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It is precisely this emphasis on the primacy of the political that also characterizes anarchism. Anarchism offered a radical alternative to Marxism by insisting on the importance and autonomy of the political realm - in particular, the specific [[power]] and authority of the State institution - rather than subsuming it, as classical Marxism did, to an [[analysis]] of the [[economy]] and class relations. Anarchism therefore offered new theoretical tools for the analysis of political power, beyond the [[economic]] and class reductionism of Marxism. Its major theoretical [[achievement]] was precisely to unmask both the specific and [[autonomous]] dimension of political authority, and the dangers of their reaffirmation in a [[revolution]] if neglected. In [[other]] words, power and authority were now seen as phenomena that could no longer be reduced to their different class articulations. Rather, they were to be [[understood]] in terms of an abstract [[position]] or [[place]] in the social, and as having their own structural imperative - that of [[self]]-perpetuation - which instantiated itself in different guises, including that of the [[Marxist]] [[workers]]' revolution itself. Therefore, the [[place of power]] could not be easily overcome, and was always in [[danger]] of [[being]] reaffirmed unless addressed specifically. Anarchism thus exposed the limitations of Marxist theory in dealing with the problem of power and authority. Blinded as it was by its economic determinism, Marxism failed to see power and authority as phenomena that were irreducible to economic factors, requiring their own specific forms of analysis. Anarchism, moreover, pointed to other sites of authority and domination that were neglected in Marxist theory - for example, the [[Church]], the [[family]] and patriarchal [[structures]], [[technology]], as well as the [[structure]] and hierarchy of the revolutionary party itself.

"What you [[want]] is [[another]] master!": Lacan's dystopia

As unambiguous as this [[statement]] may seem, there are two implications that can be drawn from it in relation to the importance of psychoanalytic theory for radical politics. The first implication is a simple outright dismissal of any form of radical political [[activity]] - give up your [[hysterical]] revolutionary aspirations, as they will ultimately end in new forms of domination . This would seem to align Lacan with a [[conservative]] a-political stance, and put paid to the [[suggestion]] that there is anything in Lacanian theory that is of interest to radical politics. 2 However, it is possible to draw another implication here - one that, paradoxically, aligns Lacan with the anarchist position. One may suggest that this statement may be taken as a warning to radical politics about the dangers of reaffirming the structures of power and authority as a consequence of a revolution. Was this not precisely the same warning that the anarchists gave to Marxists regarding the question of the State and political institutions? In this [[sense]], then, both the anarchist and Lacanian positions point to the place of power - that is, the dangers of power and authority being reproduced in one's very attempt to overcome [[them]]. Both perspectives address, in other words, the position of the revolutionary vis-à-vis the place of domination he contests - the revolutionary must confront the hidden, disavowed authoritarian implications of his own endeavor. In other words, the revolutionary is asked, is the authority you contest not already immanent in your position as revolutionary, and will your revolution not lead to a perpetuation of this authority? So the question to be addressed here is: how can radical politics be reconfigured in such a way that it can avoid the reaffirmation of power and authority? This was the anarchist question - to some degree it is also the Lacanian question.

Part of this reconfiguring of radical politics via Lacanian theory would, however, involve a critique of the [[conceptual]] structures of anarchism itself. Since anarchism, like Marxism, is a discourse of revolution, it must be submitted to a Lacanian critique of the revolutionary position and its immanent [[authoritarianism]]. In other words, does anarchism itself reaffirm the authority it transgresses?; in seeking to overcome the position of the master, will it install a new master in its place? That is to say, is anarchism also caught up in the authoritarian discourse of the master - the very discourse it ostensibly seeks to abolish? It would seem that from a Lacanian perspective, there is a structural link between the position of the revolutionist and the position of the master - one implying the other. It is precisely this hidden connection between revolutionary [[desire]] and the domination it contests, between transgression and authority, that is the central problem of revolutionary politics.

