an idea of a radically different society that also connects with everyday politics. In some ways, the problem resembles that of how to invigorate two-dimensional thought through one-dimensional language, but Jameson confronts the challenge more directly than Marcuse, seeing the ten­ sion between the two sides as the condition for progress. For us, Jameson’s approach here suggests the possibility of gradual ideological change through the advancement of political ideas. However, it is not clear, as Jameson argues, that this potential taps into some underlying ‘utopian impulse’ for collective living. Nor is it certain that utopian thinking is any more than a way of pre­ paring ideologically for some crisis to come, rather than of actually stimulating a radical political movement. But the efficacy of the project appears to rest on the latter, implying a need for our concept of ideological rationalisation. Jameson explains that ‘Utopian form is itself a representational meditation on radical difference, radical otherness, and on the systemic nature of the social totality’ (Jameson, 2005, p.xii). As with History, it views the present as con­ tingent, but from the perspective of an alternative future, based on realising repressed existing potentials. Utopia is ‘another word for the socialist project’ (Jameson, 1986, p.80), for Jameson, which, similar to Marcuse, demonstrates structural tendencies, and counters pejorative definitions that either stress the impossibility of qualitative change or its empty idealism. Jameson sees that Utopia should be especially central to political considerations when alternatives seem unviable (as in late capitalism), because trying to imagine a different system inspires re-evaluation of current limits. Focusing on Utopia does not mean ‘the outlines of a new and effective practical politics […] will at once become visible; but only that we will never come to one without it’ (Jameson, 2004, p.36). Jameson distinguishes between discrete utopian programmes and an underlying utopian impulse in cultural expression. The first represents an explicit political project that attempts to correct a particular wrong seen as the root problem in a social order. The second is an ever-present abstract ideal or proto-political desire, whose lack of fulfilment is compensated for by particular ideological goals, such as liberal reform, market fundament­ alism or consumer pleasure (Jameson, 2005, p.3). Psychologically, Jameson explains, this impulse may represent some felt lack of collectivity or deeprooted longing to become a ‘people’, even though such a collective has no real historical precedent (Jameson, 2008h, p.625). But since the abstract ideal exceeds existing political activities and social norms, while a political project must communicate through norms, there is an incompatibility between Utopia and actual politics. Although Utopia ‘inevitably arouses political passions’, it seems ‘to avoid or to abolish the political altogether’ (Jameson, 2005, p.37). Utopian ideas must be brought down to Earth, else

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they remain an unfathomable transcendence that appears to cancel human­ ity itself, and can ‘reawaken all the most classical fears of Utopia as such’ (Jameson, 2005, p.175). This paradox is not terminal for utopian politics, according to Jameson, but signifies a dialectical tension which represents the mechanism of utopian pos­ sibility. The tension must be accepted, and the attempt to imagine how the utopian impulse can be represented symbolically or allegorically can slowly alter the limits of representation. As Jameson explains, debates about utopian representation itself may ‘find themselves drawn inside the Utopian text, thereby becoming occasions for further Utopian productivity’ (Jameson, 2005, p.142). In essence, defining and communicating the supposedly impossible ‘swims against the current, and is the minimal performative utterance that must be voiced as insurance for the future’, to produce the conditions of pos­ sibility it announces (Leslie, 2004, p.207). Whereas with Marcuse the obstacle for utopian art is that it must somehow remain autonomous and become less marginal, for Jameson, the antagonism between marginalisation and estab­ lished politics is the engine of utopian thinking. Jameson also describes the tension in utopian politics through the concepts of ‘Imagination’ – an overall utopian vision and commitment to change – and ‘Fancy’ – the micro processes and details of change – either of which can take precedence depending on social conditions (Jameson, 2005, p.55). In late capit­ alism it may seem that the global system leaves no space for Imagination, and that Fancy is incorporated into individual ‘life-style’ fantasies, but for Jameson the utopian impulse can re-emerge. That is, a situation in which there is no radical politics ‘allows us to take hitherto unimaginable mental liberties with structures whose actual modification or abolition scarcely seem on the cards’ (Jameson, 2004, p.45). Specifically, it may be possible to reinvigorate Imagination by fully considering forms of Fancy. For example, thinking through a particular notion such as the abolition of money ‘unexpectedly foregrounds all kinds of new indi­ vidual, social and ontological relationships’ (Jameson, 2005, p.230), which at least reintroduces the possibility of alternatives. In this sense, Jameson says, ‘Utopian is no longer the invention and defense of a specific floorplan, but rather the story of all the arguments about how Utopia should be constructed in the first place’ (Jameson, 2005, p.217). This reciprocal approach avoids Marcuse’s impasse between the conditions needed for a social break and the break needed to create those conditions. For Jameson, that paradox is ‘a rhetorical and political strength’, because the attempt to think what a social break would look like, rather than what would come after, enables change (Jameson, 2005, p.232). This theory suggests conversation between utopian ideals and everyday politics, by imagining a theoretical change to an apparently insurmountable system, and using that to identify actual political obstacles. It also goes beyond much existing anti-capitalist sentiment in that it aims ‘to propose more elaborated versions of an alternate social system than simply to argue the need for one’, even if it begins as a mere thought experiment (Jameson, 2016). Moreover, one of Jameson’s aims is to use utopian thinking to confront

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the fear of Utopia, or the ideological resistance that dominates over questions of social change (Jameson, 2016). These are important points for our ideology theory, in that they suggest an approach to communication between affirma­ tive and oppositional thinking, through comprehensible ideas that demand creative social critique, and challenge the crippling neoliberal mantra that ‘there is no alternative’. In his recent work, Jameson hints at the possibility of changing attitudes through shifts in political discourse, whether the way the Occupy movement reframed debt and inequality, or the need for socialdemocratic parties to (re)introduce concepts such as nationalising industry and energy, taxation of corporate wealth, economic redistribution, and free education and healthcare. For Jameson, such parties today ‘can never accom­ plish any of these things, but they can talk about them, they can make them thinkable and conceivable once again’ (Jameson, 2016). This notion of rewrit­ ing what can and should be done implies ideological rationalisation based on conscious narratives that can gradually change through contestation. From this perspective, however, the concept of a ‘utopian impulse’ appears less relevant. Jameson notes that, with any utopian project, ‘the imagined resolution necessarily remains wedded to this or that ideological perspective’ (Jameson, 2004, p.47), and as such it seems unnecessary to presume some pre-ideological utopian impulse at all, rather than viewing each ideology as having its own sense of a social ideal and solutions to perceived social antagonisms. For Jameson, any future Utopia must have some association with socialism, in terms of ‘the values of social and economic equality and the universal right to food, lodging, medi­ cine, education and work’, and he provides ‘proof’ that these socialist goals are intrinsically utopian, in that ‘even neo-conservative fundamentalisms of the day continue to promise eventual satisfaction in all these areas’ (Jameson, 2005, p.197). For us, these ideologies show that universal provision is not only a socialist ideal, and that utopian visions can remain committed to capitalism. Even fascist ideologies with ideals based on exclusion are utopian in their own way, as opposed to simply ‘spring[ing] from rage and bitter disappointment at the failures of Utopian aspirations’ (Jameson, 2009a, p.387). As Homer says, there is no absolute distinction between compensatory and anticipatory ideal projections, and if ‘Jameson may interpret a racist rally as compensatory, […] the racists themselves would see it as being anticipatory’ (Homer, 1998, p.97). Utopian impulse is then better viewed as the ‘lack’ (in Žižek’s Lacanian terms), or the negative incompleteness of subjectivity that is ‘retroactively constituted’ by an ideological object (Parker, 2013, p.26). What matters then is the discourse between competing ideas and beliefs, and what kind of political imagination it inspires. It is not a case of injecting a particular ideal (full employment, abolishing money) into a critical vacuum to reinvigorate a lost impulse, but of entering it into a field of competing ideological positions. Finally, because Jameson is more focused on the degraded impulse than existing oppositional ideas, the political role of his utopian proposals is unclear. In ‘An American Utopia’, he outlines a utopian vision based on a concept of ‘dual power’, in which a universal military draft turns the army into

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a collective cross-class social space that exists alongside, and gradually erodes, the state, with a system of socialised healthcare, education and full employ­ ment. This proposal is a thought experiment designed to stimulate radical political ideas and ‘an entirely new articulation of how to think of sociality’ (Ruda, 2016), and to actually consider overcoming existing systems of power. Yet it also seems to replace the politics it aims to inspire. Žižek tells us that when ‘Jameson was asked how he imagines the eventual implementation of his utopia of universal militarization, he evoked an emergency state caused by a large ecological catastrophe’ (Žižek, 2016). This answer does not tell us why, even after the catastrophe, a government would enact this specific change. Paradoxically, it seems that the army ‘has to break its deep bonds with the bourgeoisie and the capitalist state’, which ‘can only happen if a power dia­ lectically internal to capitalism can weaken the reified powers of the ruling classes’ (Giri, 2016). There would need to be a socialist government to create the draft, which would then remove the need for a parallel power structure. If the aim of this proposal is to reinvigorate political imagination, why not ima­ gine a mass movement taking power? Instead, Jameson’s Utopia involves a unilateral state decision that shifts political power into hierarchical military structures and ‘directs us away from the dual power with actual political potential: crowds and party’ (Dean, 2016). Also, if a future catastrophe is required to bring political change into being, there is no indication that the split between Utopia and politics can be mediated, even theoretically. For us, it is crucial to maintain this concept of mediation, which means considering how changes in consciousness begin to cause political shifts in the present, or how dual power grows organically from conscious challenges to dominant ideas.

Perception and fragmentation If a greater focus on conscious rationalisation is required to demonstrate the full effectiveness of Jameson’s concepts of History and Utopia, it is necessary to examine more closely how our theory of ideology differs from Jameson’s, in a way that suggests potentials for political engagement that are not purely preparatory. To highlight the conditions and beliefs of different ideological positions, we first critique Jameson’s analysis of perception in postmodernism, in which a fragmented experience identifies with and ‘compartmentalises’ postmodern codes so that contradictions remain unnoticed. We compare this with points at which Jameson notes how the psyche depends on narratives, and argue that such narratives remain in reception of fragmented culture in a way that involves ordering beliefs and values. These forms of ideological rationali­ sation are then part of the internalisation of the socio-economic system, and part of late capitalist production itself, in the sense that its legitimacy requires their support. Jameson’s theory of the psyche in late capitalism is again based on a contrast between modernism and postmodernism. He identifies a ‘shift in the dynamics of cultural pathology’ from the modernist monadic subject to today’s situation,

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‘in which the alienation of the subject is displaced by the latter’s fragmentation’ (Jameson, 1991, p.14). As with Marcuse’s technological rationality, ‘psychic fragmentation’ develops with systematic quantification and instrumentalism in capitalism. Historically, it follows the notion of autonomous individualism, as production increasingly becomes a series of micro tasks within an unseen larger process, rather than the self-contained activity of an individual. For Jameson, it is not necessarily that there really was an ‘autonomous’ modern subject, but that even the perception of autonomy encouraged critical thinking and rein­ forced the image of unique subjective experience. Similarly, even if fragmenta­ tion is only a matter of perception, because no unified self is apparent, individual feeling and transcendence are harder to comprehend. This psychic fragmentation appears to present a kind of non-subject for whom signifiers lose any concrete relationship, or a ‘schizophrenic’, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terminology (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983). Jameson explains that conceiving the schizophrenic or ‘subject who “perceives” by way of difference and differentiation alone’, is only ‘the construction of an ideal’, as an ethical and political task (Jameson, 1991, p.345). Total fragmentation is impossible, and the postmodern reduction to present experience is a ‘historical tendency’ that is ‘unrealizable’, since ‘human beings cannot revert to the immediacy of the animal kingdom’ (Jameson, 2003, p.717). However, the way Jameson uses concepts such as depthlessness implies a political reality that resembles this schizophrenic ideal. For example, he explains that in the past a narrative fragment would be mean­ ingless without its overall context, but can now emit ‘a complete narrative mes­ sage in its own right’, based on a ‘newly acquired capacity to soak up content and to project it in a kind of instant reflex’ (Jameson, 1998d, p.160). He also describes a psychic compartmentalisation, in which ‘the separation of sub­ systems and topics in various unrelated parts of the mind’ (Jameson, 1991, p.375) keep apart contradictory discourses. In this psyche, attention span decreases, and notion of history and narrative, or the present coming into being, becomes alien. Jameson explains that even ‘big ideological issues’ connected to communism are mainly avoided not because of ‘the memory of deaths and vio­ lence’, but ‘because such topics now appear boring’ (Jameson, 2009b, p.134). Perception is so fragmented and sensual that even ‘urban squalor’ can become ‘a delight to the eyes when expressed in commodification’, so deprivation ‘can now be experienced in the form of a strange new hallucinatory exhilaration’ (Jame­ son, 1991, p.33). Social disparity becomes mere aesthetic variation. Jameson’s definition of the postmodernism psyche thus goes further than observing that cultural difference and ephemerality are a major part of today’s society, or that fragmentation reflects structures of production and consump­ tion in late capitalism. He explains that, while cultural modernism corresponds to semi-autonomy of language and the possibility of utopian negation, in postmodern texts ‘reification penetrates the sign itself and disjoins the signifier from the signified’, leaving a ‘pure and random play of signifiers’ (Jameson, 1991, p.96). Against this idea, it can be asked whether language really is so fragmented, and whether the postmodern psyche can absorb it in this shattered

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form. Similar to Marcuse, Jameson notes how media forms such as newspapers present stories as equivalent but discrete units, so ‘two events activate alto­ gether different and unrelated mental zones of reference and associative fields’ (Jameson, 1991, p.374), and any connections are obscured. Moreover, he states, ideologies are transformed in the media ‘into images of themselves and car­ icatures in which identifiable slogans substitute for traditional beliefs’ (Jame­ son, 1994, p.15). Yet, as we see it, there is no clear line between cynical sloganeering and traditional belief, especially since ideological belief may always attach itself to slogans. Also, because publications maintain specific political positions, the choice of stories follows an overall logic. Although all stories in a publication are not perfectly in tune ideologically, ‘they depend on, and also in some ways express, unities of thought and consciousness’, as opposed to being disconnected signifiers (Giddens, 1991, pp.26–27). Similarly, while individuals may be accustomed to switching attention between different content, they do not necessarily compartmentalise it without a unifying logic. In fact, Jameson alludes to a basic psychological need to understand experience through patterns and narrative forms. He considers how people still try to construct clear narratives when reading literary fiction, even though plots have become less coherent historically, from the pre-modern novel, drawing on well-worn proverbs and social conventions, to modernist psychological novels with individual viewpoints (Jameson, 2008b, p.37), and postmodern forms which have no unity of action and character. Rather than simply absorb inconsistency, ‘the mind blows its fuses, and its abstract, patternmaking functions reappear underground’, because unconscious reason ‘is unable to cease making those intricate cross-references and interconnections that the surface of the work seems to deny’ (Jameson, 2008a, p.12). Elsewhere Jameson also says that the basic categories of narrative ‘are fundamental tropes or forms by which we understand human events and realities’ (Jameson, 2007, p.158). It therefore seems that although it has become ‘increasingly difficult to construct a narrative which does justice to […] the situation’ (Jameson, 2007, p.159), we cannot accept fragmented difference without interpretation. Fur­ thermore, for us, this narrative forming takes place in consciousness as well as the unconscious. Even the collapse of social narrative requires explanation – the sense of being lost and confused crystallises around certain rationalisations, and acceptance of contradictory ideas still involves some connecting logic. This perspective implies a tension between fragmented media logics and ideologies, which Jameson’s analysis of postmodernism tends to underplay. He focuses on the forms of cultural objects to comprehend a dominant cultural logic, but pays little attention to elements such as ‘the subjective, empirical and psy­ chological’ (Eagleton, 2009, p.137), and does not fully examine how fragmented culture is structured and received in conscious ideological processes, or how other logics may push back against subjective dissolution (Kellner, 1989, pp.130–131). In this sense, the postmodern psyche resembles Marcuse’s extreme formulations of ego weakness, so that images are received and immediately generate an iden­ tity-appropriate response. In analysing Marcuse, Jameson even reiterates ‘the

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collapse of the family, the disappearance of the authoritarian father’, according to which ‘the Oedipus complex and the superego themselves are greatly weakened’ (Jameson, 1971, p.109). But, if the subject’s perception is fragmented to the extent of having no sense of self, it is not clear what remains to be emancipated, or why it would be worthwhile (Homer, 1998, p.79; Best, 1989, p.364). Also, for Marcuse the superego is not weakened so much as transferred to alternative authority figures, with the performance principle and repressive desublimation implying systemic demands that create an illusion of fragmen­ tation. Jameson points to something more like repressive desublimation when he describes mass cultural manipulation as ‘repression and wish-fulfillment together’, as a mechanism which ‘strategically arouses fantasy content within careful symbolic containment structures’, and gratifies ‘desires only to the degree to which they can be momentarily stilled’ (Jameson, 1992, p.25). Here, manipulation is neither empty distraction,2 nor false consciousness, but a way of indulging fantasies within the confines of the system, even creating an image of social harmony. But as such, the way individuals perceive their social and individual goals, and how those perceptions are maintained ideologically, remain important. It is necessary to analyse how the economic structure is supported culturally, through ‘competing ideological and practical narratives and objects that bring economic life into view’ (Gregory, 2004, p.86). This idea moves us away from Jameson’s notion that postmodernism confronts us like a huge panel of TV screens, and that to transcend it would be to ‘do the impos­ sible, namely, to see all the screens at once, in their radical and random differ­ ence’, to the point that ‘the vivid perception of radical difference is in and of itself a new mode of grasping what used to be called relationship’ (Jameson, 1991, p.31). Instead relationship is what allows the psyche to accept these screens as reality, and it is possible to question that relationship to perceive the power source behind them.

Market ideology To demonstrate the role of different narratives, it is necessary to identify the ideological positions that justify and contribute to social reproduction. Jame­ son tends to present postmodern ideology as an acceptance of economic conditions that continues regardless of beliefs in specific values. In this view, the two dominant ‘ideologies’ today relate to the market and consumption, or a cynical reason ‘that knows and accepts everything about itself ’ and a mode of assuring society through commodified practices rather than beliefs (Jame­ son, 2009a, p.285). Jameson cites Adorno on numerous occasions with the idea that today ‘the commodity is its own ideology’, and that ‘consumption and consumerism […] themselves are enough to reproduce and legitimate the system, no matter what “ideology” you happen to be committed to’ (Jame­ son, 2008f, p.363–364; and see Jameson, 1977, p.558; Jameson, 1994, p.40). Yet if we examine the concept of market ideology and other ways in which Jameson conceives conformism, it not only helps define an overall ideological

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background in late capitalism, towards which different rationalisations must relate, it also implies a variety of ideological positions, which for us all rely on assumptions and rationalisations. Market ideology, for Jameson, involves an acceptance of neoliberalism and commitment to maintaining the economic apparatus. He associates this posi­ tion with elites who affirm the market as it functions, without illusion that it actually creates growth and choice, or that free trade creates personal freedom. This perspective recognises the reality of multinational oligopolies, incon­ sequential consumer choices and limited personal opportunity. As Jameson says, ‘in the view of many neoliberals, not only do we not yet have a free market, but what we have in its place’ is ‘absolutely inimical to […] its estab­ lishment’ (Jameson, 1991, p.266). He contrasts this position with liberal ‘poli­ tical philosophy’ that disconnects analysis of social problems and the choice of solutions from the structuring mechanism of the market. This view presumes the market is a legitimate and preferable form of social ordering, even though the current form of the market contradicts liberal values. As such, it does not analyse the intrinsic contradictions of the market or its role in shaping political options, whereas market ideology sees and accepts these contradictions. At the same time, Jameson claims, market ideology still depends on certain metaphysical concepts, especially a universal human nature. It naturalises behaviour that focuses on economic efficiency and productivity, or calculating rationality aimed at maximising value. For Jameson, the problem here is not merely viewing human behaviour as instrumental calculation, but that com­ parison between this behaviour and business enterprise becomes prescriptive, as rationality is associated with maintaining current economic productivity. It also does not account for a postmodern culture in which consumerism itself becomes an object of consumption (Jameson, 1991, p.269), since market ideology understands human behaviour as productive, and cannot rationalise consumption for its own sake. Market ideology’s belief that humans are fun­ damentally flawed then views the market as an essential ‘interpersonal mechanism’ to ‘substitute for human hubris and planning and replace human decisions altogether’ (Jameson, 1991, p.273). For Jameson, this view is con­ nected to the historical failure of planned economies, particularly the Soviet Union, and constitutes ‘cynical reason’, in which ‘profound disillusionment with political praxis’ has led to a popular ‘rhetoric of market abnegation and the surrender of human freedom’ (Jameson, 1991, p.274). This definition of cynical reason resembles the cynicism outlined in chapter 2 in its allusion to a pessimistic, absolute concept of human nature. What remains unclear is what kind of cynicism this is, if neoliberals sincerely oppose economic planning and exploit the control of the market by elite interests. Market ideology presumably recognises, as Jameson says, that multinational corporations effectively direct the economy, and that private business becomes ‘a visible “subject of history” and a visible actor on the world stage’ (Jameson, 2008g, p.510). As such, the cynicism here may be that of supporting the market simply because it is dominant and provides elite stability. The flaws in human

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nature imply that all societies are corrupted by greed and individualism, so it is better to maintain the situation that offers them the most privilege. Such a perspective is less concerned with social degradation, and even absolves these subjects of responsibility for their actions, as it encourages them to indulge their individual desires (Buchanan, 2006, p.38). Elsewhere, Jameson defines a cynicism that relates to people lower down the economic scale, who perceive only the system’s ‘permanence’. This is an ‘empty ideology that accompanies the practices of profit and money making, and that has (and needs) no content to disguise itself ’ or any ‘great ideological project for the future’ (Jameson, 2005, p.229). It is a position that recalls the ‘dull economic compulsion’ of Abercrombie, Hill and Turner’s thesis, according to which people simply act to survive within the system. Jameson also explains how individuals must now function in less stable and secure conditions, in which market fluctuations mean the ‘entire system is […] subject to reshuffling without warning’ (Jameson, 1991, p.350). This concept implies strong tones of what we have called ‘defeatism’, which in Jameson’s terms becomes a form of cynicism, but still distinct from neoliberal opportunism. It also particularly embodies Jameson’s observation that ‘it seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism’ (Jameson, 1998a, p.50). In effect, capitalism is experienced as an omnipotent power that may cause unstoppable destruction. This defeatism reveals an inability ‘to conceive how “delinking” from the world economy could possibly be a feasible political and economic project’ (Jameson, 2000, p.56). Importantly, this ‘generalized cynicism’, as Jameson later calls it, ‘in which everyone is a Marxist and understands the dynamics and the depre­ dations of capitalism without feeling it possible to do anything about them’ (Jameson, 2016), is very different from the cynicism of market ideology. We can add that this sense of impossibility and commitment to short-term survival still come from certain beliefs about the market system and political organisation. It already seems that Jameson’s theory points to different forms of accep­ tance with clear beliefs, and it is possible to identify more. For example, he mentions an essentialist notion of human nature that is more celebratory than pessimistic, in that it promotes toil, productivity and competitiveness as goods in themselves, ideally suited to capitalism. He describes a market rhetoric according to which the destructive (Erotic) excesses of these elements are put to work by ‘a conception of the sinfulness and aggressivity of human nature that can alone be balanced and tamed by an equally natural propensity of human beings to do business and to make money’ (Jameson, 1994, p.51). This statement contrasts with Jameson’s notion of cynicism, because the cynic is pessimistic and resigned to the flaws of capitalism, whereas this commitment to capitalist productivity as manifestation of universal truth either shades into traditional liberalism, by connecting the instrumental rationality of humans to capitalism, or into neoconservatism that defends individualistic nature both against economic planning and the destructive excesses of the market, based on a strong moral (religious) doctrine.

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Also, some people may actually believe the rhetorics of market freedom and opportunity, or consumerist fulfilment. For example, Jameson describes the deregulation and privatisation drives of Reagan and Thatcher as ‘utopias of immense investments and increases in production to come’, and states that because ‘it has become customary to identify political freedom with market freedom, the motivations behind ideology no longer seem to need an elaborate machinery of decoding’ (Jameson, 1998d, p.137). Yet, the celebration of small government, lower taxes and open markets still represents itself as a general social good, and may be justified as such. More recently, Jameson has stated that ‘many people today, perhaps a majority, […] believe that the free market actually exists, besides being eternal’ (Jameson, 2016). He also looks to ‘single out the commitment to efficiency as a fundamental value’, as it ‘fans out into a rationale for austerity as a politico-economic program’ (Jameson, 2016). If these myths of market freedom and efficiency endure, therefore, while the neoliberal sees the free market as a noble lie, a (neo)conservative may believe that lower taxes improve individual opportunity, and even those whose life quality degrades alongside reduced public services may understand this as a worthy short-term sacrifice for rewards to come. Jameson explains that such pleasures are ‘the ideological fantasy consequences available for ideological consumers who buy into the market theory, of which they are not themselves a part’ (Jameson, 1991, p.271). For such subjects, the free market is an ideal for hedonistic consumption, or taking ‘pleasure in the market itself’ (Jameson, 1991, p.276), rather than production or entrepreneurialism. Interpreted this way, neoliberal ‘market ideology’ is one affirmative position among many, none of which are obviously dominant, and Jameson’s observa­ tions complement and augment the five positions we identified in chapter 2. For Jameson, however, these traits are less signs of specific ideological positions, and more symptoms of the lack of meaningful beliefs. He emphasises that the prac­ tices of consumer choice reproduce the system, so that ideologies are mere images and media codes, or that elite justifications of free market economics are transparent about their self-interested aims, so that ‘the unmasking of [ideologi­ cal] rationalizations, the primordial gesture of debunking and of exposure, no longer seems necessary’ (Jameson, 2009a, p.413). Yet, in the first case, while political identities are often reduced to commodified images, the images them­ selves do not explain why people make specific choices, or what hopes they invest in them. In the second case, cynical self-interest still involves mystifying and manipulative narratives that obscure its intentions, and Jameson in fact suggests as much. For example, he says that ‘cynical reason is a positivism with a mission, with a politics or even a metaphysics’, and involves ‘a whole program for justi­ fying this view of things’ (Jameson, 2008e, p.300). More specifically, it works to systematically redirect anti-institutional energies ‘against fantasies of “big gov­ ernment” and “bureaucracy”’ (Jameson, 1994, p.63), and this ‘repression of the concept of society and the social system has a vital part to play in perpetuating its domination’ (Jameson, 1990, p.40). In other words, cynicism attempts to manipulate consciousness based on a belief that it matters what people think,

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and society cannot obviously function without such rhetoric. As Cevasco states, it has been one of ‘the ideological victories of the Right’ to implant ‘the word “irrevocability” in contemporary discourse’, implying that ‘it is impossible to have a better world’, to an extent that has ‘repressed critical knowledge of the actual functioning of the system’ (Cevasco, 2004, p.110). This is a contestable form of rationalisation within cynical reason, which shows that it does not ‘know and accept everything about itself’. In ‘Ideological Analysis: A Handbook’, Jameson suggests a more multilayered approach to ideology which hints back to the political unconscious. He explains that it is useful ‘to measure the analytic or diagnostic value of various competing conceptions of ideology’ (Jameson, 2009a, p.315), which include levels of the individual mind, group consciousness and the system, and it is only at this third level that the ideological is located in the organisation and practices of daily life (Jameson, 2009a, pp.331–332). The implication is that all these forms of analysis are advantageous for understanding how ideology functions, and Jameson recognises that viewing ideology in terms of practices alone can ‘elide the conceptual and social dimensions of ideology altogether’, and remove its connection to ‘the historical function of ideology in class struggle’ (Jameson, 2009a, p.344). We must then apply this approach to Jame­ son’s theory of postmodernism, to show that the individual and group levels of ideology remain significant, and that various types of market acceptance represent beliefs within different ideological positions.

