GREIMAS AVEC LACAN

GREIMAS AVEC LACAN; OR, FROM THE SYMBOLIC TO THE REAL IN DIALECTICAL CRITICISM

Phillip E. Wegner

[n this essay, I want toexp]ore the ill1plications fo r a materia list dialectics of a reading of A.J. Grcimas's scmimics, and in particular what Fredric Jameson has described as its "supreme achievement," Greimas's "semiotic rectangle"I (figure I). My approach challenges what has become a commonplace assumpt ion~advanced, for example, in both Paul de Man's classic essay ;'Thc Resistance to Theory" (1982) and P:lUl Ricocur's three-volume opus Time alld Narrative {l983-85)- that tak es Grcimas's work and the tools he elaborates as the quintessence of a structuralist drive to :lbstraction. marked by totalizingltotalltarian tendencies and an utter rejection of h istoricity (the diach ronic) and indeterminacy. (In de Man's terms. this takes the form of an absolute privileging of the grammatical level of a text ove r the rhetorical; and Ricoeur concludes. "The whole suategy thus amounts to a vast attempt to do :1way with diachrony."2) While such a reading may be accurate in ce rtain deploymems of these tools, a different set o f possibilities emerges when the sem iotic rectangle is read in co njunction with the work of Greimas's great contemporary, Jacques Lacan, and. in pa rt icular, "the fundamenta l cI:1ssification system around which all his theorizing turns," the three orders of the Symbolic, Im:lginary, and Rea!.' Indeed, in this essay, I use the rich sem iotic resources of the Greimasian rectangle to tell a number of deeply interrelated stories: about the history of the novel; developments in the last few decades in theory more generally :'!nd in the work of Fredric Jameson in particular; and lhe value of dialectic:'!1 thinking for our present mornelll of g lobal iz:lt ion.

This gesture of reading Greimas with Lacan takes its lead from Lacan's own work, by way of hi s essay "Kant avec Sade." In a footnote to a recent discussion of this essay, Slavoj Zizek suggests that "f.1r from being restricted

Crlflmm. Spring 2009. Vol. 51. No.2. Pl" 211-H5. ISSN: 0011 -1589. o 2009 Waync Smc Unil'crslly Prcss. lktroit. :-OIl -48101· 1309.

211

212 PHILLIP E. WEGNER

c

N

to Lacan, this procedure of reading'X with Y' has a long Marxist lineage"; indeed, Zizek argues,

Il ls not the main point of Marx's crit ique of HegeJ's speculative idealism precisely to read '; Hcgel with political economy," that is, to discern in the speculati ve circu lar movemcm of Ca pital the "obscene secret" of the circula r moveme nt orthe Hegelian Not ion~~

GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 213

Furthermore, Zizck maintains that we misread this relationship if we see the latter figure in the cou ple as "the truth" of lhe former:

lOin the contrary, the Sadeian perversion emerges as the result of the Kantian comp romise, of Kant 's avoiding the consequences of hi s breakthrough. Sade is the J'ymptom of Knill: ... the space for the figure of Sadc is opened up by this compromise of Kant, by his unwillin gness to go to

the end, to retain the fu ll fidelity to his philosophical breakthrough.~

Something simil:1f, I want to :lrgue, occurs when we read Greimas with Lacan. The ianer shows us something new aboul the nature of the former's breakthrough: the always already-existent symptom haunting the illusory closure of the strllcturalist schemas, a materi:.lizing horizon of di:.lectical possibilities implicit wi thin the Greim:.sian mapping itself.!'

The va lue for any dialect ica l criticism of Greimas's work (as wel l as that of Laca n) has been ex plored in great detail by Jameson, Greimas's si ngle most inAuent ial proponent in the Engli sh-language COnlext, and it will be by way of the shift s that occ ur in Jameson's usage of Greimas's semiotic rectangle that the device's full di:.lectical force becomes clca r.7 For readers less famil iar with the workings of the semiotic rectangle, Jnmeson's desc ription of it from The Political Unconscious (198 1) is sti ll helpful:

BrieAy the semiotic rectangle or "elementa ry st ructure of sign ification" is the representation of a binary oppos ition or of two contraries (5 and -S), along with the si mple negations or contradictories of both terms (the so-ca ll ed subcontrar ics -S and S): significant slots are constituted by the various possible combinations of these term s, most notably the "complex" term (or ideal synthesis of the two contraries) and the "neu tral" term (or ideal sy nthesis of the two su bcontraries).~

These last two terms, the complex and the neu/ml, will ha ve, as we shall sec, crucial roles to play in the development of Jnmeson 's intellectual proj ect more genera lly.

Jameson's first extended discussion of Grcimasian semiotics occurs in hi s 1972 book on Russia n Form alism and its structuralist descendan ts, The Prison-House of umgllage. At th is early j LLnctLL re, Jameson's focus remains primarily on the four in ternal "5 '· terms of the sc hema , and the dialectical


movement he notes between them (see figure 2). H ere, Jameson suggests th at the fourth te rm in the sc hema, the -5 in the bottom-left slot in figure 2, may be identified

as nonc other than the negation of a negation" famil iar from dia lectical philosophy. It is, indeed. because the negation of a neg:Hion is such a decisive leap. suc h a production or generation of new meaning, th:a we so frequently come upon a system in the incomplete state shown above (onl y three terms out of four g iven). Unde r suc h ci rcum stances the negation of the negat ion then becomes the primary work which the mechanism is called upon to accom pli sh.9

Jameson goes on to demonstrate how this gene rati ve machinery operates through a brief discussion of Charles Dicke ns's HtlJd Times (1854), a novel in which "we witness the confrontat ion of what amoun ts to two intellectual systems: Mr. Gradgrind 's utilitarian ism ("Fans! Facts!') and the world of anti-facts sy mbol ized by Sissy Jupe and the circus, or in othe r words, imagination."'u Jameson argues that the narrative's plot is to be unde rstood as "nothing but an attempt to g ive" the absent fo urth term in the schema

im:lginative being, to work through faully solLilions :lnd unacceptable hypotheses umil an adequate embodi lllem has been realized in terms of the narrati ve material. With this discovery (Mr. Gradgrind's education. Louisa's bela ted

RAW ~ ____________ ~~ROTTEN

? COOKED

Flg/4rt' 2. Frrdric }umr,·QII. The Prison· House or bn,l!u~ge (197l). J66.

GREIMASAVEC LACAN 215

experience of family love). the semiotic rcct:mgle is completed :Ind the novel comes to an end,ll

What is wonh underscoring at this early stage is that Jameson already conccplUalizcs the Grcimasian schema in decidedly dynamic terms, as a presentation (Darstellung) of I he labor of narrat ive. "the all inform i ng process of fIllI'rotive," he will later claim, being "the cent ra 1 function or illS/alice

orthe human mind."!! With his next deployments ohhe Grcimasian rectangle, in his essays on

Mnx Webe r (1973) and Philip K. Dick (1975), and then, even more spectacularly, in the Ba lzac and Conrad chapters of The Political Unconscious, Jameson's attention sh ifts to the four outer poles of the schema and especially the position at its summit, the "complex" term (C).IJ Greimas's rectangle becomes an idea l means of illustrating the narrative operation Jameson nnmes "n symbolic act, wherehy real social contradictions, insurmountable in their own terms, find a purely fo rmal resolution in the aesthetic rea lm."H It is in this way, too, that the cu h ural text, conceived he re fundamentally as allegory, makes av:ri lable LO its later readers its historical context, encountered by us, he famously main tains. only in this mediated textual form.

Rather than summarizing one of Jameson's discussions, I would like to

illustrate this first full deployment of the resources of the Greimasian rectangle through a brief reading of my own. My case study is one of the most well known English novels of the early nineteenth century, and one of the Ll rtexts of the mode rn gc n rc of sc ience fiction, Mary Shelley's Frtlllkenstl·in; 01; The Mode'l"l/ Prometheus (1818). The dilemma this gothic fantasy confronts, as numerous comment:ltors have pointed out in different ways, is that of the modern intellccwal and, more specifically, scientific labor. At the roO[ of the problem in the novel is the education, or culture, that Victor Fmnkenstein receives at his modern (i.e., German) universi ty.

Early on, Mary Shelley develops a character schema that enables her to div ide human knowledge in a proto-Kanti:rn fashion into the spheres of science, ethics, and aesthetics. Viewr observes,

Elizabeth was of a ca lmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smi tten with the thi rst fo r knowledge. She busied herself with fo llow ing the aeri:11 creations of the poets; and in the majestic ancl wondrous scenes that surrounded ollr Swiss horne .... it W:lS the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn ... my


inquiries were directed [0 the mct:lphysic~l, or in its highest sense, the physical sec rets of the world.

