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Nonetheless, the notion of class antagonism as a [[binary opposition]] that informs this pivotal example still falls short of capturing the psychoanalytical notion of “antagonism” in its most radical meaning. If, rather than focusing on this example, we look at the principal tendency that runs through Žižek’s writings, we find that Žižek does not in fact locate the “source of class antagonism” in the particular antagonism “between the working and ruling classes”. On the contrary, he repeatedly argues against such a theorization since this would conflate the [[psychoanalytic]] concept of antagonism as the ineradicable obstacle that throws into disarray every identity with the notion of antagonism as the particular relation between oppositional identities. In the [[subject]]-[[position]] [[model]] of class antagonism between the [[Proletariat|proletarian]] and the [[capitalist]], each identity is presented as what prevents the [[other]] from achieving its identity, that is, the capitalist is the obstacle, the external [[enemy]] preventing the proletarian from realizing their [[full]] [[human]] potential. Žižek, however, argues that one should “invert” the [[relationship]] between these two [[terms]]:<blockquote>It is not the external enemy who is preventing me from achieving identity with myself, but every identity is already in itself blocked, marked by an impossibility, and the external enemy is simply the small piece, the rest of [[reality]] upon which we “project” or “externalize” this intrinsic, immanent impossibility. (“''[[Beyond Discourse Analysis]]''”: 251–2)</blockquote>Žižek draws further conclusions regarding class antagonism when he translates [[Formulae of sexuation|the Lacanian formulae]] regarding the impossibility of [[sexual]] relationship into the context of class [[politics]]: “There is no class relationship” (''SO'': 126; LC: 295). He does not mean by this that there are no [[concrete]] class [[structures]], but that any attempt by participants to institute a ‘‘normal’’ way of organizing class relations is bound to fail. Class antagonism does not refer to the particular antagonisms between the serf and the lord, [[Proletariat|the proletariat]] and the capitalist, the [[slave]] and the [[master]]. Rather, class antagonism is the very impossibility of achieving an [[ideal]] class [[structure]] that can ultimately fix class relations. Approached from the perspective of the Real of class antagonism, it is possible to view various concrete articulations of class positions as socially invented (symbolic and imaginary) identities that make up for the non-[[existence]] of proper class relations. Each concrete class structure, or a particular class antagonism, like the one Žižek mobilizes in the example mentioned above, between “the working and ruling classes”, is ‘‘already a ‘reactive’ or ‘defense’ [[formation]], an attempt to ‘cope with’ (to come to terms with, to pacify …) the [[trauma]] of class antagonism” (“Four Discourses”: 81). Nevertheless, these particular [[defence]] [[formations]] inevitably fail to stabilize the Real of class antagonism. A key indication of this is that, whenever class antagonism is translated into the “opposition of classes qua positive, existing social groups”, such as [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] versus [[working class]], or the top [[elite]] versus middle class, “a surplus, a [[third]] element that does not ‘fit’ this opposition” emerges, such as the ''[[lumpenproletariat]]'', or the [[immigrant]] [[workers]] (“The Real of Sexual Diff erence”: 74).
It is important to stress that “class antagonism” is not merely [[another]] venue (adding to the series of [[gender]], racial, ethnic antagonisms and so on) for Žižek to restage his position on [[The Deadlock|the deadlock ]] of sexual relation. If “antagonism” qua the Real is Žižek’s re-[[interpretation]] of the [[post-Marxist]] attempt at [[undoing]] class [[essentialism]], “class antagonism” is his psychoanalytical in(ter)vention enabling him to persist within, while radically transforming, the field of [[post-Marxism]]. This is to say that “class antagonism” is not simply Žižek’s psychoanalytical application of antagonism to the issue of class, but rather his provocation for rethinking Marxist class politics since it puts into question the myriad [[utopian]] preoccupations that have drawn their [[moral]] force from [[fantasies]] of class reconciliation.
Žižek especially takes issue with [[communist]] fantasies that [[represent]] capitalism as a [[self]]-revolutionizing movement that would bring [[about]] its own end and deliver a society of producers free of enjoyment (i.e. [[aggression]], [[envy]] and resentment) (“[[Multitude]], Surplus, and Envy”). He supports his critique by drawing from Lacan’s homology between [[Jouissance|surplus jouissance]] and [[surplus value]]. [[Jouissance]] is not an assimilable [[excess]] that can be done away with in [[order]] to render signification [[whole]] again. [[Surplus value]] is not an assimilable excess that can be rid of so as to assist the passage from [[capitalism]] to communim. This homology opens up a [[space]] to pose a series of crucial questions for class politics, such as how to relate to or [[enjoy]] the [[irreducibility]] of class antagonism, and what would it mean to [[traverse the fantasy]] of class reconciliation. At the same time, the homology, in so far as it collapses the different roles the [[concepts]] of surplus [[value]] and [[Jouissance|surplus jouissance]] play within their respective problematics of Marxist [[political]] [[economy]] and [[Lacanian]] [[psychoanalysis]], also raises some intractable questions for Žižek: if [[surplus value]], just like [[Jouissance|surplus jouissance]], is ineradicable, then does that mean capitalism is here to stay as the only possible defence formation for organizing “class antagonism”?