Rationalisation and culture If market acceptance is the baseline of affirmative ideology, its rationalisations are not only economic, but also cultural, from religious moralising to con­ sumerist notions of happiness. Affirming the mode of production requires con­ scious investment in cultural norms, which is a significant part of how we understand ideological positions and their conditions. Jameson’s analyses of postmodern culture and responses to the expectations it creates provide a useful framework here, and indicate numerous ways in which people relate to the whole. For our purposes, however, these responses are not merely mediatised images or simulacra, but functioning ideologies based on beliefs and rationali­ sations of consumer capitalism which can help us to develop our ideology map. One position we did not mention in the previous section is pluralism, partly because it obscures the existence of the market as a system. As a position that valorises free cultural expression, it celebrates the apparent absence of a system signified by postmodern fragmentation and difference. For Jameson, this denial of systemic logic makes pluralist politics ‘at best a refusal to go about the principal critical business of our time, which is to forge a kind of methodolo­ gical synthesis from the multiplicity of critical codes’, and at worst a ‘veiled assault on the nonpluralistic (read, “totalitarian”) critical systems – Marxism, for example’ (Jameson, 2008b, p.63). Pluralism constructs a binary opposition between heterogeneity and homogeneity, or cultural difference and totalitarian

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conformity, and assumes that qualitative comparison of different identities is intrinsically oppressive. As Jameson explains, its purpose is ‘to forestall that systematic articulation and totalization of interpretive results which can only lead to embarrassing questions about the relationship between them and in particular the place of history’ (Jameson, 1983, p.16). In effect, pluralism is undermined by historicising it as the expression of a specific totality, so it must maintain the illusion of a non-system. But this anti-authoritarian position does not then consider how difference is structured by the market, and submits to the increasingly homogenous authority (and hierarchies) of exchange value. Jameson also explains how anti-essentialist pluralism in some cases accepts essentialist ideas, such as that of universal human nature (Jameson, 2005, p.163). This contradiction could be seen as psychological compartmentalisation, if ‘we postmodern people are capable of entertaining both these attitudes […] simulta­ neously, with no sense of their incongruity, let alone their logical incompatibility’ (Jameson, 1994, p.52). But it appears that pluralist attitudes are only compatible with certain essentialisms, which is more an indication that pluralism itself involves essential beliefs. Specifically, pluralism can accept other positions to the extent they promote production of cultural difference (and its systems). Thus, if it should oppose traditional liberalism and cynical neoliberalism for their respective concepts of enlightenment values or human nature, it accepts liberal notions of individual, autonomous agents, as opposed to systemic overdetermination, and cynicism’s fear of planned economies. Also, the pluralist concept of an external ‘common enemy’, or homogeneous alternative, shares with cynical neoliberalism the need to maintain the present against an undesir­ able other. In this respect, we can see the economic supports that pluralism requires, and some of the cultural supports for economic cynicism. Other positions may affirm pluralist difference less directly, or vary in how they interpret postmodern concepts of freedom of expression and choice. Hedonism, or taking pleasure in the market through investment in consumerist ideals, is perhaps the only other fully celebratory response. Other positions, even those that promote consumerist behaviour, have a more complex relationship. For example, we have already mentioned how cynical defeatism may enjoy con­ sumerist pleasures as escapism. This idea also emerges in Jameson’s work, although not specifically tied to this position. He describes consumption as a bonus, and its excesses ‘a way of talking yourself into it and making […] a gen­ uine pleasure and jouissance out of necessity, turning resignation into excite­ ment’ (Jameson, 1991, p.321). In our terms, this statement suggests that defeatism may lead to genuine enjoyment of consumerism, despite knowledge of its destructive side. It indicates a pessimistic inversion of the celebratory pluralist ‘end of history’ (the point at which capitalism has become a single dominant) (Jameson, 1998b, pp.90–91), into an experience of involuntary political stasis, or a dead end of history that is then reinforced with escapist behaviour. Jameson also describes a rejection of fragmentation and anti-essentialism, based on a psychological inability to handle subjective indeterminacy and relativism. He explains that the expectation placed on individuals to recognise

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new identities may put strain on the sense of self. As these individuals recog­ nise others, they panic and ‘are led to anticipate the imminent collapse of all [their] inward conceptual defense mechanisms, and in particular the rationa­ lizations of privilege and the well-nigh natural formations […] of narcissism and self-love’ (Jameson, 1991, p.358). This idea resembles the Freudian con­ cept in which a social demand to love the neighbour, even the stranger, con­ flicts with love for the core family (Freud, 1995, pp.747–748). Yet here individuals fear that recognising everyone comes at the expense of the ego itself, or any sense of its own uniqueness. This ‘terror of anonymity’, for Jameson, can lead to ‘a self-deception that does not want to know and tries to sink ever deeper into a willful involuntarity, a directed distraction’ (Jameson, 1991, p.358). Interesting in general here is the implication that fragmentation is experienced as an external pressure with which the psyche struggles. It does not seem that the psyche itself is fragmented; rather there is ‘a subject in a postmodern hyperspace where it feels that old-fashioned thing: a loss of iden­ tity’ (Spivak, 1999, p. 320). More specifically, this response appears to suggest either defeatism again, as a refusal of self-examination due to fear there may be nothing to examine, or more of an outright rejection of cultural relativism. This rejection can then harden into a more hostile, moral opposition. In the ‘Ideology’ chapter of Postmodernism, Jameson describes various morally jud­ gemental responses to postmodernism, through different combinations of intellectual anti- or pro- modernism and postmodernism. In particular, the two variations of pro-modernism and anti-postmodernism he defines, correspond with neoconservative and liberal apologist positions. First, Jameson identifies a position that contrasts ‘the moral responsibility of the “masterpieces” and monuments of classical modernism with the fundamental irresponsibility and superficiality of […] postmodernism’ (Jameson, 1991, p.57), and that recom­ mends defence of traditional values, against a ‘social breakdown’ associated with 1960s counter culture. Second, he describes a position that views postmodernism as a politically reactionary distraction from the modernist project based on Enlightenment values. For Jameson, both of these ‘traditional’ posi­ tions emerge within postmodernism. The liberal ideal wants to reclaim ‘ethics’ from postmodern relativism, as if the latter signified ‘anything goes’ hedonism and violence (Jameson, 1998c, p.95), while believing ‘that the “system” is not really total’ and we can ‘regulate it in such a way that it becomes tolerable’ (Jameson, 1991, p.207). Meanwhile, neoconservative ‘fundamentalisms’ reaf­ firm an absolute that has been supposedly marginalised by pluralism, but have ‘a simulated relationship to the past’. For example, fundamentalist Christianity involves ‘the denial of any fundamental social or cultural difference between postmodern subjects of late capitalism and the Middle-Eastern subjects of the early Roman Empire’ (Jameson, 1991, p.390). Such an attitude maintains the de-historicising character of postmodern culture, even though it opposes het­ erogeneity and espouses an explicit ‘truth’. Again, however, where Jameson considers these positions, it is as part of the simulacra of pluralist choice, rather than as functioning ideological positions

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whose rationalisations affect social reproduction. He states, for instance, that liberalism has little political relevance anymore, because modern realities such as ‘counterinsurgency warfare and neocolonialism’ are understood ‘as deeper and more ominous structural necessities of the American system’ (Jameson, 2008c, p.139). In fact, we can assume that Jameson would view all of the posi­ tions identified here as images or caricatures of themselves, merely creating an appearance of ideological struggle. Yet there is something too complete and enclosed about this view, in that it does not give us insight into why people take particular positions, or how beliefs and justifications structure the limits of adherence. For example, religious and nationalist fundamentalisms may centre on de-historicised postmodern images and involve genuine, politically potent beliefs, in the sense that they must maintain certain truth claims, and can both aid or obstruct facets of capitalist reproduction. As Brown shows in a com­ parison between neoliberalism and neoconservatism, the two exist in a complex relationship of overlapping and clashing demands, and while neoconservatism is a reaction to present conditions, it ‘breeds a new political form, a specific mod­ ality of governance and citizenship’ (Brown, 2006. p.702). It is important to register the tension within such positions, and the conditions of their systemic conformism. It is also important to reiterate how forms of cynical reason and postmodernised ‘traditional’ beliefs are structurally equivalent. That is, cynical positions do not simply understand how the social system functions; they are responses to it that justify it according to particular ideas. Conversely, the pro­ liferation of de-historicised media images does not necessarily mean that indivi­ duals merely accept them, or that consumer choices have ‘replaced the resolute taking of a stand and the full-throated endorsement of a political opinion’ (Jameson, 1991, p.398). Rather, all these ideological positions mediate between individual and society, and continue to develop and fluctuate inside and outside the media. With these points in mind, and using various aspects of Jameson’s analyses, we can end by developing our ideology map as follows: 1

2

3

Liberal apologist: as with the ‘apologist’ defined in chapter 2, this posi­ tion views the system’s demands of productivity, consumption and indi­ vidual responsibility as morally good. It recognises flaws in the existing market, but does not see these as inherent contradictions, and looks to ‘Enlightenment’ values to inspire necessary reforms. Neoconservative fundamentalist: this position also stems from the ‘apolo­ gist’ and conforms to ideals of individual responsibility. It sees capitalism as an expression of human nature, and celebrates ‘entrepreneurialism’ against ‘big government’. As a moral position, it also opposes corruption, greed and cultural difference through an image of ‘traditional’ nationalis­ tic or religious values. Hedonist: a position that invests in consumerist fantasies and the free perso­ nal choice offered by permissive pluralism. It views the market system as the engine of opportunity, or the means of realising fulfilment through pleasure.

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5

6

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Pluralist: this position sees the production of cultural difference and choice as the antidote to a monolithic system, and views any attempts at totalising to be authoritarian. It refutes its own historicity, and does not recognise its reliance on essentialist ideas of market exchange, autono­ mous individualism and otherness. Neoliberal cynic: this cynicism seeks to actively prevent change and reproduce the current order, despite recognising its intrinsic flaws and injustices. It stems from a pessimistic view of human nature and history, which either sees that planned economies must be resisted, or that all systems produce inequality so only self-interested competition matters. Defeatist cynic: the defeatist is also a kind of cynic, who understands the absurdities of capitalism but cannot imagine an alternative or an effective form of resistance. The result is a pessimistic inability to deal with the complexity of the system’s demands, and a retreat into the very commo­ dified pleasures that help reproduce the system.

Notes 1 Indeed, even the method itself can be historicised. It is not that ‘historicism must include at least one precept – “always historicize!” – which is axiomatic, and as such exempt’ (Eagleton, 2009, p.135), but that the theoretical possibility of its negation implies an absolute that somehow escapes history. 2 Generally, Jameson accepts the Frankfurt School concept of the Culture Industry as a distraction from political thinking (Jameson, 1976, p.57), leading to ‘the commo­ dification of the mind’ (Jameson, 2008f, p. 356).

Bibliography Best, S., (1989) ‘Jameson, Totality, and the Poststructuralist Critique’, Postmodernism/ Jameson/Critique, ed. by D. Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press), 333–368 Best, S. and D. Kellner, (1991) Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations (Basing­ stoke: Macmillan) Boer, R., (2006) ‘A Level Playing Field? Metacommentary and Marxism’, On Jame­ son: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 51–69 Brown, W., (2006) ‘American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism and Dedemocratization’, Political Theory, 34, 690–714 Buchanan, I., (2006) Fredric Jameson: Live Theory (London: Continuum) Cevasco, M. E., (2004) ‘The Political Unconscious of Globalization: Notes from the Periphery’, Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, ed. by S. Homer and D. Kellner (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 94–111 Dean, J., (2016) ‘Dual Power Redux’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Uni­ versal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso) Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari, (1983) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. by R. Hurley, M. Seem and H. R. Lane (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minne­ sota Press)

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Eagleton, T., (2006) ‘Making a Break’, London Review of Books, 28, 25–26 [accessed 10 August 2016] Eagleton, T., (2009) ‘Jameson and Form’, New Left Review, 59, 123–137 Freud, S., (1995) ‘Civilization and Its Discontents’, The Freud Reader, ed. by P. Gay (London: Vintage), 722–772 Giddens, A., (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge: Polity Press) Giri, S., (2016) ‘The Happy Accident of Utopia’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso) Gregory, C. A., (2004) ‘Stranded Economies’, Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, ed. by S. Homer and D. Kellner (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 77–93 Helmling, S., (2001) The Success and Failure of Fredric Jameson: Writing, the Sublime, and the Dialectic of Critique (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) Homer, S., (1998) Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism (Cam­ bridge: Polity Press) Homer, S., (2006) ‘Narratives of History, Narratives of Time’, On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 71–91 Jameson, F., (1971) Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) Jameson, F., (1976) ‘Introduction/Prospectus: To Reconsider the Relationship of Marxism to Utopian Thought’, Minnesota Review, 6, 53–58 Jameson, F., (1977) ‘Ideology, Narrative Analysis, and Popular Culture’, Theory and Society, 4, 543–559 Jameson, F., (1983) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Routledge) Jameson, F., (1986) ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’, Social Text, 15, 65–88 Jameson, F., (1987) ‘The State of the Subject (III)’, Critical Quarterly, 29, 16–25 Jameson, F., (1990) Late Marxism: Adorno or the Persistence of the Dialectic (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (1991) Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (1992) Signatures of the Visible (New York, NY: Routledge) Jameson, F., (1994) The Seeds of Time: The Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine (New York, NY: Columbia University Press) Jameson, F., (1998a) ‘The Antinomies of Postmodernity’, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso), 50–72 Jameson, F., (1998b) ‘“End of Art” or “End of History”?’, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso), 73–92 Jameson, F., (1998c) ‘Transformations of the Image in Postmodernity’, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso), 93–135 Jameson, F., (1998d) ‘Culture and Finance Capital’, The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998 (London: Verso), 136–161 Jameson, F., (2000) ‘Globalization and Political Strategy’, New Left Review, 4, 49–68 Jameson, F., (2003) ‘The End of Temporality’, Critical Inquiry, 29, 695–718 Jameson, F., (2004) ‘The Politics of Utopia’, New Left Review, 25, 35–54 Jameson, F., (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso)

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Jameson, F., (2007) Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism, ed. by I. Buchanan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) Jameson, F., (2008a) ‘Metacommentary’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 5–19 Jameson, F (2008b) ‘The Ideology of the Text’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 20–76 Jameson, F., (2008c) ‘Criticism in History’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 125–143 Jameson, F., (2008d) ‘Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analy­ sis’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 144–160 Jameson, F., (2008e) ‘How Not to Historicize Theory’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 286–303 Jameson, F., (2008f) ‘Architecture and the Critique of Ideology’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 344–371 Jameson, F., (2008g) ‘Periodizing the 60s’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 483–515 Jameson, F., (2008h) ‘On “Cultural Studies”’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 598–635 Jameson, F., (2009a) Valences of the Dialectic (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2009b) ‘Sandblasting Marx’, New Left Review, 55, 134–142 Jameson, F., (2011) Representing Capital: A Commentary on Volume One (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2016) ‘An American Utopia’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso) Kellner, D., (1989) ‘Jameson, Marxism, and Postmodernism’, Postmodernism/Jameson/ Critique, ed. by D. Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press), 1–42 LaCapra, D., (1982) ‘Review Essay: The Political Unconscious’, History and Theory, 21, 83–106 Leslie, E., (2004) ‘Jameson, Brecht, Lenin and Spectral Possibilities’, Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, ed. by S. Homer and D. Kellner (Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac­ millan), 195–209 Parker, I., (2013) ‘Žižek’s Sublime Objects Now’, Žižek Now: Current Perspectives in Žižek Studies, ed. by J. Khader and M. A. Rothenberg (Cambridge: Polity Press), 16–28 Roberts, A., (2000) Fredric Jameson (London: Routledge) Ruda, F., (2016) ‘Jameson and Method: On Comic Utopianism’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso) Shumway, D., (1989) ‘Jameson/Hermeneutics/Postmodernism’, Postmodernism/Jame­ son/Critique, ed. by D. Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press), 172–202 Spivak, G. C., (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Watkins, E., (2006) ‘Generally Historicizing’, On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 15–25 Žižek, S., (2016) ‘The Seeds of Imagination’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso)

5

Jameson Reconstructing class consciousness

The aim now is to consider how oppositional forms of ideology may develop within a globalised system that produces apparent fragmentation and depth­ lessness. We first return to the superficial image culture that Jameson defines, and the dichotomy he establishes between modernism and postmodernism, to highlight how it makes the expression and reception of oppositional political ideas problematic. Yet while mass commodification of art and media spaces has an obvious de-historicising effect, the way Jameson periodises the present in contrast to the past makes the extent to which ‘modernist’ and other logics remain influential less clear. As such, while history and utopian ideals may be obscured by cultural production and promotion, their forms and content are not necessarily ‘depthless’, and may contain political meaning in a similar way to modern art. Through our understanding that ideologies tend to exceed de-politicised media representations, we suggest ways in which oppositional thinking might be developed even within commodity culture. Second, while Jameson notes that conscious agency still exists, and sub­ jectivity cannot be reduced to systemic factors, his focus on economic struc­ ture and mediatised culture means that he rarely focuses on how these factors work within the system. This point is especially important when we turn to his concept of ‘cognitive mapping’, which looks to reinstate temporality and class consciousness into ‘spatialised’ postmodern logic. From our perspective, cognitive mapping is useful in imagining change, as it provides alternative, systemic narratives and connects apparently disparate social elements. But in Jameson’s terms, in a mode of depthless culture and fragmented conscious­ ness, it effectively needs to interact with an unconscious psychological impulse to create a coherent narrative of the world. We consider how it might function as a method in relation to conscious agents and narratives built on assump­ tions and beliefs. In this way, cognitive mapping suggests a potential to develop dialectical thought not only by stimulating a repressed form but more directly through the content of ideological positions. Finally, when it comes to political practice, Jameson approaches the subject less often than Marcuse or Žižek, but still confronts some potentials and requirements for political change. The style and cultural focus of Jameson’s work is itself valuable in this respect, as a means to encourage different forms

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of thought across various intellectual fields. However, it still implies that political resistance is now more a matter of sustaining critique to prepare for a potential future change in social conditions than communicating with active political agents. At other points, Jameson analyses ‘new social movements’ and a changing political atmosphere in recent years that may offer opportu­ nities for class-based utopian alternatives to gain a foothold, but for the most part it still seems that the aim is to use utopian ideas to sustain the possibility of dialectical thinking. For us, the agency and consciousness implied by forms of political resistance is a general feature of ideology, emerging from social contradictions in common experience. The possibility of connecting these movements thus becomes a project for the present. This chapter does not aim to downplay the difficulties that face ideological and political change in neoliberalised societies. Near total commodification and the reduction of politics to particular group interests are huge obstacles to imagining effective oppositional politics. Moreover, the complexity of the globalised system makes any kind of united resistance hard to conceive. Even so, we look at this situation slightly differently to Jameson, by not focusing so exclusively on higher level dominant trends, exploring specific phenomena that challenge those trends and considering current political resistance within postmodern culture as ongoing ideological struggle. This small shift, com­ bined with a view of ideology as rationalisation, turns politics into something constantly developing in the present.

Postmodernism versus modernism Understanding the postmodern psyche in terms of ideological rationalisations enables us to imagine shifts in thinking through communication with their limits, conditions and ideals. The question is then what channels this com­ munication can use, and how it may resist appropriation by dominant narra­ tives. In a sense, Jameson’s periodisation of postmodernism in contrast to modernism recreates the notion of cultural autonomy versus commodifica­ tion, and the need to produce and disseminate radical ideas in de-historicised media. But our argument is that the way Jameson defines postmodernism in terms of this contrast effectively excludes ‘modernist’ features from his ana­ lysis of the present, even though he recognises there is no clear split between periods. When he links modernism to modernisation, for example, he does not explore ongoing processes of modernisation, which would suggest that certain areas at least remain in a modernist state of flux. The continued cul­ tural disparity between and within societies indicates that antagonism and politicisation are not fully lost in the commodification of expression, and are not a dwindling ‘remnant’ of modernism, but intrinsic to postmodern logic. Similar to Marcuse’s analysis of mass commodification, the development between modernism and postmodernism, for Jameson, both increases literacy, access to information and democratisation and signifies a loss of the autonomy which made utopian thinking possible, despite its reliance on social disparity.

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Thus, postmodernism provides greater opportunity for cultural expression at the cost of the latter’s power, making further democratisation more difficult to ima­ gine. Commodification erodes the divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, but turns both into images of themselves that reference different audience appeal, which represses any negating or critical value (Jameson, 1991, pp.63–64). For most, high culture is experienced only in particular contexts (such as classical music in advertising), so that any ‘continuous discourse has become an indistinguishable blur intermittently illuminated by vulgar theme songs, motifs that have crystallized into objects and tokens, like clichés in speech’ (Jameson, 1971, p.24). In contrast, for Jameson, the counter-cultural innovations of political art in the 1960s still functioned as protests. Here, the ‘end of art’ was a reaction to the perceived complicity of institutions, including art and academia, in dominant political structures. The postmodern equivalent, the ‘end of history’, is de-poli­ ticised, or an attempt to subvert a cultural dominant that fails because modernist styles are no longer subversive. For example, Jameson says, as modernist archi­ tectural forms are absorbed into the system and ‘become stamped with […] bureaucratic connotation’, their supersession by other styles ‘radically produces some feeling of “relief”, even though what replaces it is neither Utopia nor democracy’ (Jameson, 1991, p.314). Since experimentation is now the norm, the power to shock has been lost, and the main difference between modern and postmodern art is not form or content, but their situation. In a post-modern world, new styles and interpretations are fuel for industries constantly trying to renew desire, so postmodern culture seems to ‘share a resonant affirmation, when not an outright celebration, of the market as such’ (Jameson, 1991, p.305). Jameson also explains that modernism represents a time of social modernisation, in which change was in progress and alternative realities coexisted. Modern artists and philosophers ‘lived in two distinct worlds simultaneously’, moving between the rural past and urban present, and their ‘sensitivity to deep time […] registers this comparatist perception of the two socioeconomic temporalities’ (Jameson, 2003, p.699). Conversely, with postmodernism, ‘nature has been triumphantly blotted out, along with peasants, petit-bourgeois commerce, handicraft, feudal aristocracies and imperial bureaucracies’ (Jameson, 1991, pp.309–310). As all has been modernised, these elements remain only as simulacra, with no sense of continuation or development towards a different future. The difference is exemplified in Jameson’s distinction between modernist parody, in which stylistic imitation satirically reveals contradictions in linguistic norms, and postmodern pastiche, for which there is no linguistic norm, only private group codes, and thus no satirical context. Representations of history in commodified culture are nos­ talgic images that merely illustrate a de-historicised postmodern perception of the past. According to Jameson, if there is any sense of ‘realism’ left in representation, it is the slow awareness ‘of a new and original historical situation in which we are condemned to seek History by way of our own pop images and simulacra of that history’ (Jameson, 1991, p.25).

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The synchronic periodisation that Jameson employs effectively illustrates the social impact of expanded commodification. Yet, it is often the case that, despite caveats about uneven development, Jameson treats postmodernism as more than an idealised analytical category, by paying insufficient attention to ‘modernist’ processes that remain within postmodern logic. For example, modernisation goes beyond any correlation with cultural modernism, especially as many regions remain far less modernised than the USA, or cannot modernise precisely due to the inequality engendered by global capitalism (Gregory, 2004, pp.84–85). Jameson notes that the level of commodification is not identical everywhere, but ‘the tendency toward global commodification is far more visible and imaginable than it was in the modern period’ (Jameson, 1994, p.27). It is certainly the case that postmodernism is globally dominant in the sense that increasing market penetration into popular culture worldwide, especially through media technolo­ gies, gives it a major presence, if not necessarily dominance in every individual nation (Anderson, 1998, pp.122–123). Jameson also states that the struggle in Third World cultures connected to First World cultural imperialism is ‘a reflex­ ion of the economic situation of such areas in their penetration by various stages of capital, or as it is sometimes euphemistically termed, of modernization’ (Jameson, 1986, p.68). But as such, the particular media technology that engen­ ders de-historicised imagery is not universal, and few places are postmodern in terms of being fully modernised, so a sense of ‘modernist’ temporality should remain. Jameson later states that incomplete commodification in certain parts of the world is what enables us to understand what completeness looks like (Jame­ son, 2007, p.166). If so, it suggests that we can still experience meaningful dif­ ference, and envisage what is at stake in the struggles involved. Jameson’s insistence on postmodern stasis shifts focus from how dominant narratives represent contrast, to the impossibility of representation. Similarly, when Jameson identifies hints of political meaning in postmodern culture he still tends to emphasise their fragmentation and depthlessness. For example, he states that music ‘remains a fundamental class marker’, and that ‘highbrow and lowbrow, or elite and mass, musical tastes’ still arouse passions, because music ‘includes history in a more thoroughgoing and irrevocable fash­ ion’ that ‘can scarcely be woven out of the memory’ (Jameson, 1991, p.299). But he does not then consider that other cultural forms have class markers, which indicate limits of cultural democratisation. Burnham suggests, for instance, that poetry as ‘an elite art form’ lacks economic (commodity) prestige and has ‘no popular equivalent’, so that ‘interest in poetry immediately marks the aesthete off from the masses’ (Burnham, 1995, p.239). Even if we add that types of ‘street poetry’ contrast this elite, they are also heavily class marked. It can then be extrapolated that other cultural forms retain class markers to greater or lesser extents. Yet Jameson mainly accentuates the lack of markers, such as where he compares postmodern society to Blade Runner with its ‘interfusion of crowds of people among a high technological bazaar […], all of it sealed into an inside without an outside’ (Jameson, 1994, p.157). This analogy supresses continued experiences of disparity and segregation, or limited social mobility, and does not

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account for the way such experiences exceed the branding of commodified cul­ tural codes. Jameson asks whether in postmodernism ‘some deeper memory of history still faintly stirs’, or if nostalgia denotes ‘the incompleteness of the post­ modern process, the survival within it of remnants of the past’ (Jameson, 1992a, p.229). For us, this memory is implicit in the definition of postmodernism, and in the ideological positions that support the cultural dominant. Postmodernism clearly involves a greater quantity and scope of de-politicisa­ tion than previous eras, but a disconnect between cultural images and history is not new, and different, even oppositional interpretations still exceed the domi­ nant logic. Postmodern culture does not mean ‘the supersession of everything outside of commercial culture’, to the extent that ‘it is vain to expect a negation of the logic of commodity production from it’ (Jameson, 1998c, p.135). Rather, as Hutcheon argues, although postmodern culture has to work within the commodified field, it may recognise its commodity status and exploit ‘its “insider” position in order to begin a subversion from within’ (Hutcheon, 1989, p.114). In this sense, postmodernism denotes ‘cultural practices which acknowledge their inevitable implication in capitalism, without relinquishing the power or will to intervene critically in it’ (Hutcheon, 1989, p.26). From our perspective, the point is that culture which participates in the system can also critically examine its own role as well as various dominant ideologies. As Hutcheon says, this implies that parody remains possible, and ‘signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference’ (Hutcheon, 1989, p.93). Such parody highlights connotations of par­ ticular styles by placing them against others to reveal that all representation is political, and does not then reflect Jameson’s contrast between a simpler past and the fragmented present (which is itself nostalgic, for Hutcheon). If this notion of critical postmodern culture demonstrates that politics is communicable within commodified culture, however, it is not a ‘modernist’ negation that points towards an alternative potential reality, or mediates with utopian political projects. Indeed, Hutcheon notes that postmodern culture lacks a theory of agency, and is caught in negativity (Hutcheon, 1989, p.23). As such, it is not enough to celebrate this form of criticism, as that tacitly main­ tains it in its commodity form and stops it from becoming a political catalyst. For Hutcheon, postmodern artists ‘know that their interrogations of culture themselves form an ideology’ (Hutcheon, 1988, p.209), but, she suggests, they avoid the answers and totalising replies Jameson seeks, ‘which postmodernism cannot and will not offer’ (Hutcheon, 1988, p.214). The problem is that trying to avoid ‘totalising’ creates a totalising logic, because there is no way to take a particular position of resistance against the current situation, which leaves it untouched. Thus, while we agree that parody remains possible, and disagree with Jameson that no ideological norms remain, parody will still become pas­ tiche without a consistent ‘totalising’ political direction. The question that emerges here is how to identify the norms to be par­ odied, and according to what political aims. From Jameson’s definition of postmodernism, the lack of any norm is the issue, but he also shows how that

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lack is structured by late capitalism. We can conclude that the appearance of unstructured difference that obscures the market logic behind it is the norm, and if pastiche is the play of styles inside the bounds of market acceptance and pluralist tolerance, parody takes the position of what the market excludes or does not tolerate. It is whatever is missing – history, class struggle – that keeps parody possible. So, if postmodern culture can criticise the whole from within, a more directed political criticism can function within commodified spaces, based around opposition to the norms of disparity and exclusion. This would not only be a critique of capitalism, but focus on a common logic of marginalisation and consideration of potential alternative social forms that resolve systemic contradictions. If Jameson’s project of reintroducing utopian ideas to political thought is realisable, it is crucial that working within commodified cultural fields in this way can be effective.

Politics in art This possibility of political content within postmodern culture rests on a con­ sciousness that attempts to create political art despite the demands of the market, and a consciousness that can receive political messages even when distributed through mass media. Here, we theorise the continued presence of the former with the contention that postmodern art is no more intrinsically depthless than classic modernist texts, and that both are subject to similar degrees to the flattening effect of commodification. Thus, although commodity logic influences cultural production, an expression of depth remains that is often suppressed by Jameson’s interpretation or choice of text. The culture’s presentation as commodity promotes superficial interpretations, but does not completely repress politically meaningful ideas. Moreover, this depth can be considered as a constituent part of postmodern logic, albeit subordinate, rather than an anomaly in the dominant logic that occurs in spite of itself. At times, Jameson identifies forms of art that might fit Hutcheon’s definition of self-reflexive, critical postmodern culture, but mostly perceives them as rare hints of a degraded utopian unconscious. For example, in certain fictional dystopian or post-apocalyptic futures, he identifies a consumerist proto-uto­ pian vision, in the way survivors are left free to consume without limitations. The apocalypse thus ‘includes both catastrophe and fulfillment’, or ‘Utopia and the extinction of the human race all at once’ (Jameson, 2005, p.199). He also describes how magical realism and fantasy history novels blur the lines between real historical accounts and fiction, reinvigorating imagination and offering a relationship to praxis missing from more literal representations. In the absence of history, these novels’ ‘inventiveness endorses a creative freedom with respect to events it cannot control’ and agency ‘steps out of the historical record itself into the process of devising it’ (Jameson, 1991, p.369). At one point, Jameson describes a more explicit utopian sentiment in a collaborative art installation, which provokes viewers to contemplate relationship in the composition of its objects, and the cooperative agency behind it. For Jameson,

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this installation ‘does not compute within the [postmodern] paradigm and does not seem to have been theoretically foreseen by it’ (Jameson, 1991, p.159). It offers an alternative mode of thought through postmodernism itself, rather than as a remnant of modernism. He adds here that, ‘one finds everywhere today – not least among artists and writers – something like an unac­ knowledged “party of Utopia”’ (Jameson, 1991, p.180). It may not be widely recognised and inspire an oppositional politics, but represents oppositional sentiment within postmodern art. If this ‘party of Utopia’ is everywhere, however, Jameson rarely mentions it in his other analyses of postmodern art, which mostly serve to emphasise the superficiality of its forms. In comparing Van Gogh’s modernist Peasant Shoes and Warhol’s postmodern Diamond Dust Shoes, for example, Jameson explains that while Van Gogh’s use of colour transforms the landscape of peasant life, Warhol employs the monochrome form of the photographic negative, so its disembodied items exist in space but not time, and the image ‘does not really speak to us at all’ (Jameson, 1991, p.8). Yet it could be said that the photo­ graphic negative also points beyond existing reality – it both ‘negates’ its depicted (consumer) object, and represents something to be ‘developed’ – and therefore indicates a ‘utopian’ element in a different way to Van Gogh’s piece (Spivak, 1999, p.317). Furthermore, other statements imply that it is not the form itself or lack of critical intent that is at issue, but the context in which art is embedded. He explains that, while Warhol’s works are ‘obviously repre­ sentations of commodity or consumer fetishism [they] do not seem to function as critical or political statements’ (Jameson, 1991, p.158). But this appearance of absent critical function could equally apply to Van Gogh. As Jameson says, if Van Gogh’s ‘copiously reproduced image is not to sink to the level of sheer decoration, it requires us to reconstruct some initial situation out of which the finished work emerges’ (Jameson, 1991, p.7). We could thus reconstruct such a situation for Warhol too, and reveal connections between both artists’ works through this hermeneutic reading (Shumway, 1989, p.198). In such comparisons, it is then not necessarily the case that de-politicisation in postmodern art is a symptom of commodified production leading to forms that are intrinsically more depthless than modernist forms. Where Jameson implies otherwise, he tends to select examples that best fit his interpretation, omitting texts that do focus on themes of narrative and memory (Homer, 1998, p.117; Hutcheon, 1988, p.212; Nicholls, 1991, p.3), or forces ‘into a single mould a diversity of cultural phenomena which do not obviously belong toge­ ther’ (Callinicos, 1989, p.131). In this way, for Jameson, when forms of mod­ ernist depth are detectable in postmodern art, they are anomalous ‘failures’ of depthless expression ‘that inscribe the particular postmodern project back into its context’ (Jameson, 1991, p.xvi), rather than intrinsic critical aspects of cul­ tural expression resisting commodified coding. He explains, for instance, that video art as a form blocks final interpretations, and any connections made between the fragmented images are ‘provisional’, and ‘subject to change with­ out notice’ (Jameson, 1991, p.87). He adds that sometimes a single theme can

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dominate long enough to become an overall interpretation, but then ‘whatever a good […] videotext might be, it will be bad or flawed whenever such inter­ pretation proves possible’ (Jameson, 1991, p.92). Here, it is only Jameson’s definition of postmodernism and video art that makes such meaning a flaw or ‘bad’ excess, rather than part of the medium and its aims (Homer, 1998, p.115). Jameson also explains that the features of postmodernism are not fully understood by looking at individual works. That is, there are no ‘works’ with clear meanings to be interpreted, only ‘texts’ that deny interpretation, so view­ ing texts as representations of postmodernism means failing to appreciate their textuality (Jameson, 1991, p.xvii). Jameson thus emphasises relationship over the object, so that ‘the cultural production process […] is the object of study and no longer the individual masterpiece’, which ‘shifts our methodological practice […] from individual textual analysis to […] mode-of-production ana­ lysis’ (Jameson, 2004, p.408). In our view, however, Jameson does examine individual pieces as works to illustrate the characteristics of postmodernism, and this is only problematic because he uses this analysis to highlight certain characteristics and not others. In fact, individual analysis is necessary to con­ struct a theory of ‘cultural logic’ relating to a mode of production, if it does not accept randomness and difference as a (lack of) logic. Understanding the social conditions and ideological ties that influence postmodern forms does not imply some outdated ‘modernist’ approach, but shows that the logic of difference engenders and relies on a range of political ideals. It remains the case that postmodern art is depoliticised both by being received and produced as a commodity, within an ideological climate that often represses utopian social alternatives. But such a notion does not exhaust the political possibilities in cultural production, or the way ideological beliefs can exceed commodified presentation and express themselves through it. In this respect, Jameson’s theory tends to consider the ‘political unconscious’ of postmodern art only as an expression of late capitalist cultural fragmentation. His goal is ‘to reawaken […] some sense of the ineradicable drive towards collectivity that can be detected, no matter how faintly and feebly, in the most degraded works of mass culture’ (Jameson, 1992a, p.34), and he explains that highlighting the lack of meaning in a form may better reveal the dominant logic than seeking meaning within texts themselves (Jameson, 1991, p.71). But in focusing only on the lack of meaning, we miss existing expressions of political ideas, and the possibility of examining postmodern culture for beliefs or ideals that are not as faint or degraded as Jameson suggests, to explore how such sentiments might further expand despite the restraints of commodification.