MC:lnwhile, C[cn'a l occupied himself with the moral rcl:uions of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes. and the actions of men were his theme. \~

As long as a balance between the three is Ill:lintaincd, trouble is averted. H owever, when Victor leaves the companionship of C lerv:.l and Elizabeth. he ente rS:l much more d:lIlgcrous path: "From this day natural philosophy, and particu larly chemistry, in the most com prehensive sense of the term, became my sole occupation," II, This sunders the older "natura1" unity ("Our meddling intellect / I\lis-shapcs the beauteous forms of things:-I We murder to dissect") champi o ned by Shell ey's circle of Romantic in tellectu;I1s. 17

Howeve r, Victor's real culpabilit y li es less in his g iving life to his "unnatura l" cre:lture-an aestheticall y horrifying reanimatcd assemblage of different bodies-than in his subseq uelll abandonmelll of that to which his labor had gi\·en rise. That is, Victo r 's real failure, and his responsibility for the !>u bscq uelll terror a nd innocelll deaths, lies, as the crea ture itself notes, in his unwi ll ingness to offe r it the gu idance found in a proper enc ulturation: "Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions and then cas t me abroad an object for the scorn and horror ofmanki nd."'~

The contradiction with which this novel deals is actually the same as in Greimas's or ig inal demonstrat ion of th e sc hema, that of cu lture a nd natlIrel 'l (fig ure 3). I have already touched on twoofthc resolutio ns found in Shelley's work, th:1I on the left-hand side of the schema an d that on the bottom, or what G reimas la bels the ·'neutral te rm ,. (N): fi rst, the com bi nation of cul ture, or bourgeois education, and the "unnalUral"'- intellectual overspec ialization, or instrumentalization as Max H orkheime r and Theodor Adorno will bter describe it- represented by the figure of Victor; and, second, the destruct ive and improperly ed ucated force of the creature itself. This mapping thus m:lkes clea r the double structu re of "monstrosity" at work in the novel,:lI o nce meant to include the mode rn intellectual and hi s creat ion.!O The parallels between lhe two become increasingly ev ident as the novel progresses: both arc isolated from intercourse with other humans, and, in the end, ·'revenge" becomes each being's "devouring and only passion."!!

The resolution directly opposi te Victor :llso suggests th e deepl y classed nature of lhe cr isis being dea lt with here: for this is figured in Ihe novel by the peasan try, those who may be connected to olde r natural or agricultural

Victor

Culture

Unl1llturn l (Monstrous)

GREIMASAVEC LACAN 217

Cler"al (Romanticism)

Thc Crcature

Nature

Peasmlts

No Culture (uncducated)

F,g,m' 3. Mury SI",II,,}", Fr"nkenstcin; or, T he Modern Promctheus (/SI8).

rhythms ("The untaught peaS;lIlt beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses"), but who lack the proper ethical ed ucation to respond with anything but an imal fear and revulsion when confronted with the radical mherness of the crea LUfC: "The whole village was rou sed: some fled, some altacked me,"!! Of course, these vcry lumpcn bodies compose the fl esh of the monster and thus encounter in him their ow n denaturalized SW le, what Sanre would call their "practico-ine rt" form . I n this way. the monster takes on a n additional allegorical resonance, becoming a figure of a now alienated peasantry recently removed [0 the new urban environs-o r, as Franco Morett i suggests, a fig ure already of the emergent industrial proleta riat, the novel expressing the "elementary scheme" described by Marx "of simplification and splitting (The whole of society must split into th e two classes .. .')."!l


And what then of the final space, the complex term, "the ideal synthesis which would 'resolve' the initial binary opposition by subsuming it under a single unity"? !~ It is filled by Victor's childhood companion, Henry C lerval. a figure we arc told who stands in the text for Mary Shelley's husband, the Romanti c poet Percy Bysshe She\ley:!~

ClcrvaJ! Beloved fr iend ! Even now it delights me to record your words and to dwell on the praise of wh ich you arc so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the "very poetry of nature." His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardcnt affection s, and his friendship W:lS of th:1I dcvQ[cd :lIld wondrous nature that the world-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were nOl sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of externalll3ture, which ot hers regard only with admiration, he loved wilh ardour.!I,

Howeve r, here the realism of Mary Shel ley's great wor k comes to the fore, for this ideal cre:llllre can find no place in the world, and he perishes (as Shelley himself would do a few years after the book's original publication), Icaving us at the narrative's conclusion with the apocalyptic scena rio of Victor and the creature tormenting each other in a pursuit :lCross a frozen landscape, a desperate quest that ends only with their mutual destruction- a terrible object lesson aimed at both the story's narrator, the ambitiolls young explore r Robert Wahon, and the rcade r.2;

The story that Mary Shelley relates here is one of a f:liled cultu ral revolution, the inability of the Romantic intellectuals to t:lke up a position of cultural and social leadership, lO becomc, in other words, theacknowledged "legislalOrs of the worl d" (<I fantasy brought LO fruition in the science-fictional alternate history of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Oiffer(llce h'ngine 11990[):'~ The consequence of this failure is immense, for it has left other kinds of irresponsible intellectuals, d ri ven by "mad enth usiasm," who mold "nature"- litcrally in this case the uneducated masses of the people- into some thing monstrous.!" And, with this turn , the fu ll allegorical significance of bot h ViclOr and his monster becomes evident: "ViclOr Frankenstein and his startling creation are a scientific cipher for an ove rh asty radical intellectual at the time of the French Revol ution :mim:Hing (like the Ingolstadt Illuminati , so well known to the Shell eys) the 'I hanlly adequatel materials' (chap. 4) of the broad popular forces:' !')


That such a fear waS:1 prominenl one for English intellectuals more generally in this moment is borne Out by Greimasian mappings of the narrative sehemas in two of FlYltlkenstein's gre:lt contemporaries, \VaIH:r Scott's The Heart of Midlothi(ln (1818) and Jane Austen's Emma (18 15) (figures 4 and 5). The strategies for confronting this crisis dirfer in each case: if Mary Shelley gives us the precursor to the twe nt ieth-century clyslOpian narrative (her Utopian mentality, like George OrweJl's, a form of what Karl Mannheim names a conservative one), Scott, ollth, other hand, tries to assure his readers that the resolution to the crisis has already occurred with the establishment of the new legal structlJres of Greal Britain nearly a century earlier, struclllres thaI the British people have freely chosen. II (Conf-licls in the novel's conclusion are then exported "out there," into the rapidly expanding field of the second British Empire.)

AUTHORITY

Ponrous Qu~cn (ENGLAND)

CRIME

s

Effie', AdnX'nte Duke of Argyll

Jeame Oeans & Butler'$ Child (GREAT BRITAIN)

•

.s ~'~-----------=-

George StaUlOn Effoe [kan

Madge Wildfin: Effoe & St~uton's Ch,ld

(EMPIRE)

PIg/in- 4. Wu/ur Scalf. The H~3rt of Midlothi:m (1818).

LAW

()~,id Deans Effoe'smal (SCOTLAND)

INJUSTICE


"binh" (Ulle &lor money)

Mi.s AUgU513

lI(lwkins

lII·bred

s

Em= ("Jane Austen")

-s +-----.....; .. s

Harriel Snllih

"nalure or education" (breeding)

Jane Falrra.~

No title or money

f"gllrr 5. jlllU: Allst .. ", Emma (/816). "Emma, yo", ",/alU(lIlOn UhQlI1 fhul gIrl bfllldj YOII.

Wlla/ 11ft' Harm" Small J dUtm" <'lInl'r of hlffn, "lltll't' or duell/IO"?" (N(w York: f>('IIglll1l,

lOOl.59-60).

Howeve r, Austen's solution is the most ingenious of all. In a classic reading of the novel, Wayne Booth notes,

"Jane Austen," like "Henry Fielding." is a paragon of wir, wisdom, and virtue. She docs not talk about her qualities; unlike Fielding she docs nO[ in Emma call direct attention to her artistic ski ll s. But we are seldom allowed to forget abom her for all that. When we read this novel we accept her as representing evcrything we admire most. ... She is. in short, a pcrfect human being, within th e concept of perfection est:lbli shed by the book she writesY

In other words. it is not the character Emma who produces what Austen recognizes to be a necessary and proper (i.e .. gradua l and reformist)

GRE1MAS AVEC LACAN 221

rcordering of the social ficld, but rather the ghost who stands hchind her, the novelist Austen herself, who orchestrates the various marriages that enable the conflicts of the novel to be dispelled and a new kind of national imaginary to be set into place (the spatial movemen!s in the plot that this elllaiis have been effectively mapped by Mon:tti). 11 I n this way, the domestic novel becomes, as Nancy Armstrong has taught us, the preeminelll political and pedagogical tool-so effective precisely because it presents itself as feminine, domestic, and apolitical-in a properly British middleclass cultural revolution. H

It is this deployment of the Greimasian rectangle that becomes suc h a significant part of Jameson's work over the next few decades. However, in the very years th at he is finishing work on The Political Unconscious J:1.Ineson points toward another way of using the Greimasian rectangle, This first occurs in a long review essay, published in a 197i issue of Diacritics, on Louis Marin's UlOpiques:jt'UX d'cspace (Utopics: spa tial play) (1973). Jameson shows that in Marin's developmelll of his concept of Utopian neutralization- the figure of the Other Utopian order emerging as a point-by-point cancellation of the historical situation from which it cmerges-it is the bottom term in the Greimasian schema that becomes the most significant one, Utopian narration se rves in M~lrin's hands as

the structural inverSIon of myth in the following sense: where as the narrative operation of myth undertakes fO mediate between (he (wo primary terms of the opposition S and -5, and to produce a complex term that would be their resolution, Utopian narrative is constitu ted by the union of the tw in contradictories of the initial opposition, the combination of-S and S. a combination which, virtually a double clncellation of the initial contradiction itself, may be said to effect the latter's neutralization and 10 produce a new term, the so-called neuter or neutral term N,l~

Jameson demonstrates this new usc of the Grcimasian schema th rough a reading of the Utopian figuration that takes place in the work of composer and architect lann is Xenakis: "Xenak is' cosmic ci ty is both decentralized and concentrated all at once, and designates, ;:IS a figure, that place in which some future urban conceptuality, the categories of some concrete coll ectiv e and city life as yet inconceivable [Q use, remain to be invented" j(1 (figure 6). However, Jameson goes on to point out th at what is at one moment the corrosive clearing away and historical opening

222 PHILLI P E. WEGNER

The City (Complex Term)

COMMUNITY INDIVIDUAL FREEOO\1

CON CENTRA TION DECfNTRAUZA TlON

? (ncull'3l (erm)

FlgMr 6. Frt'dric lalni'W", "Of hhwd; und Tunch..,: Nrlllrali;ullIon and Ilu' ProductIOn of U10PUlII Di${'Otm~ • .. III ldcolog;(~ or Theory (1989). 1:91.

that is Utopian neutralization becomes, at another moment, simply ideology itse! f:

So the Utopian ncutraliz:lIion of the old ideology ends up m:rking a cOlllribution to the product ion of that new communicational one whose var ian ts may be found in McLuhanism. systems theory, Habermas' "communications theory of society," and structuralism, to the degree to

which each of these. above and beyond its value as an instrument of analysis, projects a morc properly ideological 3mh ropology or thcory of "human nature" according to

which it is proposed that soc iety he organized.Ii

In this latter claim, we also see some of the first indic:ltions of the line of thought that will culmin ate in Jameson's o ri ginal and decply inAucntial theory of postmode rn ism as tht: cu lturnllogic of late capi t:llism.