However, it is precisely this reconciliation that Lacan rejects, suggesting that even in this universal State there would still be divisions wrought by rivalries between egos - a mutual [[envy]], for [[instance]], between "scientists" and non-scientists, particularly over the status of [[knowledge]] (Borch-Jacobsen, 1991, p 90). This was precisely the same [[contradiction]] that anarchists pointed to in the [[concept]] of the Marxist workers' State, which was supposed to be the institution wherein class divisions would be reconciled. On the contrary, Bakunin (1973, p 266) predicted that new class divisions would emerge - those between a bureaucratic class of scientists and experts, and the rest of the population. However, there is an important [[difference]] here: what the anarchists reject is the [[idea]] that dialectical reconciliation can be achieved through the State, while Lacan rejects the idea of dialectical reconciliation altogether.

In other words, what a political revolution succeeds in doing is merely to re-instantiate itself within the structure of the master's discourse. It merely completes the circle, once again ending up in the master's discourse - the very position of authority that it tried to negate. It is here that Lacan seems to reflect the anarchist argument about the "place of power" or the structural imperative of authority to perpetuate itself, even in revolutionary situations. In other words, both the anarchists and Lacan would see power and authority in terms of a specific structural [[logic]] of self-perpetuation, pointing to the dangers of revolutionary endeavors that do not deal directly with this question. This would apply particularly to Marxism, which ends up in a 'changing of the guard'. As anarchists showed, Marxism falls into the trap of the place of power because it thinks it can transform society without transforming the structure of authority; because it seeks merely to put another [[agent]] in the position of authority - the worker in place of the bourgeois. "And this is why," as Lacan says "all he has done is change masters" (Grigg, Seminar XVII, Ch 2, p 6).

Now it is precisely this lack that the discourse of the hysteric, in a paradoxical fashion, hones in on. The position of the hysteric is characterized by an [[identification]] with an [[unsatisfied]] desire. As the agent here realizes her lack - the lack of the [[object of desire]] that will complete her identity - her position is characterized by a [[demand]] to [[know]] who she is and what her desire is (Verhaeghe, 2001, p 28). This demand is always addressed to the other, and it is because of the nature of this demand that the hysteric makes a master out of the other. In other words, the hysteric's demand is addressed to the master, who is expected to provide an answer to the hysteric's desire. However, due to the impossibility of [[satisfying]] this desire, the answer that the master provides is always wrong or inadequate. In order to keep her desire alive, the hysteric therefore has a vested interest in sustaining the lack in the master. We can see, in this [[complex]] dialectic, the precise relation between these two discourses - the hysteric is always testing the knowledge and authority of the master who, in trying to conceal his lack and shore up his position of authority, provides answers that only expose his [[impotence]] and lack all the more.

Therefore, the hysteric questions, interrogates and resists the master but, at the same time, [[needs]] the master in order to sustain her insurrectionary desire. In political terms, then, we could say that while Marxism, despite its revolutionary aspirations, was ultimately part of the discourse of the master, anarchism would be part of the [[hysteric's discourse]]. This is because while Marxism, in its revolutionary endeavors, neglected the master's discourse - the place of power and authority - which was why it remained caught within it, anarchism, like the hysteric, focused on this place of authority itself, [[seeing]] it as the main impediment to the subject's freedom and fullness. So just as the hysteric sees the master as the cause of her [[alienation]], so the anarchist sees the State as the cause of the subject's alienation. However, despite - or more precisely through - its attempt to negate political authority, anarchism finds itself, paradoxically, reliant upon it in order to form its own revolutionary identity. I have shown the way, for instance, that in anarchist discourse the State functions as both an impediment to, and object cause of , revolutionary desire. So, in this analysis, just as the hysteric needs the master to have something to protest against, so the anarchist needs the State to constitute the subject's revolutionary identity.

Let us try to understand this process in political terms - that is, in terms of the possibility of anarchism or, radical politics generally, escaping the master and traversing the political fantasy. We have seen that classical anarchism, as a radical political philosophy, is sustained not only by the idea of a rational social "object" that determines the revolutionary process but also by the utopian idea of society on the "other side" of power - a society, in other words, without the distortions and dislocations wrought by power and authority. That is to say, there is a utopian fantasy of an Edenic state of fullness and reconciliation that would prevail in society once power relations have been eliminated. Furthermore, there is, in anarchism, an [[idealization]] of the subject - the subject is seen as embodying an inherent [[morality]] and [[rationality]], the full expression of which has been distorted by political authority. In other words, there is a political fantasy that sustains the revolutionary desire at the heart of anarchism - this fantasy consists of a Manichean [[division]] between the subject and authority, and the promise of a return to a lost rational and moral social objectivity once this authority has been eliminated.