Consumer culture The other issue with expressing depth in commodified culture is whether and how it is received. Given our emphasis on narrative over fragmentation, we argue that many people can still experience meaning in media codes and images, or interpret cultural objects in non-prescribed ways, so that space remains within

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commodified culture for alternative ideas to develop. In Jameson’s theory, the relationship between culture and economics is ‘dedifferentiated’, so that culture is now economic right down to its core, and apparent oppositional positions are reduced to consumer choices. While we understand how this colonisation between spheres has a de-politicising effect, we contend that people do not merely consume culture in accordance with the identity images it promotes, and that consumers can still perceive the exploitation in conditions of production, no matter how disconnected they are. According to Jameson, culture has exploded into all spheres of social life, in a way that also makes it fully economic. As he puts it, ‘the market has become […] fully as much a commodity as any of the items it includes within itself ’, while ‘postmodernism is the consumption of sheer commodification as a pro­ cess’ (Jameson, 1991, p.x). Mass media are platforms for distributing com­ modities, while the market is glamorised through the lifestyles of celebrity entrepreneurs. Trade agreements ensure the global dominance of US exports, from agriculture to film industries, connecting mass culture, economic aims and political policy (Jameson, 2000a, pp.54–55). Meanwhile, the economic forces driving consumerism are fetishised, whether in the enjoyment of shop­ ping, celebration of films based on their budgets, or focus on the capabilities of media technology rather than media content. Even cultural subversion is dis­ tributed through commodified channels, so the message becomes inseparable from its presentation, imbedded between advertisements or in news organs that are largely publicity machines. This distribution validates the idea of free choice, in that it welcomes all kinds of views and identity groups into the market, until almost any belief or taste is represented by appropriate products, including niche cultures that have an anti-consumerist stance. For example, Jameson explains, highbrow French film is part of the international film market alongside the Hollywood output it defines itself against (Jameson, 1998c, p.132). There are limits to what can be widely distributed, as some ideas exceed the boundaries of pluralist tolerance, and certain groups are not marketable because they lack the means to consume. But such people are then either ren­ dered near-invisible or vilified according to ‘enemy’ narratives that portray outsiders as anti-pluralist fundamentalists or victims. In a globalised system, the conditions of cultural production also become more opaque. Jameson states that, for all the complexities of consumerism, the effacement of the object’s production is ‘the indispensable precondition on which all the rest can be constructed’ (Jameson, 1991, p.315). Because con­ sumers generally only encounter finished consumable objects, without experi­ encing their production history, they ‘inhabit a dream world of artificial stimuli and televised experience’, in which ‘the fundamental questions of being and of the meaning of life [seem] utterly remote and pointless’ (Jameson, 1971, p. xviii). Previously, for Jameson, the bourgeoisie was similarly detached from production, but workers could perceive ‘the finished product as little more than a moment in the process of production itself ’ and understand the world in terms of interrelated processes (Jameson, 1971, p.187). Today, few consumers

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have this perspective, and those who are interested struggle to comprehend the multifaceted processes of production, or connections between consumerism and global poverty. Seen this way, there is not much potential for consciousness to develop beyond the absorption of de-historicised products aimed at different identities. Yet, as with Marcuse, Jameson mentions some intrinsic tendencies in the system itself that may create strain. He notes that difficulties may arise with maintaining mass purchasing power, but adds that such an issue will only become significant when relatively high employment cannot be maintained (Jameson, 2007, p.166). Or, he describes a more immediate pressure in manu­ facturing libidinal investment in consumerism, since the latter must create actual pleasure, rather than being a mere commodity ‘fix’ that satisfies addic­ tion. Here, for Jameson, despite the promotion of consumer goods as needs, deep down individuals are ‘naggingly aware’ that is not the case (Jameson, 2008c, pp.374–375). This idea is similar to Marcuse’s that consumer pleasures provide partial fulfilment, so subjects must be continually convinced that their ‘real’ desires can also be met by consumer goods. For us, this concept of nagging awareness may be expanded, to suggest ways in which individuals develop ideas from consumer culture that exceed de-historicised products and identities. First, consumers’ beliefs do not necessarily accord with the media identity with which they are associated. For example, if, as Jameson says, an interest in arthouse cinema based on a rejection of the reactionary politics in mainstream culture becomes a commodified choice, this does not mean that the oppositional sentiment is exhausted in the process. Nor does the choice necessarily replace more substantive political ideas, and in fact the culture consumed may further develop these ideas. The range of identities in the media cannot completely exclude radical sentiments, and these sentiments are not lost even in the commo­ dified diffusion of oppositional identities into de-historicised ‘rebellious’ styles. Despite the relatively small presence of such positions, due to the demands of the market, they still transmit alternative ideas. Thus, individuals might not only be ‘naggingly aware’ that their consumption is not completely fulfilling, but what they consume may also contain concepts that bring them towards a critique of con­ sumerism itself. Culture that is critical of dominant ideas, and even suggests radical political alternatives, may gradually alter the limits of acceptable discourse in a way that mainstream ‘conformist’ culture does not. Furthermore, nagging awareness may also link back to the production con­ ditions of consumer goods, as lack of fulfilment in part produces a certain guilt in postmodern living. In this respect, issues surrounding methods of manu­ facture and the providence of goods are becoming increasingly prominent, indicating that consumption has not been delinked from production in people’s minds. It thus seems less that ‘the materiality of the object itself is summoned to veil the human relationship and to give it the appearance of a relation between things’ (Jameson, 2005, p.158). For the most part, this recognition is re-appropriated by the system, as multinationals find loopholes in labour laws and ethical consumerism becomes another commodified choice designed to

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appeal to specific (middle-class, liberal) demographics. As Jameson says, con­ sumerism ‘individualizes and atomizes’, and ethical consumerism (at least where it replaces political action) blocks collective responses to social issues (Jameson, 2000a, p.57). But these developments still signify public under­ standing of production processes, meaning that ideological values are not repressed by the reified appearance of consumer goods. Although brands such as Fair Trade do not yet question the system, they show that people still recognise the human relationships in production and consumption, and oppose some notion of exploitation in these relations. It then seems possible that a wider understanding of value can slowly relate the concept of exploitation to the commodity form itself. Jameson focuses only on how the relations of pro­ duction are effaced by the consumer product, but paying ‘too great an atten­ tion to “commodification” links the economical to the experiential only at the cost of displacing the political’ (Eagleton, 1986, p.75). Although the majority of products are superficial, the political remains present, both in production and consumption, and can help to challenge affirmative positions.

Subject positions This potential to receive and develop political ideas, along with the centrality of narrative, suggest a postmodern subjectivity that can actively engage with the dominant logic and its contradictions. Jameson’s definition of postmodernism assigns such qualities more to modernism, or a monadic, autonomous subject has been superseded by subject positions attached to de-historicised identities. Yet he claims there is still agency, or choices that are structured by social con­ ditions without being reducible to them, and that neither system nor agent should take analytical precedence, because it means either the system appears ‘so total that it is overpowering, and […] the individuals caught up in it have little power to do anything’, or ‘agents and actors appear who are somehow stronger than the most inhuman system’ (Jameson, 2011, p.144). Such statements provide supports for our theory, but Jameson often does give precedence to systems in his analysis, and considers individuals as adherents to group identities. For the most part, the postmodern subject in Jameson’s theory functions as a composite of mediatised ‘subject-positions’. These unstable identity markers and their communicative codes are not ideologies, but ‘a kind of storehouse of older ideological fragments that can be appealed to now and then for a digression or an acceptable justification for some necessary move in narrative strategy’ (Jameson, 2008a, p.32). Here, codes and subject positions reduce meaning to arguments and ideas that individuals call upon to maintain their support for the system, regard­ less of coherence, reducing cultural antagonisms to variations of opinion and style. The repression of history in these identity codes means they lack conception of their origins, and become sociological categories rather than political class desires. For Jameson, group identities represent a form of ‘liberal tolerance’ that comes from social ‘standardization and the obliteration of genuine social dif­ ference in the first place’ (Jameson, 1991, p.341). He explains that there has

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been ‘a transformation of the Other and of otherness, in which paradoxically the recognition of the Other entails the waning or disappearance of otherness, and in which a politics of difference becomes a politics of identity’ (Jameson, 2010, p.12). This postmodern Other of identity contrasts with the historical Other as antagonistic alien culture, in which the observer recognises another culture as the opposite of what is known, but comes to recognise its own knowledge as cultural (not universal) through the Other (Jameson, 2008d, p.615). The different practices and antagonisms between cultures are what define them as cultures in the first place, so postmodern pluralism is a false resolution which homogenises differences under a singular cultural dominant, while being antagonistic to cultures that retain any actual sense of history and otherness. Pluralist tolerance is thus not universal collectivity, because it era­ dicates difference to maintain one group’s domination over (or isolation from) others. It represents a sublimation of the original ‘ethnic’ antagonism, for Jameson, and obscures the alternative sublimation into class struggle, which aims not at ‘the triumph of one class over another but the abolition of the very category of class’ (Jameson, 2008d, p.619). Postmodern pluralist logic is thus a justification of late capitalist social hier­ archies, and subject positions are still structured by social inequalities. As such, antagonisms remain between positions and there are limits in the free play of arguments and opinions. As Jameson explains, subject positions are ‘inter­ pellated roles’ that emerge from existing social groups, and a specific con­ stellation of positions can only function if it reflects ‘some more concrete truce or alliance between the various real social groups thereby entailed’ (Jameson, 1991, p.345). In other words, some identities remain irreconcilable, even when they become mere cultural differences that lack any notion of their antagonistic historical emergence (for example, the way racial markers such as black and white are often embedded with notions of superiority and inferiority). From our perspective, this point indicates a certain depth in subject positions, based on beliefs and narratives that go beyond compartmentalisation and free-float­ ing differences of opinion. For instance, if some individuals can support envir­ onmental responsibility while practising excessive consumerism, others cannot, and the difference between the two is not intrinsic to the codes, or the indivi­ duals’ social positions, but in the way this combination is encountered through different beliefs, values and rationalisations. These differences also point to the simultaneous compatibility and incompatibility between affirmative ideologi­ cal positions within pluralist culture. While Jameson’s theory of subject positions and postmodern identity formation implies that the scope for subjective agency is severely limited, he maintains that he emphasises structural influences not to discount agency, but to counterbalance a more individual focus. That is, although we can examine postmodern culture through the conscious aims of artists, audiences, and institutions, we must also understand the synchronic and diachronic cultural influences on them. In parti­ cular, any attempt to define the social condition through psychology detached from systemic analysis will inevitably be insufficient (Jameson, 2016). Jameson reiterates

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Marx’s point that people make history but not in circumstances of their choosing, and that his focus on modes of production does not override that various agents can create different forms of political tactics (Jameson, 1991, p.408). He also notes that the idea of collective or class consciousness should not view individual con­ sciousness as a mere reflection of group dynamics and structures. But, for Jameson, understanding class dynamics is still essential, to theorise the relationships between individuals, so what is required ‘is a whole new logic of collective dynamics, with categories that escape the taint of some mere application of terms drawn from individual experience’ (Jameson, 1983, p.284). At these points, Jameson appears to espouse a dialectical mediation between the system and individual, whereby social structures and discourse overdetermine consciousness but consciousness can also influence structures and discourse. However, the conclusions of Jameson’s theory still do not sufficiently include these aspects of individual consciousness. The functioning ideological positions that we have identified as part of the postmodern situation, and necessary for conceiving change, remain absent from his theory of subject positions. Jameson mainly considers only the shift from modernist autonomous subjects to post­ modern fragmented positions, rather than any continuing processes of conscious engagement. Where he introduces ‘a third term’ of subjectivity besides autonomy and fragmentation, he describes it as ‘the non-centered subject that is a part of an organic group or collective’ (Jameson, 1991, p.345), or a subject ‘in a social order that has put behind it class organization, commodity production and the market’ (Jameson, 2008b, p.113). This is a subject yet to come, which leaves the question of what remains in the present that might nurture this form. For us, a class con­ sciousness that can challenge the dominant individualist perspective can only expand from both the critical distance of a minority and the possibility of gradu­ ally influencing the conscious beliefs of the majority. Therefore, it is important to consider how to develop different forms of consciousness within identity groups, by interrogating the common rationalisations for conformist behaviour that structure and support subject positions.

Cognitive mapping In this sense, agency is a process of maintaining or changing subject positions, based on narratives formed in part within group identities, and influenced by experience, knowledge and social position. Introducing a dialectical concept of totality then reveals the contingency of the system and the narratives that justify it, opening up the possibility of a greater oppositional agency. The problem for Jameson is how we can consider the system at all in postmodernism, and one of his enduring contributions in this regard is that of ‘cognitive mapping’. This is a way of trying to understand a systemic logic, in terms of class consciousness, when the system itself has become too complex to perceive in its full connectivity. Jameson highlights how culture often represents a kind of failed unconscious attempt to narrativise and map, which at least points to an ongoing desire for coherence. Yet while his aim with cognitive mapping is therefore to reinvigorate

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that repressed desire, for us it can also focus on the patterns of rationalisation in conscious ideological positions. These positions are already ways of interpreting the social whole, with contestable narratives that have an impact on agency. Jameson defines cognitive mapping as an effectively ‘modernist’ method that ‘retains an impossible concept of totality’ (Jameson, 1991, p.409). In a system that has become too complex to comprehend from any particular perspective, it describes an attempt to see all the connections and our position amongst them. The partial view of any individual makes cognitive mapping a collective project, and Jameson equates it to the development of class consciousness, albeit of a new and unforeseeable kind. In effect, because of the global system and its de­ historicising culture, a class view of society is rendered problematic. For exam­ ple, although certain individuals have power and are responsible for economic strategies, there is no clear ruling class that assimilates the masses to its own cultural norms. As with Marcuse’s view that agency is often reduced to admin­ istrative roles, Jameson says that ‘what’s systemic about it is not due to anybody’s agency’, and norms are imposed on the elite as much as anyone (Jameson, 2007, p.114). Thus, although there are persisting social divisions, and only a few have the knowledge and social position to actually affect the economy (Jameson, 1991, p.352), the elite is not easily viewed as a class because it is internally frag­ mented throughout the production process.1 Given such difficulties, class con­ sciousness through cognitive mapping is more an attempt ‘to see whether by systematizing something that is resolutely unsystematic, and historicizing some­ thing that is resolutely ahistorical, one couldn’t outflank it and force a historical way at least of thinking about that’ (Jameson, 1991, p.418). Cognitive mapping is thus not a mapping of physical space but a form of nar­ rative, which brings the temporal back into the spatial. The important point here is not that Jameson privileges the temporal over the spatial, but that spatial rela­ tions should be historicised. It is not, as Homer argues, that Jameson’s focus on politics as narrative abstracts too much from spatial experience, or misses that globalised politics and economics are significantly spatial. For example, he says, trade agreements such as NAFTA mean that ‘North America is now free to export grain to Mexico, potentially destroying the local economies, yet the citizens of California can erect barriers to keep Mexican migrants out’ (Homer, 1998, p.151). Rather, a pure spatial politics is what disconnects these issues from each other and NAFTA, and it is only by seeing the temporal dimension across these spaces that their connectivity becomes apparent. Alternatively, Massey argues that a concept of temporality (which Massey connects to Jameson’s fear of postmodern disorder) may create a ‘Grand Narrative’ that ignores the spatial diversity required for a wide-ranging political movement (Massey, 1992, p.83). Yet Jameson appears to be aware of the problem, when he describes ‘the unresolvable […] dilemma of the transfer of curved space to flat charts’, so ‘there can be no true maps’, only ‘scientific progress, or better still, a dialectical advance, in the various historical moments of mapmaking’ (Jameson, 1991, p.52). In other words, the processes of mapping develop with knowledge, and spatial diversity is not excluded from the temporal formulation.

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The issue with cognitive mapping as Jameson presents it is more a paradox (not dissimilar to Marcuse’s political impasse) of its ‘outflanking’ manoeuvre, that the very thing it aims to address – postmodern de-historicisation – renders it ineffective. On one hand, the temporal is still in some sense detectable in spatialised postmodernism, for Jameson, as even the idealised notion of the schizophrenic ‘marks the impossible effort to imagine something like a pure experience of the spatial present’ (Jameson, 1991, p.154). In this way, cognitive mapping represents ‘most clearly Jameson’s refusal to accept the apparent clo­ sures and ahistoricity of the postmodern that he outlines elsewhere’ (Wegner, 2006, p.267). On the other hand, Jameson cannot identify any dialectical rela­ tionship between cognitive mapping and spatial politics in the present. Instead, its potential ‘may well be dependent on some prior political opening, which its task would then be to enlarge culturally’, and until then all it enables is ‘the attempt to keep alive the possibility of imagining such a thing’ (Jameson, 2000b, p.287). In this view, the mapping process finds itself re-spatialised, and insisting that the temporal is ineradicable in present conditions seems super­ fluous if it is also completely inaccessible, so it remains ‘precisely space’s ability to absolutely repress temporality that is the issue’ (Homer, 1998, p.148). The temporal is less a marginalised element within postmodernism, and more an unreachable repressed dimension. At certain points, Jameson identifies degraded forms of mapping that at least demonstrate a continuing desire to explain the workings of the system. He tells us that we continue to seek cognition of the social totality all the time, uncon­ sciously, and that ‘all thinking today is also, whatever else it is, an attempt to think the world system as such’ (Jameson, 1992b, p.4). One of the allegorical forms he analyses here is conspiracy fiction (a form that resembles our ‘defea­ tist’ ideological position, by perceiving an omnipotent actor pulling the strings of the social order), which he sees as an attempt to totalise, despite the fantasy form it takes. Conspiracy theories do not connect their narratives to a histor­ ical mode of production, but at least achieve a kind of ‘closure-effect’, which resembles how cognitive mapping triangulates, ‘rather than perceiving or representing, a totality’ (Jameson, 1992b, p.31). For Jameson, these and other examples of allegorical representation signify that ‘narrative is itself a form of cognition’, and that, in line with the concept of cognitive mapping, ‘an obvious next step lies in the systematic harnessing of the energies of those hitherto irrational activities for cognitive purposes’ (Jameson, 1992b, p.188). Narratives still exist in postmodernism, even if they lack a temporal or systemic dimen­ sion, so cognitive mapping is at least formally a familiar process. Even so, this apparent need for narrative is only expressed in the unconscious, which does not consider how narratives formed of rationalisations are central to conscious ideological positions. For Jameson, focusing on the unconscious is pertinent since ‘the production of functioning and living ideologies’ may be ‘not possible at all’ in current conditions (Jameson, 1991, p.53). In such statements, it does not seem merely that the complexity of the system makes it impossible to grasp, but that postmodern subjects have become incapable of conscious pattern

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and narrative formation. But in our sense, rather than a way of reintroducing the concept of historical totality to people who can no longer comprehend their experience, cognitive mapping can be seen as a means to contest the uni­ versalised assumptions in rationalisations, or ‘living ideologies’, with alternative, systemic concepts. In fact, Jameson says that ‘ideology, as such, attempts to span or coordinate, to map, by means of conscious and unconscious representations’ (Jameson, 2000b, p.283). For us, the conscious aspect here remains a necessity for social functioning (Best and Kellner, 2001, p.8), and represents the capacity to make connections between social phenomena. Analysing and contrasting these positions is then a possibility that can begin in the present, and may help us to recognise which ideological elements are emergent and which are residual against the dominant cultural logic (Lesjak, 2006, p.40). As with Jameson’s uto­ pian theory, cognitive mapping can mediate between totalising class conscious­ ness and existing politics to inspire alternative thought and collective ambition.

Cultural criticism and politics In terms of oppositional politics, the thrust of Jameson’s work remains that of keeping the idea of the temporal alive, in preparation for potential future devel­ opments. As such, and as he is primarily a cultural critic, he devotes less of his work to examining political strategies than either Marcuse or Žižek, and con­ centrates more on the forms of culture that can repress or inspire oppositional thinking. Even in his work on Utopia, in which he suggests transformative social policies, his aim is to create a space for dialectical thinking, rather than actually formulate political programmes. So what is the political effect of Jameson’s dis­ ciplinary and theoretical focus? To answer this question, we examine some cri­ tical analyses of Jameson’s work, which overall suggest that Jameson’s approach promotes indirect reflection on political possibilities, but in a way that margin­ alises it from politics itself. In effect, the need to mediate between theory and practice, or utopian and everyday politics, that Jameson has identified, appears to demand a more even balance of cultural and political theorising. For some theorists, Jameson’s examination of cultural forms, and even his writing style, are politically meaningful. Irr and Buchanan, for example, explain how the wide range of his cultural analyses and emphasis on non-jud­ gemental historicising are inclusive, because he compares and combines observations from a huge variety of texts, and reaches audiences in different aesthetic fields (Irr and Buchanan, 2006, p.4). Where there is a tendency towards separation of disciplines in academia, Jameson contributes to rever­ sing that trend, by linking literature, architecture, film studies and so on. For Helmling, meanwhile, there are dialectical qualities within the forms of Jame­ son’s work, which act to deter familiarity and closure, working with the content to reveal the contingency of conventions. In this view, the form creates a certain ambition and energy, which appeals to ‘a minority audience that hungers to see the challenges of its own time written about in relevantly challenging ways’ (Helmling, 2001, p.147). There is a depth of satisfaction in understanding

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Jameson’s texts that cannot be gained from more ‘accessible’ texts, which implies a greater comprehension of the existing totality. More critical views of Jameson’s work point to a lack of political engagement, or suggest that his totalising approach excludes existing politics. For example, Eagleton explains that ‘what appears wrong with the world’, for Jameson, ‘is not so much this or that phenomenon but the fact that we cannot see all these phe­ nomena together and see them whole’ (Eagleton, 1986, p.76). As such, totalising becomes a hermeneutics which explains the world but cannot try to change it. Jameson does emphasise the unity of theory and practice, in the sense that ‘dis­ covering the truth and elaborating it is inseparable from action’ (Jameson, 2009, p.322). Yet, for Eagleton, it is not enough to achieve such unity that Jameson merely discovers and elaborates aspects of the social reality. Similarly, Homer accuses Jameson of an all-or-nothing logic in regard to mapping the totality as, even though we must transcend the logic of fragmented micro-politics, it is debilitating ‘to be faced with the task of conceiving of a completely new form of global politics’ (Homer, 1998, p.186). This criticism effectively aligns cognitive mapping with Marcuse’s demand to withdraw politically to prepare for social conditions more conducive to change, or disconnect from political practices until the theoretical task is complete. Said questions whether there is a need to dis­ tinguish between everyday politics and global theory at all, and criticises Jame­ son for paying little attention to the former, or how the two connect, instead focusing on ‘a strong hermeneutic globalism which will have the effect of sub­ suming the local in the synchronic’ (Said, 1983, p.147). In all these examples, envisaging the totality overrides the influence of specific parts within it, and the need to map postpones consideration of political action. From our perspective, there are important points to consider on both sides of these arguments. First, Jameson’s work demonstrates the kind of alternative and unifying thinking necessary for political opposition. The lack of resolution in his writing maintains dialectical tension in contrasts, such as that between synchronic and diachronic, and even within postmodernism. Even though, at the level of content, Jameson emphasises the dominating logic over its particulars, his style denotes the lack of completeness and closure. Furthermore, Jameson’s far-reaching analysis of cultural commodification is essential to any radical pol­ itics in late capitalism. That is, it has become increasingly necessary to approach politics via culture, because fields such as politics and economics are dominated by one-dimensional considerations of existing relations, to reintroduce more transcendent forms of thought. Ultimately, although social problems are poli­ tical or economic in some deeper sense, any resistance must find a way to exceed cultural incorporation, and Jameson’s work represents a commitment to such issues, with a historicising method that avoids final interpretations. Conversely, there is validity in criticisms of Jameson’s approach regarding the need to fully understand the totality, or know exactly where we stand within a global system, before political resistance can be effective. His idea of unifying theory and practice appears to involve concentrating fully on theory in the hope that some new form of practice develops from it, because existing

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practices are understood as commodified, fragmented images. But, as Osborne argues, ‘if we take seriously the reference to social classes […] then this retreat becomes unnecessary, and not only “negative” theory but some kind of more “positive” form of dialectical theorizing should be possible’ (Osborne, 1992, p.191). For us, the issue with Jameson here is not that he sees a need to fully theorise the totality prior to political action, because he recognises the inevi­ table failure of cognitive mapping to ever completely envisage a system, and aims rather at reinvigorating dialectical thinking through the exercise itself. However, even the attempt to map can develop in conversation with living ideological positions from the start, even if their politics is not already trans­ cendent (Goldstein, 1989, p.257). In that sense, mapping is not a theoretical exercise that can inspire a form of practice; it is a practical involvement with fragmented groups to understand the uneven and partially antagonistic rela­ tionships between the whole and its parts. The dialectical tensions in Jameson’s work reflect the conflict he identifies in his theory of Utopia, between radical ideals and recognised politics. That is, a strong, focused contribution to cultural and aesthetic theory inevitably loses some connection to specific social problems. Or, a challenging writing style that skilfully represents the complexity of the system, and points to dialectical potentials, may not connect with the majority of political actors, or even aca­ demics (Homer, 1998, p.184). In this respect, focusing on aesthetics and commodification may be a particularly postmodern choice in itself, which reflects an emphasis on culture within society over the politics of continuing struggles (even though Jameson’s point is to re-politicise the whole). As Eagleton puts it, ‘the question of appropriation has to do with politics, not with culture; it is a question of who is winning at any particular time’ (Eagleton, 1990, p.372). According to this idea, art and culture are not fields which gain or lose power to create political change, so much as reflections of political dominance and resistance which indicate possible directions for political change. As such, it becomes pertinent to consider ideology through the dynamics of conformity and opposition in existing positions. In analysing ideology mainly in regards to a cultural logic, the relationship between aesthetics and politics in Jameson’s work remains too focused on the former, and tends to reiterate the inescapable dominance of the postmodern situation, rather than using its cultural perspec­ tive to envisage and develop a political movement in the present.