However, Jameson would not truly begin to explore this other deploy. men! of the Greimasian schema until his bter poslJl1odernism study, The Seeds afTime (1994). In this book, Jameson suggests that each of the three essays, originally presented as the 1991 Wellck Library Lectures at the Uni\'ersity of California, I n 'ine, "attempts a diagnosis of the cultural prt::s· ent with a view toward opening a perspective onto a future which they are clearly incapable of forecasting in any prophetic sense."j ~ The first essay offers a mapping of the ccnlfal conceptual antinomies of the postmodern; the second, by way of a reading of Chevengur, the "rediscovered" 1920s Soviet Utopia by Andfei Platono\" a confrontation "with what has van· ished from the postmodern scene;" )') :lnd the third, of rnost interest to us here, a Greimasian perm utation:11 mapping of [he v:lrious architectural styles that have emerged in the present moment.

While Jameson claims that only the first chapte r is "dialectical" in its representational form (t he third prope rl y structural, and the second "prob. ably best ch:uacterized in more Freudi,m or depth psychological terms"), I would suggest that there is a larger dialectical Darstellullg:H work in the book as a whole .... ) Indeed, The Seeds of7i'me has a narrative structure whose richness and drama approach that of Jameson's grea t real ist masterpiece, Marxism and Form: TIlIt'l1tieth.Ct'l1tIllY Oia/ectiCli/ Theories of Literal/Ire (l971).l) The fi rst section of the book begins by offering a provisional mapping of some of the antinomies that struct ure the present: constant change and absolute stasis, spatial heterogeneity and global homogeneity, a hostility to nature and a renewed sense of nature as limi ts to human energy, ;Ind utopia and :mti·lllopia. These provide:ln idcologic:1l ~h:lpe to the lived experience of the particular historical order, or "arrested dialectic," named the postmodern. The second section begins the movement of opcning up this imaginary closure precisely by marking lhe absences haunting this sit~ ua tion- Utopia, modcrnism, and, at this momcnt, the quite reccnt and unexpected disappearance of the Soviet Union and thc end of the Cold War (and, in this regard, there is a deep kinship betwcen Jameson's project and that of its contemporary, Jacques Derrid:1's Specters of Marx: The Slate of Debt, the Work of AlolIl"llil1g, and the New /rlfe1'l1(ltiaf/(J/jI9931).

In the third and final section, Jameson prescms and then eb borates upon the following two Greimasian mappings of contemporary architectural practice (figures 7 and 8). Significantly, in the discussion that follows, J;lme~ son turns his auention away from [he complex term that had been at the center of his earlier uses of Greimas. In the first case, he is primarily con· cerned with the tWO side resolutions and the ways that the architectu ral practices of Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman ofTer us partial, residual (or is it reemergent?) modernist architec(Ural practices. Then, in his final study,

224 PHI LLI P E. WEGNER

HIGH MODERNISM

/ totality •• ,.----------•• innovation

/ DIRTY REALISM DECONSTRUCTIONISM 2

/ replication •• ,.----------+t Part/element/signifier

/ STYLISTIC POSTMODERN ISMI

NEORATIONAUSMI CRITICAL REGIONALISM

Flgllrt' 7. Fredric fUllln/HI, The Seeds of Time (1m), { n.

Replication or imcrtexluality TI-IE ANTI VANGUARD (TRANS-AVANT -GARDE PLURALISM) CORPORATE '-IEGEMONY

STYLISTIC POSTMODERNISM

/.,--------~-+J part/clemenllsignifier THE ANTISYSTEM

joints rearguanl T HE ANTISCENOGRAPI11C .,--------_J MARGINALITY AND

tectonic/tactile/telluric THE LOCAL.

THEANTIGRID "" /RESISTANCE

CRITICAL REGIONA LISM

Flgllrt' 8. Frdrtc }am('ioll. The ~cd~ of Time (1994), /95.


hc explores the ways in which what Kcnndh Frampton n,lI11eS Critical Rc~ gional ism emerges as a nelltral ization of the dominant practices of a "styl is~ tic postnloclcrnism," represented by the canonical work of Michael Graves,

There arc two vc ry suggest ivc consequences of this particular dcploy~ ment of Greimas's schem:1. First. Jameson's reading points IOward an autonomy (but, as I will show shordy, rcally a semiaulOnomy) of the three horizontal planes crcated by the exterior poles of the schema, Secondly, and even more importantly, the final or neutral position takes on a new ccntra lity as the site of potential emergence within thc spatia l closure of the Grein1:lsian mapping, an emergence whose full dialectical forcc is m:ldc cvident in rhe following passage:

For while it can be said that Critical Rcgionalism shares with them a systemat ic rcpudiation of ce rtain essential traits of high mod ernism, it distinguishes itscI f by attempting at one and the same time to negatc a whole series of postmod~ ern negations of modernism as well, and can in somc respects be seen as antimodern :'Ind antipostmodern si multaneously. in a "negation of the negation" that is far from rcturning us to our st:lrting point or from making Critical Regionalism ovcr intO:1 belatcd form of modernism,~:

Ja meson is quite carcful not to overvalue the achicvements of this move~ ment as it currcntly exists: rather. in his reading. it sta nds as the formal aliegoricil placeholder for conc rete potentialities. "the possibility of in~ vcming some new relationship to the technologic:11 beyond nostalgic repu~ diation or mindless corporate celebration,"H He subsequently notes,

Frampton's conce ptual proposal. however, is not an intern:11 but rather a geopolitical one: it seeks to mobilize a pluralism of "regional" styles (a term selected, no doubt. in order 10

forestall the unw:mted connotations of the terms national and international alikc), with a \'iew toward resisting thc standardi zation of a henceforth global late capitalism and corporatism, whose "vcrnacular" is as omnipresent as its powcr ove r local decisions (and indeed, after the end of the Cold War. over local governments and individual nation states as wel l ).~i

In Jameson's hands. Critical Regionalism thus comes to function in a way not unlike Derricla's figure of the specter or, later in th e 1990s, Michael


Hardt and Antonio Negri's multitude-and. as in all three cases, it is this emergent horizon of possibility that escapes our efforts to represent it fully.

Jameson will further develop the implications of this retooling of the Grcimasian rcctangk in his 2005 book, Archal'Ologies oj the FullIre: The Desire Called Utopia atld Olher Science Fictions, the final volume of his projected six~volume "The Poetin of Social Forrns."fS Here, Jameson concludes that any solution to the problem of representing Utopian otherness need!> to remain:l purely formal one; otherwise it falls prey to the temptation of lrony- "it is in Irony til;!! we arc able 10 have our cake both ways and de ny what we affirm, while affirm ing what we dcny"- that he first identifies in his previous book, A Singular Modernity (1002), as "the quintessential ex pression of late modernism and of the ideology of the modern th:1t was developed during the Cold War:''''' lt is this formal solu tion that the semiotic squa re "seems to promise":

For now, ollr scheme allows us. following ~larin 's guidance, to identify another possible position, namely that "synthesis" of the two negations which Greirnas named the nelltral term. Not both ar once, but neither one nor the other. without :1Ily third possibility in sight. This nelltral position does nor seek to hold two su bstantive fealllres. two positivities, together in the mind at once, but rather attempts to retain two negative or privative ones, along with their mutual negation of each other. ... They must neither be combined in some humanist organic sy nthesis. nor effaced and abandoned :altogether; but retained and sharpened, made more virulent, their incompatibility and indeed their incommensurability a scandal for the mind. but:l scandal th:H remains vivid and alive, and that c;mllot be thought away, either by resolving it or eliminating it: the biblical stumbling block. which gives Utopia its savor and its bitter freshness. when the thought of Utopias is still pos!>ibleY

The figu ration of this kind of totalizing Utopian horiz.on can be seen in a wide range of contemporary cultural texts- including, as in the earli er book, in Critical Regionalism-and for which, in the present case, the older term ;'redera li sm" will se rve as a weak :md inadequalt' nallle "until we ha ve a better one. "f~

It is here where J think :1 reading oflhis particula r and origi nal deploymenl of the Greimasian semiOlie rectangle with Lacan's th eori za tions of


the three orders becomes productive. as it enables us to characterize in a new set of terms the work of dialectical thinking, or narration, that we sec taking place in these later works of Jameson. First, the plane of the Grcim:lsian schema occupied by the complex te rm is that orthe Symbolic order, the Big Other (A), or "the parasi t ic symbolic machine (l:lIlguagc as a dead entity which 'behaves as if it possesses a life of its own ')," that operates as both the third 10, and ground of, any orthe concrete exchanges and encounters th:n take place on the plane of the Imagina ry. ~? T he complex term- also akin to the Idea of the "constel la tion" in the Platonic Darsfe/lulIg

that Walter Benjamin develops in his great study orthe German TrOIleJ"

spiel (mourning play)- is thus the name of the totality, encompassing the lived experience of the Imagina ry and the void of the Rea[:

[n order to conceive what happens in the domain proper to

the human order, we must SUITt with the idea that this order constitutes a totality. [n the symbol ic order the totali ty is called a universe. The symbolic order from the first takes on its universal character.