The contingency of the political

But what does this mean for anarchism and emancipative politics generally? Simply, that it must abandon the fantasy of utopian fullness and recognize that the other is lacking, that there is no natural or essential commonality that holds society together. In other words, what radical politics must acknowledge and, indeed, affirm is that there is no [[dialectical process]] or underlying social logic that determines the political - that the political is always radically ungrounded, indeterminate and [[contingent]] . Stavrakakis here talks about the crisis of the utopian project, suggesting that instead "the politics of today is the politics of aporia." (Stavrakakis, 1999, p 99) Utopian political projects, including anarchism, were based on the fantasy of a society without dislocation and [[antagonism]], and were attempts to conceal or "patch up" the very lack in the social itself - the lack that was irreducible and indeed, constitutive of the political itself .

Politics of the [[event]]

Rancière is a thinker for whom the contingent and disruptive element of the politics is central. This disruptive element is based on a constitutive incommensurability or "disagreement" ( mésentente ) between the demos and the "police" order, an incommensurability that Rancière traces back to its origins in Athenian democracy. The demos, or "the [[people]]", is defined by its exclusion from the polis - it is the formless mass that has "no part" in the political life of the city and, as such, has been the [[victim]] of a fundamental "wrong" that must be redressed. The "police" order refers to the status quo , the dominant social and political structures. This order is based on a process of "calculation" that seeks to [[separate]] the [[individual]] from the mass and assign each to his place within the dominant order. Its tendency is therefore towards a de-[[politicization]] of the mass, and a reduction of the political terrain through a process of individualization. However, this incommensurability gives rise to disputes in which fundamental political questions are raised: "It produces both new inscriptions of equality within liberty and a fresh sphere of visibility for further demonstrations" (Rancière, 1999, p 42). So for Rancière, there are moments of rupture in which identities become indeterminate, and in which dominant social hierarchies and structures are momentarily dislocated or suspended, allowing new and unpredictable political [[meanings]] to be articulated. This would be similar to the transitional spaces between discourses that I have referred to, in which new political meanings - even revolutionary ones - may intervene. The key point here, however, is that there is no utopian [[goal]] for politics - or at least there is not one that can ever be reached; rather politics must be seen as a series of clashes or "disagreements" in which its inherently unstable and contingent nature is brought to the fore.

However, the political event, if theorized in this way, is fundamentally ambiguous. On the one hand, the ethical decision can refer to a kind of leap into an abyss of contingency and freedom, in which there is an impossible gap between the subject and the pre-established [[normative]] criteria that are supposed to [[guide]] his action. According to [[Ernesto Laclau]], for instance, this unstable relationship between the ethical and the normative is the basis for a hegemonic politics, in which there is always a gap between the universal and particular, between the empty place of the universal and the particular identity that attempts, ultimately unsuccessfully, to embody it (Butler et al , 2000, p 81). This politics of hegemony - or politics of the lack - implies a democratic and emancipative contingency, in which the political field is constituted through its [[openness]] to different identities and forms of engagement. For Zizek, on the other hand, however, the politico-ethical decision seems to imply a form of authoritarian or 'terrorist' politics, which at [[times]] he openly advocates: "The only 'realistic' prospect is to ground a new political universality by opting for the impossible, fully assuming the place of the exception, with no taboos, no apriori norms ('[[human rights]]', 'democracy'), respect for which would prevent us also from resignifying [[terror]], the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of sacrifice... (Butler et al , 2000, p 326)"