Movements and classes Despite this tendency for Jameson’s work to suggest an absence of meaningful political activity in late capitalism, he does at times consider the potential of existing oppositional forces. At these points, although contemporary social movements do not represent class struggle, they are more than simply media codes. There then remains the question of how these movements might expand and connect into universal opposition to the capitalist mode of production, and Jameson highlights various difficulties in this respect. For us, these are valid

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observations that must be considered in imagining any demand for social change, but they also demonstrate a potential common ground, because dis­ parity, deprivation and marginalisation are still part of everyday existence. As long as these material realities are visible, the ways various groups and indivi­ duals justify or accept them may be challenged by historicising and utopian narratives. From our perspective, we can see in this aspect of Jameson’s theory the beginnings of a mediation between existing assumptions and utopian possibilities. For Jameson, ‘new social movements’ and single-issue identity politics are indicative of discourse based on subject positions and pluralism, in which antagonisms become questions of tolerance. As such, these movements do not replace class struggle, but are expressions of capitalist differentiation that signify the repression of class struggle by postmodern logic. However, Jameson claims, these movements exceed the prescribed values of consumerism, and are therefore politically meaningful even though they fall short of a real antithesis. They represent political activity that results from and retrospectively confirms objec­ tive circumstances, but also an individual choice to act in the face of historical Necessity. Here, Jameson recognises ‘the simultaneous possibility of active poli­ tical commitment along with disabused systemic realism and contemplation, and not some sterile choice between those two things’ (Jameson, 1991, p.330). There is a conscious decision-making process to resist the social order, which implies openness to change, even if it is formulated within dominant logic. The task for a class-based politics is to connect the desire for change within such movements through utopian ideas, which, as Jameson shows, faces major difficulties. To begin with, a combination of strategies is required that adapts to the realities of the present while holding the structure of capital in mind (Jame­ son, 2007, p.19), but no specific group can represent a revolutionary subject, and uniting around common interests with temporary overlaps does not confront systemic contradictions. For Jameson, such movements must somehow make the economic central to their aims, to enable a politics that can resist a ‘postmodern nominalism which shears away such apparent abstractions as the economic system and the social totality themselves’ (Jameson, 1991, p.330). Yet he does not seek a purely economic focus. If an economic demand is crucial because political and democratic programmes can be incorporated back into the capi­ talist state, he explains that it ‘must always be in some sense a figure for a more total revolutionary transformation, unless it is to fall back into economism’ (Jameson, 2008c, p.384). Different political or cultural antagonisms can be compatible with economic critique, and it is not a question of one taking priority over the other, but of the aims of cultural change being sufficiently radical to include liberation from economic exploitation (Jameson, 1983, pp.85–86). So, for example, in international resistance against US imperialism, Jameson explains that a nationalistic focus is insufficient to oppose the universal of capitalism, and the result is often a kind of traditionalist (fundamentalist) pro­ tectionism that lacks answers to the complexities of global capitalist exploita­ tion. Even so, Jameson claims, ‘pre-existing forms of social cohesion […] are

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necessarily the indispensable precondition for any effective and long-lasting political struggle’, if they can form a utopian view of a ‘collective life to come’ (Jameson, 2000a, p.66). The issue remains, however, that group politics appear to have fundamental incompatibilities with an economic focus. Jameson explains that social move­ ments are more prone to de-historicising representation than class-based strug­ gles, as even the more marginalised are part of the plurality of group identities and cannot fulfil a ‘structural role’ (Jameson, 1991, p.348). As a historical example, he describes how the League of Black Revolutionary Workers in Detroit in the 1960s, after a number of city-wide political successes, had repre­ sentation problems when the movement tried to expand its cause. According to Jameson, they found it difficult to explain the local issue in a way that resonated with other particular situations, and, in the process of networking, the leaders became media figures, which caused the original base to crumble. The use of commodified space as a communication channel robbed the message of its poli­ tical content, and the movement’s legacy was to reveal ‘some ultimate dialectical barrier or invisible limit’ of the system in relief against it (Jameson, 1991, p.415). Conversely, while concepts of class aid structural understanding, they lack immediate appeal, as they define individuals according to abstractions such as production processes. It is easier to identify with group issues that are more locally relevant, and predicated on visible institutions. Jameson concludes here that the limits of political practice beyond local causes in postmodernism seem to be these moments of rendering the system visible as a force that blocks greater collective formations. Jameson also considers whether revolutionary demands to think, recognise exploitation and accommodate myriad political desires can remain relevant when they seem so dramatically opposed to the joys of consumerism, and thus whether it is possible and necessary to combine ideas of revolution and plea­ sure. For example, he says, a notion such as sexual liberation is problematic, especially regarding ‘working-class’ attitudes to gender and sexuality, or ‘the programmed habits of subalternity, obedience, and the like, which cultural revolution seeks to dissolve’ (Jameson, 2008c, p.377). The sexual revolutionary may appear as a patronising middle-class outsider, or, a male defence of sexual liberation, in contrast to a female view of feminist group struggle, may even facilitate sexual exploitation. Furthermore, if revolution is presented as realis­ ing a deeper libidinal pleasure, it may appear frivolous, or insufficiently poli­ tical. Yet, Jameson states, integration between pleasure and radical change is not unfeasible, if it can maintain ‘a dual focus, in which the local issue is meaningful and desirable in and of itself ’, and ‘taken as the figure for Utopia in general’ (Jameson, 2008c, p.384). One question to ask here is whether the postmodern logic Jameson originally defined in the 1980s remains as dominant today, and whether the compatibility issues between social movements and revolutionary goals remain as pronounced. Recently, Jameson has noted how even Utopia ‘has become the rallying cry for left and progressive forces’, albeit only among a young generation without

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established political allegiances, and not as an organised, unified alternative so much as ‘a general consensus on the failure of capitalism’ (Jameson, 2016). Elsewhere, Jameson makes specific political recommendations, such as to defend the welfare state against market rhetoric, while also naming the system and its alternative (Jameson, 2009, p.382). He also explains how current left-leaning governments offer potentials, despite feelings of powerlessness and the failures of many oppositional movements, in that ‘Left electoral victories’ are ‘signals for the gradual unfolding of democratic demands’, which could make ‘increasingly radical claims on a sympathetic government’ (Jameson, 2009, p.391). In these cases, there is an implied potential to communicate with active agents who are psychologically capable of a negative critique of the system, which appears to override questions of how politics today is possible. At the same time, Jameson’s utopian method is meant to contribute to a pro­ cess of ‘cultural revolution’, or a gradual shifting of political imagination, by challenging late capitalist notions of efficiency, progress and fear of utopian ideals (Jameson, 2016). In this sense, there still seems to be a more basic aim of showing that such thought is possible at all. But putting it in terms of this cul­ tural revolution implies a direct critique of the ‘background’ neoliberal ideology, as opposed to the oblique potentials implied in artistic form. What remains for us is to emphasise how this approach may (and must) develop in communication not only with youth movements and sympathetic parties, but with a wider range of ideological positions and rationalisations. Utopian ideas must converse with the particular contradictions of these positions, as well as the universal antag­ onisms of the background. In our view of ideology, this conversation appears viable because of the excesses of consciousness over depthless media representa­ tion in general, with conscious narrative elements that may gradually connect with radical ideas. In his early work, Jameson tells us that the ‘visibility and continuity of the class model, from the daily experience in the home and on the street all the way up to total mobilization itself, […] is no longer available today’ (Jameson, 1971, p.xvii). If that were ever fully the case, today it seems less so, and while it is undeniable that globalised class relations make it difficult to envisage or organise class politics, the situation is not invisible so much as rationalised, whether through representations of helpless victims, cynical dismissal of change or the hidden intolerance of pluralism. As we have seen with Marcuse, a class politics can no longer look towards a single class that manifests economic contradictions. It entails a process in which systemic antagonisms are better understood by individuals and groups across social and national boundaries. The important point in terms of produ­ cing radical alternatives is that the developing movement focuses on the way social disparity is intrinsic to contradictions in capitalism, but can be overcome if the mode of production is transformed. Jameson’s theories of History and Utopia are significant parts of such goals, in the sense that they can define empowerment and freedom in ways that are both locally and generally mean­ ingful, by mediating between various political dynamics and notions of class. However, it is crucial to reiterate that such methods may have an impact within

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the current cultural logic, not only in some unforeseeable alternative future. In this respect, Jameson’s concept of Utopia shows a way forward, and resembles Marcuse’s step by step approach in that it does not seem to ‘rest on the debili­ tating prospect of representing an unrepresentable totality, but rather on the articulation of a formal tension between local difference and global totality’ (Homer, 1998, p.172). For us, this effort describes a struggle among ‘living’ ideological positions, which operate with something at stake.

Note 1 Jameson has since pointed to a revitalisation of class difference. He states that viewing globalised capitalism as either ‘an impersonal system’ or as ‘the combined wills and intentions of an elite’ is a matter of ‘choices based on a narrative strategy’ (Jameson, 2009, p.609).

Bibliography Anderson, P., (1998) The Origins of Postmodernity (London: Verso) Best, S., and D. Kellner, (2001) The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium (London: Routledge) Burnham, C., (1995) The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) Callinicos, A., (1989) Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique (Cambridge: Polity Press) Eagleton, T., (1986) Against the Grain: Essays 1975–1985 (London: Verso) Eagleton, T., (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Malden, MA: Blackwell) Goldstein, P., (1989) ‘The Politics of Fredric Jameson’s Literary Theory: A Critique’, Postmodernism/Jameson/Critique, ed. by D. Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press), 249–267 Gregory, C. A., (2004) ‘Stranded Economies’, Fredric Jameson: A Critical Reader, ed. by S. Homer and D. Kellner (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), 77–93 Helmling, S., (2001) The Success and Failure of Fredric Jameson: Writing, the Sublime, and the Dialectic of Critique (Albany, NY: SUNY Press) Homer, S., (1998) Fredric Jameson: Marxism, Hermeneutics, Postmodernism (Cam­ bridge: Polity Press) Hutcheon, L., (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London: Routledge) Hutcheon, L., (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge) Irr, C. and I. Buchanan, (2006) ‘Introduction’, On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 1–11 Jameson, F., (1971) Marxism and Form: Twentieth Century Dialectical Theories of Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) Jameson, F., (1983) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Routledge) Jameson, F., (1986) ‘Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism’, Social Text, 15, 65–88 Jameson, F., (1991) Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso)

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Jameson, F., (1992a) Signatures of the Visible (New York, NY: Routledge) Jameson, F., (1992b) The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press) Jameson, F., (1994) The Seeds of Time: The Wellek Library Lectures at the University of California, Irvine (New York, NY: Columbia University Press) Jameson, F., (1998c) ‘Transformations of the Image in Postmodernity’, The Cultural

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Jameson, F., (2000a) ‘Globalization and Political Strategy’, New Left Review, 4, 49–68

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K. Weeks (Oxford: Blackwell), 277–287 Jameson, F., (2003) ‘The End of Temporality’, Critical Inquiry, 29, 695–718 Jameson, F., (2004) ‘Symptoms of Theory or Symptoms for Theory?’, Critical Inquiry, 30, 403–408 Jameson, F., (2005) Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2007) Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism, ed. by I. Buchanan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) Jameson, F., (2008a) ‘The Ideology of the Text’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 20–76 Jameson, F., (2008b) ‘Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 77–124 Jameson, F., (2008c) ‘Pleasure: A Political Issue’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 372–385 Jameson, F., (2008d) ‘On “Cultural Studies”’, The Ideologies of Theory (London: Verso), 598–635 Jameson, F., (2009) Valences of the Dialectic (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2010) ‘A New Reading of Capital’, Mediations, 25, 5–14 Jameson, F., (2011) Representing Capital: A Commentary on Volume One (London: Verso) Jameson, F., (2016) ‘An American Utopia’, An American Utopia: Dual Power and the Universal Army [ebook], ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso) Lesjak, C., (2006) ‘History, Narrative, and Realism: Jameson’s Search for a Method’, On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 27–50 Massey, D., (1992) ‘Politics and Space/Time’, New Left Review, I/196, 65–84 Nicholls, P., (1991) ‘Divergences: Modernism, Postmodernism, Jameson and Lyotard’, Critical Quarterly, 33, 1–18 Osborne, P., (1992) ‘A Marxism for the Postmodern? Jameson’s Adorno’, New German Critique, 56, 171–192 Said, E., (1983) ‘Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies and Community’, The Antiaesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. by H. Foster (Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press), 135–159 Shumway, D., (1989) ‘Jameson/Hermeneutics/Postmodernism’, Postmodernism/Jame­ son/Critique, ed. by D. Kellner (Washington, DC: Maisonneuve Press), 172–202 Spivak, G. C., (1999) A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) Wegner, P. E., (2006) ‘Periodizing Jameson, or, Notes toward a Cultural Logic of Globalization’, On Jameson: From Postmodernism to Globalization, ed. by C. Irr and I. Buchanan (Albany, NY: SUNY Press), 241–279

6

Slavoj Žižek Disavowing the Real

This chapter explores how Žižek structures ideology through Lacanian cate­ gories of the subject, and the implications of that approach to defining ideolo­ gical positions. All of Žižek’s work can be seen as part of a single project, with subjectivity and ideology at the centre, but the scope here is kept narrow, partly due to space constrictions and partly in an attempt to represent an extra­ ordinarily complex and evolving body of work through a handful of connected strands. Given this focus, and chronological overlap with the core of Jameson’s theories discussed in the previous chapters, it mainly explores Žižek’s major works from 1989 through the 1990s. As such, it does not consider certain aspects of his theory, such as his treatment of Christianity or his more recent studies of ‘dialectical materialism’, in the name of a concentrated argument. As with Marcuse and Jameson, Žižek’s theory effectively splits ideology between affirmative and oppositional positions, centred on class struggle. However, more than the other theorists, it posits a dialectical potential internal to the subject that may recognise and transcend ideological attachment. While this is relevant to our model, our argument is that the psychological structure Žižek theorises for repressing this potential, based predominantly on uncon­ scious fantasy and enjoyment, leaves little room for conscious rationalisation and political ideas in questions of radical change. It does not appear that rationalisation can be affected by contradictions in knowledge and experience that in turn influence the core attachment. Instead, Žižek focuses on negation, or subjects facing the pure contingency and lack in their positions. We accept that radically progressive change requires self-reflexive recognition of radical contingency, but stress that this realisation can only come through challenges to conscious beliefs, or negation that presupposes certain alternatives. The first part of the chapter focuses on some key Lacanian terms that Žižek uses to define ideology and subjectivity. It explores how the categories of Ima­ ginary, Symbolic and Real provide tools to define a subject that is constituted and interpellated through language, in a way that is necessarily incomplete, requiring an imaginary fantasy to cover for the ‘irrational’ internalisation of a contingent social order. This terminology enables us to split symbolic attach­ ment according to our concepts of ideological ‘affirmation’ and ‘opposition’ around the notion of the (symbolic) Real as ideological background. However,

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in the subject’s relationship to ideology that Žižek formulates through concepts of drive, desire, fantasy and superego, the dialectical potential within the sub­ ject is effectively blocked by a primary circuit of obedience and enjoyment. In this way, for Žižek, ideological change is a matter of ‘traversing the fantasy’, or the subject’s negative act of recognition that there is no absolute reason for its symbolic attachment. We suggest that contradictory experience and knowledge are a crucial means of enacting this traversal, by exposing the arbitrary nature of the fantasy, and Žižek does not sufficiently emphasise the inevitable role of an oppositional politics in guiding the process of negation. The second part of the chapter explores Žižek’s theorisation of ideology specifically, and the relationship between unconscious attachment, activity and conscious belief that it entails. According to Žižek, the central feature of ideology (today) is that it is ‘fetishistic’, or reveals its attachment through beha­ viour, rather than conscious ideas that ‘displace’ the attachment. He contrasts this form against ‘symptomal’ ideologies, which can be exposed to ideology critique based on contradictory ideas, but are no longer predominant in postmodern societies. Questioning how people rationalise their actions is thus ineffective because they already know that their behaviour is contradictory, but do it anyway. Here, we insist that the ways in which discrepancies themselves are justified still involves rationalisation and beliefs that can be analysed and challenged sympto­ mally, including cynical fetishism. While we agree with Žižek that beliefs are not false in some absolute sense, the fetish does not simply displace conscious belief, as it justifies displacement through other beliefs. With this idea, it is possible to examine various ideologies described by Žižek, both in relation to the positions we have outlined in previous chapters, and the particular rationalisations they employ. Throughout, our aim is to stress the role of an oppositional ideology in facil­ itating negation, and that affirmative ideologies are susceptible to symptomal challenges to varying degrees even with their fetishistic attachments. In doing so, we follow many of Žižek’s Lacanian categories, in the way they define the subject around an exclusion that tries and fails to find fulfilment. We also concur with Žižek’s use of the Real in social theory as an untranscendable negative limit around which antagonism can be defined (without turning the Real into an absolute a priori presence). Nevertheless, there are issues around the composition of subjectivity in Žižek’s theory, especially the concept of a pre-subjectivised subject or the positing of a zero level subjectivity prior to symbolic interpella­ tion. This idea implies a process of negation that leads to a subject recognising the radical contingency of their attachment, but it is not clear how this process transfers from a process of clinical psychoanalysis to ideological change. That is, the negation of ideological attachment presupposes alternative political ideals, which first develop through conscious knowledge and experience.

Symbolic, Real and Imaginary Žižek’s conception of ideology through Lacanian psychoanalysis provides a structure for our model, in that the core triad – Imaginary, Symbolic and Real –

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suggests a dialectical relationship within subjectivity. Notions such as repressed erotic instinct (Marcuse) or utopian impulse (Jameson) become, in these terms, an indeterminable ‘lack’ in the subject, or the unavoidable excess of language-based consciousness. The constitutive gap formed by this Real remainder of any parti­ cular Symbolic order implies that ideology is always present and contingent, because symbolic representation must repress the potential of alternatives and its own ultimate arbitrariness. Furthermore, we take Žižek’s concept of an Imagin­ ary fantasy that structures a subject’s desire as a kind of bridge between the basic ‘irrational’ attachment to the Symbolic (affirmation or rejection of the back­ ground) and conscious rationalisation. We also argue that Žižek’s notion of capitalism as ‘symbolic Real’ (as with History in Jameson’s theory) effectively represents the split between affirmative and oppositional ideologies. To begin with, the Symbolic is the horizon of representation, within which consciousness functions, and therefore forms the boundaries of experienced reality. It is the structure which enables explanation, or the ‘Other Scene external to the thought whereby the form of the thought is already articulated in advance’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.13), and the stability of our reality relies on the stability of meaning it provides. The Real is the remainder of symbolisation – not a reality beyond the Symbolic, but the unnameable negative excess of representation itself, which emerges as an effect of language. Whatever mean­ ing the Symbolic offers, the Real points to its contingency, through contra­ dictions in the symbolic reality. There is only symbolic reality and the negative gap between symbolic representation and its object, so ideology is not an escape from reality into mystification, but the creation of reality to escape absence of meaning. The Symbolic needs ideology to hide its lack (of totality), or to suture the symbolic field with a ‘Master-Signifier’ that acts as a guarantor of meaning. This Master-Signifier is ultimately tautological (follow God’s word because it is God’s word), and an ideological position is structured around it, to keep the subject from confronting its emptiness. This framework also entails imaginary identification, or the subjects’ ideal image of itself (ideal ego), and symbolic identification, in which the subject views itself from the perspective of an (imagined) authority figure (ego ideal). Here, symbolic identification overdetermines imaginary identification, so the ideal ego falls under the gaze of the Symbolic, and is overdetermined by the ego ideal. Žižek explains that ‘the subject must identify himself with the imaginary other’, that is, see his identity as that of an external perception, and this ‘imaginary self-experi­ ence is for the subject the way to misrecognize his radical dependence on […] the symbolic order as his decentred cause’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.116). The base, irrational attachment to a Master-Signifier then gains an ideological structure through an imaginary ‘fantasy’ that fills in the desire of the Other, so the subject ‘is loaded with a symbolic mandate’, and ‘given a place in the intersubjective network of symbolic relations’ (Žižek, 2008a, pp.125–126). The subject relates to the Symbolic through certain unexamined ideas and assumptions that constitute identity. From these simplified starting points, ideology can be seen as both necessary and incomplete, because there is no objective reality, and representation is

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always unequal to its object. Also, attachment to the Symbolic, supported by the Master-Signifier and the fantasy, constitute the basic coordinates through which the subject affirms or opposes the dominant ideological background. The fantasy is not conscious rationalisation (whose role in Žižek’s schema is explored later in the chapter), but it does structure how subjects relate to con­ scious experience. The Real, meanwhile, signifies an instability in all ideology, or a limit to the Symbolic (its own contingency) that the fantasy must repress. One question which arises here is that of the status of the Symbolic in regard to ‘affirmative’ and ‘oppositional’ symbolic attachments. Does the Symbolic represent the complete range of significations that exist in the social order, including those that reject it, making the Real literally the unthinkable negative? Or is the Symbolic more a reflection of hegemony, so that revolu­ tionary ideas and other taboos are part of the Real that haunts it? First, Žižek recognises certain ‘empty’ or shared Master-Signifiers which act as central points in the (affirmative) ideological field. These signifiers suture the Sym­ bolic at a higher level than individual ego ideals, and make ideological struggle a matter of attempting to ‘fill’ these Master-Signifiers with specific meanings (Žižek, 2008c, p.119). For example, the Master-Signifier ‘democ­ racy’ is central to many ideologies in late capitalist societies, but each may accord it different content, as long as they never actually contest its legiti­ macy. Contra a point made by Sharpe and Boucher, it is not that Žižek fails to distinguish between the ego ideal and the overall symbolic order, or that his ‘call for a renewal of the Symbolic Order must necessarily lead to the call for a new Ego Ideal, and for this Ego Ideal to be universally shared’ (Sharpe and Boucher, 2010, p.163). Rather, Žižek distinguishes between the Symbolic as horizon of common language, and ego ideals as positions within it. He explains that ‘the ego ideal is symbolic, the point of my symbolic identifica­ tion, the point in the big Other from which I observe (and judge) myself ’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.89). It is not that the ego ideal is the symbolic order; it is of the symbolic order, the point of identification within it. If this distinction implies various ‘affirmative’ ideologies, we can also ask whether ‘oppositional’ ideologies that resist the authority of the empty Master-Signifier remain within the Symbolic. For example, an ideology may reject ‘democracy’ outright, showing that this Master-Signifier is ‘only’ a dominant idea and that non-democracy remains thinkable. Yet as an ideology with particular content it is not the Real, and here what Žižek calls the ‘symbolic Real’ becomes significant. Žižek pairs all the terms in the Lacanian trinity in their different permutations to create six different positions (real Real, symbolic Real, imaginary Real, symbolic Symbolic, imaginary Sym­ bolic and imaginary Imaginary). In this schema, both imaginary Real and symbolic Real describe points at which subjects confront the limits of sym­ bolisation, as opposed to the real Real of absolute negativity. The imaginary Real is the thing that annoys us in the Other that we can never identify, while the symbolic Real is language ‘that we cannot integrate […] into our horizon of meaning’ (Žižek and Daly, 2004, p.68). Žižek is here referring to scientific

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formulae in quantum physics that function without being comprehensible, but it might be any discourse that exceeds and challenges the boundaries of meaning defined by the dominant background ideology. Crucially, another example Žižek provides of the symbolic Real is capitalism, which, he explains, ‘remains the same in all possible symbolization’, and exists beyond the mul­ titude of cultures as the ‘neutral meaningless underlying structure’ (Žižek and Daly, 2004, pp.150–151). This point constitutes the limits of the existing Symbolic around capitalism, and defines the split between affirmative and oppositional ideologies. This association between capitalism and the Real effectively describes the background ideology in our model, although the exact relationship requires clarification (especially since Žižek does not always specify that capitalism is the symbolic Real, rather than simply the Real). First, it may seem that calling capitalism the Real implies it cannot be theorised. Sharpe asks how Žižek can make this equivalence in the name of a ‘critique of capitalism’, when, ‘logically, it can only mean the collapse into one-dimensionality’ (Sharpe, 2004, p.202), where capitalism cannot be outmanoeuvred. The opposite issue is that this defi­ nition lowers the Real to the level of the particular. Butler argues that either the Real is some ahistorical principle that misses specific ‘failures and discontinuities produced by social relations […] whose exclusions are necessary for the stabili­ zation of the signifier’ (Butler, 1993, p.167), or it is merely those specific needs for immanent critique, which ‘are defined in relation to the discourse itself’, not ‘in every instance from an ahistorical “bar”’ (Butler, 2000c, p.277), so there is no need for a general term. In the first case, although Žižek sees that capitalism is in a sense universal, because it transcends any particular civilisation, it is not ‘the entire empirical reality of capitalism’ that is real, but ‘the underlying matrix of its functioning’ (Žižek, 2005, p.241). Capitalism goes beyond any single culture or language, and cannot be fully symbolised, but cuts across cultures, rather than structuring everything in them, so non-capitalist symbolisations remain possible. In the second case, capitalism is an example of the impossibility of a symbolic order without a lack, for Žižek, but that impossibility is inferred from particular antagonisms, so does not precede them. As he states, ‘the political struggle for hegemony […], and the “non-historical” bar or impossibility are thus strictly correlative’ (Žižek, 2000a, p.111). Every particular struggle is sustained by the impossibility of non-antagonistic totality, and capitalism describes an especially expansive instance of such struggle. In this way, capitalism is neither untouchable, nor an embodiment of an eter­ nal principle. However, it is still not clear why we should try to resolve capitalist antagonisms, if all societies are inevitably antagonistic. Thus, Butler wonders whether anything really new can come from ‘analysis of the social field that remains restricted to inversions, aporias and reversals that work regardless of time and place’, and whether ‘these reversals produce something other than their own structurally identical repetitions’ (Butler, 2000a, p.29). Meanwhile, Sharpe criticises Žižek for focusing on ‘antinomy’ as such, instead of particular ‘con­ tradictions’ (Sharpe, 2005, p.165), avoiding empirical political analysis and

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normative values that tell us ‘whether our future acts will bring about a “better” or “worse” Other’ (Sharpe, 2004, p.216). But, for Žižek, oppositional politics revolves around the needs of subjects excluded from society. As such, empirical examples are the way in which ‘antinomy’ is recognised and opposed, and Žižek does not suggest that the inevitable lack in representation makes it irrelevant which symbolic order is dominant. The subjects who embody contradiction make change necessary, and although there is a sense of structural repetition, the particulars of exclusion do not render all forms equal. The concept of the symbolic Real and its association with capitalism is therefore a useful means of distinguishing between affirmative and radically oppositional ideology. The association is an ideological construct, because, even if market fluctuations really affect people’s lives, to define them as an ‘underlying matrix’ is to symbolise them, and subjectively project a narrative. As in Jameson’s concept of History, it is only an alternative to other forms of organising logic, such as those that treat culture and economics as distinct entities. But consequently, as with Jameson, this has important political rami­ fications, because the symbolic Real allows us not only to understand the Symbolic as contingent, but also explore what this contingency excludes. Laclau makes the point that capitalism cannot be the Real, since ‘capitalism as such is dislocated by the Real, and it is open to contingent hegemonic retota­ lizations’ (Laclau, 2000, p.291). But, Žižek is effectively ‘re-totalising’ capital­ ism as the (symbolic) Real, so as to represent the hidden split in the Symbolic that causes social exclusion. Only by identifying capitalism’s background role can it become a point of contention within the Symbolic, to represent socially excluded subjects.

Subjectivity The constitutive incompleteness and contingency of the Symbolic implies an inherent potential within subjectivity to transcend its own ideological bound­ aries. In our terms, it seems that the subject is not simply fixed into its ideo­ logical position, but must continually maintain it against contesting views and experiences. From Žižek’s Lacanian theory, however, it is difficult to imagine the conditions of altering an existing ideological circuit. Specifically, despite an internal subjective drive to exceed symbolic boundaries, desire, fantasy and superego function to maintain subjective identity. Moreover, as Žižek presents it, the subject’s irrational ‘enjoyment’ of its basic symbolic attachment does not rely on any specific content in the fantasy, or therefore conscious ratio­ nalisation, so ideological change does not seem plausible as an effect of con­ tradictory knowledge and experience. For us, it is thus important to formulate a mutual dependency and influence between base attachment, fantasy and rationalisation, to establish grounds for change through consciousness. The conscious subject is necessarily incomplete due to its attachment to a particular symbolic order, and must hide its fundamental contingency. Sub­ jectivity maintains this illusion through what Žižek describes as ‘the square of

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desire, fantasy, lack in the Other and drive pulsating around some unbearable surplus-enjoyment’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.139). In these terms, drive is not biologi­ cal instinct, but a raw sense of something missing that persists within sym­ bolic attachment. As Žižek puts it, ‘drive is quite literally the very “drive” to break the All of continuity in which we are embedded, to introduce a radical imbalance into it’ (Žižek, 2008g). To embrace this negative excess would mean exiting the symbolic order, so within subjective identity drive is sub­ limated into desire through the fantasy. In this process, ‘lack’ is represented as the apparent ‘loss’ of some object (objet a), which is thus paradoxically ‘the object causing our desire and at the same time […] posed retroactively by this desire’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.69). Desire appears to the subject as always-already present, but comes from subjective sublimation of its inner lack. Drive is made to focus on a lost ‘Thing’ that can never be recovered, and in the repe­ tition of circling that object is partially satisfied, or its ‘aim is realized in its very repeated failure to realize its goal’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.93). In this schema, the fantasy bestows fetishistic value on objet a, and protects it by ensuring it is never attained or fulfilled. It also projects desire as the desire of some Other, to ground it in an external, universal source. From our per­ spective, ideological change would then constitute locating the limits of the subject’s ability to rationalise the fantasy, or represent its position to itself with any kind of coherence. However, the fantasy contains its own defence mechanisms, in that it posits various external influences to explain the subject’s inability to reach its desired goal. As Žižek puts it, the ‘fantasy is a means for an ideology to take its own failure into account in advance’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.142). For example, he says, in fascism the Jews are held responsible for social antagonisms, and enable the fantasy to displace the intrinsic impossibility of its utopian vision. Moreover, the content of the fantasy appears secondary to the way the symbolic attachment is ultimately held firm by the partial jouissance or enjoyment of simply being within its circuit. In this way, symbolic law is pri­ marily obeyed not through any justification based on the Other’s desire, but for its own sake. It does not then seem that the fantasy has to be clearly rationa­ lised; it is merely a prism of deflection from the contingency of desire. In fact, Žižek states, the ‘stain’ of irrationality, or surplus over the symbolic identification, ‘far from hindering the full submission of the subject to the ideo­ logical command, is the very condition of it’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.43). As drive fulfils its aim, and the subject conforms to its attachment, the ‘superego’ emerges as ‘an unethical moral Law […] in which an obscene enjoyment sticks to obedi­ ence to the moral norms’ (Žižek, 1994a, p.67). This superego commands sub­ jects to obey purely for the enjoyment, rather than any fantasy. Žižek explains how Nazi officers in the Holocaust had an ‘imaginary screen of satisfactions, myths, and so on’ that allowed them to maintain a ‘human’ distance from their actions, or claim they were merely doing a job. But, because this job permitted sadism, in that duty itself involved inflicting suffering, the participants would also have experienced ‘the real of the perverse (sadistic) jouissance in what they were doing’ (Žižek, 2008c, p.69).1 The subject can deny responsibility for

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sadistic behaviour, because it is duty or ‘necessity’, but enacts a ‘surplus obe­ dience’ or going beyond what is asked, due to enjoyment. Indeed, the superego inflicts guilt on the subject because of their symbolic attachment. For Žižek, ‘the true superego injunction’ is a general prohibitive ‘You shall not!’, without particular content, which explains that, ‘you yourself should know or guess what you should not do, so that you are put in an impossible position of always and a priori being under suspicion of violating some (unknown) prohibition’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.lxv). Guilt comes from subjectivity itself, as the superego marks symbolic consciousness as a ‘loss’ of subjective wholeness (which never really existed), but also enforces the strength of the subject’s libidinal attach­ ment in trying (and failing) to regain that loss. This structure of fantasy, enjoyment and superego appears to block any way for the subject to recognise the internal gap within subjectivity itself. The fantasy is highly flexible even when rationalisation becomes difficult and the subject is hooked onto the Symbolic through an irrational enjoyment of interpellation as such, or the drive’s partial satisfaction according to a Master-Signifier. For Žižek, then, when ‘an ideology is really “holding us” […] we do not feel any opposition between it and reality’, even when an apparent contradiction is encountered, so ‘the ideology succeeds in determining the mode of our everyday experience of reality itself’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.49). It seems that the subject can alter its symbolic identity only within the scope of its ‘lost’ object, altering its position to maintain the cycle around it, but unable to go beyond ‘the “irrational” fixation on some symbolic Cause’, to which ‘we stick regardless of the consequences’ (Žižek, 2008c, p.120). There is no room here to imagine potential for dissonance between attachment, fantasy and rationalisation through which conscious experience and knowledge can change how the subject defines its desire. This concept of subjectivity, whether relating to the definition of ideology or questions of agency, disconnects rationalisation from political commitment and erases any mutual influence between belief and attachment. Yet, in our model, as rationalisation struggles in the face of social antagonism and con­ tradictory experience, the fantasy may also have to reconfigure its coordi­ nates, eventually revealing the contingency of the Master-Signifier and the attachment. In other words, if the fantasy emerges as a way of structuring attachment, that structure may subsequently evolve to influence the attach­ ment itself. In particular, if the fetishised agent that supposedly blocks rea­ lisation of the goal (such as the Jews in fascism) can no longer be sustained, the need to cling to that form of libidinal attachment and partial enjoyment may begin to weaken. Here, we can follow Butler’s description of the ‘inter­ relation’ between interpellation and fantasy. As she explains, social norms are ‘incorporated and interpreted features of existence that are sustained by the idealizations furnished by fantasy’ (Butler, 2000b, p.152). If we equate social norms to the conformism of symbolic attachment (the condition for produ­ cing norms), the point is that fantasy has to sustain the attachment, or con­ ditions whether the same norms can still be accepted.