It isn't constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol arrives, there is a universe of symbols.~

The middle plane occupies the place of Lacan's Imaginary, primarily a matter of dualities and oppositions-"most notably all those which accumu l:lIe around the self and the other (or the subject and object)"- the antimon ies whose apparent irresolvabililY constitute the lived experience of a particular situation.s,

Finally, the neutral term is homologous to the Lacanian Real, which Lacan describes in his first seminar as "what resists symbol is:u ion absolutely," and which in Jameson's earliest characte rization becomes another name fo r "simply History itsdf."~! Or, as Lorenzo Chiesa more precisely frames the isslie in his br illiant book, Subjcaitliry and O,hernf'ss: A Philo sophica/ Reading of LoCUli (2007), "the re is something real in it which escapes the Symbolic. something which renders the symbolic Other 'not:,11' :lnd, for the same reason, makes it possible precisely as a differential symbolic slruClme."5J Crucially, in a way whose significance will become clear in a moment, it is this resistance to symbolizat ion, or to incorporation into the reigning order. that both accounts for the trallm:ltic expe rience of any encounter with such a Re;!l (hence, the monstrous figuration of the Real of revolution in Mar), Shelley's Melion) and, even more significantly, :lssures the nonclosure or suturability or any reality, here represented by the other [\\'0 planes of the G rei masian schema.


The deeply di:llcctical nature of IXlth Lacan's conceptualizat ion of the three orders and Greimas's semiotic reClanglc lies in their emphasis on tht inscp;1 rabi I ity of I hese multiple levds. I ndeed, there is in this light an interest ing figural resonance between the full Greimasian rectangle and Lacan's late typology of rhe Borrolllean knot. Moreover, the outer reClanglc formed by the four terms of interest to us here ma y be productively understood as a figura tion of the fourth ring Lacan describes in his fina l scminars as the sinthome."I At the S:Ime time. there i .. a resonance between Greimas's figure and Lacan's earlier schcma L, the latter. howeve r, rotated as show n in figure 9.~~ A properly dialectical criticism conceivcd in this fashion thus re\ealS;1 deep kinsh ip with the work of analysis as Lacan prescnls it in hi ~ early work: inte rvening from the posit ion of the Symbolic orde r .• malysis attempts 10 ellt through the deadlock, or disabling antinomies of the I nl.1ginary, and en:l ble an encounter with the traumatic Real.

This emphasis on the Re:l l also re presents a signific:Hlt shift wit hin Laea n's own projeCl, a shift that occurs, C hi esa argues, around the lime of

A (Othcr) (Symbolic Ordcr)

a' (other) L-----------------------7 a (ego)

Imaginary relationship

S (Es) (Rcal)

l-"igul'l' 9. Laca" s schema f.. rl'Vlud. ()rtgi"al apprars I" tcrilS (2006). ·m. 458.

CREIMAS AVEC LACAN 229

the 1959-60 seminar on The Ethics of Ps),cho(lfl(l/ysis. This t:lkes the form of a mO\'emcnt :nv:ly frolll the eMlie r dominant formub, "There is an O dll:r of the Other:' Chiesa unpacks th is form ula in the following way: "(T(he fact that the re is:l (symbolic) Other of tile (symbolic) Other ind icates that the Other as the order of signifiers is guaranteed by anothe r transcendent O ther. namely the paterna l Law."'iI, In this moment in Lacan's project, wh:n Chiesa identifies as Lacan's structuralist phase, "the order of the Real is enti rely separated from the Symbolic. The Real ca n be defined only negatively as tha t wh ich the Symbolic is not" (i.e., a~ what resists symboliz.:llion absolutely).57

Howeve r, beginning with h is 1960 essay "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious"-an essay that engages d irectly and critica lly w ith the "schema H egel gave LIS of H istory" in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807}---Lacan begins to turn his att ention to the consequences of the new fOflllllla, "(T(here is no Other of [he Othe r."5~ C hiesa sUlllma rizes this move in the following way:

Conseque ntly, the most imporwnt effect of the passage from "there is an Other of the O ther" (A) to "there is no Other of the Other" (A b:lrred) is that the lack in the Other-the fact that. beC:lllSe of the d ifferential logic of the signifying st ructure, a signifie r is always missing from the battery of signifiers-is no longer imrasymbolic but should be considered as real, as a presence of the Real in the open structure of the Symbolic.~·'

It is precisely this opening up of the structu re of the Creimasian schema that, I want to a rgue here, Jameson effects when he shifts his attention from the complex term (a structuralist deployment of the rect:wglc) to ,he nelltr:ll, [he la ner best understood:ts a hole in the whole of the C reimasian figure-and indeed, there is a striking resonance between Chiesa's figure for the formula "There is no Othcr of the Other" and the Creil1l:lsian rectangle as I reimagine it here-something that becomes fully apparent only when we read Creimas with Lacan.

The ultimate conclusion Chiesa draws from this reconceptualization is worth citing here, as well, as it ha~ important implications for the qucstions I will t:lke up in the final sect ion Ofl his essay:

It goes without saying that such a direct politicization of jOllissance is comp:ltible wi th Lacania n psychoana lysis only if the fund:tmental fant:tsy it sets up is radically net//: in other

230 PHILLIP E, WEGNER

words. a ~laster-Signifier is progressive and consequently worth fighting for only if it closely follows the temporary assumption of fhe real bck in the Sy m bolic,jollis-suns, At the risk of oversimplifying an in tricate issue which is only introduced here, I would go so far as to suggest tha t any possible politicoll elaboration of the extreme ethics of the ex nihilo should rely on the equation between what is new and what is good.'~l

~ {y hypothesis would be that the Greim:lsian schema reconceived in this way offers us a representation of the labor of dialectical thought and writing (the two being inseparable), Most immediately, th is claim enables us to read in a new way th<.' labor of thought occurring in some of Jameson's own earlier schemas, For eX:llllple. in his foreword to the Grcimas collection On Me(ll/ing (1987), Jameson develops a mappi ng of Hayde n \Vhite's masterpiece, Mef(lhl~'to,.y: The HI~ .. toricallm(lgil/(ltio1J ;11 NilleteenthCentury Europe (1973). that places the resolutions represented by the figures of Nietzsche and Hegel/Marx opposite each othe r on the plane of the Greim:lsian schema that I h;we suggested corresponds to the L:lCanian In1:lgin:lry,

Howeve r, Jameson also notes that White ultimately gives a "tentative priority of Nietzsche over the other two positions insof;l f as Nietzsche 'includes' thei r moments of Tragedy and Comedy and then projects funher new and original possibilities, ~let:lphor and Irony (properly linguistic or reAexive moments), Olll of the earl ier pai r,"(>' N ietzsche "begins with :11) idellfific:ltion of Tragedy and Comedy, which luminOlls ly eclipse each other and in the ir indistinetion give rise to something else. which will be an Ironic se nse of the powers of language that now once again releases the great Metaphoric energies,"I.! This privileging of the Nie tzschean view ove r the classical ~Iarxi$t Hegel ian one wkes all the force in White's moment of the early 19705 of:l conceptual breakthrough. suggest ing that we rotate Jameson '$ graph so that Nietzsche now occupies lhe neutra l position we have identified with the Lacanian Real (figure 10),

This in turn makes clear the degree to which White's book serves. in Jameson's representation at least, as a symptom of an emergent post modernism: /IIcwhiuO/y rep resents another example of the "communicational ideology" that we already have seen at work in Jameson's discu<;sion of Xcnakis I referred to ea rl ier, while also offering the intimations of some radically new and currently uni maginable way ofbcing in the world (as wit h the N ietzsche of Derr ida or of Dclcuzian afflnnation),


l lege! S\ ' MIIOUC Mar~

com.!-<l)' 'ynccdochc

IMAG INAKY

Optimism

romance metaphor

s -s

-s ;....--------=. s

Nietzsche

cragcdy n~lonymy

satire Irony

Pessimism

FlglII't' 10. Frt'drir jomCio'l,jorcU'Qrd to On Meamng: Selected W rilings in Semiotic Theory, by A. /. Gmma. (1987), rt'vlst"d. XXI.

