'What does not work in the world': the specter of Lacan in critical political thought. Issue 1 (2nd January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pohl, Lucas; Swyngedouw, Erik
• Is Part Of: Distinktion. Volume 24:Issue 1(2023)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 19
• Publication Date: 2023-01-02
• Subjects: Critical political theory -- post-foundational thought -- Jacques Lacan -- psychoanalysis -- radical politics -- subjectivation -- political desire; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; Social history -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2021.1872667
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1600-910X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of 'the political' can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of 'the political', the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian-inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoj Žižek, and Alain Badiou.