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Traversing the fantasy Žižek’s approach to ideological change focuses on negation, or revealing the illusion of fantasy as such, rather than contradictions within fantasies. In Žižek’s Lacanian terms, subjects must ‘traverse the fantasy’ and recognise that there is no big Other, or external symbolic mandate, to become conscious of the contingency of the Symbolic, and change their attachment to it. For us, while it is necessary for subjects to recognise contingency for radical ideologi­ cal change, the route to this recognition still involves challenging the content of the fantasy through consciousness. Otherwise, traversal suggests either spon­ taneous voluntarism, or subjective disintegration. While Žižek does not ulti­ mately view traversing the fantasy in such terms, his concepts of negation do not always indicate how alternative ideas may function as the catalysts for change. In particular, with ideological change, as opposed to clinical psycho­ logical treatment, traversing the fantasy implies guidance through specific political values. That is, there is no subjective break, but a new ideology (which reflexively recognises its contingency) that develops to overcome the old. Žižek explains, via Lacan, that ‘traversing the fantasy’ is the way the subject recognises that there is no ‘big Other’. The big Other is ‘the subject presumed to know’ how things really are, based on internalised social influences but ultimately posited by the subject to create a sense of an external authority. In analysis, the analysand has to stop positing the big Other’s desire, and accept the lack of any absolute reason for subjectivity. As Žižek says, ‘the “dissolution of transference” takes place when the analysand renounces filling out the void, the lack in the Other’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.132). At this point, there is no guaran­ teed symbolic meaning, and all that remains is the analysand’s realisation that he/she is solely responsible for his/her subject position. This realisation is the ‘absolute knowledge’ of Hegelian dialectics, for Žižek, or recognition that totalisation consistently fails, implying a ‘system’ of failures in which ‘the breakdown of a totalization itself begets another totalization’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.99). Here, absolute knowledge is a subjective understanding that contra­ diction is at the heart of identity, and that the contingency of a symbolic order is only perceivable from the position of another symbolic order. It acknowl­ edges the distortion of perspective as such, meaning that ‘what appears to us as our inability to know the thing indicates a crack in the thing itself, so that our very failure to reach the full truth is the indicator of truth’ (Žižek, 2012, p.17). In terms of how to traverse the fantasy, Žižek states that subjects must first identify with it, or act fully in accordance with its dictates, rather than employing cynical criticism. It is necessary to make the fantasy appear in all its absurdity and incoherence by following it literally, against the unwritten rules (enjoyment) that support it, instead of allowing it to adapt in accordance with the symbolic attachment. For example, he describes a satirical TV show broadcast in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War that, ‘instead of bemoaning the tragic fate of the Bos­ nians, […] daringly mobilised all the clichés about the “stupid Bosnians” which were a commonplace in Yugoslavia’, indicating that ‘true solidarity leads through

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direct confrontation with the obscene racist fantasies […] through the playful identification with them’ (Žižek, 2005, p.235). Elsewhere, he defines identification as a matter of insisting on an option that is formally given, but not really meant to be chosen. So, if two friends are competing over a job promotion and the one who is offered it politely offers to step aside so the other can take it, the other would shatter the social rules by really accepting it (Žižek, 2008f, p.138). Acting in accordance with the letter of the law undermines the subject’s enjoyment of obe­ dience, and reveals its arbitrary nature. A key question here is that of the status of the subject at the point of recognising that the big Other is a subjective supposition. For us, as conscious recognition within language, it can only be meaningful if guaranteed by some Master-Signifier. So, the subject can only think the contingency of the fantasy, and its libidinal attachment, if the authority of the Master-Signifier is already replaced by another. When the subject identifies its (partial) enjoyment of the attachment and the fundamental lack within itself, as opposed to the loss of something, there has to be an alternative ideological position motivating that identification which overdetermines the subject’s response. Yet Žižek maintains notions of traversal as a negative step into the unknown, or suggests a temporal process that first dissolves the Symbolic itself, and subsequently constructs a new symbolic identity. To an extent, this temporal series is merely an analytical tool to show how the Symbolic ‘posits its own presupposition’, or makes itself appear universal after the fact. Žižek considers how subjectivity begins, and theorises that the symbolic subject cannot be accounted for unless there is some prior subject to bring itself into consciousness. Here, he explains that there is no actual state of pre-symbolic subjectivity, but a ‘need for the form of mythical narrative’, which ‘arises when one endeavours to break the circle of the sym­ bolic order and to give an account of its genesis (“origins”)’ (Žižek, 2007a, p.9). However, Žižek also states that drive should be considered as pre-symbolic, in that, ‘the “subject before subjectivization” is a positive force in itself, the infinite force of negativity called by Freud the “death drive”’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.344). This idea alters the meaning of drive and the Real, as it implies ‘an a priori structural emptiness preexisting the sequences of subjectifying identifications’, rather than a gap ‘hollowed out through the increasingly apparent contingency of all opera­ tors of subjectification’ (Johnston, 2008, p.231; see also Butler, 2005, p.96). It also suggests that traversing the fantasy entails revisiting some founding moment of symbolic attachment after consciousness has occurred, where death-drive suspends the existing order, ‘clearing the table, opening up the space for sub­ limation, which can (re)start the work of creation’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.lxxxiii). Here, drive somehow restarts the subjective circuit from within the symbolic order, and ‘wiping the slate clean’ necessarily ‘precedes any positive gesture of enthusiastic identification with a Cause’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.179). In our understanding, the notion of a ‘pure subject’ devoid of ‘all symbolic support’ (Žižek, 2002, p.252) is conceptually problematic. If a subject must empty itself of symbolic support prior to assuming a new symbolic attachment, that detracts from the kinds of political ideas that may enable subjects to grasp

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the lack of the big Other, and influence their response to that idea. This issue becomes apparent where Žižek correlates the Lacanian psychoanalytic process to shifts in political ideology. In psychoanalysis, the analyst assumes an effec­ tive ‘empty’ mediating presence, or a subject presumed to know the answers, for the analysand. As Žižek explains, ‘there is a desire that remains even after we have traversed our fundamental fantasy, a desire not sustained by a fantasy, […] the desire of the analyst’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.358). Similarly, Žižek claims that in politics, change occurs through a transferential relationship, so ‘a leader is necessary to trigger the enthusiasm for a Cause, to bring about the radical change in the subjective position of his followers’ (Žižek, 2005, p.253). For Žižek, a leader or Master does not tell people what to want and do. Rather, he ‘obeys his own desire and leaves it up to others to decide if they want to follow him’ (Žižek, 2014, Introduction). That is, the Master leads by example, show­ ing that other choices are possible. However, political leaders never truly hold the place of knowledge ‘empty’, because they attempt to trigger enthusiasm for a particular cause. They demonstrate freedom and convince people to accept certain alternative ideas. Moreover, analysis is a process of working through a set of personal issues, not inter-subjectively formulated demands. As Bryant says, it seems impossible ‘to get a politics out of the discourse of the analyst’, because it ‘does not aim at collective engagement or the common […] but the precise opposite’ (Bryant, 2008, p. 36). For us, subjectivity is better grasped as an ‘always-already’ paradox. Wells explains Žižek’s position as one in which the ‘baseline’ of subjectivity is a pure void which posits the question, ‘What does the Other want from me?’, leading to symbolic attachment and fantasy as ‘a make-shift answer’ (Wells, 2014, p.50). But how does the subject recognise the Other’s desire as a question from outside the Symbolic? The big Other cannot pre-exist and determine subjective identity, because it is projected by the subject. Yet the subject does not con­ struct a big Other from nothing, but from cultural norms embedded in lan­ guage. In these terms, traversing the (ideological) fantasy means prompting the subject to recognise symbolic contingency as such, which implies a certain ideological shift. Recognising the inexistence of the big Other grants the subject a relatively self-reflexive position from which to question existing power rela­ tions, against the alternative of positing ‘perfect self-identity in some form of otherness’, which ‘will always function as a barrier to our political acts’ (McGowan, 2013, p.35). Often, Žižek implies exactly that, especially when presenting traversing the fantasy as absolute knowledge that recognises its inclusion in the contingent symbolic series. It also seems a necessary conclusion when Žižek formulates a politics of negation through socially excluded sub­ jects, who embody ‘truth’ because their exclusion reveals social antagonisms (Žižek, 2008a, p.217). Here, recognising contingency appears to involve a pre­ formulated ideological position which identifies with the needs of the excluded. However, Žižek generally does not explicitly acknowledge the need for oppo­ sitional ideology to facilitate negation. For instance, where he discusses tra­ versing the fantasy through over-identification, he does not examine the kind

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of consciousness required to make such gestures. In his examples (the Bosnian TV show, the insincere job offer), identifying with the fantasy does not mean actually affirming it, but pretending to take it seriously, to consciously enact its contradictions from a counter-hegemonic position. Moreover, only certain negations of dominant social fantasies reveal sym­ bolic contingency in a way that points towards radical freedom and agency. That is, there may be various ways of reacting to the idea that reality is ideol­ ogy, and not all imply a radical Left position. Kovacevic, for example, defines four different reactions: continued conformist acceptance, cynical manipula­ tion of those who still believe, attempting to realise the big Other, and critical theory (Kovacevic, 2007, p.197). Also, as Glynos says, it is not clear ‘precisely what the difference is between crossing any one of a whole array of social fan­ tasies (in the plural) and crossing the fundamental social fantasy (in the sin­ gular)’, and ‘too easy to abstain from offering any response, even if we accept the necessarily negative gesture that this ethical move entails’ (Glynos, 2001, p.103). In this respect, we maintain that the difference between traversing par­ ticular fantasies and the universal fantasy is located in oppositional ideologies which identify with the constitutively excluded in existing power relations. Conversely, with Žižek’s theory, and his politics (see chapter 7), pure negation often appears to be a prerequisite of change. For this reason, there is some validity in criticisms that he uses ideas such as contingency and absolute knowledge ‘to promote blind Faith at the expense of rational belief or uncon­ ditional Fidelity at the expense of critical theory’ (Resch, 2005, p.101). From our perspective, it is because Žižek connects ideology primarily to enjoyment and fantasy, with rationalisation a mere effect, that he does not consistently affirm the inseparability of negation and particular oppositional beliefs.

Ideology as fetish If, as we claim, the relationship between the conscious and unconscious aspects of ideology is one of mutual influence, we need to consider further how con­ cepts such as belief and rationalisation function within a subjective attachment based in irrational obedience and enjoyment. Žižek’s focus on ideological ‘dis­ placement’ makes ideology primarily a matter of behaviour rather than belief, and disconnects knowledge from obedience by showing how subjects often recognise social antagonisms in theory, but justify behaviour that reproduces them through a ‘fetish’ in practice. Thus, for Žižek, traditional ideology cri­ tique becomes less useful, as it is no longer a matter of revealing contradictory ideas through ‘symptoms’, but of showing how conscious awareness obscures the deeper ideological attachment. However, we stress that, structurally, ‘fetishistic’ and ‘symptomal’ ideology are not markedly different, especially as fetishistic displacement still relies on justificatory reasons that can be inter­ rogated through symptomal critique. As such, rationalisation remains an important support for ideology that must be maintained against oppositional ideas and experiences.

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Displacement, for Žižek, means that ideological statements are less matters of ignorance and error than ways of obscuring obedience to and enjoyment of ideological attachment in behaviour that contrasts with consciously held values. This ideological structure takes the form of ‘I know, but nevertheless’, where knowledge that something is untrue or wrong does not stop the subject from doing it, suggesting a deeper unconscious ‘belief ’ that is denied. Here, illusion is not at the level of awareness, but in social reality itself, in activity that maintains the existing order. Ideology becomes fetish, similar to the func­ tion of money as a commodity in capitalist societies. That is, people know coins and notes do not have value as such, but act as though they do. In Žižek’s terms, people ‘are fetishists in practice, not in theory’, and misrecognise that, in the reality of commodity exchange, ‘they are guided by the fetishistic illusion’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.28). Also, in the process of ideological displacement, subjects project unconscious belief onto an external object, which protects them from its inconsistencies. For example, cynical ideology projects the idea of a subject supposed to believe in and follow official moral norms, so even if reality is corrupt and unjust, there is no point trying to resist it if everyone else accepts it. As Žižek says, ‘in a definite, closed multitude of subjects, each person can play this role for all the others’, with each acting based on their belief that the others believe (Žižek, 2008a, p.211). In effect, cynics do not ‘believe in’ the authority of the Symbolic order but still ‘believe it’, and ‘feel bound by some symbolic commitment’ (Žižek, 2001b, pp.109–110). The first question to ask here is whether all ideology involves displacement, or only a particular (contemporary) form. Žižek distinguishes between ‘symptomal’ ideology, in which ‘the ideological lie which structures our perception of reality is threatened by […] cracks in the fabric of the ideological lie’, and the ‘fetishistic’ mode, in which ‘the embodiment of the Lie […] enables us to sustain the unbear­ able truth’ (Žižek, 2009, p.65). He states that in today’s supposedly ‘post-ideolo­ gical’ era ideology functions ‘more and more’ in its fetishistic mode, implying that fetishism is historically variable. He also defines a semiotic square, in which ‘symptomal’ and ‘fetishistic’ positions are placed in opposition, with cynicism and fundamentalism on the side of fetish, and liberalism and ideologico-criticism being symptomal (Žižek, 2009, p.69). The symptomal cases here must still require a fantasy that covers the irrationality of attachment, but indicate subjects who rationalise their behaviour directly, and believe in what they do. Elsewhere, Žižek explains that ‘displacement is original and constitutive’, since the ‘most fundamental’ beliefs ‘are from the very outset “decentred” beliefs of the Other’, and ‘the phenomenon of the “subject supposed to believe” is thus universal and structurally necessary’ (Žižek, 2008c, p.135). That is, subjects do not believe first and then displace belief; symbolic attachment is already displaced into the desire of the Other. Yet in this sense, displacement does not represent fetish in opposition to symptomal forms, but implicitly applies the same structure to both. For us, it is then possible to take this implication further, with the idea that both forms are structurally similar, so not only does symptomal ideology involve dis­ placement, but fetishist disavowal relies on rationalisations with identifiable

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symptoms. While Žižek’s concept of fetishism is crucial to understanding ideology, in that it shows how different conscious ideas support unconscious obedience indirectly through disavowal, it is still necessary to ask how disavowal itself is con­ sciously reconciled, and what alternative potentials it represses. To consider first how symptomal ideologies are fetishistic, we can return to Žižek’s semiotic square. Here, liberalism is a symptomal ideology that allows for ‘interpretive demystification’, according to which, when confronted with the lack of freedoms in liberal societies, ‘an “honest” liberal democrat will have to admit that the content of his ideological premise belies its form, and thus will radicalize the form (the egalitarian axiom) by way of implementing the content more thoroughly’ (Žižek, 2009, p.68). In short, such liberals should insist on their values, and radically reimagine society to implement them, or else fall into fetishistic cynicism. However, since the fantasy accounts for its failures by deflecting them onto others, this subject may still hold on to a displaced belief in the status quo, for example by insisting that incremental reforms are less risky than radical changes. This constitutes a fetishistic liberalism that is not merely cynical. Also, Žižek defines fetish as something which, ‘far from obfuscating “realistic” knowledge of how things are, […] enables the subject to accept this knowledge without paying the full price for it’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.300). He explains that everyone has fetishes which allow them to tolerate hardship, from spiritual experiences ‘which tell us that our social reality is mere appear­ ance which does not really matter’, to our children ‘for whose good we do all the humiliating things in our jobs’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.298). But even traditional or religious ideological mystification is fetishistic in this sense, because it pro­ vides ways to accept social disparity and injustice. Belief in an afterlife, or belief that aristocrats are inherently superior to peasants, are precisely such fetishistic coping mechanisms. At the same time, we can see in these examples how rationalisation features in the fetish itself. Žižek does mention rationalisation in relation to displacement, as he explains that, when we repress belief into the unconscious, ‘in its place enters some spare moment which is not in contradiction to the first – this is the logic of so-called “rationalization”’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.242). Here, the displace­ ment of ‘I know … but nevertheless …’ is supplemented by justification that Žižek calls ‘lying by way of truth’. In effect, a reasoned statement ‘operates as a lie’ because it ratifies and continues to deny unconscious belief. In politics, for example, disavowal often involves ceding a principle due to a particular emer­ gency, and this ‘infamous “analysis of concrete circumstances” is basically nothing other than a search for rationalization which attempts to justify the violation of a principle’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.243). In this way, we can say that the fetishistic statement ‘I know, but nevertheless …’ also includes a ‘because …’ that justifies the disparity with symptomal rationalising. So, with fetishistic cynicism, the statement ‘I know social relations are unjust, but nevertheless I act in accordance with them’ is completed with ‘because’ clauses such as ‘they are too powerful to resist’, ‘everyone else believes’ or ‘human nature is intrinsically selfish’. The cynic’s position still relies on repressing alternative ideas – that

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altruistic behaviour is also natural, that many people do not believe in official ideology, or that oppositional politics can significantly improve people’s lives. In Žižek’s theory, however, the fetishistic element of cynicism dominates as an archetypal form of postmodern ideology. He accepts that society appears ‘post­ ideological’ in the symptomal sense, because in the prevailing cynicism ‘people no longer believe in ideological truth; they do not take ideological propositions seriously’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.30). Subjects are aware that official ideological norms are bogus, but accept them nonetheless, so challenging this awareness appears irrelevant. The only thing they do not recognise is their ideological displacement, and their deep enjoyment of the social order. From our perspective, in contrast, while cynicism may denote a general awareness of existing conditions, it does not automatically signify complete understanding of social issues. According to Žižek, ‘the basic lesson of the failure of traditional Ideologie-Kritik’ is that ‘knowing is not enough, one can know what one is doing and still go ahead and do it’ (Žižek, 2012, p.983). But even when subjects ‘know’ in this sense, there are still symptomal points for ideology critique to identify. At times, Žižek links cynicism to specific ideological propositions, but he still does not present these concepts as symptomal contradictions within fetishistic disavowal. First, the need for the image of a subject presumed to believe, means that cynicism only functions if the system retains its sense of legitimacy. The whole theatre of elections, political posturing, scandal and earnest discussion must continue, and there can be no ‘pure post-politics’, in which parties simply espouse competent administration without an ethical dimension (Žižek, 2007b, p.252). Also, Žižek says, ‘enemy propaganda against radical emancipatory politics is by definition cynical’, but ‘precisely insofar as it does believe its own words, since its message is a resigned conviction […] that any radical change will only make things worse’ (Žižek, 2009, p.28). As with Jameson’s market ideology, there appears to be real belief that change must be stopped because qualitative improvement is impossible. For us, such cynical convictions about the other, either as dupe or enemy, represent symptomal elements. Indeed, if cynicism relies on a subject supposed to believe, then either cynics are right, in which case propagandistic manipulation remains socially dominant (and should be the focus of ideology critique), or they are wrong and few people really believe, in which case the false cynical belief is dominant (and should be the focus of ideology critique). Žižek’s focus on ideology is thus a critique of form, or how ideologies relate to power, rather than content. He explains that dominant ideologies can be ‘true’ in terms of content, and what is important is ‘the way this content is related to the subjective position implied by its own process of enunciation’ (Žižek, 1994b, p.8). For example, he says, when western military intervention is justified by human rights arguments, even though it is ideological (because it also consolidates wes­ tern dominance), it is true if intervention really improves human rights. Or, in East Germany after the fall of socialism, it was true that those who saw an opportunity for a properly socialist third way (such as the political group Neues Forum) ‘were nothing but a bunch of heroic daydreamers’, because the powerful

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forces surrounding capitalism were already in motion. But that view was still ideological, because it ‘implied an ideological belief in the unproblematic, nonantagonistic functioning of the late capitalist “social state”’ (Žižek, 1994b, p.7). For us, these truths are at best partial, and still obscure inaccuracies and hidden suppositions – humanitarian aid covers for strategic dominance, the pro-capi­ talist belief in non-antagonistic capitalism lacks historical foundation. Yet Žižek does not theorise these points as symptoms to be exposed. For him, the Neues Forum example highlights the value of the impossible utopian narrative in revealing systemic antagonism, rather than the fiction within the dominant, ‘realistic’ ideology that opposes it. In our terms, ideology critique can still ana­ lyse both how Neues Forum reveals the alternative potential beyond the apparent necessity of capitalism, and the possibility of developing that potential by criti­ cising contradictions in the capitalist view directly.

Forms of internalisation As Žižek’s semiotic square of ideologies shows, he does not only consider cynical ideological positions, despite viewing them as dominant, and further analysis of other positions he describes can help develop our ideology map. The three affir­ mative positions in the semiotic square (cynicism, liberalism and fundamental­ ism) provide a basic framework, but concepts he introduces elsewhere imply overlaps between these points and variations within them. The aim here is to relate these positions back to those in the map and identify possible symptoms within them. Žižek’s formulations often reveal connections or demonstrate how apparently opposed positions effectively act together as mutual supports for the social whole. But we are also interested in how the rationalisations that maintain these positions represent different forms of indirect commitment to the social order, and seek indications of this variation in the details Žižek provides. To begin, we can return to our discussion of cynicism by exploring different variations that Žižek introduces. Alongside the cynicism of self-interest and fear of radical change, Žižek redefines ‘Kynicism’ (from Sloterdijk) as a cynical dis­ tance which impotently complains and mocks official dictates, securing enjoy­ ment from its subordinate role. Through Hegel’s concept of the ‘Beautiful Soul’, which laments its victimisation by social conditions, Žižek shows that cynical defeatists demand something from existing authority rather than challenging it. These Beautiful Souls thus identify with the status quo, which allows them to maintain their identity and be proven correct about their unfair treatment (Žižek, 2008b, p.71). Similarly, Žižek mentions a defeatism that appears to desire change, embodied by ‘progressive liberals’ who ‘often complain that they would like to join a “revolution” […], but no matter how desperately they search for it, they just “do not see it”’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.392). He perceives that, despite the element of truth (there is no revolution on the horizon), waiting to see a revolu­ tion before getting involved demonstrates a lack of genuine desire. There are also elements of resignation in what Žižek calls a ‘Buddhist’ response, which stresses that we should ‘drift along, while retaining an inner distance and indifference’,

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because ‘social and technological upheaval […] do not really concern the inner­ most kernel of our being’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.13). This position retreats from poli­ tics by prioritising spiritual concerns, but, since subjects are always within power relations, equates to tacit acceptance of dominant forces. These concepts enable us to build on the notions of cynicism and defeatism defined previously. On one hand, they suggest different defeatist fantasies that justify feelings of impotence. It is not only that people want change but cannot envisage it, but that they ‘enjoy’ playing the victim, or place themselves above political involvement. On the other hand, this variation suggests that these positions may not be equally cynical, or as equally committed to the status quo. The ‘Buddhist’ stance actually seems closer to the self-interest of cynicism proper, with its essentialist conception of human nature, in that it elevates non­ interference in existing conditions to an ahistorical principle. Conversely, the ‘progressive liberal’ stance may represent a more complex mixture of the ‘Beautiful Soul’ and some residual desire for change that remains genuine. While these positions are disavowals that displace their support for the existing order, their claims may represent different conditional disconnects between behaviour and conscious belief. Many positions Žižek identifies relate to the categories of liberalism and fundamentalism, which he sees as two sides of the same (postmodern) coin. He often defines liberalism in terms of ‘pluralist’ or ‘multiculturalist’ attitudes, and sees (similar to Jameson) that fundamentalist beliefs are reactions to such ‘post-ideology’ thinking, rather than remnants of the past. The repression of antagonisms into pragmatic measures and identity issues returns in the guise of unacceptable and supposedly defunct political categories, such as racism and fascism (Žižek, 2008c, p.211), but in a postmodern form in which they are merely implied. As Žižek says, neo-fascism is ‘more and more “postmodern”, civilized, playful, involving ironic self-distance … yet no less Fascist for all that’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.81). Populist fundamentalism even uses the ‘strategies of identity politics, presenting itself as one of the threatened minorities, simply striving to maintain its specific way of life and cultural identity’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.251), but its core message is still exclusionary. Also, for Žižek, fundamental­ ism and pluralism share a common basis in their fascination with the Other. That is, fundamentalisms are often ‘perverted’, because they are obsessed with others’ sin and decadence, and lack conviction of their own superiority (Žižek, 2008e, p.332), while western multiculturalists are fascinated by distant cultures as representations of both mystical liberation and filthy primitiveness. Both entail a fixation on the jouissance of the Other. For fundamentalism, this causes jealousy and resentment. For the multiculturalist, the Other remains acceptable as long as it conforms to a particular image. Žižek thus defines this multiculturalism as a disavowed form of racism, which does not explicitly assert superiority, but views its own position as a neutral point from which to evaluate others (Žižek, 1997, p.44). In both of these ideological forms, the concept of the Other is central, and could represent a point of contestability. Yet, Žižek maintains, the fundamentalist

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is impervious to ideological challenge as he clings to his ideas and ‘(not so much believes as) directly “knows” the truth embodied in his fetish’ (Žižek, 2009, p.69). We argue here that, certainly, the fetish seems especially pronounced in racist modes of thought, but there are still contestable narratives that support it. With multiculturalism, conversely, the politics of tolerance suggests a particular avenue of belief that may be challenged. According to Žižek, pluralist tolerance natur­ alises and neutralises political difference into issues of cultural identity or perso­ nal opinion, and as such cannot tolerate it if the Other actually insists on being Other, with an identity that goes beyond cultural ‘choices’ (Žižek, 2006, pp.331– 332). Or, while sympathy is granted to the passive victim of oppression, the moment it ‘wants to strike back on its own’, it ‘magically turns into a terrorist, fundamentalist, drug-trafficking Other’ (Žižek, 1999). In our understanding, these limits of tolerance are ideological symptoms, or the conditions behind the fetish, and we can ask why some people are deemed ‘worthy victims’ (Herman and Chomsky, 2002), who deserve protection, while others are left to their fates. Specifically, this seems to relate to the symbolic Real split itself, or how affirma­ tive pluralism operates within the boundaries of consumer capitalism. The triad of liberalism, fundamentalism and cynicism may be expanded further if we examine the dualism Žižek identifies between Cultural Studies and ‘Third Culture’ ideology of scientific progress. As Žižek explains it, Third Culture ideology imagines a new epoch of humanity in which ‘egotistical indi­ vidualism will be replaced by a transindividual cosmic Awareness’, and the naturalisation of the social, such as cyberspace, becoming ‘a self-evolving “natural” organism’, will be coupled with the socialisation of nature (Žižek, 2001a, p.214). For Žižek, these ideas do not consider power relations, so although Third Culture asks questions about humanity, it is not anchored in social analysis, such as how cyberspace relates to and reproduces political and economic hegemony. Cultural Studies, meanwhile, is a relativist-pluralism that confronts everyday power struggles, but does not analyse the general workings of the universe or the human psyche. According to Žižek, the aims of Cultural Studies predominantly ‘rely on a set of silent (non-thematized) ontological and epistemological presuppositions about the nature of human knowledge and reality’ (Žižek, 2001a, pp.218–219). In effect, Cultural Studies focuses on power relations and certain notions of identity struggle, which reveal theore­ tical deficiencies in the utopian humanism of Third Culture, while the wider view of Third Culture indicates the lack of attention paid to humanity overall in Cultural Studies. What both miss, for Žižek, is the possibility of combining their positions to think the social order as a historical totality. For our theory, these positions highlight how different affirmative ideologies may be both unified at a higher (systemic) level and contradictory. In particular, this contrast between Third Culture and Cultural Studies (which we take here as a position of intellectualised pluralism, rather than an actual academic field) splits liberalism into postmodern multiculturalist and more classical or humanist forms. Pluralism retains liberal concepts such as human rights and personal freedom, while Third Culture contrasts identity politics with a demand for

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scientific progress and enlightenment values. As we saw with Jameson, there remains a common liberal ground in their emphasis on the individual as con­ scious agent, but there are also major differences. The other important factor here is how Žižek describes each of these positions as containing the elements neces­ sary to challenge the other. Third Culture and Cultural Studies operate within apparently incompatible circles but are potentially able to transform one another into something more radical. In this sense, what keeps them apart is their common lack – an inability to perceive struggle as a collective endeavour within specific circumstances. We can also add here Žižek’s notion of economic realism, which argues that we must accept (as mature adults) that utopian ideals cannot be realised, so it is best to rely on the ‘neutral’ mechanism of the market. As Žižek explains, with such thinking, economic dictates regarding lower costs, higher efficiency, increased competition and constant growth become ideals, and the necessity of the market ‘is itself to be inserted into the series of great modern utopian pro­ jects’ (Žižek, 2000b, p.324). While economic realism has no illusions about the essential goodness of human nature, it believes a global mechanism can create progress and balance, and renders ‘invisible the impossible-real of the antag­ onism that cuts across capitalist societies’ (Žižek, 2010, p.94). In the terms we have developed so far, economic realism lacks the cynicism of Jameson’s ‘market ideology’, and connects more to the liberal stance based around sci­ entific advancement and individual endeavour (including Third Culture). Moreover, it is a useful illustration of the fundamentalist core within appar­ ently pragmatic positions. For Žižek, fundamentalist ideologies with absolute principles can justify anything (Žižek, 2008f, p.116), and we would argue that this point applies to principles of market stability and expansion which justify wars, forced regime changes and mass impoverishment. Finally, the one position in our model we have not explored here so far is hedonism, which features in Žižek’s work in relation to the circuit of enjoyment and desire. The idea of ultimate fulfilment through consumer goods, which is often found in advertising (the thing you need to become whole), is never actually realised in consumption, and yet consumer pleasures do provide some sense of excess enjoyment. As Žižek puts it, although such objects ‘are sem­ blances which always fall short of the full jouissance, they are nonetheless experienced as excessive, as the surplus-enjoyment’, so ‘the “not enough”, the falling short, coincides with the excess’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.22). But then, Žižek explains elsewhere, this falling short can turn consumption into a burden, as subjects continually attempt to find greater pleasure. Here, ‘the unconscious unconditional superego injunction to enjoy’ causes guilt when pleasure fails to reach new heights, and the subject ‘gets so deeply involved in the preparatory activities […] that the attraction of the official Goal of his efforts fades away’ (Žižek, 2008d, pp.449–450). The unending demand for pleasure, as opposed to its prohibition, thus results in slavish effort and disinterested boredom. For us, the question is then whether this boredom makes hedonists susceptible to alternative ideas.