To tcst this proposilion more properly. howeve r. I would like to show how thi:. is the case in two orthe mosl significant ach ievements in dia lec t i~

cal criticism produced in the lasl few decades: Micl13c1 McKeon's The OrigillS of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987) and SI;Jvoj Zizek's Tanyiflg with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (1993). On the most general plane. McKeon sets fo r himself the t:'l5k of ex plain ing "how c:llcgorics. whether '[iterary' or socia l,' exist in history: how they first co~ alcsce by bei ng understood in terms of-as transform.nions of -other forms tha t have thus fa r been taken to define the fiel d of possibil ity."61 Taking his lead from the dialectical analysis of the conce pt of prod uction found in Marx's Gnmdrisse (1857-6 1), McKeon shows how the "simple ab~ st raction" of the novel comes into being as the culmination of a centur ies~

long debate over the two intertw ined sets of epistemological and social concerns that Mc Keon names, respec tively, questions of Truth and questions of Virtue. What ul t imately occurs is a neutra lizat ion of both the older sense of the authori ty of established texts as the final epistemological cou rt of appeals and an aristocratic roma nce idealism found manifest in the

232 PHI LLI P E. WEGNER

Authority: Tradition

Na'ivc Empirici~rn (Progressive)

Romance

s -s

-s •• =-----------.::.. ~ s

The Novei

Rornanl'c Idcalism (Ariqocr.ltic)

True HiSlOry (Rcalhrn)

Flglirr II. MIt'hue! Mr Kt'on. Th., Ori}(ins or !I,., Engli~h '\'",.:1, I(,(){)- I i40 (J987).

great chivalric romances- a neutralization tlUII ultimately will be named "the novel" (figu re I I ),

While McKeon's stud y offers it rich and exemplary model of a dialecticallitcrary critic ism throughout, and one whose vcry breadth of his to ric:ll schola rshi p anddemon:.trat ion make~ it suc h :l n imposingachicvemcnt, it is the climax to his narnltive th:l\ is of most intCresl to me here, i\IcKeon cha llenges two lines of inquiry that would privilege as the first true novel eit her Samuel Ri chardson's work (a move exemplified by Ian Wan's classic study) or that of Henry Fielding. McKeon argues that "within the present accounl of the origi ns o r the English novel-as a long-term historical process that consists bOlh in the experimellwl conAation of epi stemological and socia l conce rns and in the expe rimental oppos iti on of narr;nive strateg ies-there is little se nse in seeking the identity of ' the first noveli st:"

Rather, McKeon maimains, "[T[he novel is conSTituted as a d ial ectical unity of opposed parts."'''' That is, the novel :IS a simple abst raction, or


wh~H I <1111 c<l lling th e n<lllle or Ide<l of <I Symholic order, encompasses the ~ tr:lteg ies of both of the "two stylistic lines of development" in the novel identified by Mikhail M, Bakht in : those of Rich;lrdson- wh<lt McKeon describes <IS <I nai\'e empiricism <lnd a progressive ideology, origina ll y imagined as:, negation of <I preexisting rom:mce idealism and aristocra ti c ideology, com bined with <I moralizing focus 0 11 the internal and [he su bjective (t he latter becoming fully evident only wit h Fielding's 1:ller rejoinder)- and those of Fielding- the combination of r:ldic<ll ske pticism and conservative ideology, a negation of Richardson's intervention, and the disavowal of Rich:trdson's artifice that Fielding nam es "nature" or "true history," and that will shortly simply be referred toas realism (which, McKeon still points Out, "is only art by anothe r namc")."~

The publ ic contro\'e rsy between the two is thus prope rl y an Im;lginary one, the two au thors employing "ant ithetica l methods of writing what is nonetheless recognized as the same species of narrative": indeed, each adopts the str:ttegies of the othe r in their later works- works that now occupy the fully established institution of the novel"" (figure 12), One of the real va lues of mapping McKeon's narrat ive in this way is that it helps

SVMIIOI.lC

Nah'c Empirici"n (Progre'si\c)

IMAGINAR¥

Samuel Rlch3rdson

Anifice Subjcct: I>~)'chology

(8's !~ Slyli,ric trendl

The Novel

s -s

-s --------. -S

REAL l'ristrnm 511mull-

Nature: True History (RcaliMn)

Ohjccli~ily; Society (8 's 20<1 stylistic trend)

Ilcnr) Fielding

Radical Skcprici~m (Conscl"\'a li\c)

Flgllrt' 12, Mlchad McKt'QII, The Ong,ns ofd1C EnglIsh NOICI, 1600- 17-10 (1987).


us to see more clearly how the plane of the Imaginary at oncepl'eceties historica ll y and yet is COWlifllted by the totality named by the Symbolic.

However, this is not quite the end of McKeon·s sLOry. In a final note whose implication5 for the future study of the development of any genre call for Illuch further exploration. McKeon writes.

Of COlHse the claim lO historic it)' cont inues to be scrviceable, in various ways, to future gener:Hions of novclists. But in a more general sense, both the claim and its subversion end in the triumph of the creative human mind. a triumph already prefigured at the moment of the novel's emergence: in Rich:lTdson the triumphant mind is th:n of the protagonist; in Fielding it is that of the author. The implications of the formal breakthrough of the 17-40s arc pursued with such feverish intensity over the next two decades that after "/iislram Shandy 11759-671. it may be s:lid, the young genre setdes down to a more deliberate and studied recapitul:nion of the «ame g round, this time for the next IWO centuries.t

.?

In short, McKeon :Irgues that we see already prefigured in the uncategoriz;lble masterpiece of Laurence Sterne the ··end of the nove]"' that will nOI occur until much later in a practice that brings together under the name of mOl/t'I"flism {he skeptic ism ahoul the representational possibilities of realism with an emphasis on psychological interiority (keep in mind T. S. Eliol's dictum Ihal whatever else it was, Ulysses was "not a novcl''). ('~

It is no coincidence, then, that Sterne's work is ·'rediscovered·' in Ihe moment of rl1Q{icrnism by Victor Shklovksy, Vl:llter Benjamin, J;lmes Joyce. and others.

There is a further insight to be gained from this m;lpping of ~IcKcon'!> narr:ltivc. If we read in conjunction the twO Greimasian schemas I have produced (modeled, of course, on the double mapping Jameson generates in The Seeds oJTime), such that the concept of the novel in cach-occllpying the neutral or Real position in the first presentation and that of the complex or the Symboli c in the second-becomes the point of overlap, an interesting historical bifocality emerges, what Zitek ca ll s the ·'par;ll1ax view:' a "constantl y shifting perspective between twO points betwee n which no synthesis or medi:ltion is possible.''''') On the one hand, the novel serves as the name for;l particular Symbolic order, or what we wOlild conventionally refer to as a "period" within literary history. On the other hand. as our perspective shifts to the two end points of the larger mapping, the novel becomes the name of a transitional phase- what Jameson calls a

GREIMA$ AVEC LACAN 235

"vanishing mediator" and Lacan the "space between two deaths"- between the orders of the romance and that of modernism,i!! Such a dialectical p:lrallax is char:lcte ristic. Jameson has more recently suggested, of every periodizing narrative."

The case I would like to look at from L:izek's Tarrying wirll the Negatit1e also comes from the book's fina l chapter. "Enjoy Your Nation as Yoursci fl " However, whereas McKeon's discussion remains centered on the eighteenth ccntury. Zizek t;lkcs us directly into the contested ::lIld unst:lblc ficld of the final decadc of thc fwcntieth centu ry. Thus. while McKeon's work opens up ontO:1I1 historic:ll question- why does il t:lke a century and a half fo r the breakthrough figured by Sterne to become actualized on a brger social institutional scale?-Zizek's ana lysis focuses on what he takes to be the fundamental political question of the post- Cold War moment (and, in this, Ttmyillg with the Negative is also:l contemporary of Tile Seeds of Time and Specters of lIofarx); how do we begin 10 break through the closures of the Symbolic order oflate capitalism--or what we now c:lII. to

use the term whose r;lpid ascent to prominence is just beginning in the years of the publication ofZizek's book,g/obalizalioll ?7~ On the b'c! of the geopolitical Imaginary, this closure takes the form of the global deadlock of "to day's liberal del1locr:lcy," Ziiek offers this description of the current SItuatIon:

The problem with liberal democracy is th:n a priori, for structural reasons, it cannot be universalized. Hegel said the moment of victory of a political force is the vcry moment of its splitting: the triumphant liberal-democratic "new world order" is more and more marked by a frontier separating its "insidc" from its "outside"-a fromier between those who manllge to remain "within" (the "developed." those (Q whom the rules of human rights, social security, etc.. apply) and the others. the excluded (the main concern of the "developed" apropos of III em is to contain their explosive potential. cvcn if the price to be paid for such containment is the neglect of elementary democratic principles),-\

Zizek argues that the then-recent and unexpectcd disappcarance of the socialist bloc's third way ("a desperate auempt at modernization outside the constraints of capitalism") has set into place a new fundamental opposit ion between, on the one hand, the corporate :lnel state sponsors of ncoliheralism advocating the violent dissolution of all traditional and preexisting social and cultura l formations (processes David Harvey c;llIs

236 PHILLI P E. WEGNER

'·accumulation by dispossession" and Naomi Klein calls '·shock therapy"): and, on the other, the various fundamentalisll1'i, which include for Zizek bOlh religious fundamemalisrns and nco-ethnic nationalisms, which. unde r the mantle of the maintenance of (invented) traditions, resist these tr:l.nsformations.7~ (A similar vision of the antinomies of globalization is on display more recently in the critically and popularly acclaimed Da nny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire 120081.) Crucially for Zizek, any full account of globalization must take into aC((Junt both of these poles.

However, in what we now should recognize as the indication of a dialectical thought proces~ under way, Zizek's analysis docs not stop here and, indeed, mon's into what was surely intended by Zizek and will be for many readers a far more scandalous terrain:

This antagonistic splitting opens up the field for the Khmer Rouge, Sendero Luminoso, and other similar movements which seem to personify "radical Evil" in t()(lay's politics: if ''fundamenta lism'' functions as :l kind of "neg:ltive judgment·· on lihcral capitalism, as an inherent negation of the univers:llist claim of liberal capitalism, then movements slich as Sendero Luminoso enact an "infinite judgmenl" on it."'i

The full Greimasian mappinJ! ofZizek's narrative would thus appear a~ in figure 13.

Earlier in the book, Zitek defines the Kantian concept of radical E\"il as a force ··which disrupts the panern of the organic substantial whole'-· The example he offe rs us of this is a fasc inating one:

Suffice it to recall Thomas r-,·lore, the C:ltholic saint who resisted the pressurc of Henry VIII to approve of his divorcc .... I Flrom a ·'cornmunitarian" point of "iew, his rectitude was an ·'irrational" self-destructive gesturc which was "cvil" in the sense that it cut into thc texture of the social body, threatening the stability of the crown and the reby of the entire social o rder. So, although the motivations of Thomas More were undoubtedly "good,'· the very formal slrtu:fttre of h,s (let W(lS "radically evil": his was an act of radical defiance which d isregarded the Good of community.'!'