An-archism and radical politics today

As a concrete example of a Lacanian an-anarchic politics in this sense, we could point to what is broadly termed the "anti-globalization" movement - a protest movement that has exploded across our political horizons in recent years, from Seattle to Cancun. This is a series of struggles against the neo-liberal capitalist [[vision]] of globalization that so dominates us today. What is radical about this movement is not only the breadth of its political agenda but also the new forms of political action that it entails. It is fundamentally different from both the identity politics that has recently prevailed in Western liberal societies, as well as from the Marxist politics of [[class struggle]]. On the one hand, the [[anti-globalization movement]] unites different identities around a common struggle; and yet this common ground is not determined in advance, or based on the priority of particular class interests, but rather is articulated in a contingent way during the struggle itself. Having moved beyond the [[cultural]] and [[sexual]] identity wars of the 1980s and 1990s - the PC litany of victimizations that passed as "subversive" politics - radical politics today has once again placed [[capitalism]] back on the agenda, only not in the same way as Marxism did. It now targets new sites of oppression and domination within the capitalist system: corporate power and greed, G-M products, workplace surveillance, environmental degradation, and so on.

Moreover, what makes this movement radical is its unpredictability and indeterminacy - the way that unexpected [[links]] and alliances are formed between different identities and groups that would otherwise have little in common. So while this movement is universal, in the sense that it invokes a common emancipative horizon that interpellates the identities of participants, it also rejects the [[false]] universality of Marxist struggles that deny difference and subordinate other struggles to the central role of the [[proletariat]] - or, to be more precise, to the vanguard role of the party. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that anarchist groups feature prominently in these protests. It may be seen as an anarchistic form of politics because it rejects centralism and hierarchy, preferring structures that are more democratic and pluralistic. 5 Moreover, it remains open to a [[plurality]] of different identities and struggles. Just as classical anarchists insisted, in opposition to [[Marx]], that the revolutionary struggle should not be confined or determined by the class interests of the industrial proletariat, and must also be open to peasants, the [[lumpenproletariat]], and intellectuals déclassé , etc., so too the contemporary anti-globalization movement includes a broad range of struggles, identities and interests - trade unions, students, environmentalists, indigenous groups, ethnic minorities, peace activists, and so on.

The title of Klein's book implies precisely a rejection, or at least a [[subversion]] of logos as signifiers of corporate power. She examines a number of different strategies of resistance to the corporate culture of branding, from "culture jamming", or the parodying of logos and advertisements, to more concrete forms of activism such as Reclaim The Streets campaigns. However, this very rejection of logos or master signifiers - No Logo - becomes in itself an "[[empty signifier]]", a stand in that "sutures" together in a contingent way the diverse field of struggles. 7 As [[Miller]] (1977/8, pp 26-28) argues, "suturing" describes a process by which the subject is joined into the signifying [[chain]], allowing the signifier to stand in for the subject's [[absence]] in discourse. In the same way, different political identities and struggles against different aspects of capitalist globalization can be joined together in a [[signifying chain]] through a signifier without a [[signified]] - a logo without a brand, thus implying the very rejection of brands. Therefore, it is not correct to say that No Logo operates in the same way as a logo or master signifier - rather, it is a signifier emptied of content, and it is precisely through this emptiness that it can [[represent]] the [[heterogeneity]] of political struggles around capitalist globalization.

1. Stavrakakis recalls Freud's 'half-conversion' to Bolshevism: "when he was told that [[communism]] would bring at first some hard years and then harmony and [[happiness]], he answered that he believed in the first half of this programme." (Stavrakakis, 1999, p 12).

2. Indeed, Lacan refers dismissively to the "libertarian hook" that supposedly attaches itself to psychoanalysis, pointing to certain attempts to see psychoanalysis as a practice that can free us from the Law (see Grigg, Seminar XVII, Ch 8, p 2).

5. See Graeber's (2002) [[discussion]] of some of these anarchistic structures and forms of organization in "The New Anarchists".

6. Indeed Lacan himself links advertising and consumer products to the discourse of the master: "We are becoming increasingly familiar with the functions of an agent. We live at a time at which we know what this conveys - fake stuff, advertising stuff, which has to be sold. But we also know that it works with that, at the point we have come to in the expansion, the paroxysm, of the discourse of the master in a society that is founded on it" (Grigg, Seminar XVII, Chapter 8, p 13).

Biography: About the author

[Author Affiliation]

1 University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

[[Category:Religion]]

[[Category:Politics]]