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In our view, all the positions outlined by Žižek contain symptoms, with some more open to challenge than others. In Žižek’s work, this picture is less clear, as he ultimately tends to reduce the ideological totality to two or three terms. For exam­ ple, he says that ‘today’s ideological constellation is determined by the opposition between neoconservative fundamentalist populism and liberal multiculturalism’ (Žižek, 2006, p.349). Or, he links class groups to specific positions – the professional class to politically correct liberalism; the middle class of traditional workers to populist fundamentalism; and the excluded class of the unemployed and under­ privileged to hedonistic nihilism or radical fundamentalism (Žižek, 2000b, p.323). While these ideas are relevant, they suggest a smaller range of ideological positions than in Žižek’s overall theory. Most significantly, in contrast with Žižek’s emphasis elsewhere, there is no cynicism distinguished from the liber­ alism and conservatism in the first example, or from the values attached to the middle and professional classes in the second. In our understanding, it is important to view cynicism as one part of the ideological composition, which itself involves universalised assumptions, as well as to consider how different positions contrast or connect with each other in complex ways. For example, Dean explains, the dominance of neoliberal economics in the US relies on religion as well as promises of freedom and anti-government rhetoric, so ‘the category of fantasy alone cannot explain the hold of neoliberalism’ (Dean, 2009, p.63). Affirmative ideological positions not only organise a fundamental attachment; they must be maintained through structures of belief. Taking this analysis into account, our map of ideologies can develop fur­ ther. While we do not define any new positions at this point, the relationships Žižek explores help us to add further dimensions to our existing definitions, highlighting the complexities within each position, as follows: 1

2

3

4

Humanist liberal: Žižek’s concepts of ‘Third Culture’ and economic realism augment our previous ‘liberal apologist’ position, which views systemic demands for productivity and growth as necessary for progress based on supposed ‘pragmatism’ and scientific advancement. The economic and cul­ tural aspects of this position are not necessarily inseparable, but are both grounded in ‘Enlightenment’ values of progress and individual agency. Neoconservative/fundamentalist: this position can now be seen as a resentful obsession with the Other that has various dimensions, from extreme market fundamentalism to religious dogma and racist nationalism. It emphasises morality, superiority and an individualist work ethic. It opposes postmodern multiculturalism, but is itself a response to postmodern conditions. Hedonist: the internalisation of consumerist fantasies leads to a circuit of excess and failure, according to the superego demand to enjoy. The necessity of work to achieve pleasure may then turn the search for fulfilment into boredom, which points to the ambiguity of the subject’s relationship with permissive consumer capitalism. Pluralist liberal: the perspective of multiculturalism that places itself as a neutral point of observation, accepting Others at a distance and according

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5

6

157

to specific definitions based on commodified cultural traits. At another level, this is also the position of ‘Cultural Studies’, or an understanding of particular power struggles between identities, lacking a unifying theory (bar that of particularity itself). Neoliberal/self-interested cynic: this cynicism does not believe in official values, but rests on the notion of another subject who believes to main­ tain its conformity to the status quo. It can then enjoy the fruits of the existing reality, including manipulation and personal accumulation while disavowing guilt. We can also include as a variation here Žižek’s western Buddhist position of indifference towards social and political events. Defeatist cynic: the defeatist may now also be seen as the ‘Beautiful Soul’ who retains a deep attachment to the existing order even as it always com­ plains about its subjugation. There is a sense of masochistic enjoyment here, but also the possibility that a desire for change continues at some level, beneath the pessimistic exterior.

Note 1 In this case, the imaginary screen Žižek mentions resembles conscious rationalisa­ tion more than fantasy. His examples include the Nazi soldiers ‘telling themselves that Jews are only being transported to some new Eastern camps’, or ‘claiming that just a small number of them were actually killed’.

Bibliography Bryant, L. R., (2008) ‘Žižek’s New Universe of Discourse: Politics and the Discourse of the Capitalist’, International Journal of Žižek Studies, 2, 1–48 [accessed 10 October 2019] Butler, J., (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (Abingdon: Routledge) Butler, J., (2000a) ‘Restaging the Universal: Hegemony and the Limits of Formalism’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 11–43 Butler, J., (2000b) ‘Competing Universalities’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 136–181 Butler, J., (2000c) ‘Dynamic Conclusions’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Con­ temporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 263–280 Butler, R., (2005) Slavoj Žižek: Live Theory (London: Continuum) Dean, J., (2009) Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capital­ ism and Left Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press) Glynos, J., (2001) ‘“There is no Other of the Other”: Symptoms of a Decline in Sym­ bolic Faith, or, Žižek’s Anti-capitalism’, Paragraph, 24, 78–110 Herman, E. S. and N. Chomsky, (2002) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Econ­ omy of the Mass Media, 2nd edn (New York, NY: Pantheon Books)

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Johnston, A., (2008) Žižek’s Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Sub­ jectivity (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press) Kovacevic, F., (2007) Liberating Oedipus? Psychoanalysis as Critical Theory (Lanham, MD: Lexington) Laclau, E., (2000) ‘Constructing Universality’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 281–307 McGowan, T., (2013) ‘Hegel as Marxist: Žižek’s Revision of German Idealism’, Žižek Now: Current Perspectives in Žižek Studies, ed. by J. Khader and M. A. Rothenberg (Cambridge: Polity Press), 31–53 Resch, R. P., (2005) ‘What If God Was One of Us: Žižek’s Ontology’, Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Responses to Slavoj Žižek, ed. by G. Boucher, J. Glynos and M. Sharpe (Aldershot: Ashgate), 89–103 Sharpe, M., (2004) Slavoj Žižek: A Little Piece of the Real (London: Ashgate) Sharpe, M., (2005) ‘What’s Left in Žižek? The Antinomies of Žižek’s Sociopolitical Reason’, Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Responses to Slavoj Žižek, ed. by G. Boucher, J. Glynos and M. Sharpe (Aldershot: Ashgate), 147–168 Sharpe, M. and G. Boucher, (2010) Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction (Edin­ burgh: Edinburgh University Press) Wells, C., (2014) The Subject of Liberation: Žižek, Politics, Psychoanalysis (New York: Bloomsbury) Žižek, S., (1994a) The Metastases of Enjoyment: Six Essays on Woman and Causality (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (1994b) ‘The Spectre of Ideology’, Mapping Ideology, ed. by S. Žižek (London: Verso), 1–33 Žižek, S., (1997) ‘Multiculturalism, or, the Cultural Logic of Multinational Capital­ ism’, New Left Review, I/225, 28–51 Žižek, S., (1999) ‘Attempts to Escape the Logic of Capitalism’, London Review of Books, 21, 3–6 [accessed 11 October 2019] Žižek, S., (2000a) ‘Class Struggle or Postmodernism? Yes, please!’, Contingency, Hege­ mony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 90–135 Žižek, S., (2000b) ‘Holding the Place’, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Con­ temporary Dialogues on the Left, ed. by J. Butler, E. Laclau and S. Žižek (London: Verso), 308–329 Žižek, S., (2001a) Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? Five Interventions on the (Mis) Use of a Notion (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2001b) On Belief (London: Routledge) Žižek, S., (2002) Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917 (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2005) ‘Concesso non Dato’, Traversing the Fantasy: Critical Responses to Slavoj Žižek, ed. by G. Boucher, J. Glynos and M. Sharpe (Aldershot: Ashgate), 219–255 Žižek, S., (2006) The Parallax View (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) Žižek, S., (2007a) The Indivisible Remainder: Essays on Schelling and Related Matters, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2007b) ‘With Defenders Like These, Who Needs Attackers?’, The Truth of Žižek, ed. by P. Bowman and R. Stamp (London: Continuum), 199–257

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Žižek, S., (2008a) The Sublime Object of Ideology, 2nd edn (London: Verso)

Žižek, S., (2008b) For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor,

2nd edn (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2008c) The Plague of Fantasies, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2008d) The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology, 2nd edn (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2008e) In Defense of Lost Causes (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2008f) Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Profile) Žižek, S., (2008g) ‘Ideology II: Competition Is a Sin’, Lacan.com, 4 January [accessed 10 October 2019] Žižek, S., (2009) First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2010) ‘A Permanent Economic Emergency’, New Left Review, 64, 85–95 Žižek, S., (2012) Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso) Žižek, S., (2014) Absolute Recoil: Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materi­ alism [ebook] (London: Verso) Žižek, S. and G. Daly, (2004) Conversations with Žižek (Cambridge: Polity Press)

7

Žižek Enacting negation

Our definitions of ideological positions imply a specific concept of neoliberal consciousness, and it remains to explore how the capitalist order structures the ideological field and problematises change. In this case, we turn more to Žižek’s 21st century work, which increasingly focuses on questions of political change. For us, it is important to reiterate the strategies and obstacles he identifies, but in terms of the reciprocal connection between ideological levels, and negation that emerges from particular ideals. First, Žižek identifies var­ ious ways in which capitalism obstructs and diffuses radical politics, including the fetishism of the commodity form, the permissive injunction to ‘enjoy’ that replaces any overall authority figure, and the incorporation of oppositional culture. From our perspective, the focus on fetishistic behaviour or an empty injunction can obscure how different ideological rationalisations commit dif­ ferently, based on various conditions, to the social order. These attachments to capitalism may then be contested by oppositional ideas, which we again argue can survive their depoliticisation within commodified cultural channels. From here, in terms of political agency, our main focus is on Žižek’s treat­ ment of the Lacanian ‘act’, in which the subject does something unsanctioned within the existing symbolic horizon, and changes what is deemed possible. The act indicates a form of self-determination through the subject’s ability to take responsibility for their position, and we consider what may motivate sub­ jects to take this step in a politically meaningful way. Specifically, if an act is to be more than spontaneous voluntarism, it has to be already rationalised according to an oppositional idea signified symbolically, which implies that it cannot precede a conscious ideological shift. In our view, Žižek does not fully confront the point that the symbolic order which is inaugurated by the act also prefigures the act, so that the outcome reflects from its specific form. We then connect this concept of agency to Žižek’s emphasis on class struggle, in which he constructs a theory of universal social antagonism based around ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ elements in society. For us, any negating act must be consciously framed in these class terms in advance. Finally, we take a similar approach to Žižek’s consideration of political action, in which he continues to emphasise the power of negation to reveal the possibi­ lity of radical alternatives. We show how his resistance to democracy works to

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mark a distinction between politics within the current symbolic horizon and a politics of class struggle, and explore how a politics based on refusal of given choices alters the coordinates of what can be done. In both cases, there is value in clearing a space for new aims and activities, rather than continuing to repeat ineffective strategies. Yet, we assert, it remains necessary to define more clearly how negative refusal may be combined with recognised forms of participation for maximum effect, and to bridge the gap between everyday thinking and transcendent ideals. Such mediation is more evident in Žižek’s vision of ‘the Party’ as an organising force for change, which emphasises cooperation between radical leadership and a wider political movement. As with Marcuse’s concept of education, we reiterate that the Party implies certain political goals, rather than a purely negative role of revealing contingency, but the ideological direction it represents appears essential to challenging affirmative beliefs. The sections in this chapter thus address different aspects of neoliberal demands – consumption, production, political participation – and how ideolo­ gical practices and beliefs function through them. Our main concern is the ten­ sion between the attempt to negate the status quo, to reveal its contingency, and the concrete political ideas that must underpin any such aim. On one hand, we thus affirm Žižek’s commitment to negation, against criticisms that he is looking to simply replace one closed dominant discourse with another, that his focus on universal antinomy undermines analysis of specific political antagonisms, or that his radical politics is too vague or passive. On the other hand, we emphasise how negation is already politicised by its own alternative content, how the results of political refusal are in part tied to the motivations behind it, and how the Party and its leaders must recognise the content of their position inevitably embedded in the form of organisation. Ultimately, it is always the need to challenge con­ scious ideological rationalisations with oppositional positions that is the condi­ tion for a politics of negation and class struggle.

Consumerism and enjoyment In Žižek’s theory, it is possible to understand the ideological reproduction of late capitalism as a result of fetishistic behaviour embedded in the commodity form and permissive consumerism that pressures individuals to maximise enjoyment. As with Marcuse and Jameson, Žižek identifies major obstacles to oppositional politics presented by these forces, and it becomes difficult to per­ ceive how any kind of counter-hegemony can develop. Here, we consider whe­ ther ideological behaviour motivated by commodity exchange still relies on conditional conscious acceptance of its political implications. For us, it seems that while certain ‘beliefs’ are displaced into consumer transactions, there are also signs that individuals must find ways to rationalise their effects. But also, for Žižek, late capitalism’s requirement for endless consumption distinguishes it from other social forms in that the superego demand to enjoy becomes law itself. He demonstrates that permissiveness destabilises subjectivity, because there is no specific embodiment of the big Other which reveals the dominant

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logic of capitalism. Yet we contend that this demand to enjoy still creates social expectations of both leisure and productivity, and maintains its logic through various institutions. Because subjects cannot fulfil all of capitalism’s demands, they must prioritise some over others, which defines the particular conditions of their connection to the symbolic Real. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Žižek shows that while subjects know the commodity form is merely symbolic, commodities are endowed with ‘spe­ cial powers’ in practice because exchange and value are naturalised in daily transactions. By participating in exchanges, consumers reinforce the logic of equivalence created by the value relation, which obscures its point of ‘false unity’. Specifically, with commodities, this point is the exchange of labour power for wages, which ‘precisely as an equivalent, functions as the very form of exploitation’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.18). If the capitalist notion of freedom revolves around individuals being free to sell their labour, by accepting this freedom workers become enslaved to capital. The result is that while relations between people are no longer fetishised in capitalism (so that certain people are seen as intrinsically superior), the fetish remains in relations between things (value), and hierarchy is maintained despite formal equality between indivi­ duals. For example, the commodity relationship means that while ‘a “post­ modern” boss insists that he is not the master but just a coordinator of our joint creative efforts’, he still ‘remains our master’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.202). Simi­ larly, with celebrity culture, individuals know celebrities are normal people, but their success is a sign that they should be treated as special. However, while these inequalities are not explicitly embedded in ideologies, it seems they still must be rationalised. Žižek suggests as much when he explains that ‘the book market is overflowing with psychological manuals advising us on how to succeed’, and ‘making our success dependent on our proper “attitude”’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.425), rather than complex market forces, and that discussions of figures such as Bill Gates focus on his personal qualities, ignoring how the sys­ temic structure enables his wealth accumulation. In these cases, success really does appear to signify superiority, following a Calvinist logic of pre-ordained selection, in which those who ‘make it’ prove they were always special. Žižek’s observations here can thus be read as an indication that narratives have to be sustained for the hierarchy of value to be widely accepted. Yet Žižek tends to stress the festishistic practice and self-reproductive power of contradictions in capitalism. His overriding point is still that conformist behaviour demonstrates subjects’ symbolic attachment to capitalist Master-Signifiers, to the extent that, as he says via Hegel, ‘it does not matter what individuals’ minds are preoccupied with while they are participating in a ceremony; the truth resides in the ceremony itself’ (Žižek, 2006, p.66). In neoliberal consumer societies, where almost nobody can avoid participating in commodified exchange relations, conscious ideological supports then appear largely insignificant. In our view, it is thus necessary to look beyond fetishistic behaviour to evaluate ideology, such as considering what it means when individuals act in contrasting ways (for instance, buying consumer goods and theorising radical politics). While

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we clearly help reproduce the system through commodity exchanges, it is such a ground level activity today that it is hard to read much into it in terms of ideology. One way to approach the meaning of this behaviour through consciousness is perhaps to challenge the rationalisation of the inequalities that emerge in practice against the ideas of formal freedom embedded in value. Indeed, as Žižek notes (drawing on Marcuse), the formal freedom in late capitalism provides a certain potential, or a standard of expectation against which individuals can experience antagonism (Žižek, 2009, p.143). Another idea that can be pushed is that of reducing consumption. Žižek imagines a scenario in which mass refusal to parti­ cipate economically ‘in the financial virtual game’ could be today’s ‘ultimate political act’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.303), since virtual money only functions as long as people believe in it by participating in its circulation. For us, this observation can also apply to the way market growth relies on consumer investment (especially with ideological positions such as hedonism or defeatism) in demands to overconsume. Promoting reduction of consumption would then be similarly politi­ cally effective, and links practices to particular conscious rationalisations. Another aspect of permissive consumer societies that Žižek explores, how­ ever, is a direct superego injunction to ‘enjoy’, as opposed to a prohibitive paternal authority anchored in the nation or God, which enables enjoyment through a hidden underside. Today, subjects are guided by imaginary ideals (of social success) and the ferocious ascendance of this demand, which turns ‘per­ verse’ enjoyment into law, and removes the tension between their ‘innermost idiosyncratic creative impulses and the Institution that does not appreciate them or wants to crush them’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.452). This injunction particu­ larly points to consumerist pleasures that encourage free choice and experi­ mentation. But, by following the demand to enjoy and its accompanying micro-decisions, the consumer forfeits a deeper freedom to opt out. As Žižek puts it, what is excluded in consumer societies, ‘in which even such “natural” features as sexual orientation and ethnic identification are experienced as a matter of choice, is the basic, authentic, choice itself ’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.28). Furthermore, because the demand to continually maximise pleasure treats the individual as a ‘subject supposed to know what he really wants’, and provides no external guarantee for that knowledge, the burden of choice and responsibility leaves subjects needing guidance more than ever (Žižek, 2008c, pp.197–198). The lack of predetermined patterns in social life is presented as opportunity for selfreinvention, so (as with one-dimensionality) failure signifies a personality defect, and ‘the postmodern […] ideologist will immediately accuse you of being unable to assume full freedom’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.116). The subject here resembles the near-schizophrenic form that Jameson formulates, as the lack of clear authority sets meaning adrift. In fact, Žižek describes the consumer capitalist situation as one in which there is no big Other, in the sense that no specific individual or institution in society takes on the role. He says, ‘there is no “Invisible Hand” whose mechanism […] somehow re-establishes the balance; no Other Scene in which the accounts are properly kept’, and ‘no global mechanism regulating our interactions’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.412) to ensure the meaning of choices.

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The lack of authority, for Žižek, does not mean that there is no social struc­ ture, or that society is ‘post-Oedipal’, because subjectivity still requires subjec­ tion through continuing domination. As Žižek says, ‘the spectral presence of Capital is the figure of the big Other which not only remains operative when all the traditional embodiments of the symbolic big Other disintegrate, but even directly causes this disintegration’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.431). Žižek later clarifies this situation by explaining that what is lacking is not a big Other to tie the social order together, but ‘a small other’ that can ‘stand in for, the big Other’, or someone ‘who directly embodies authority’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.35). Similar to Jameson’s postmodernism, this lack of proper authority creates the impression of an ‘atonal’ range of multiplicities that obscure their structuring logic. Thus, Žižek explains, the political aim of undermining a particular authority cannot work, and (as with Jameson) he seeks instead to reveal the tone behind the atonality, or the capitalist big Other that overdetermines the imaginary ideals. It is not, as Sharpe and Boucher argue, that Žižek seeks a new prohibitive authority to replace multiplicity, because he believes that ‘supporting multiple struggles for cultural recognition and different sorts of political demands […] actually makes things worse’ (Sharpe and Boucher, 2010, p.159). Nor is it, as Boucher says elsewhere, that ‘Žižek’s position implies that political revolution is fundamentally a restoration of Oedipal subjectivity and a redemption of the “big Other”, redolent of a religious “cure” for postlapsarian wickedness’ (Boucher, 2008, p.225). Rather, the issue is the existence of the big Other in its current pseudo-natural (or symbolic Real) form, as the logic through which pluralism is expressed (Vighi and Feldner, 2007, p.45). As Žižek explains, the problem is not ‘the inadequacy of every small other to stand in for the big Other’, but that the big Other hides behind them (Žižek, 2008e, pp.35–36). This aspect of Žižek’s work reaffirms Marcuse’s emphasis on individual responsibility, and the structuring of difference in Jameson’s postmodernism. Yet, as with those theories, it also implies a subject that is overly groundless and fragmented. For us, it is not clear that the superego injunction to enjoy can integrate into the symbolic mandate without tension, both because superego guilt is in part that ‘of accepting the ego ideal (the socially determined sym­ bolic role) as the ideal to be followed in the first place’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.319), and because the superego is indifferent to the preservation of the organism, and late capitalist societies do not simply direct us towards reckless annihilation. That is, while there is no single embodiment of the big Other, the capitalist symbolic Real manifests in a range of institutions that simultaneously permit and prohibit, often in contradictory ways. We are commanded to maximise enjoyment in all areas of life, but as with Marcuse’s ‘repressive desublimation’, or an allowance of indulgence that serves a ‘performance principle’, we are expected to balance these areas as well. We can here follow Vighi’s distinction between jouissance and the valorised enjoyment of consumerism, or an imita­ tion enjoyment that is regulated ‘as “enjoy responsibly” and “enjoy wellbeing”, i.e. “enjoy without enjoyment”’ (Vighi, 2010, p.28). For Vighi, the ‘potentially (self-)destructive injunction to embrace excessive enjoyment’ is ‘constantly

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balanced out and domesticated by opposite discourses’ (Vighi, 2010, p.17). Crucially, this is how we inevitably fail according to neoliberal demands – if we balance our lives, we are guilty of not maximising our potential; if we maximise success in a single area, we are guilty of imbalance. Put another way, there is an ‘invisible hand’ regulating interactions, or some ‘Other scene’ which judges and guides performance, albeit one whose expecta­ tions are never fully compatible with each other. But some of those expectations are prohibitive; it is not that freedom is fully part of the law, or that no enjoyment is transgressive, so only some ‘extreme form of strictly regulated domination and submission becomes the secret transgressive source of libidinal satisfaction’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.418). The issue is that submission, obedience and discipline are as heavily endorsed as indulgence and recklessness, and often in the same areas of life (work, sex, shopping, health), so that almost all behaviour has transgressive and conformist sides. If anything, transgression is taking one form of behaviour to the extreme at the expense of all others (addiction), as no matter how much we are entreated to work harder, spend more and reach highs of pleasure, doing so to the exclusion of other goals makes us ineffective capitalist subjects. From this perspective, different ideological rationalisations are different ways of reconciling the demand to enjoy responsibly, by prioritising particular facets of the demand and their corresponding institutions and leader figures over others. Žižek explains how various local and temporary authorities, such as ethics committees, decide on particular issues because there are no established moral norms in various social domains (Žižek, 2008d, p.401), and any small others are not constant and stable. Ideological fantasies react to the lack of embodiment of the big Other by constructing an idea of the big Other behind the scenes, or an ‘Other of the Other’, through paranoid conspiracy theories (Žižek, 2008d, p.442). Or, fundamentalisms lead to ‘the re-emergence of the different facets of a big Other which exists effectively, in the Real, and not merely as symbolic fiction’ (Žižek, 1997b). Yet the various small others people follow may be seen as at once ephemeral replacements for a singular embodiment of the big Other and parts of that big Other, or connections to capitalism that affirm its demands indirectly. Looking at the ideological positions in our map, it becomes clear how different institutions – economics, entertainment, politics, education – can become the central fetish for each, with beliefs that rationalise the injunction to enjoy and the conscious conditions of their unconscious ideological affirma­ tion. In this sense, phenomena such as ethics committees may be less a matter of constantly having to recreate a moral position and more a way for officials to mediate between contrasting convictions.

Cultural politics Another major point in relation to commodification is how it effectively blocks or diffuses radical cultural expression. Given his focus on unconscious belief and behaviour, while Žižek analyses many cultural texts, it is less to identify their potential political power than to illustrate their repressed ideological fantasies,

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and he does not explore political aesthetics as much as Marcuse or Jameson. In fact, he is critical of cultural Marxism, arguing that even its most sophisticated proponents, including Jameson, see ‘that the workers’ consciousness is obfus­ cated by the seductions of consumerist society and/or manipulation by the ideological forces of cultural hegemony’, and mistakenly conclude that ‘the focus of critical work should shift to “cultural criticism”’ (Žižek, 2006, p.50). He thus focuses on how commodified culture incorporates radical ideas and renders them impotent, whereas, for us, challenging ideological content is a key battle­ ground for change, and certain cultural messages remain un-incorporable. Žižek notes the abstract potential of art, but emphasises its de-politicisation and does not theorise it as an important source of change in current social circumstances. He describes artists as those who do not ‘reconcile the opposites and tensions in the aesthetic Totality of a harmonious Whole’, but ‘construct a place in which people can ecstatically perceive the traumatic excess around which their life turns’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.96). In this way, as for Marcuse, art points negatively beyond dominant narratives, or indicates a real excess. However, Žižek explains, this dimension is missing in postmodern ‘transgres­ sive’ art, in which artists display their inner fantasies on stage, because it ‘con­ fronts us directly with jouissance at its most solipsistic’, and ‘precisely characterizes individuals insofar as they are caught up in a “crowd”’ (Žižek, 2006, p.311). He adds that there is nothing ‘more dull, opportunistic, and sterile’ than constantly trying ‘to invent new artistic transgressions and provo­ cations’, or ‘to engage in more and more “daring” forms of sexuality’ (Žižek, 2006, p.358). This critique of the impotence of shock in permissive society also echoes Marcuse, but Žižek does not then consider how ‘authentic’ art may re­ emerge in the current order. A similar concept of narcissistic individualism emerges where Žižek exam­ ines the supposedly progressive qualities of new media and technology. He describes how, for its advocates, cyberspace is effectively a postmodern Utopia made real, in which subjects embrace their de-centred disintegration and become plural selves, seamlessly adopting different masks. The problem is that ‘depriving the Self of any substantial content ends in radical subjectivization, in the loss of the firm objective reality itself ’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.26). Taken to its logical conclusion, the subject becomes an enclosed monad, communicating only with other masks, and if every wish can be instantly fulfilled, the desire of the Other is experienced as intrusion into the illusion of limitlessness. Further­ more, cyberspace remains rooted in an economic system of exploitation and exclusion, and as such, rather than representing the ‘unending possibilities of limitless change’, it hides ‘an unheard-of imposition of radical closure’ (Žižek, 2008c, p.199). The concept of ‘frictionless’ capitalism that emerges with cyberspace relies on a material existence within unequal social relations. The point for Žižek here is not to argue that such technological progress threatens to erase some essential notion of being. He explains that, while uto­ pian theories of technology are problematic, ‘negative descriptions of the “meaningless” universe of technological self-manipulation’ involve the same

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‘perspective fallacy’, because ‘they also measure the future according to inadequate present standards’ (Žižek, 2006, p.195). The utopian free-floating subjectivity and the dystopian loss of meaning both effectively view humanity as a fixed entity, to be lost or sustained, rather than a changing condition. In each case, transcendental ideas are foreclosed, and together they constitute a cultural field which blocks consideration of how capitalism structures concep­ tions of humanity. Conversely, for Žižek, the relevant political factor is how technology is implemented, in terms of the natural and human resources required, which is missed when discussion around these issues is reduced to culture, such as administrative matters, individual idiosyncrasies or ethno-reli­ gious disagreement (Žižek, 2006, p.379). Rather than merely participating in cultural debate, Žižek explains it is necessary to confront the politics and eco­ nomics of these issues. In fact, this concept of linking culture to economic mechanisms is similar to that recommended by Marcuse and Jameson in their cultural analyses, and the important point to consider again is how cultural criticism may connect to the economic especially through commodified channels. One issue Žižek mentions is the problem of incorporation, according to which even anti-capitalist senti­ ments become part of mainstream culture, such as in Hollywood movies that demonise big corporations. As Žižek puts it, ‘there is no lack of anti-capitalists today’, and ‘we are even witnessing an overload of critiques of capitalism’s horrors’ (Žižek, 2010, p.87). Thus, it is not a matter of directly opposing capitalism, as although ‘the economy is the key domain’, where ‘the battle will be decided’, any ‘intervention should be properly political, not economic’ (Žižek, 2006, p.320). He sees that the main sacred concept today, untouched by cultural criticism, is not capitalism but democracy, or control over capitalism through mass participation. According to this thinking, only by questioning democracy itself does the contingency of the whole system come into view, including the capitalist structure. Regardless of the object of criticism, however, the problem remains that the critique itself has to work within the same cultural arenas. If concepts as radical as anti-capitalism can be depoliticised, it seems that the commodity form can co-opt any message, and it is unclear how critique of democracy can avoid a similar fate. Either an anti-democracy stance can also be widely de­ politicised, or it can resist such reduction, which implies that an anti-capitalist stance can too. One question in Žižek’s proposition that mainstream culture, such as conspiracy films, has harmlessly incorporated anti-capitalist ideas is the meaning of ‘anti-capitalist’. As mentioned above, Žižek sees conspiracy as a way subjects imagine the ‘Other of the Other’, or a secret force behind the scenes, which recalls Jameson’s point that conspiracy films are failed cognitive maps that miss the centrality of capitalism. Surely, conspiracy films such as Enemy of the State, which is among Žižek’s examples (Žižek, 2006, p.320), are about rogue individuals or groups that take the place of the capitalist system. These films certainly have anti-corporate or anti-profiteering senti­ ments, but democracy can only be the corrective if they assume the economic

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system still functions. In fact, even in narratives of the financial crisis in 2007, as Žižek shows (see chapter 3), the focus was on inevitable systemic fluctua­ tion or greed and incompetence, rather than capitalism’s intrinsic failures. So, radical anti-capitalism still does not have a substantial cultural presence, as aspects of it resist de-politicisation and cannot simply be incorporated into mainstream capitalist culture. The goal remains that of creating and main­ taining cultural space for political and economic criticism, which can contest dominant narratives in interconnected ways. The act Žižek’s concept of ideology as disavowal and this approach to change through negating and revealing the contingency of entrenched ideas (such as democ­ racy) is also central to his concept of agency. Here, the identifiable point of agency is that of traversing the fantasy, or recognising the lack of the big Other, enabling the subject to take responsibility for their relation to the Symbolic. Yet the question is how, politically, subjects make such a psychological shift and what may cause it. If the fantasy is able to pre-empt its own flaws, for Žižek, there is still the possibility of an ‘act’, in which subjects refuse existing symbolic regulations. An act occurs when the Symbolic cannot provide an answer for how to proceed, so the subject engages in action which takes them outside social norms. For us, this capacity for subjects to act beyond given options implies that consciousness can effectively reflect on and rewrite its symbolic attachment. But Žižek often presents the act as a formal decision that negates the Symbolic, creating an openness that allows for alternative ideas. In our view, it is important to emphasise that the possible outcomes of an act reflect the politics that is necessary to cause it. As such, the prerequisite for a radical progressive politics is not merely an act – a suspension or negation – but the negating result of an explicit attempt to enact an oppositional ideology. Žižek perceives that subjects have a freedom beyond the illusion that they have chosen their own interpellation. Specifically, while subjects ‘are passively affected by pathological objects and motivations’, they ‘have a minimal reflex­ ive power to accept (or reject) being affected in this way’ (Žižek, 2014, ch.10). This freedom is a retroactive endorsement of causal influences, but allows subjects to decide which ‘sequence of necessities’ determines them. That is, if subjects take responsibility for their interpellation and enjoyment, they react differently when confronted with their overdetermination by external forces. As Žižek explains, if it is an illusion that subjects decide their own fate, then ‘simply to endorse and assume this predicament is also an illusion, an escapist avoidance of the burden of responsibility’ (Žižek, 2014, ch.9). Subjects who accept the absence of meaningful agency lack a capability for self-reinvention gained by those who experience overdetermination as liberating. If we accept that, since the Other’s desire is unknowable, we have a freedom to decide, this becomes a form of agency because it produces different behaviour, including that towards social change (Kay, 2003, pp.36–37).