Radical Evil is thus the name the dominant order gives to any social force that appcars as a traumatic disruption. Moreover. Zizek is even more intcrested in the way ideology coll:lpscs the twO quite distinct positions of

SYI' IHO I.IC

Modem'1) HY<lcric S

I \ IAG IS ,\KY

Nco-lihcnlli,m

AnlHrad,Uon .S •


I..:ue Cap,lali'"' (Globah/.allOnl

D)·na""c ~ubll{nc <ma~uh~) Kno,,"lcdge

·s

. -S

Radi<::l] E\,I Infinite Judgmem

M~I""maucal ~ublime (femin'~) (lklid)

Trad,hOn! culiu<e MlSlcr

FuooM1cn{.OI"ms Neg jlldgmenl

AnlHI""""m

Stll/V} 2I't<,1(. T~rrying wilh Ihe Negal!\c (1991), 221-25.

the neg~lt i ve judgment :l nd the infini te judgment-the origi nal reference for this latte r figure bei ng, Zizck argues, the Prench Revolution itsclfinto the undiffere ntiated ethical figure of evil. Such an et hica l gesture serves as a w:ly of avoiding any encou nter with the Rea l, both blinding us to the formal existence of radica ll y other possi biliti es of resistance within OLlr world and preventing us from :"my spec ific political d iscussion of the va lut: and lim itations of tht:se other movements as th ey currently ex ist. Ziiek then goes on to describe this othe r force in a way that brings us fu ll cirelt: back to Mary Shelley's novel:

It scems that only today. with the advent oflate capitalism, has this IHegelianl notion of "rabble" achieved itS adeq u:ue realization in soc ial reality, through politica l forces which par:ldoxicalty unite th e most radica l indigenisl anti modernism (th e refusal of everything th at defines modernity: market. moncy individuali!>m .. . ) with the eminently modern

238 PH ILLIP E. WEGNER

project of eff~cing the entire symbolic tradition :'Ind lx:ginning from a zero-point (in the case of Khmer Rouge, this meant :'Ibolishing the entire system of education ;lIld killing imdlectltals), What, precisely comtitlttes the "shining path" of tht: Senderist:ls If not the idea to reinscrbc the construction of socialism within the frame of the return to the ancient Inca empire? The result of this desperate endeavor to surmount the antagonism benveen tradition and modernity is a double negat ion: a radically anti-ca pitalist movcment (the refusal ofimcgration into the world market) coupled wit h a systematic dissolution of all traditional hicrarchical links, beginn ing with the r.llnily,'~

Zizek concludes in a way that hears out precisely how these forms of radical Evil occupy the nelilral position on our Grcimasian mapping:

The Khmer Rouge and the Senderistas therefore function as :t kind of "infinite judgment" on late c:tpitalism in the prt:cisc Kaillian sense of the te rm: they are to be located in a third dOlll:lin heyond the inherent antagon ism that defines the late c:lpitalist dynamic (the antagonism between the modern ist drive and the fundament:llist b;tcklash), since they radically reject both poles of thc opposition. A!> such, they are-to put it in Hegdese-an integral part orthe notion of late capit:llism: if one wallts to comprise capitalism as a world-system, one must take inlD account its inherent negation, the "fundalllenta lism," as well as its ahsolute negation, the infinite judgment on it. 7~

Lest one conclude th:!1 such an approach is limited only to contemporary theoretical texts, I would like to end this essay by bridly outlining twO additional examples taken from earlier moments in the rich history of dialeClical criticism. The first takes as its case study Walter Bellj.llnin's Ursp/"l/lIg des deulScht'll ·Iirwe/"spicls (The Origin ojGcn11(l1I Tmgic Drama) (1928), a work, Benjamin wOlild later nOle in a leiter to Max Ryncher, while not yet materialist, "was dialectical." ;"'} Wh:lt becomes evident in a re:lding of Benja.min's narrative through the lens ofCreirnas's semiotic schema is th:n Benjamin's figllr'Hions of the German mourning play (7hwerspie/) and Ihe device of allegory occur through a dialeClical nClilral ization of the dominant institutional modes of tragedy and the symbol. Moreover, in Benj:l1nin's study, the THlllerspiel form becomes an :lllegory

SYMIIOU C

M~th

Rcpetition P"s,;v;ty

IMAG INARY

Ruin Frngmcnt5 0"," F~ilure


s

Tmgcdy Symbol

An ( H"hi!ilwim'nchri/I)

"m'qual,amsm

-s

-s •• '-------------=.. s

Trnuen.piel Allegory

Modernism (Urspnmgbuch) Radical Hi<!oric.;;tn

Monumcnt Unity Closure Succc"s

Event Shock Will

Flgllfl'14. lVoltrr limjumlll, Ursprung de) DeuI.ehen Traucr$picb (/928).

in its own right of modernism-not the least of which includes lhe modernist practice of Benj;tmin's HahilitatiollsschriJt-and the means by which Benjamin is able [Q bre:lk through to his own radically o riginal mode of historicism (figure 14).

My final schema is the most far reaching, offering an open dialectical or totalizing presen tation of the problemat ic of Marxism itself. Marxism is the science of the mode of production of capitalism, and its Imaginary unfolds, as Etienne Bal ibar so brilliantly suggests in The Philosophy of Marx (1993), into the :mtinomics of ideology and rcification (and the homologous political opposition of voluntarism ;Hld dl'lerminism).JQI The only way to break through such a deadlock is through a rigorous formalism that will enable a confrontation with the traumatic rnateria l---class consciousness, revolution, and communism itself-that is too often evaded


S),MIIOUC

Ideology lCriti'loe)

' MAGINAR),

I~egcmony

Imerpcllallon jVolumarism)

Struggle (11<,,,,,ming Subjl.'C11

s

·s

Mode of Produ'llon (Tmalilyl

Chis, ConSl:iousne" He'olUlinn O;>mmonlsm

(Utopia)

·s

s

ConmlOdlly fcti~h;sm

(Obj<-clific'lIon)

KcificallOO (Ik~nn""'m)

EcoJll)l]lIC Dc\'elopmclu (Poll1ltaJ Economy)

in lOllay's illlcllcclUal Mafxisms, a si w :nion of which Zizck, Jameson, and other contcmpor:lry dialectic;.1 thinker:. offer a powerful an:11ysis. The lesson ofthi~ final schema nicely sums up the rea l val ucof thc model of dialectical crit icism that I have been arguing for throughout rhis essay, for it shows us, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that a map of Marxism today that does not include Utopia is not wonh even glancing at (figure 15).

-Uni vcrsity of Florida

NOTES

!. Frc,lnc lameson. foreword !O 0,1 Mrunmg: St/rcud II'mmgi III St'IIIIOI/C ","roll", b)' Alglrdas 'ul1<':n Grcima~. Irans. Paul l. Perron :lnd Frank H. Collms. Theory and I-I "wr)' of I.ilcr"\,,rc, ,,,I. 38 (:'-'hnncapolis: Uni\'crm}' of 1-1'11ncso\;\ Press, 198i), "-X)<II.

(]umation un lti,. Grcima' tim de"dIJps Ihi~ Inol in his cbs~tr essay. (O;/ll\h,)rcd wnh


Fran~uis Rasticr. "The [nteractiun "fSc:ulII.tic C<)mtr~illts" ([9(i8). rC(Jrlllted 11101/

Mrllllmg.48-62.

2. Paul ,Ie ~bn. "The Rcsl~tance hi Theorl:' }alr Prel/ch SI/ul,r$, no. 63 (1982); H . IS; and Paul RlCocur. 'limr u",1 NllTrolll:r. H.L 2, I "ms. Kath[een o\Id,'"lghlin 'mtl D~\·,d Pdlaucr (Chicago; Unl\cr,il}, of Chic:.gu Press. I 98S). 4b. AI<o!.IT R,cocur. "Greimas's Narrati\e GrJ11lmar:' Nm' Llferury Hiiful)' 20, no, ) (1989); S81-608. espeeiall)' the lun).: notes on the <emiolic reCTangle in footnotes ~ anti 12: and now Fre{lric ' :lIne<flll's re3'SCSSlllent o( Ricocur's proj~'<t 111 Ihe lin:d chapter, "\'alenees o( Hi<tory:' in I'a{enui of rhe Dlulemc (i\'C\\ York: \'crw. 20(9). 4;~-612,

3. D)'lan E\'am. /In IlIIroJllnory J)1(-ri(}I1ury of LocUli/I III ",-,,('hllUlII/IYii, ( I'hil~ddl'hia:

Brunner-Routledge. 2(01). 132.

4. Sla\,ul l:i2ck, The I'amllax 1'1t,·", (Calllbridge.1'.I,\: MIT I're,s,l()(}(,). 399.

S. 11m!.. 94.

6. Lei mc add, 100. th'1\ somelhing 5IIllibr c'Hlld be s:ud IO(){:(Ilr Ullllan)" oflhe "'her great structuralist splcms, For example, in T 7_el\3n Todoro'-'s strllcturali,t /-:enrc study. IlIIroJlI('fWI/ iJ la IwlnHltre [ullfumqlfe (l9;O). the genrc's fun.bmental rhetorical dC\icc uf "hesiI:IIIOn"-~Ihe dur~tion of uncertaint)""' bctwe~1l Ih~ acccptancc ur a world of magic, and hencc thc <hift into the kin gmrc of the mJne[ml'. or tho:: introduction of a "o;cicnlific" cxplanation fot thc narr~ti, c's 'ttang~ uccurrcnc<'s, chataett"ristic or the related gcnre Todaro\' n,lInes the "uncanny"-ha, the dICet. as long 3S it is sllst~ined (inddinilcl)" as is the (;I>C in a "'(Irk not lhscusscd br ToduTO'. Jalllcs Hugg's mastcr· picce of the form. The I'm'(Jf(" Mell/om alld COl/ftJi/om ofll Jlufljicd S/I1I1("r 1111241>, or undamining the gr ~mmar of the genrc's "thclllcs" thai TodorO\ dahoratcs in tht" second half or thc book (Tlct,an TodoTO\. The FUllfllific: A StruCfllrul Approach ro a Gt"nr(" Ilth~ea. NY: Corncll Un;\'cnit) PrC$~. 19;5I. 2S).

