Capitalism and the Banality of Desire

ABSTRACT

This paper elaborates on Todd McGowan’s perspicacious, psychoanalytic explanation of capitalism’s resilience, due to its formidable ideological insinuation into the banal micro-desires of consumers. I outline his contention that capitalism’s false promise of future satisfaction is subverted by the psychical change indicated by Freud’s re-evaluation of the desire/satisfaction relationship. This is elaborated on via Lacan’s claim, somewhat underplayed in McGowan’s reflections, that desire is essentially narcissistic. Lacan’s claim raises the stakes of capitalism’s psychic appeal, but also indicates how Lacanian psychoanalysis offers a point of intervention. I briefly point to the consistency between Lacan’s conception of the actualized subject and Deleuze’s and Guattari’s articulation of desire in terms of “the process” and the complex metaphor of “desiring machines”. I finally turn to ?i?ek’s conception of the developing world as “the place of rupture” and a major fault line internal to capitalism that threatens to disrupt its operation.     

The real of the rabble: Žižek and the historical truth of the Hegelo-Lacanian dialectic

In this essay I attempt to answer a fundamental question about ?i?ek’s heterodox reading of Hegel’s dialectic: What project sustains this reading in the first place? That is, what is at stake for ?i?ek himself? The purpose of this essay is to develop in this fashion a reading of ?i?ek (since he does not programmatically answer this question), although not one that is necessarily meant to compete against other alternatives. My argument, then, is that ?i?ek’s ontological and hermeneutical project is ultimately political, that when ?i?ek says we need Hegel “now more than ever,” he has a political situation in mind. By finding an element of Hegel’s thought, the political subjectivity of the “rabble,” that resists the traditional picture of dialectical system (especially the critical picture of the post-structuralists), ?i?ek can overturn the distinction between Hegelian method and system by suggesting that there’s no comprehensible distinction at all. And by politicizing Hegel and drawing out the seeds of Lacanian thought that were nonetheless incomplete until Lacan, ?i?ek’s historiographical project takes on the character of ideological critique. As such, Hegel and Lacan reach us anew, as theoretical players in an anti-postmodern political gambit.     

Slavoj Žižek,the Death Drive,and Zombies: A Theological Account

In this article, I discuss the question of the hybridity of the religious and the secular through the example of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj ?i?ek and his psychoanalytically inspired notion of the undead. The undead is ?i?ek's rendering of the Freudian death drive, and as the undead is instantiated in the popular culture cliché of the zombies, we need to look no further than to George A. Romero's classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead from 1968. Thus, this article proceeds in three steps: first, I trace the concept of the death drive from Freud to ?i?ek, supplemented, for their theological importance, by two contemporary philosophers, Jonathan Lear and Eric Santner. Second, I discuss the zombie in contemporary popular culture, with a focus on Romero's movies, and whether such cinematic representations can function as a kind of cultural critique. In conclusion, I return to the question of theology by showing what ?i?ek means by theology and contrasting as well as comparing his philosophy to Augustine's anthropology. Despite ?i?ek's atheistic confession and his dismissal of all pre‐modern philosophy and theology, I show that Augustine's anthropology is structurally similar to ?i?ek's, thus suggesting that the relationship is more complex than ?i?ek allows. Both are united in rejecting any superficial and transparent understanding of self, and become, consequently, an example of the ambiguous relationship between religion and secularity in contemporary times.     

Rethinking the presumption of atheism

Is there—or rather, ought there to be—a presumption of atheism, as Antony Flew (1923–2010) so famously argued nearly half a century ago? It is time to revisit this issue. After clarifying the concept of a presumption of atheism (which includes clarifying the concept of a presumption), I take up the evaluative question of whether there ought to be a presumption of atheism, focusing on Flew’s arguments for an affirmative answer. I conclude that Flew’s arguments, one of which rests on an analogy with the (legal) presumption of innocence, fail.     