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Žižek calls this moment of agency an ‘act’, which he develops from Lacanian psychoanalysis into a radical political gesture. The main criterion for an act is that it cannot be accounted for within the Symbolic; it changes the Symbolic and is symbolised retrospectively under the new conditions. As Žižek says, ‘an authentic act momentarily suspends the big Other, but it is simultaneously the “vanishing mediator” which grounds, brings into existence, the big Other’ (Žižek, 2007a, p.144). Because it goes beyond existing symbolisation, it first appears as an aberration, crime or madness. Yet the act is ‘ethical’ in this respect, not because it frees the subject from pathological motivation, but because it reveals the contingent imposition of the law in general. The authentic act involves risk, as its resolution must cause momentous transfor­ mation, which may ‘acquire a meaning different from or even totally opposed to what [the subject] intended to accomplish’ (Žižek, 1993, p.31). In this way, according to Žižek, political movements such as fascism are not acts, because they are still guaranteed by the big Other and do not go beyond ‘the key fea­ ture of their society, the capitalist relations of production’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.152). The act is more a pure refusal, but as such always ultimately ‘fails’, in that it then inaugurates a new imposition of law. The act changes historical perspective, but turns that perspective into necessity, ‘succeeding’ (in its aim, not its goal) by re-suturing the Symbolic and erasing ‘the radically contingent, “scandalous”, abyssal character of the new Master-Signifier’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.193). Also, although acts are rooted in material conditions, they ‘are possible on account of the ontological non-closure, inconsistency, gaps, in a situation’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.309). Change occurs only when the subject shifts the coordi­ nates of what can be recognised. So how, precisely, does a subject act against symbolic meaning, and how are acts politically motivated? It seems that, because the subject acts outside accep­ ted symbolic codes, the ‘actor’ cannot be the symbolic subject. In fact, Žižek explains, ‘if there is a subject to the act’, it is ‘an uncanny “acephalous” subject through which the act takes place as that which is “in him more than himself”’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.460). He also describes the act as a ‘purely formal’ decision ‘without a clear awareness of what the subject decides about’, which is ‘non­ psychological’, has ‘no motives, desires or fears’, and is ‘not the outcome of strategic argumentation’ (Žižek, 2005b). The cause of the act is some subjective excess, experienced as an abstract ethical imperative. Marchart suggests that it then appears that acts ‘occur in a vacuum where all strategic considerations are suspended’ (Marchart, 2007, p.103). Against Žižek’s reading of Lenin, he states that, ‘when Lenin in 1917 came to a different conclusion to that of his fellowrevolutionaries, this was not because he was prepared, existentially, to “take a leap”, but because he arrived at a different strategic assessment of the situation’ (Marchart, 2007, pp.107–108). Similarly, for Sharpe, Žižek regards all strategy and consequence as being relegated beneath the ethical negation (Sharpe, 2005, p.168), which ignores that actors are always motivated, even if not according to social norms (Sharpe, 2004, p.244). Žižek counters such points by explaining that his concept does not disqualify political decision-making – it ‘is neither a

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strategic intervention into the existing order, nor its “crazy” destructive negation; an act is an “excessive”, trans-strategic, intervention which redefines the rules and contours of the existing order’ (Žižek, 2005c, p.145). In other words, it is a move to do the impossible based on a strategic assessment that the existing strategies are insufficient. The need to act is strategic, but the act itself cannot be accounted for within the range of strategies in the existing Symbolic. In this way, it seems that the act is first justified by political motivation, and revolutionary subjects do not exit symbolic subjectivity in the process. Žižek states that, although ‘psychoanalysis confronts us with the zero-level of poli­ tics’, or a gap which the political act can exploit, their relationship is always ‘a missed encounter’, in that ‘psychoanalysis opens up the gap before the act, while politics already sutures the gap’ (Žižek, 2012, p.963). Here, the political act represents an interpretation of contingency from a certain political stance, which already fills in the negative space. This position is clarified somewhat where Žižek explains that the gap between negation and sublimation, ‘is not just a theoretical distinction between the two aspects, which are inseparable in our actual experience’, and the (Lacanian) point is to focus ‘on those limitexperiences in which the subject finds himself confronted with the death drive at its purest, prior to its reversal into sublimation’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.189, emphasis added). That is, the gap is neither purely theoretical nor actually experienced. The subject is confronted with the truth of drive, that there is no big Other, but from within the Symbolic, so the freedom to choose at that point is retrospectively seen to have already been decided. Understood in this way, however, a political act cannot be a ‘purely formal’ decision. While, in psychoanalysis, analysands may recognise the contingency of their unconscious attachment for reasons that are symbolised only subsequently, the contingency of the existing Symbolic in politics is recognised through conscious opposition. The risk in the political act is in trying to realise new social goals according to an already-functioning oppositional ideology, while recognising its own contingency. Yet Žižek tends to disconnect the initial political aims of the act from the Symbolic it creates, as if the act only negates. For example, he explains that radical political change cannot be measured by how much life would improve afterwards, because it ‘changes the very standards of what “good life” is, and a different (higher, eventually) standard of living is a by-product of a revolutionary process, not its goal’ (Žižek, 2005a, p.253). But while the new meaning of the good cannot be explained according to dominant standards, revolutionaries (such as Lenin) must have an alternative notion of the good life to motivate them to act. This alternative is necessary because we ‘have to be in a position to prepare for, if not completely recognize, a kind of portent or sign of how freedom might unfold, in time’ (Ramey, 2013, p.89). As in Jameson’s theory of Utopia, a completely unfa­ miliar conception of humanity is antithetical to politics, and it is necessary to mediate between the two. A political act must both exceed dominant ideas and resonate with existing oppositional views to gain support. The risk in restructuring the Symbolic after negation is thus linked to the ideology behind the act, and if the political act is to have a radical progressive

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outcome, it must come from a radical, counter hegemonic movement. Vighi and Feldner explain that, ‘the conscious definition of a subversive political strategy already necessarily includes drive and the dimension of the act’, which ‘can be conceived as synchronous with the attempt to disturb the core of the hegemonic ideological constellation’ (Vighi and Feldner, 2010, p.10). This ‘conscious’ aspect is crucial, along with pointing to a general contingency, in making the act a radical political move. In some cases, such as when Žižek (following Lacan) defines the act in relation to Antigone, and her insistence on the proper burial of her brother in defiance of King Creon, this dimension is lost. Žižek explains that Antigone embodies both the desire of the big Other, ‘which demands that the (brother’s) body be integrated into the symbolic tradition’, and ‘a willing selfexclusion from the big Other, a suspension of the Other’s existence’ (Žižek, 1993, p.60). In this sense, she exceeds the symbolic norm of royal decree in accordance with another symbolic mandate. But, as Grigg says, Antigone thus ‘refuses to comply with a command she thinks is wrong […] in the name of a higher law’ (Grigg, 2001, p.116). Since she insists on established customs guaranteed by an alternative big Other, her act does not recognise overall contingency and she cannot take full responsibility for her defiance. There is no reason to assume that such an act is conducive to progressive social change (Stavrakakis, 2007, p.135). For Žižek, ‘an act proper’ is not defined by ‘its inherent qualities but its struc­ tural place within a given symbolic network’, so ‘the externality of the act is absolutely internal to the symbolic order’ (Žižek, 2005a, p.252). For us, not only is the structural place important, but whether an oppositional ideology can for­ mulate its aims against this structure. The value of this point becomes clear in relation to some of Žižek’s real-world examples of acts, which either do not seem to signify revolutionary shifts in the Symbolic, or do so through reactionary alternatives. In the first case, Žižek views the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in the UK as an act that ‘changes the very para­ meters of the possible’, because, in Chile, ‘the fear of Pinochet dissipated’ and ‘the taboo subjects of torture and disappearances became the daily grist of the news media’ (Žižek, 2001a, p.169). The arrest was an insistence on international law that allowed subordinate voices to be heard. Yet it still represents more of a shift within the existing (capitalist) Master-Signifier than the introduction of a new one, because it is not explicitly signified in terms of class struggle. In the second case, Žižek discusses the Canudos, a 19th century movement in Brazil in which the poor and social outcasts formed an autonomous community under the lea­ dership of an apocalyptic prophet. He also describes an instance in the Vietnam War in which the Viet Cong cut the arms off children after discovering they had been vaccinated by the US army. Here, Žižek endorses the complete negation of the Other, whether via religious fanaticism, or by rejecting even its ‘good’ quali­ ties, because ‘if one adopts the attitude of “let us take from the enemy what is good and reject or even fight against what is bad”, one is already caught in the liberal trap of “humanitarian help”’ (Žižek, 2005c, p.147). But, with the Canu­ dos, the negation of one big Other leads to its replacement by another that is equally dogmatic. With the Viet Cong, the logic of simply negating the Other

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results in an absurd, directionless ‘ethics’ condemned to mindlessly react against the Other, which is not ‘a useful strategy for convincing people that the left offers a viable alternative to the systemic violence of capitalism’ (Homer, 2016, p.86). In these examples, ‘what seems to count for Žižek is not the content of an emanci­ patory project, but the purely formal fact that a radical break is established vis-à­ vis the existing order’ (Marchart, 2007, p.104). Instead, we take from them that the difference between radically emancipatory acts and acts of fascism guaran­ teed by the big Other, or those unable to go beyond capitalism, is content, espe­ cially taking responsibility for actions. It is necessary to develop a certain kind of consciousness through ideological critique to inspire acts that aim at a revolu­ tionary impact.

Class struggle Another way of understanding this argument is that a political act must con­ nect explicitly with Žižek’s concept of class struggle, which defines radical political agency. In these terms, class struggle is effectively the symbolic Real, glimpsed through its effects, or excluded groups within the social order. Žižek describes it as ‘the unfathomable limit that cannot be objectivized, located within the social totality, since it is itself that limit which prevents us from conceiving society as a closed totality’ (Žižek, 1994, p.22). For us, this notion of class struggle can challenge affirmative ideological assumptions based on the realities of (surplus) deprivation, and construct a radical political act. Never­ theless, it remains difficult to imagine how class consciousness can expand when, as Marcuse theorised, needs, power and awareness are still often split between different groups. As with Marcuse, Žižek considers some potentials for class consciousness to develop that seem unlikely, but he also sees class politics as a matter of connecting different movements and ideas, which implies the possibility of creating gradual ideological change through a variety of channels. Žižek explains that class struggle does not override other struggles, but redefines their relationship. As he puts it, class struggle is not ‘the ultimate referent and horizon of meaning’, but ‘the structuring principle which allows us to account for the very “inconsistent” plurality of ways in which other antag­ onisms can be articulated’ (Žižek, 2006, p.361). Class struggle is a symbolic, political move that reveals the power relations in other symbolisations and their ‘partial position of enunciation’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.125). In this way, even relativism that views particular antagonisms as equal and unconnected tacitly affirms the social order by failing to consider its underlying contradictions. Moreover, class struggle goes beyond particular, historical groups, such as the industrial proletariat, to mark a general social antagonism. Laclau criticises Žižek because his notion of classes is too empty, and their only feature is that they, ‘in some way, are constituted and struggle at the level of the “system”, while all other struggles and identities would be intra-systemic’ (Laclau, 2000b, p.205). But the primary point of class struggle is this dichotomy, which exposes the difference between changes within a system, and changing the system itself.

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Even so, if class struggle has no specific content, it is not merely an empty category. In fact, the very designation ‘smuggles a positive content into the “Real” of antagonism’, by already implying a particular way of considering the social split (Marchart, 2007, p.113). We must therefore explain why only certain groups symbolise it, and why it privileges economic exclusion. In Žižek’s view, economic antagonism enables us to understand the constitutive lack of totality, and that identity struggles which supposedly replace class as the central social antagonism are symptoms of late capitalism. Thus, where there appears to be no class struggle, that does not indicate its irrelevance but ‘the index of the victory of one side in the struggle’ (Žižek, 2000, p.320), and ‘the multitude of particular struggles with their continuously shifting displacements and condensations is sustained by the “repression” of the key role of economic struggle’ (Žižek, 1997a, p.47). Also, class struggle is a representation of the social Real, or what the political field represses, but does not designate any absolute form of social division. For Devenney, there is a contradiction here, because, based on notions of contingency, ‘the determining role of class cannot even be viewed. Yet this is precisely what is required if the act is to traverse the fundamental fantasy’ (Devenney, 2007, p.55). To transcend class antagonism, we need to know what it is in some concrete form. Similarly, Sharpe argues that understanding class division as an always present split or antinomy allows Žižek to avoid examining specific antagonisms, and to attribute the concept of class struggle to political groups almost at will (Sharpe, 2004, p.210). Either class struggle is this Real, or it is a particular political struggle. But we see Žižek’s position here as a claim that, while no specific subject is class struggle, because class antagonism exists in every social, a part of each social order embodies class struggle, and it is always a question of which groups fulfil that role. The need for radical change revolves around this ‘part of no part’ in society, represented by the unemployed, imprisoned and displaced. In Žižek’s terms, such groups are the ‘empty set’, normally considered only as transgressions, that can reveal society’s failure on its own terms. For example, they show that if ‘society needs fewer and fewer workers to reproduce itself […], then it is not the workers who are in excess, but Capital itself ’ (Žižek, 2002, p.291). What Žižek calls ‘politicization proper’ is then a process in which ‘the logic of excluding a particular group is shown to be part of a wider problem’, providing ‘a kind of distilled version of what is wrong with society as such’ (Žižek and Daly, 2004, p.142). This group represents the truth of the social order, and re-signifies political opposition in radical terms. Elsewhere, Žižek defines four destabilising antagonisms in today’s societies: ecological imbalance; the concept of ‘intel­ lectual property’; technological advances; and economic ‘apartheid’ in major cities. He explains that the last of these represents class struggle, and the others only become revolutionary when ‘the antagonism between the Excluded and the Included’ overdetermines ‘the entire terrain of struggle’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.428). The part of no part cannot be included without changing the system itself, as with Jameson’s idea that class antagonism is only overcome when existing class categories are abolished.

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For us, this notion of class struggle represents an oppositional point that counters many affirmative ideological rationalisations, but the issue remains how it may actually work in practice. First, it is necessary to unite the singular inter­ ests of postmodern political movements, which highlight contradictions in capitalism without defining them as such. Žižek explains for example that workers’ rights campaigns should recognise that ‘there is no worker without a capitalist organizing the production process’, and that to overcome oppression ‘one has substantially to transform the content of one’s own position’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.79), that is, view it universally. For Žižek, class opposition must reinvi­ gorate the concept of generalised Left movements, against liberal Left Beautiful Souls, who ‘want a true revolution [but] shirk the actual price to be paid for it’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.4). We must choose between accepting struggle within capital­ ism, or confronting class antagonism. The latter involves recalling that many modern social rights emerged from Left victories, and showing that collective struggle need not be replaced by single group issues. We must decide how ‘to remain faithful to the Old in the new conditions’, because ‘only in this way can we generate something effectively New’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.33). Oppositional ideology means rethinking collective politics for the current situation. A problem remains that the excluded are often not politically active, or in a position to articulate their universality. Also, as class struggle in capitalism has disconnected from a definable proletariat, the excluded are more fragmented and detached from any possible political movement. As Laclau explains, the unity of class as a concept is lost when classes have no concrete identity, and although ‘there are still remainders of full class identities in our world […] the main line of development works in the opposite direction’ (Laclau, 2000c, p.301). Or, as Marcuse observed, the excluded is no longer equivalent to a working class that experiences material deprivation, holds a central role in production and invigorates class consciousness. Žižek similarly describes ‘three fractions of the working class’ today as ‘intellectual labourers, the old manual working class, and the outcasts’, all of which replace the universal class, and are currently antagonistic to each other (Žižek, 2009, p.147). He notes that even the slum-dwellers are not a revolutionary class, because while ‘the classic Marxist working class […] is defined in the precise terms of economic “exploi­ tation” […], the defining feature of the slum-dwellers is socio-political’ (Žižek, 2005a, p.226). It is hard to envisage how to build a political project around the excluded as a modern proletariat. Where Žižek formulates such a ‘proletariat’, he identifies potentials but struggles to overcome these difficulties. For example, he states that ‘to be a “proletarian” involves assuming a certain subjective stance’, because ‘the line that separates the two opposing sides in the class struggle […] is not the line separating two positive social groups, but ultimately radically subjective’ (Žižek, 2008d, p.273). Elsewhere, he explains that ‘today’s proletarians’ are found ‘where there are subjects reduced to a rootless existence, deprived of all substantial links’ (Žižek, 2001a, p.140). The first of these definitions helps in creating an inclusive concept which implies potential for a cross-class radical movement. But

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there is no clear material need linking those who take this subjective stance. Žižek explains that, due to technological and environmental issues, we are all proletarians, ‘dispossessed of our symbolic substance, our genetic base heavily manipulated, vegetating in an unlivable environment’ (Žižek, 2009, p.92). Yet lacking here is the immediate deprivation experienced by the impoverished. As for a general class consciousness, Žižek says that, since deprivation is experi­ enced in the global slums, ‘we should be looking for signs of the new forms of social awareness that will emerge from the slum collectives’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.426). This idea appears more promising, depending on how significant such awareness can become, and the extent to which it can mediate its needs with the global environmental and technological concerns of other groups. Ultimately, for Žižek, these attempts to define a proletariat demonstrate an incredibly slight potential, as no major anti-capitalist politics is currently plausible. He explains that, ‘calls for a radical overthrow of capitalism and its democratic political form, […] although necessary in the long run, are meaningless today’ (Žižek, 2005a, p.224). But, he continues, it remains crucial to continue questioning capitalism, and not merely turn to local forms of resistance. For us, Žižek’s position here is not merely a ‘vain hope of the implosion of capital’, which demonstrates ‘profound ignorance of the more complex mechanisms whereby contemporary forms of capitalisation function’ (Devenney, 2007, p.52). Rather, because the part of no part represents a need to overthrow capitalism, but also the current impossibility of succeeding, anticapitalism must begin through continuous production of alliances between groups and individuals. For Žižek, it is still necessary to create a global anticapitalist project, but class struggle means opposing ‘concrete political agents and their actions’, while anti-capitalism remains ‘the horizon of all its activ­ ity’ (Žižek, 2012, p.1005). In this sense, Žižek’s project is not hugely different from, for example, Laclau and Mouffe’s radical democracy, which also attempts to dissolve ideological boundaries, and find common points of articulation, to subvert hegemony (Žižek and Daly, 2004, p.18). The differ­ ence is that it constructs its politics in opposition to capitalism specifically, through the human excess of capitalist production, for whom change within capitalism is inadequate by definition. It is a necessary position from our perspective in that it goes beyond interactions between contrasting affirmative ideologies, to create a radical sense of contingency.

Democracy So what kind of politics may inspire acts, or begin to develop class con­ sciousness? In our theory, the aim is to gradually increase alternative thinking which offers political ideals and understands the contingency of any world view, to challenge affirmative ideological content. In this regard, Žižek out­ lines a form of politics that is sufficiently radical, and implies the possibility of slowly building opposition, but is in some ways still too focused on nega­ tion. To begin with, we analyse Žižek’s theory of democracy, and the shift he

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makes from affirming radical democracy to opposing a political focus on democracy. At this stage, we are mainly concerned with defending Žižek’s position, as an anti-capitalist politics that aims to place control in the hands of the excluded. The important point is that Žižek does not discard democ­ racy as such, but reformulates it around the excluded and class politics. For Žižek, any democracy necessarily involves an irrational Master-Signifier, which fills the locus of power with some unquestionable notion, as well as an excluded social element. For instance, he explains, where the Jacobins attemp­ ted to keep the centre of power empty, to protect it from pathological motiva­ tion, they effectively took power themselves in ‘the most cunning and at the same time the most brutal, unconditional way’ (Žižek, 2008b, p.269). In his earlier work, Žižek reads the implications of these excesses as a need for radical democracy, because of the contradiction it implies. He accepts that democracy is manipulated and corrupted, but that the abstract notion of democracy acts as ‘a symbolic fact in the absence of which effective democracy […] could not reproduce itself ’ (Žižek, 2008a, p.167). In other words, democracy is both a particular realisation revolving around some contingent point, and the process of its own evolution, attempting to realise its impossible universal idea. As such, ‘this split is the very source of the strength of democracy’, if it can ‘take cognizance of the fact that its limit lies in itself, in its internal “antagonism”’ (Žižek, 1991, p.168). It is not that Žižek distances himself from democracy here, because it contains ‘particularistic ideological fantasies’ (Sharpe, 2005, p.156), or its hidden excess has ‘sinister connotations’, aligned ‘with bureau­ cratic idiocy, illegal transgressions, racist jouissance, patriarchal sexism, and so forth’ (Boucher, 2008, p.208). Rather, recognition of the fantasy, corruption and irrational excess in democracy gives the concept dialectical momentum. From the mid-1990s onwards, however, Žižek considers more how democ­ racy functions as the major obstacle to social change, in the sense that people trust in the existing democratic process. He states that, ‘what, today, prevents the radical questioning of capitalism itself is precisely the belief in the demo­ cratic form of the struggle against capitalism’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.183). Democracy cannot fulfil its role of self-reinvention if it does not address the deep antag­ onisms constitutive of capitalist society, so he considers whether ‘one should take the risk of abandoning it to the enemy’ (Žižek, 2001b, p.123). In such comments, Žižek points to a particular understanding of democracy, in which voting and other formal aspects of liberal democracy are seen as a kind of panacea. But because in today’s society there is often an immediate association between liberal democracy and democracy as such, it seems that anti-capitalist politics has to counter democracy itself to undermine its liberal form. In taking this step, Žižek distances himself from radical democracy, on the basis that its appeal to the empty universal of democracy is filled by a hidden supplement. For Žižek, radical democratic theory is problematic when it equates recognising the universality of social antagonism with an ability to keep democracy open, or function without fantasy. For example, Laclau speaks of maintaining a gap ‘between the particularity of the normative order

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and the universality of the ethical moment’, and states that ‘the only demo­ cratic society is one which permanently shows the contingency of its own foundations’ (Laclau, 2000a, pp.85–86). Or, Stavrakakis argues against Žižek that ‘democratic lack can acquire a non-essentialist positive existence’, as we can sacrifice ‘our libidinal, fantasmatic/symptomatic attachment to symbolic authority’, to ‘really enjoy the signifier of the lack in the Other’ (Stavrakakis, 2007, pp.278–279). Yet such ideas imply either the impossibility of achieving social stability, because the law is always undermined by admission of its own contingency and ‘endless cycles of infra-political networking’ (Daly, 2007, p.8), or that hegemony shifts to a higher level, in which the ‘emptiness’ of power gives power to those who define emptiness. Žižek states that ‘the democratic empty place and the discourse of totalitarian fullness are strictly correlative’, because ‘it is meaningless to […] advocate a “radical” democracy which would avoid this unpleasant supplement’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.101). The concept of the empty place does not sufficiently acknowledge its own position, which, as Daly puts it, ‘reproduces the fantasy that it can submit everything (including global economic activity) to conscious political control and that we could change if we really wanted to’ (Daly, 2010, p.11). Even a self-reflexive democracy must have an excess naturalised via fantasy. What radical democracy lacks, for Žižek, is a notion of class struggle, or the antagonism that is repressed by the constitution of any law. Žižek illustrates this point in a critique of Mouffe’s pluralist ‘agonistic’ democracy, in which different discourses meet as adversaries rather than enemies, and democracy is not a matter of rational consensus, or agreement without exclusion, but must maintain the principle of democratic contestation regardless of the hegemony established. Žižek here points to a ‘key political struggle’ besides ‘the agonistic competition within the field of the admissible’, which is ‘the struggle for the delimitation of this field, for the definition of the line which will separate the legitimate adversary from the illegitimate enemy’ (Žižek, 2004a, p.114). That is, certain positions are excluded to establish the agonistic system in the first place. For Mouffe, the beginning point is ‘a certain amount of consensus’ around ‘ethico-political principles’, and confrontation should be between dif­ ferent interpretations of these principles, which include ‘liberal-conservative, social-democratic, neo-liberal [and] radical-democratic’ (Mouffe, 2000, pp.103–104). Absent from this list is any definitively anti-capitalist position, whose hegemony would presuppose economic changes that would render the others obsolete. As Žižek says, this limit point represents the undemocratic assumption behind democratic inclusion, and is ‘overdetermined by the fun­ damental social antagonism (“class struggle”)’, that ‘cannot ever be adequately translated into the form of democratic competition’ (Žižek, 2004a, p.117). Žižek’s approach to democracy thus opposes established forms of demo­ cratic participation in contrast to a democratic explosion of popular will embedded in class categories. This democratic act, for Žižek, would appear anti-democratic, in that it brings forth what is repressed by existing democracy. Its success involves re-signifying the symbolic order, by exceeding normality

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and being institutionalised ‘in the guise of its opposite, as revolutionarydemocratic terror’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.266). Žižek’s counter-democracy is then not dictatorship, but a subversion of the limits of existing democracy into a new form. He explains via Lenin that liberal democracy can be seen in this way as bourgeois dictatorship, because ‘the very form of the bourgeois-democratic state, the sovereignty of its power in its ideologico-political presuppositions, embodies a “bourgeois” logic’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.412). Liberal democracy is democracy within capitalism, and reveals its ‘dictatorial dimension’ if the system that sustains it is questioned. Against this, a ‘dictatorship of the prole­ tariat’ is democracy formulated around the excluded, against the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The important factor in each case is who controls state power, and the effects of that control. Žižek says, if ‘being freed from the invi­ sible hand of the market’ means being ‘controlled by the visible hand of new rulers’, it is worth it ‘if the visible hand is visible to and controlled by the “part of no part”’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.419). The crucial point is whether decisions are made ‘through the engaged participation of the majority’, else ‘it is of second­ ary importance if we have parliamentary democracy and freedom of individual choices’ (Žižek, 2004b). This concept of democracy marks a clear distinction between existing insti­ tutions and a potential beyond them, and represents an oppositional ideology in the sense of seeking change based on the contingency of existing economic and political logics. Also, while it is uncertain whether Žižek’s abandoning of the term ‘democracy’, rather than attempting to re-signify it, is strategically effective, it remains a commitment to a mass political movement. Even so, in practical terms, although Žižek’s proposal is more inclusive than Marcuse’s notion of ‘dictatorship’, it shares the problem that there is no large-scale, antiestablishment political explosion on the horizon. It does not take us beyond Marcuse’s political impasse, in that self-determination means escaping estab­ lished democratic procedure, which requires a self-determined subject to first change social relations. It thus needs to be considered how a large-scale rejec­ tion of established democracy can gradually come to fruition, in ways that may even involve forms of democratic participation.

Refusal In terms of the political tactics that may be compatible with this gradual development, Žižek emphasises a mode of refusal, against a predominant ‘pseudo-activity’ that merely appears to be doing something, based on an ‘urge to […] “participate”, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on’ (Žižek, 2006, p.334). We understand here that Žižek does not literally recommend people do nothing, but instead make choices that reject accepted forms of participation. But we still question whether refusal has sufficient political direction, and whether its goals can really be separated from established pol­ itics. As with traversing the fantasy and the act, Žižek often focuses on the negating power of refusal, which ‘clears the table’ first, before introducing

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specific political ideas, but sometimes also implies a need to maintain ordin­ ary political participation to reach particular ends. It is thus important to clarify how refusal and participation can function together, and the ideologi­ cal assumptions that motivate these efforts. Žižek defines three kinds of act that contrast with the act proper, because they do not truly disrupt the Symbolic: the hysterical act that ‘stages’ its complaint for the ruling order (thus recognising its authority); the passage à l’acte (such as riots) that strikes out blindly and violently in impotence; and a symbolic act that stands in for a political programme, such as a cultural statement (Žižek, 2001b, pp.84–85). The cultural act and passage à l’acte are in fact similar, for Žižek, in that, although aesthetic spectacle is very different from spontaneous violence, both are performative representations of frustrations that cannot name the poli­ tical real (Žižek, 2008e, p.482). The radical alternative to these is then a symbolic violence that disturbs society and introduces a point of separation. Rather than the violence of the passage à l’acte, or a fascist spectacle that stands in for real change, revolution requires the violence of refusal. The gesture is encapsulated, for Žižek, in the phrase ‘I would prefer not to’, spoken by Herman Melville’s character, Bartleby the scrivener. It is passive refusal that causes procedure to grind to a halt, or a non-violence that causes the violence of upheaval. Žižek explains that such refusal passes from a politics ‘which parasitizes upon what it negates, to a politics which opens up a new space outside the hegemonic position and its negation’ (Žižek, 2006, pp.381–382). In this view, maintaining the system requires more effort than changing it, ‘so that the first gesture to provoke a change in the system is to withdraw activity, to do nothing’ (Žižek, 2008f, p.180). Even certain forms of subversive activity contribute to the energy needed to sustain the system, and simply stopping would be more productive. It should be noted that this ‘doing nothing’ is not exactly the complete withdrawal that Žižek’s reference to Bartleby implies. It is not that he ‘affirms only something like […] individual subjective withdrawal from the concrete options open in the present’ (Ramey, 2013, p.95). Instead, it represents a poli­ tics whose first move is to refuse the terms of debate, or the totality represented through a limited choice, such as liberalism and conservatism, and select its hidden excess. It effectively means taking the fantasy of free political choice literally, making the impossibility of radical change possible by treating it as a genuine option. As with Marcuse, revolution can become necessity only once it becomes a possibility, and Žižek states that, whereas in the early 20th century it was clear what the Left needed to do, but not when to do it, today ‘we do not know what we have to do, but we have to act now, because the consequence of non-action could be disastrous’ (Žižek, 2010, p.95). It is necessary then to enact a negation of existing domination, to make space for politics. With the envir­ onmental crisis, for example, Žižek explains we must insist upon drastic, pre­ ventative action (and risk appearing absurd if there is no catastrophe), rather than choose between doing nothing or taking limited measures that will fall short (Žižek, 2008e, p.456). Here, the initial refusal of the given choice actually requires the most action.