;. s.:c. for example, Frc(lnc J:lrncs<>n, "I 11l3gm3r), anll S}·mbuhc m I..;"an," m Thrldi'Ologu'; ofThro ... ,.: r;';IIY>. 1971-/986, \01. I, SmwfIQII;ofThro')' (Mmneapolis: Uni\er<il)' or Minnc~ota Press. (989), ;S-IIS: and Jameson, "[..lIcan and the Dillc<:lic: A Fr"),:l1lenl," in U('ml' "'''e Silr", 1)1I"flIers, cd. Sl,woj Zizek (New Ynrk: \'ersll. 2(06). 365--97,

8. Frcdnc J:'meson, The PolwCI1II.'flCo",.iolli: XamIlwr a, a Sooally S}mbolic .. let (ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni\C:tsilY Prcs., 190'11).166.

,). Fredric 13me~m, Thr I'moll HOllse of {.ongltllgr: A Crlli('u/ A(,("()11tI1 ofSmu'(/ll11/l>m und RIISiIUI/ Porn/allim (prmccton. NI: Prmceton Un1\'ersity Pres~, 19i2). 166-67,

lU. Ibi{!.. 16;,

II, Ihid .. 168. For another deployment of the Greim~si~n SCI1lIlJl/C rewlIlglc Ih31 dndops in some richly producll\c \\':')'~ Ihc di.lk'<lic,,1 or "explosive" possibilities of the Internal fourth term, sce Ronald Schlei!Ter, I. J. Gmmas I1l1d Ihe NI1IUrc ofAft"l1nwg: ,-mg"'i/lCi, Semiolla al/d Dli("Ollrir Thea,)' (Lincoln: Unn crsit), ufNcbr:lsb Press, 198;). Schlei/fer's superh ,tlldy al5tl ha. the a,1<Iiti"n31 \-aiue of already callin/-: illto question the stereotypi(al charaCterizalion ofGrcil1l3s's work :lIld exploring In hrilli:tlll detail ils d)'IIJmic dimen~ioll\, ilO; well ns;to; kin,hip wilh Ihe I:ller work of [xrrid:., dc ~bn. and [p1ca!l.

12. Jame<on.l'o/lll<"ul UI/WmnOtIi, 13.

13, Sec F redr;c J~mcS(lI1. 'The \"lIIishin)l '\1cdiator; or. Max WeI)!;r as Stur)·teller," in Th .. Idrologlei ofThrory: 1'Siuy;. 1971-1986, ,'oJ. 2: The S},lIfa;r of HUlol)' (~llnneap(lli~, Ullivermy or Mlnllc<ola Prc's. 1'}89). _'I-H; ,lnd Jamcson. ",\(tcr Armageddon: Char,.clcr System, HI f)r. l/l00dn/oIICJ"~ in /lrchllrologiu ofrh .. Fllfllrc: 'I'll .. f)mTc CuI/cd Uropia alld Olha Snellce Flerlolls (1\'e\\ Yurk: Vcr",). 200') •. H9-62.


14. IlIid .. 79.

15. ~1.lr)' Shdk·). Frullkrmlrill. or. Thr Modall I'romrlhr/U' (New York: Signel Cbs,ic. 19~1). 36-'i.

16. Ih,d.,4'J.

17. William Word.worlh. 'The l;,bln Turned," in Engllih RomlJlllir II'rurrs. ed. D ... id Perkins (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1967).209.

18. Sheik), Prullkmi/(II1. 1 B. Imcres!lngly, the no\eI suggests early on:l SlImb. failure on the p.1rt of\'icwr\ f'Hher:

If. instc"d of thi~ remark. m}' (ather had taken Ihc pains to expbin 10 me that the principles o( Agripp., had heen emirel)' exploded .1I1d Ihat a mudem sptetll of Klcnce had been inuooucnl which flO'!;esscd much grcaler powers Ih:m Ihe Jlle.;enl I should certainl)" h3\'e Ihrown Agrippa .• side :md haH' e<)I1tented my imagination. warmed as ;1 was. hy rCHlming lI'ilh g'''':Oler :ordnur to my former 'HldlCs. (Shelley. Frullf(.-nirrlll, 3S-3'J)

19. Gr",imas .md R:ISllcr, ~ I nl(fanion ofS<;miollc Constrain!)," 'B-'H.

20. ,\Iso') now sce the discussion o( other le\'cb of mon,uusit)' in Ihe no\'cI offered br Sla\'oj Zil.ek in III ~frmr of 1..0;1 Calliri (Ne\\ York: \'erso, 2008), 73-S1. Fur" disclNiun "f more po,ill'e figuralions of modern mon'lroslcy, sec Phillip E. Wegner. "We 're Family: Monstrous KlIIships. Fiddlt~" :lnd the 1':' er1\ U\ HuffY tht' 1'IImr"'- SlilVr anJ Butler\ I',/rahi" No£'t'Ii," ch .. p. 8 In L1" brtWUII 'fim iJ,,"/hs, f981)....1oo/· US. C"III"" III/h" Long 1\ 'WCtlt'J (Durham. NC: Duk" Unil'ersllY Pr"s~, 10(9), 195~117.

11. Shellc}, Frullkmift'lI/, 190,

12. 11",1.,39, 101.

13. Franco ~Iorcui, 5,!!"! Tak"" f(lf Wmld"fs: r:.;,ayIIII fh" S'Kiolog), of LIt"'"")' Pomli, 'C\'. cd. (New York: \'e"o, 1988),88. Also,,,,, the pro\oc~li,t rc:tding oflhe wa) Ihe work stages Ihe: "unreprcscntability" of Ih", prole:lari,ll in thi' specific hi.\wrieal conlunclure in Warren ,\ lollla)!, '''Th~ Worksholl of Filth) ere,lIion ': A ;\brxi51 Reading of Frullkmitcm," in Cili" SlIld/f'i 111 CQlllcmpol'ury C,mc/sm __ MilT)' Shd/f')', "Fl'illlkmJICm," ~d, Johanna ~1. Smith (Boston: Hnlfonl. 19')2), ~OO-II. quot3 tion un 3 II.

H. J:uneoon.l'ollllcu( VI/COI/SCWIlS, 168.

15. "Henry Cle:nal i~ hnth an alter cgo of Victor Franktll«e;n and Ihe embodiment o( all Ih<' qualilies of PerC)' Shellq 10:11 ~br)' mOSI lo,,,,d" (Anne K. ~kllor. Mllr)' Shrllr,.: I-/"r Lift', flu F,Cflon, I-/u MOl/if"" 1 New Y/lrk: Routledge, 19891,74).

26. ShellC}, Fra'lkr/lif<'I'/, H9.

27, 1\10;0 s<:e Jameson'~ discus'lon of Ihe "milar imp<l"iblc resolut!on represented b)' th<' figure of Ihe ComIC de T/OiSlil1c in Balzac's Lu 1'""11,, Fifl" (1836), m I'uflticu/ UllamIno/ii,168--()9.

18. I ,liKu,S Gibsun and Sterling's novclm "Th", Last Bomb: IllSI of ici~.ing I hsm.y in Terr)' Bis.)On's FII'''olllh<, MOIWIIlIII and Gibson and Slerling's Th, DiffirmCl' I-:nglll"," Comparallit 23 (19'.n): HI-51.

29. Shellc)', "'rullkmi.f"III. 17S.

~O, [)arko SUI in, JI"lumorrho'''J of Sn"'ICl' FictlOlI 0" rh" l'Ol'tlri ami rilswry of a LII"ru"i Gmf" (New 1--1 :1''''11, CT: Yale UnivCTsity 1""'5', 1979), 133.

GRE1MAS AVEC LACAN 241

31. J discuss the Uloplan coll!>Cn':nil'c ul(~ r1\ali[y in "Modernity, NoslJIgia, and the t-: nds uf Nation5 in Orwell's Nlrlt'/l'l'1I EigfIlY1Q/If," ch~p. (, in Imagi!J(IIY Commllllilit's: Utopia, thf' NatlOlI, IJIIII (!If Spallul H,l(Qr/rs oJ Moor,,,,,), (Berkelc)': Umvcrs1\)' of California Press, 2002),183-218.

Jl. W:lync B(>IHh. Tilt' Rhnoric of Pierion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19(1), l(rl-65.1~l1lcson ciles lh,s passage in (ull,n h" discussion ofBouth's book III Man,sm 11r1/1 Porm: 7ium"('fh-Ct't1imy Du,lallcul Thront's of Lilt'YUlur .. (Princeton, NJ: Princc[()r1 Uni\'crSll)' Prc5~. 1(71),356.