Freedom and the psychoanalytic ontology of quantum physics

Jung's paper ‘Synchronicity – an acausal connecting principle’, defining the phenomenon as a ‘meaningful’ coincidence depending on archetypal activation, was published in 1952, together with a conceptually related piece by physicist and Nobel Laureate Wolfgang Pauli entitled, ‘The influence of archetypal ideas on the scientific theories of Kepler’. Slavoj ?i?ek, in The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters, suggests that, in contrast to any notion of a ‘pre‐modern Jungian harmony’, the main lesson of quantum physics was that not only was the psychoanalytic, empty subject of the signifier constitutively out‐of‐joint with respect to the world, but that the Real in itself was already incomplete, out‐of‐joint, ‘not‐all’. Yet while ?i?ek frequently tries to separate Jung from his own ontology, this paper shows that his ontology is not as different as he suggests. Consistent with our earlier publications on Jung and Zizek, a closer investigation reveals an underlying congruence of both of their approaches. In this paper we show that this affinity lies in the rejection by both Jung and ?i?ek of the ideology of reductive materialism, a rejection that demonstrably draws on quantum physics in similar ways. While Jung posits an inherently meaningful universe, ?i?ek attempts to salvage the freedom of human subjectivity by opposing his Lacanian ‘dialectical materialism’ to reductive materialism.     

Reaping the Whirlwind: Reply to Garth Stevens,Gillian Eagle,Margarita Kahn,and Donna Orange

Drawing on the work of ?i?ek (1992) on the neighbor, this paper grapples with Orange’s ethical challenges in this regard. Continuing a focus on the complexity of extending a hand to the Other, the paper then address Kahn’s ideas concerning how one pole of a binary defines itself through the Other, and I speak to the issue of victims and rescuers. The resistance of the erstwhile oppressed to being defined by the Other is taken up in Eagle’s paper. Eagle discusses the perils of reflection and interpretation when at the receiving end of the jouissance of embodied and enacted hatred. In this reply I elaborate these thoughts, and then move to discuss Stevens’s paper, which offers thoughts on how to respond constructively to this jouissance so as not to make a bad situation worse.     

Editorial: minding the (explanatory) gap

‘I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran’, says the robust and bluff believer, Francis Bacon, as the studio manager reaches to switch off the sound on his Elizabethan cultural perceptions, ‘than that this universal frame is without a mind... God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it...’. ‘It is true’, he goes on, ‘that a little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion’. Bacon assumes that the atheist rejects ‘religion’, not just belief in God: no middle term is readily available to him. There is a lingering nuance that ‘atheism’ is ‘shallow’ in its rejection of ‘religion’, which we can register, and even deploy, without thereby endorsing theism: can now insist that the rejection of theism is not yet atheism. Or can we? This is familiar enough stuff for Buddhists, who seem typically in their ‘non-theism’ to represent an agnosticism of indifference rather than of perplexity. But we need to recall why it might seem contentious, and revisiting the scene of religious perplexity can be salutary, since religious dialogue is not apologetic opposition but imaginativeengagement.     

Remorse and Self-love: Kostelnička’s Change of Heart

Does remorse imply self-hatred? In this paper, I argue that self-hatred is a false response to one’s wrongdoing because it is corrupted by the vice of pride, which affects the perception of its object. To identify the detrimental operation of pride, I propose to study the process of change of heart and its impediments. I use the example of Kostelni?ka, from Janá?ek’s opera Jen?fa, to show that the impediment to remorse is active already as a source of wrongdoing and self-deception. I identify three different aspects of Kostelni?ka’s pride: social ambition, defensive anger, and moral ambition. I show that it is pride as moral ambition that prevents the wrongdoer’s acknowledgment of her blameworthiness by causing her obsession with her blameless self-image and corrupting her self-love. In the last part of the paper, I reject Kostelni?ka’s initial self-hatred before her change of heart, because it is not based on an accurate judgement of her agency. Kostelni?ka’s true remorse is thereupon connected with her inner transformation towards humility and with a reorientation of her attention towards the victim of her wrongdoing, as testified in her plea for forgiveness. The implied moral improvement and reconstitution of her relationship to herself and others opens the way for her coming to terms with her guilt.