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Less clear is whether Žižek sees Bartleby politics as any rejection of dominant terms, or one which represents a particular kind of political alternative. For us, refusal cannot connect with radical politics unless it specifically challenges affir­ mative ideologies with notions of revolutionary possibility. But Žižek’s descrip­ tion of refusal sometimes presents it as indeterminate, such as when he suggests that a ‘zero-level’ or ‘empty form of protest […] deprived of concrete content’, is needed to ‘open up the space into which concrete demands and projects of change can then inscribe themselves’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.482). He also says ‘it is all too simple to oppose this passage à l’acte directly to the authentic political act’, and we ‘have to accept the risk that a blind violent outburst will be followed by its proper politicization’ (Žižek, 2002, p.225). Yet, as discussed above, ‘zero-level’ describes a ‘missed encounter’ that has already been sutured by a politics, while a ‘blind violent outburst’ is an expression of pseudo-activity. All protest is deter­ minate to some degree, and there is no correlation to be assumed between blind outbursts and radically progressive alternatives. Bartleby politics, as a politics, withdraws from dominant assumptions, but not in a way that entails ‘subjective destitution’, from where the subject can ‘rechoose his or her own fundamental fantasy’ (Wells, 2014, p.201). The ‘choice’ is intertwined with the will to refuse, and taps into a radical position that already exists (Homer, 2016, p.62). Else­ where, Žižek implies that refusal is part of a more deliberate political action. For example, he states that Bartleby’s attitude remains as a permanent foundation in a radical movement, so ‘the very frantic and engaged activity of constructing a new order is sustained by an underlying “I would prefer not to” which forever reverberates in it’ (Žižek, 2006, p.382). Here, Bartleby appears to run throughout a specific politics (whose agents will also imagine what they would prefer) to maintain the opening of radical possibility. More practically, it is unclear whether refusal is to be total, or whether negation relies on forms of sanctioned participation in some situations. For instance, Žižek suggests that individuals could subtract themselves from poli­ tics by refusing to vote, which may eventually undermine the government’s legitimacy. But, he adds, while in principle ‘one should be indifferent to the struggle between the liberal and conservative poles of today’s official politics’, in fact ‘one can only afford to be indifferent if the liberal option is in power’ (Žižek, 2002, p.301). With such an idea, it seems that radicals should only refuse if they are sure the liberals will win (thus retaining legitimacy), because a conservative win would further solidify right-wing discourse. On another occasion, Žižek criticises Critchley’s notion of making infinite, unfulfillable demands against the state, arguing it is more subversive ‘to bombard those in power with strategically well-selected precise, finite demands’, which the gov­ ernment cannot simply dismiss (Žižek, 2008e, p.350). The implication here is that demands to the state are not problematic as such simply because they recognise the incumbent power. Yet Žižek does not specify which demands are compatible with refusal, or how to determine when they may be productive. It is also difficult to reconcile these notions with others in which Žižek fully endorses non-participation. At one point, he explains that ‘I would prefer not

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to’ means not only not participating ‘in capitalist competition and profiteering’, but refusing ‘to give to charity to support a Black orphan in Africa, engage in the struggle to prevent oil-drilling in a wildlife swamp, send books to educate our liberal-feminist-spirited women in Afghanistan’, and so on, because these actions contribute to maintaining the capitalist machinery (Žižek, 2006, p.383). Simi­ larly, in the run-up to the 2016 US elections, he endorsed a Trump victory over Clinton as the necessary trigger for a ‘big awakening’ of more radical Left poli­ tics (Žižek, 2016). In this sense, refusal involves accepting disastrous short-term consequences, and, as Dean says, although it confronts the existing Left with its complicity in the current system, it appears as ‘the provocation of a catastrophe’, especially for those most vulnerable, ‘in the hope that an act will somehow occur’ (Dean, 2006, pp.130–131). Furthermore, such strategies risk leaving political consequences to chance. It thus seems necessary to balance concepts of refusal and participation, to create a mediation between the everyday and the radically different, as suggested by Jameson’s theory of Utopia. It may also be fruitful to emphasise refusals that target capitalism and conformist activity more specifi­ cally, such as buying less, as a means of rejecting individualist choice for more collective political involvement.

The Party Since political refusal is not merely a matter of individual decision, for Žižek, he recognises that it must be organised into a movement that asks subjects to take responsibility for their ideological attachments. He thus explores ‘the Party’ as a form of leadership that demonstrates the possibilities of negation. As he describes it, the Party and its leaders develop reciprocally with a movement, as the Party’s universal structure is filled by particular grievances. It represents a form of political opposition that aims to be open and self-reflexive, and to med­ iate between abstract ideals and everyday concerns. Yet, despite the importance of these qualities (which connect with Jameson’s theory of Utopia and Marcuse’s concept of radical educators), Žižek still emphasises the Party’s negating effects over the content that inevitably defines the leadership’s initial framework. In our understanding, the Party still privileges a certain perception of social issues, and to remain open it must be clear about the limits that structure its opposition. That is, if the Party is to become the core of a political movement, by challenging conscious rationalisations of affirmative ideologies, it must recognise how its own ideological content overdetermines these challenges. Žižek explains that radical politics requires a certain organisation and con­ ceptualisation, in what he describes as ‘the tetrad of people-movement-party­ leader’ (Žižek, 2012, p.998). The idea is to maintain a relationship of mutual influence between these terms, with none assuming the position of absolute control or knowledge. Thus, ‘the authority of the Party is not that of determi­ nate positive knowledge, but that of the form of knowledge, of a new type of knowledge linked to a collective political subject’ (Žižek, 2012, p.1000). In this way, the Party introduces class consciousness, and turns resistance into a

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revolutionary project by emphasising the lack of the big Other and class struggle defined around the excluded. The content of the movement is then produced by those within it; for Žižek, ‘there is no “true” party line waiting to be discovered’, as it ‘emerges out of the zigzag of oscillations’, or ‘through the mutual interaction of subjective decisions’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.230). The leader is then the element that unifies Party and people by literally taking the lead, rather than the subject-supposed-to-know, or who claims to speak for the will of the people. For Žižek, the ‘authentic Master’ encourages action by doing what people are afraid of, to show that it can be done (Žižek, 2014, ch.1), becoming a vanishing mediator who embodies the realisation of freedom beyond existing symbolic horizons. As with the intellectual leadership discussed by Marcuse, the negative role Žižek gives to the Party means it is not a top-down prescriptive organisation. Yet, also as with Marcuse, Žižek is criticised for merely offering a formal com­ mitment to revolution. For Laclau, Žižek demands that we replace liberal democracies with ‘a thoroughly different regime which he does not have the courtesy of letting us know anything about’ (Laclau, 2000c, p.289). Similarly, Samuels argues that, since Žižek merely criticises actual (non-revolutionary) politics, he ‘denies the real effects the women’s rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, and gay rights movements have had on changing our political and social sys­ tems’ (Samuels, 2009, p.79). For us, however, Žižek does not dismiss all existing politics, or claim that past gains have been worthless, and even comments favourably on political ruptures symbolised by moderate left-wing victories (Obama in the US, Syriza in Greece). If he has not fully endorsed such move­ ments, it is more ‘because they will inevitably be caught up in the logic of capital, a logic which has hegemonised hegemony’ (McMillan, 2011, p.2). They demon­ strate the possibility of disruptive acts, but remain within the capitalist Symbolic. Moreover, the main reason for not formulating clear political content is to avoid constructing a rigid party line, and to reveal an excess in the norms of discourse. The need to create an alternative emerges from actual experiences of exclusion and class struggle that go beyond current politics. As Glynos explains, the ‘attempt to predict outcomes can only rely on current standards and ideals’, which calculate radical proposals based on ‘foundational guarantees rooted in our current ethico-political horizon’ (Glynos, 2001, p.101). If Žižek focuses on the ‘abyssal’ quality of radical politics here, he effectively occupies the position of the analyst (Dean, 2006, p.xix), providing a framework for conversation between transcendental ideals and practical measures. Our potential issue with the Party, then, is similar to that with Marcuse’s radical education, that is, underemphasising how certain political solutions are inevitably already imprinted by the leadership. First, the Party founders have motivations for its organisation, and their ideas become part of the Party’s base. Second, the leadership inevitably becomes the figure of transference, analogous to the analyst, in that, as ‘the lure of the analyst’s knowledge makes the analysand create knowledge for him or herself ’, it is ‘through the emanci­ patory activities of the leader or leaders’ that ‘individuals realize that they

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themselves are the final repositories of power’ (Kovacevic, 2007, p.206). Yet, unlike the analyst, the leader sets an example through specific actions and aims, with political content inscribed in this behaviour that spreads through the Party and beyond. For example, in describing revolutionary-egalitarian justice, Žižek defines ‘trust in the people’ as ‘the wager that a large majority of the people supports […] severe measures […] and is ready to participate in their enforcement’ (Žižek, 2008e, p.461). Here, the Party assumes what people need and will support, using ‘the logic of the future anterior’, or an ‘idea of the people as if a future construction of the people was already in place’ (Daly, 2010, p.20). While this assumption resists populism, it involves a prescription of political content based on the Party’s particular knowledge, acting for ‘the people’ as an abstract concept (which Žižek often describes as an expression of totalitarianism). In this case, Sharpe and Boucher are justified to ask ‘whether the Leader could express the political will of the revolutionary vanguard in any other way than by messianically imposing it upon the lumpenproletariat’ (Sharpe and Boucher, 2010, p.193). To avoid this possibility, the Party must acknowledge the content within its position from the start so it may be devel­ oped through the movement. As Dean points out, while ‘political organization’ necessarily ‘means a gap between many and few’, this ‘does not imply that any given instantiation of the gap is permanent or justified’ (Dean, 2016, ch.4). If the Party continually recognises the gap, it is an ongoing project to reformulate it according to the needs of the movement. The danger, as with Marcuse’s conception of educators and students, is that leaders are seen as a group that understands social problems, and the move­ ment as a group that experiences them. In his analysis of Occupy Wall Street, Žižek argues that the protests successfully created an opening for rethinking politics, especially by rejecting ordinary political debate (effectively saying ‘I would prefer not to’). Yet, he explains, once this step has been taken, such a movement should discuss what it does want, and create debate around new Master-Signifiers that suggest practical political measures (Žižek, 2012, p.1007). In a sense, for Žižek, these protests require a new Master, but there is no leader figure who simply knows the answers. Rather, ‘it is the people who have the answers, they just do not know the questions to which they have (or, rather, are) the answer’ (Žižek, 2012, p.1008). From our perspective, it is cru­ cial to emphasise how both the movement and any potential leaders have questions and answers, or can contribute something to form and content. Not only do leaders bring content with their structuring role, but the movement has structural ideas about the meaning and goal of its refusal. To end, we may ask why subjects might decide to follow the Party, if their aims are not already revolutionary. In psychoanalysis, only once subjects recognise a need to submit themselves to the process does transference occur, and in the sense that the leader equates to the analyst, the subject must experience social symptoms and view the Party as the way to address them. But if ideological fantasies cover for their own flaws by redirecting blame for social symptoms onto others, it is not obvious why anyone who is not already radical

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should find the Party convincing. As such, the Party can only grow if, in line with our concept of ideology, symbolic attachments and fantasies are suscep­ tible to change by contradictory experience and knowledge. In particular, the kind of knowledge that may challenge affirmative ideological beliefs is the oppositional ideology of the Party itself. Without this understanding of ideol­ ogy, it seems we are still looking for a way to create that step of political negation, or act, which does not first require a major shift in material condi­ tions. But with our emphasis on consciousness, the particular assumptions that contribute to the Party’s constitution are the prerequisite for its power to negate, and for the gradual growth of a radical movement. The politics of refusal, as well as the role of the Party, should thus focus on creating breaks with political norms through specific challenges to affirmative rationalisations.

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Conclusion

The preceding chapters have reiterated key points regarding the theorisation of ideology and how such theory affects approaches to political change. Most fundamentally, the analysis of Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek has reaffirmed the value of their dialectical view of society, comparing existing social relations to potentials identifiable in their contradictions. This view formulates a division between ideologies, depending on whether individuals interpret society in terms of what is or this excess of what could be. Politically, the question of ideology then turns to how mass consciousness might shift from what can still be called one-dimensional thinking. This shift rests on the possibility of indi­ viduals recognising a constitutive antagonism in the socio-economic structure, in that existing social relations create a certain excluded or outside part, which embodies antagonisms in proclaimed social values. For Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek, and us, these excluded groups thus represent class struggle and a neces­ sity for change, which means reconsidering dominant social priorities. The dialectical approach to ideology also implies an innate potential for change within subjects, no matter how fixed into an ideological position they seem. Žižek in particular shows that the constitutive negative excess of sub­ jectivity, as drive (rather than a utopian or collective impulse for Jameson or Marcuse), is something that makes the subject non-identical with its symbolic self. Seen this way, alongside the basic split between ‘affirmation’ and ‘opposi­ tion’ in ideology, we also have to consider how it reproduces itself with content. In this respect, in Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek’s theories, concepts such as automatic unconscious absorption, compartmentalisation and fetishist dis­ avowal predominate, whereas we have argued for the crucial role of conscious rationalisation. Žižek especially explores the psychological mechanisms of ideology in great detail, but at most only implies a role for conscious rationa­ lisation in maintaining the unconscious fantasy (the ‘because’ that supplements the form of disavowal, ‘I know, but nevertheless …’). For us, it is crucial to emphasise that although the fantasy overdetermines behaviour and its con­ scious justification, the justifications themselves may affect the fantasy, beha­ viour and base ideological attachment in turn. From here, it is important how this concept of ideology relates to social conditions, specifically the late, advanced or consumer capitalism described

188

Conclusion

by Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek. The main idea that emerges in this respect is that of a background of social demands, to which all ideological positions are responses. Jameson and Žižek highlight how these endless demands lack any sense of overall coherence or clear authority, so the task for theory is to reveal the structure that remains behind the apparent chaos. Also still relevant here, however, are Marcuse’s concepts of the performance principle and repressive desublimation, in that they direct subjects towards certain expectations (per­ formance and consumption) that still judge them in various ways. Jameson and Žižek’s theories suggest a shift in onus in the neoliberal era towards maximising as well as balancing performance, consumption and other aspects of life, which becomes an impossible superego injunction, but Marcuse’s idea of a repressive limit to permissiveness (what we call an injunction to ‘enjoy responsibly’ rather than simply ‘enjoy’) remains pertinent (see also: Bailes, 2016). Instead of the liquidation of meaning, the result is more a clash of meanings coming from contrasting institutional expectations that subjects reconcile through different ideological positions. With this theory of the structure of demands in neoliberal consumer societies, we can begin to imagine alternatives, based on its contradictions and exclusions. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek note how capitalism’s focus on economic growth and profitmaking leads to massive waste, environmental destruction, impover­ ishment and imperialist expansion. To challenge these problems then means confronting dominant ideas regarding social needs, and fundamental features of the capitalist mode of production. Specifically, this task requires a mass political movement centred on class, or constitutive forms of economic and political exclusion in existing social relations. A key question in this regard is that of who could be the agents to start or join such a revolutionary movement. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek all emphasise that there is no longer a singular revolutionary class that resembles the industrial proletariat, and any such potential is split between different classes. Also, as Jameson demonstrates in particular, it is diffi­ cult to identify a logic that can connect the issues faced by different classes. Somehow it is necessary to find pockets of ‘class consciousness’ within each class, which offer beginning points for connectivity. The other question then is how a radical political movement may develop, not only due to worsening material circumstances, but through deliberate attempts to change dominant perceptions. There is no current likelihood of sudden change, or of a mass class movement, and any concept of forcing such change (as in Marcuse’s minority dictatorship) seems implausible. Thus, we have highlighted ideas in each chapter that suggest gradual development of political change, in which utopian ideals mediate with everyday problems, and disruptive protest must combine with established political participation. Mar­ cuse’s ‘step by step’ approach and concept of negative education, as well as Žižek’s theory of the Party, imagine dialogue between leaders and activists. Meanwhile, Jameson’s notion of Utopia is a means to bridge the gap between otherwise incompatible discourses. However, these ideas tend to focus on communications between individuals who are already interested in radical

Conclusion

189

politics, or that can only hope to reintroduce the possibility of alternative thought. For us, the aim for this approach is to have an impact on affirmative forms of ideology, if oppositional political ideals can gain sufficient social presence. The notion of presence then leads us to consider the extent to which radical political ideas can be expressed through commodified cultural channels. Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek emphasise the de-historicisation and de-con­ textualisation of culture by media structures, and how market demands mar­ ginalise oppositional ideas. While these analyses are realistic, for us, there remains space for alternative ideas to be produced and received, and perhaps even to become visible enough to counter accepted modes of discourse. Without ignoring the dominance of certain narratives, this understanding focuses on gaps in structures of cultural production and distribution, such as the way they do not explicitly censor content, or control how content is received. Moreover, the emphasis here is not only on ‘high art’ (Marcuse), whose utopian form is not widely comprehensible. That is, even if protest culture should not be anti-intellectual, a mass movement must communicate through content and use popular media. With each of these issues surrounding radical change, our overarching point has been the need to focus more on the conscious dimension of ideology to expand the scope of political possibility. If the aim is to increase oppositional sensibility in existing social conditions, it means challenging affirmative ideol­ ogies through their conscious rationalisations. As such, ideology cannot be fully understood through formulations of ego weakness (Marcuse) or psychic fragmentation (Jameson), and behaviour is not necessarily a clear measure of ideological commitment (Žižek). Rather, there is agency even in affirmative ideology, in that subjects accept their social positions conditionally and are capable of moving beyond those positions if they perceive that those conditions are not met. In effect, the social structure depends on the support of ideologies that involve beliefs and assumptions based on values which can be challenged. With all this in mind, our final aim is to examine what kind of beliefs and conditions different ideological positions hold, and we have defined a number of these positions, to consider the nature of their attachment to the status quo. These positions are drawn from the work of Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek, where they describe forms of ideological internalisation, but we exam­ ine the points of contrast between these positions as much as their overall affirmative unity, and do not assume that certain positions are especially dominant. Moreover, while Jameson and Žižek’s focus on cynicism suggests that individuals understand social problems but support the system regardless, so that belief is no longer a major component of ideology, for us all ideologies involve fundamental assumptions, and non-cynical ideologies still retain a significant presence. In chapters 2, 4 and 6, we have described these ideological positions as part of an ideology map. As it has developed, this map has come to comprise six positions, which we see as sufficiently significant and different from each other

190

Conclusion

to warrant a separate exposition of their beliefs, conditions and rationalisa­ tions. This analysis identifies many deep assumptions about life in consumer capitalist societies. It also allows us to ascertain which positions are more indirectly affirmative and how oppositional politics might communicate with everyday political thinking. For example, it appears necessary to promote the need for mass participation both inside and outside established democratic channels; counter demands for excessive labour and consumption, based on alternative conceptions of individual and social needs and realities such as automation and environmental decline; and retain a commitment to pluralist inclusion of marginalised groups within society, in opposition to cultural fundamentalisms. Current social conditions ensure that expansion of such ideas will be gradual at best, but, as Marcuse, Jameson and Žižek all show, committing to the possibility and necessity of radical change is the first step. To end, we thus summarise our attempts to define ideological positions in neo­ liberal consumer capitalism. This is merely a basic framework, based on our ideology model and some central characteristics, which may inform further inves­ tigations that either centre on themes, such as attitudes to work or democracy, dif­ ferent social groups, or types of media representation.1 These positions are not meant as an exhaustive catalogue of affirmative ideologies, but demonstrate a range of politically significant belief structures that function ideologically, whether or not they correlate directly with explicit political ideologies. They are also not rigid designations that individuals adhere to exclusively, as certain beliefs may overlap. All these positions share is an ultimate affirmation of the symbolic totality, beneath which is a matrix of similarity and discord, and how these positions con­ nect to one another is as telling as how they connect to the order as a whole. The fact that affirmative ideologies enact their differences within late capitalist demands is one of the system’s strengths, but also points to its contradictions, as each posi­ tion reconciles them indirectly, in ways that reveal the other’s misconceptions. The six positions are laid out under the following headings.

Neoconservativism/fundamentalism The starting point for this position is an imperative to follow rules, maintain standards and follow the ‘performance principle’ notion that hard work and sacrifice are intrinsic to human experience. As such, it is susceptible to neoliberal ideals of small government, deregulation and personal entrepreneurial success. It also represents a reaction against the confusion of postmodern relativism, and thus leans on traditionalist dogma (religion, nationalism) to provide a sense of moral stability. From this perspective, the cause of social problems is the cor­ ruption of timeless structures by permissive liberal elites and ‘foreign’ minorities (a hatred that comes from resentment of these Others’ perceived enjoyment). The contradictions in this fundamentalism come most obviously in its insistence on repressively rigid universal principles, but also in its reduction of social problems to cultural issues, failing to recognise how neoliberal economics create the post­ modern attitudes and consumerist excesses it despises.

Conclusion

191

Humanist liberalism This position similarly stems from belief in individual effort and clear moral standards, but is concerned much more with progress in line with Enlight­ enment values. Economically, it is in tune with the idea of gradual growth and development, and the ability of individuals to contribute to social good through hard work. In effect, it maintains a utopian optimism that recognises economic inequalities, but believes they can be overcome by the market, if reforms are enacted to control its worst excesses. This perspective works in tandem with a faith in pragmatic empirical analysis, scientific rationality and technological advances to solve social problems. This thinking remains onedimensional in its focus on the existing reality and particular issues, rather than the possibility that contradictions may be systemic or embedded in existing power relations. Nor does it fully interrogate its own ideological assumptions, because it views scientific rationality as the absence of ideology.

Pluralist liberalism This position is ostensibly based on inclusion, individual free expression and tolerance. It affirms a consumerist logic of formal freedoms that cater for dif­ ferent cultural identities, and opposes any explicit dogma, whose proponents represent intolerable enemies of freedom. As such, what pluralism can actually tolerate is heavily tied to the requirements of neoliberal capitalism, whether in terms of marketable identities or victims of ‘anti-capitalist’ forces. Pluralism sees itself as a neutral judge that accepts Others only to the extent that they conform to its de-historicised definition of their culture and never truly insist on their difference. Yet pluralism cannot view itself as a neoliberal ideology, because it believes in its non-systemic logic of particularity and difference. Politically, it can thus analyse struggles between groups and power relations, but lacks a mechanism to connect these issues, or itself, to an expression of class struggle intrinsic to capitalism.

Consumerist hedonism This hedonism is an attempt to find fulfilment by maximising pleasure through indulgence in consumer goods and entertainment. It is guided by fantasies cre­ ated by advertising and fashions, and supportive of the existing order implicitly, without any overt political commitment, as long as it continues to produce and (partially) fulfil these desires. In this way, labour and effort become a necessary means to an end, worth pursuing because they enable the hedonist to afford more and maximise pleasure. More than other positions, hedonism distances itself from social issues, and may not consider the detrimental effects of excess consumption as matters of personal responsibility. Its contradictions are more individual, such as the quantity of work that is required to continually achieve greater consumerist thrills and their ultimate inability to provide actual fulfilment.

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Conclusion

Cynical self-interest This cynicism recognises that the social order is heavily flawed, but argues that flaws are inevitable in any system. Drawing on individualistic human nature and historical examples of failed collective social projects, it sees that attempts to plan better systems only make things worse. Capitalism, as a ‘neutral’ ordering mechanism and expression of competitive individualism is as good as it gets. Paradoxically, such cynics are then both highly sceptical of political effort and heavily politically involved, to ensure the maintenance of the status quo. They can also exploit inequality to its advantage while condemning such practices, disavowing belief to indulge in the amoral excesses of capitalist accumulation. Contradictions in this position can be found in its supposed ‘realism’, which in fact presents a very incomplete view of reality, with no consideration of the other aspects of human nature, how different social forms influence behaviour, or social progress achieved historically through collective effort.

Cynical defeatism The cynical defeatist is heavily critical of the social system, but believes that there is no way to resist it, or feels impotent in relation to its size and com­ plexity. It is cynical in its pessimism and in its reaction to the perceived situation, focusing on complaint and mockery aimed at the establishment, and often retreating into consumerist escapism. In effect, it thrives on refusing responsibility and playing the victim, whether because it really maintains a subservient attachment to the social order and really enjoys escapist pursuits, or would like to see an alternative but cannot imagine it. Either way, it will not act to try and affect political change. This position may represent a deep understanding of structural contradictions in neoliberal capitalism, but con­ tinues to contribute to problems through its inability to identify weak points or see potentials in any existing oppositional politics.

Note 1 For example, see my investigation of ideological responses to neoliberalism expres­ sed through city environments in video games (Bailes, 2019).

Bibliography Bailes, J., (2016) ‘“Enjoy Responsibly”: The Continuing Relevance of Repressive Desublimation’, Radical Philosophy Review, 19/1, 239–262 Bailes, J., (2019) Ideology and the Virtual City: Videogames, Power Fantasies and Neoliberalism (Winchester: Zero Books)

Index

Abercrombie, N. 14

agency 30–31, 69–76, 124–129, 168–169 Alford, C. F. 43, 47

Althusser, L. 9, 28–29 Alway, J. 42 anti-capitalism 15–16, 20, 167–168,

175, 181

Antigone 171

apologism 56, 71, 109, 110

art 65–69, 116, 119–121, 166

attachment, libidinal 1, 5, 17–18, 25,

27–28, 144

Balbus, I. D. 79

Baudrillard, J. 18–19

belief 21–25, 49, 52, 102, 149–151, 189

Bellamy, R. 11

Boer, R. 94

Boucher, G. 140, 164, 183

Bronner, S. E. 67

Brown, W. 26, 110

Bryant, L. R. 147

Buchanan, I. 129

Burnham, C. 117

Butler, J. 29, 141, 144

capitalism 69–70, 72–73, 74, 90–91, 92,

188; as ideology 10–11, 13, 14, 23–24;

as Real 141–142; resistance to see

anti-capitalism

Cevasco, M. E. 107

class consciousness 31, 72–73, 75, 76,

126, 127

class struggle 12–16, 72–76, 96, 131–135,

172–175, 177, 188

commodification: of culture 30, 65–66,

67–69, 115–121, 167, 189; as ideology

30, 103, 162–163; total 62–63, 92,

117, 122

consumerism 39, 55, 62–65, 121–124,

155, 161–165

cultural criticism 129–131, 165–168 cultural revolution 66–67, 134

Cultural Studies 154–155 cynical defeatism 57, 64, 105, 108, 111,

152–153, 157, 192

cynical self-interest 57, 64, 71, 106–107,

108, 111, 157, 192

cynicism 23–24, 104, 110, 149, 150–151

Daly, G. 177

Davies, W. 26

Dean, J. 26, 156, 181, 183

defeatism see cynical defeatism Deleuze, G. 101

democracy 82, 167, 175–178

desire 143

Devenney, M. 173

dialectical method 3, 8–12, 39, 67,

88, 187

dictatorship 82, 178

discourse 11–12 drive 143, 146

Eagleton, T. 23–24, 95, 130, 131

economic crisis 71

economics: and culture 91, 122;

economic reductionism 14, 55; and

politics 132, 167, 173

education 78–80 Eros see instinct fantasy 27–28, 29, 45–46, 140, 143, 144

Feenberg, A, 46–47

Feldner, H. 12, 171

Fisher, M. 23–24

Forman, M. 80

Foucault, M. 11–12

194

Index

Freeden, M. 2, 11 Freud, S. 41–42, 44, 109 fundamentalism, 109, 110, 153–154, 156, 190 Geoghegan, V. 69, 75 Giddens, A. 19–20 Glynos, J. 148, 182 Grigg, R. 171 Guattari, F. 101 Habermas, J. 26, 39 Haider, A. 15 Hardt, M. 20–21 hedonism 56, 57, 63, 108, 110, 155, 156, 191 Helmling, S. 129 Hill. S. 14 Holloway, J. 20 Homer, S. 99, 127, 130 humanism 11, 154, 156, 191 human nature 24, 43, 55–56, 104–105 Hutcheon, L. 118 Hyman, E. 50 ideological positions 3, 25, 28, 57, 109–110, 156, 189 ideologies, political 10–11 ideology: affirmative and oppositional 2, 3, 25, 39, 140–141, 189; background ideology 5, 25–27, 28, 57, 188; and class 12–16; definition of 2–5, 7–29, 54–55; as dualisms 7, 25–29; and politics 3–4, 8–12, 29–32; and social relations 16–21; universality of 8–12 ideology map 29, 56–57, 110–111, 156–157, 189–192 Imaginary, the 139–140 instinct 41–44 Irr, C. 129 Jameson, F. 3, 4, 88–111, 114–135; cog­ nitive mapping 126–129, 130, 131; fragmentation 17, 100–103, 109; History 9, 93–96; market ideology 24, 103–107; narrative 93–96, 102, 128; political unconscious, the 94, 96 Jay, M. 45 Kellner, D. 39, 44, 68 Kotsko, A. 26 Kovacevic, F 148

labour 42, 43, 49–50, 57 Lacan, J. 9 Laclau, E. 14–16, 142, 172, 174, 176–177, 182 language 51–53 liberalism 11, 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 150, 154 Lichtman, R, 82 Lukes, T. J. 67 Mandel, E. 30 Marchart, O. 169 Marcuse, H. 3, 4, 36–57, 61–84, 91; ego weakness 48–50, 102–103; historical memory 44–46; needs, true and false 12–13, 40–44, 62, 64, 80, 82; perfor­ mance principle, the 41, 45, 49, 63, 164, 188; repressive desublimation 42, 50, 63, 164, 188; repressive tolerance 52, 82; surplus-repression 41, 42–43 Martineau, A. 79 Marx, K. 69 Marxism 3, 9, 10, 11, 93–95, 166 Massey, D. 127 media 18, 19, 22, 51–53, 69, 102; new media 166–167 Miles, M. 78 modernism 100–101, 115–119 Mouffe, C. 14–16, 177 Negri, A. 20–21 neoconservativism 105–106, 109, 110, 156, 190 neoliberalism 4, 25; as background ideology 25–27; as ideological position 11, 104, 108, 111, 157 Occupy 80, 99, 183 Offe, C. 76 one-dimensionality 8, 17, 22, 27, 37–40 Osborne, P. 131 Party, the 181–184 phantasy see fantasy pluralism: as cultural logic 51, 62, 125; as ideological position 11, 56, 107–108, 111, 153–154, 156–157, 191 political action 31–32, 75, 76–84, 131–135, 178–184, 188–189 Porter, R. 10 postmodernism 17, 89–93, 96, 101, 109, 115–121, 128, 153 psychoanalysis 1, 3, 147, 170, 183

Index rationalisation 1–2, 5, 21–25, 128–129,

150; and class 74; of consumerism 30,

40; of economic crisis 71; forms of 53–

57, 63–64, 107–111, 152–157; of

labour 49–50; of the market 104–107

refusal 32, 77, 178–181

Rawls, J. 10 Real, the 138–142, 173

Reitz, C. 40, 67, 79

Said, E. 130

Samuels, R. 182

scientific rationality 26, 38, 46–48, 154

Sharpe, M. 140, 141–142, 164, 169,

173, 183

Sloterdijk, P. 23

Sohn-Rethel, A. 30

socialism 83, 99

social movements 20, 131–135 Spivak, G. C. 95

Stavrakakis, Y. 177

subject, the 17–18, 28–29, 100–101,

142–148, 169–170; lack in 3, 9,

42, 143

subject positions 124–126 Symbolic, the 138–142, 146, 169–170

195

Therborn, G. 29

Third Culture 154–155

total administration 5, 62, 69–72

totalising 8, 91–92, 93, 118, 128, 130, 145

Turner, B. S. 14

unconscious, the 4, 21–22, 27

Utopia 32, 76, 97–100, 134

Van Gogh, V. 120

Vighi, F. 12, 164–165, 171

Warhol, A. 120

Weber Nicholsen, S. 47

Wells, C. 147

work see labour

Wright, E. O. 3–4

Žižek, S. 3, 4, 71, 100, 137–157, 160–184;

act, the 31, 168–172, 179; big Other,

the 145, 147, 163–165; enjoyment 22,

143–144, 155; fetishistic disavowal

22–23, 138, 148–152; superego

injunction to enjoy 26, 143–144,

163–165; traversing the fantasy

145–148