     

Chosŏn-Centrism and Japan-Centrism in the Eighteenth Century: Han Wŏn-chin vs. Motoori Norinaga

The eighteenth century was a peaceful era for East Asia, ruled by the emperors of Ching. However, intellectuals who refused to accept the Great Ching order appeared in Chos?n and Japan. They developed homeland-centric ideologies. This article compares the Han W?n-chin (韓元震, 1682–1751)‘s Chos?n-centrism with the Motoori Norinaga (本居宣長, 1730–1801)’s Japan-centrism. There is a lot of research about the Norinaga’s Japan-centrism in Japanese academia, which contains both aspects of the culture theory and order theory. In Korea, however, discourse about Chos?n-centrism is still ongoing argument under the concept of ‘Chos?n’s Sino-centrism (朝鮮中華主義)’. I would like to pay attention to that, although homeland-centrism is constructed with two aspects, which are theories of international order and culture, the Chos?n’s Sino-Centrism related discourse only discuss about culture theory aspect. Therefore, comparing Japan-centrism, which contains both culture and order parts, I will point out the problem of Chos?n’s Sino-centrism discourse has, and assert that when Han W?n-chin came up with the idea of a Chos?n-led world, Chos?n-centrism had born with both aspects of culture and order. In order to reveal the Chos?n-centrism, I will use a new concept called ‘Zhonghua Community (中華共同體)’.     

Atheism in religious clothing? Accounting for atheist interventions in the public sphere

In this paper I review several recent attempts to recast atheism in religious form in Canada, the US and the UK. First, several atheists have argued for the redefinition of atheism as a creed deserving of religious protections from the state. Second, various atheist ‘churches’ have gained publicity in recent years, in part due to their appropriation of the Protestant church format and the rhetoric of religious association. Both of these expressions of atheism stand in marked contradiction to older forms of atheism which emerged in response to (and rejection of) Christianity in the West, and they also stand in contrast to popular forms of atheism today, of the kind espoused by Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. As a result, the cases reviewed here represent the ways in which contemporary atheist movements constitute several different counterpublics, and they mark a significant change in the state’s acknowledgement of atheism as a positive form of belief.     

‘Mystic Atheism’: Julia Kristeva's Negative Theology

Abstract

This article examines Julia Kristeva's paradoxical concept of a ‘mystic atheism’. It falls into three parts. First, it briefly surveys Kristeva's psychoanalytic account of Christian theology in Au commencement était l'amour (1985). Secondly, it assesses Kristeva's analysis of the Christian mystical tradition from Teresa of Avila to Angela of Foligno in such works as Le féminin et le sacré (1999) and the three volumes on Le génie féminin (1999-2002). For Kristeva, Christian mysticism represents a key moment in the transition from theology to psychoanalysis: what she locates within the work of the female mystics is a so-called ‘mystic atheism’, that is to say, an affirmation of an other within the subject as opposed to the divine other that supposedly lies outside it. Finally, the article offers some critical comments upon Kristeva's own ‘mystic atheism’: I argue that—like much negative theology—Kristeva's psychoanalysis remains ontotheological in form and that this dimension expresses itself in a problematic tendency to anthropomorphize the other within. In conclusion, I will suggest that Kristeva's ‘mystic atheism’ ultimately remains within the theological tradition it seeks to call into question.     

A new typology of modern atheisms: pilgrim atheism versus tourist atheism

This paper distinguishes between two types of modern atheisms: pilgrim atheism versus tourist atheism. Pilgrim atheism is based on and firmly supports the religion/science dichotomy. New Atheism is today’s well-known representative of pilgrim atheism which is characterised by its hostility to all religions. However, their very atheistic conception of the human being as a cognitively privileged animal depends on a theological conception of humanity, i.e. the human being is a God-like creature who can attain God’s objective knowledge. The second part of the paper is dedicated to exploring an emerging modern atheistic discourse: tourist atheism, emblematised by figures such as Alain de Botton. The fundamental argument of that part is that tourist atheists approach religion as a cultural heritage which still contains some benefits for non-believers. Thus, their strategy of approaching religions is not absolute rejection but engaging with them as repositories of useful sentiments, rituals, insights and ideas. Thus, tourist atheists do not hold the religion versus modernity dichotomy. The paper argues that tourist atheism, which has greater concerns for human subjectivity and internal pleasure of humans, is also an extension of another theological conception of humans as created in the image of God: humans who reproduce God’s autonomy and singularity.     

Architecture of the Unconscious

Finally, when Freud unveiled the predominant role of the unconscious in psychic processes, it turned out that our ego does not even rule its own house.

— Slavoj ?i?ek, How to Read Lacan

Get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche …

— rapper Earl Sweatshirt, “Chum” In the Kitchen

Psychoanalysis is known primarily for its preoccupation with the “truth” that “speaks.” Following the critical tradition pioneered by Lacan and now ?i?ek, I would instead like to shift our attention to the “site[s]” where these pivotal experiments in truth take place—the environments we transform and the objects we fashion as we “learn to live with” the social plight we have inherited. Simply put, the aim of this paper is to explore the architecture of the unconscious. To develop this argument, I draw upon an array of genres and cultural artifacts, including personal memoir, cartoons, and hip hop lyricism.     

Embodied Disbelief: Poststructural Feminist Atheism

“I quite rightly pass for an atheist,” Jacques Derrida announces in Circumfession. Grace Jantzen's suggestion that the poststructuralist critique of modernity can also be trained on atheism helps us make sense of this playfully cryptic statement: although Derrida sympathizes with the “idea” of atheism, he is wary of the modern brand of atheism, with its insistence on rationally arranging—straightening out—religion. In this paper, I will argue that poststructural feminism, with its focus on embodied epistemology, offers a way to re‐explain Derrida's “I rightly pass,” and also to carry it forward. Poststructural feminist atheism leads us through Derrida to an embodied disbelief drawing on three dimensions of poststructural feminism: feminist epistemology and material feminism, relationality, and affect theory.     

AFFIRMATIONS AFTER GOD: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE AND RICHARD DAWKINS ON ATHEISM

Abstract. In this essay, I compare the atheism of Friedrich Nietzsche with that of Richard Dawkins. My purpose is to describe certain differences in their respective atheisms with the intent of showing that Nietzsche's atheism contains a richer and fuller affirmation of human life. In Dawkins’s presentation of the value of life without God, there is a naïve optimism that purports that human beings, educated in science and purged of religion, will find lives of easy peace and comfortable wonder. Part of my argument is that this optimism regarding the power of objective science is subject to Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates and what he calls the “theoretical man.” As such, it fails in terms of providing a true affirmation of life in the godless world.     

Mary Astell’s critique of Pierre Bayle: atheism and intellectual integrity in the Pensées (1682)

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the English philosopher Mary Astell’s marginalia in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s personal copy of the 1704 edition of Pierre Bayle’s Pensées diverses sur le comète (first published in 1682). I argue that Astell’s annotations provide good reasons for thinking that Bayle is biased towards atheism in this work. Recent scholars maintain that Bayle can be interpreted as an Academic Sceptic: as someone who honestly and impartially follows a dialectical method of argument in order to obtain the goal of intellectual integrity. In her commentary, however, Astell suggests that: (i) if Bayle were honest and impartial in his inquiries, then he would not have pretended to attack popular superstition, only to undermine generally-held religious beliefs; and (ii) if Bayle valued intellectual integrity, then his argument for a society of virtuous atheists would not have relied upon a deceptive equivocation in terms. I conclude that the rediscovery of this marginalia is valuable for enhancing our appreciation of Astell as an astute reader of one of her most enigmatic contemporaries.     

On the Death of God in Lacan – A Nuanced Atheism

This article examines the death of God theme in the work of Jacques Lacan and indicates some convergences with Christian theology. It distinguishes the ‘atheism’ of Lacan from the atheism of Freud. And it demonstrates that if Lacan does not believe in the God equated with Being, the God of the philosophers, the later Lacan’s argument for what he calls the ‘eksistence’ of God beyond language, the God of the mystics, makes for a highly nuanced atheism.     

Does Conditional Affordance Imply Representational Non-Conceptual Content?

Jan Alm?ng believes that James J. Gibson’s notion of affordances offers a reason to reject John McDowell’s thesis that representational perceptual content is conceptual through and through. I argue that Alm?ng’s arguments for the claim that the perceptual content in which conditional affordances feature can be both representational and non-conceptual are questionable.     

Divine Hiddenness and Divine Humility

If God exists, and if our ultimate well-being depends on having a positive relationship with Him (which requires as a first step that we believe He exists), why doesn't He make sure that we all believe in Him? Why doesn't He make His existence obvious? This traditional theological question is today much-used as an argument for atheism. In this paper I argue that the answer may have something to do with God's character, specifically God's humility.