B. Sec Franc!) Morelli. Ar/.Ii of Ihc El<ro~1l1I NOI;('(. 1800-J9()() (New York: Verso, \998),

H. s.:c Nancy Armstrong. /),,-'''(' tIIllIDonl(,l/I' Piman: A Poflf/f"1l1 Hwory of tilt' Notd (Oxford: Oxford UniH,rsily Press, 1987),3' wdl as her discussion ofSeoll and Shdlq in 1I0w Novr{s TIIUlt Till' LllllluoJlndividlldllimJrom 1719-1900 (New York: Columbia Unil'efSlly Pre$5, 1005). Lc<s wdt known is Ih~t some of A rlllsirong's earliest ess.~ys explore the \;tlue and lililits for reading the nOl-eI of Greim asian M:lIliotics, and include a Greirn~si;ln rnapp1l1g of Austen'~ Prldr UIIJ Pup,dlu ( 1813) Ih:ll ha~ a kinsh;p With 1I1y di5Cll5slon of Emmll (sec Nanq :, ronstroog, '·Inside Greimas·s Square: The Game of Semiotic ConsTramts in Jane AU5Icn·s Fiction:· 111 Till' S/gll /II M,,;/(" /llld Ult'rdt/lrl', e(l. 'Vendy Steiner [ .. 'u51;n: Umvc:rsit)· of Tc)ta~ Pres~, 1981 r, ;2---l>6; and Armstrong, ·'Oomes\!cJting the Foreign DCI II: Strucluralism 111 EnglIsh Letters a IXcadc L,ter,O> Sl'miOf/l'd 421 19811: 2H- 7;). The bttn essay als(> has the additional bcocfit of offering a Grcim:man mappmg. :Ikin to that dcplo)'cd in Schlclffc:r·s work. of'·dlc relationship amon): contcmling structures of discourse withm lucrJry criticism·' (272), the rc:solutlon of whose final opp0'litiun- ··poSt-structuralism·· :lnd ··Mnrxi<m amI psychoanalysis·'cffccti"d)' ,har"ctcrizcs the nriginallllcth",lology Arm.trong deploys in hCT suhsC(lliCOI dl-cply intll1enual book.

35. Fredric Jameson. "Of IsI,Ulds :lnd Trcnchcs: i':nllr:llizalion and Ih(O Production of Utopian Dlscoursc:· in fJrologll'J oJTht'Qry. 2:79.

36. 11)1(1.. 91.

37. Ibid .. 92.

311. Fredric Jamcson, Thr Srrd, oJ"fimr (New York: Columbia UI1I\,crslIy Press, 1994), XUI.

39. Ibid., ni. Also nnw scc Ihe discussion of AndreI Pblo1\m·s CII~I'C"gllr (1926--19) in Jonalhan Fbllcy, Aff«Itl'~ Mdpfmg: M~ltmcholia and lilt' Pof/lln of Modl'mislII (C:l1nbridge. MA: Har\;trd Uni\er\ily rrc~s,1008).

~U. 'alllcsun.Satiso["li'mt'. XiII - XVI.

41. 1 di5Cuss thc rC:llism of Marx/sm und "-orm 10 ··Pctlodlz1I1g /3mesun,·· 111 On /amt'io,,-" F.'Qr" f'o;/modal1lim 10 Glob.lh-:dtlon, ,<I. Carcn Irr and lao Buchan:1I1 (Alb3ny: 5ta[(O Uni,'crSll), of New York I'rc<s. 2006). 241-80.

H. Jamcson,S .. rdioJTIII/l',I'J'(l.

H. Ibid .• 201.

H Jbj<1..202.

4;. Volume 4 of )nmcson·s The POClles of Social Forms is composed of the books A Slngll/ar Mo<ll'rl1l/)'.' }:s.u,y olllhe Ontology of Iht' Prl'Jellt (New York: VClSi', 1002) and Tht' ModulII!t I'd/'l'ff (New York: Verso. 1007). and ,·olumc 5 includes f'ostmodl'mljm: or, Thr

Cu/tllrol LegicoJfAIt' Clip/Ill/ism (Durham. NC: Duke Univenit)" Press, (991), wilh Lull' Marx/jill: , Idomo: or Thl' /'rrs/Sll'na oJthl" /)//l{r("fic (New York: Verso, 1990) ~rl"ing as somethmg of an "cpiStemfl-ctillcal prologuc·' to [he bst. Thc work-in-progress I"olume 3


WIll takc up the prohlem of realism: and the propo5Cd \'OIIlIllC~ I and 1 will d",,1 with '"lth .,,,,1 n.,rr:l1;\,C and wilh aU,,!!ory. rC~I><Xtl\d}'.

4(.. ,.mle".n. Irdltll'o(og"'J ,if ,nr f"wurr. 177-7'1, t\l~():IC."e Fredric Jamc..ol1 . Sillgu/"r Mrx/t'I"IIIII,I(,]-11O.

4/. Jamc'><>I1, .1!'charologlt'J of ,h,. FUlu,r, 17<)~(1 .

.fl{, lbl<l., 114. I dISCUSS b 'l1C,On'Si ll"ch<lr%gJ('s III much more dela,l '" my essa)' "J.1mcs<>n\ ,\lo..J.:rfllsrns; or, the [)nm: Calkd UWI'I:O," /J",(rll/CS 37. no. 4 (1007): 3-10,

W. Zii.ck.I"Halluxl'it'w.121.

5U. /Jcql1t" l":lcafl, Tht' Srmlllur of Jactfllri I..JlColll, IJook II: Tht' I:'go III "',o"I's Throry and 1/1

,hI' Tnh""I"" of /J;yrhO<lIItlIF's. 1954-1955, tr~m. $)'hall" TIlIll.I'I(:l1i (New Y(>rk: 1\'urton. 19<}1),19.

51. /amto;un, "Lac;IIl ~nd 11 .... DI:llcClic," ~i6_

51. ,.ICqllC§ l,a(.ln. Thr Srrnmar of jacqllri Lucan. Jlook f: ' '"''rlld'> Papa" Qn Tt:.hmqllr. /951-1954. uans. 'ohn Forrc'ter (New York: Norton. I '1)l). (,(,; ~mJ Fredric I ~mc,on. Tht: fdt:offJglri ofThrory: J:S<ll)'i. /971-/986. vol. I: Sill/allQm ofThrol)' (~linnc~p()li,: UllIH:rsi() or I\ linnc<ota P rn •. 1989). 104.

S). Loren/_" Chiesa. SUb;t'CIIl'IIY ulld Olhrmru:.1 Phllosophicdl Rrudmg ofl..u.ulI (Cunbridge. ;\IA: 1\1IT I'rc".1007), 10'i.

'H. Sec /"({Iue, L.acan. Lr Jlmmdlrr LlI'rr XX/II. /1 Jllllhomr, /975-1976 , cd. /Jcquc,.,\I.lin I\liller (I'Mi,: f~lilllms du Seuil.100'i): anJ Elans.llII,-oolfcIOry /)tr/IOIIUI)'. 18-10, 188-90.

S5. The prnposlI,oll (h;u it would he I'tlssili!c I<J read "L:lc;U\'s 'iChCIll;ui7.:llil)ll 11\ reb tion I\>

,\. I. Creil1l3<'s 'cl1limic '<.Ju;orc" is ~bv IIndl)' ,dlmlcd tv h), l:llnc. 1\1.l\klbrd. Usmg l..u<,m. RNdlllK FIr/lOll (Urh.ln", Un'\'Cfsit)' or 111,"0;$ Press. 1991). (00-(,1.

5(,. Ihid., tn" 57. Ihid .. IllS,

'is. '''C{I"l'' 1_1",", Eam. (",ns. Brucc F ink (Ke" York: :--:"lIon. 2(06), 6i I. 691.

;'). (:hil'<a, Slfb;rCflI'lfJ ulld Othrmr~. 119.

{,(l, Ihid .. II}I-n.

(,1. Ibid .. X'I-xxi.

(,t ,\Itehad ~kKeon, Thr Orlgllls of thr English ,\'Ol'rl. I{,(}I)-J 740 (Ib lt ilnorc, M IJ: Inhn$ H()pkms Vnt,'eNt} I'res~. 1987),~.

64. 11))(1..167. Aho S-t'e I\ltdl~cI ,\!CKl'()I\, "A Derense or ])i;tlcetlc~1 Method m LltCf~r)' H istory," f)iltcrlllcs 19, nu, I (1989); 8 )-%.

(,S. ,\ !eKc'''', OnCIIl> (lfthr f:"gltjh 1\'(WrJ, 39~. Also $CC Mikh"il .\!. Ihkluin, Thr /)wlog'c IlIIo1K"'o1l1tm Four l".hu),!. lr~n~. eM)'1 Emerson ~nd ~!ieh~cli !l)lquisl (Au5Iin: Uni,erslt}' orTexa~ Press, 1981). 366---~ l'.i.

(>Ii. "!rK~~H1, Origllii ofthr English N(wrl, 166,

(,7. Iht\L.~ll1-J').

ull. T. S. Fli"l. "t.:I}'Jiri. Order. ,lIId M)th~ (1913), in Moorrlllsm: .II/Allthology. cd. I ... wrenec Rainey (Oxrord: Oxror{1 Urmersity Press, 1OOS). 16'5-67, quot31ion on 166.

C REIMAS AVEC LACAN 245

69. Zi'-ek. Parallax I',,·w.-l.

iD. Scr Fredric Jameson. '"The \'alli~hing Mediator; or. M~x Wd><:r :I, Storytel1er.M

in Mrola· glrs afTlleory 1:3-3~; ~nd )aC<lues L:K~n. Til.: Sml/lU/r of Jacqu.:s I..acan, UOlik. VII: Til,. /;'llIlrJ af I',ydl(xlIIu/Yii, 1959-1960. trans. Dennis ]loner (New York: NUT!oll. 1992).

il. See the det~iled theori;-;atioll of I><:riodi;-;"tion in p.ut 1 of J'ltnesoll. SmEII!ur Moc1rrtuly, 17-95. [ <!iscuss this dK'(>riz:ui()n in more (let"i! in the imruduelion to /..iff /Jt'tt<~t"II Tt<'O

Drallls.

n. [discuss in !-Ome det~i! the significance of. among other factor~. the "end" of the Cold W:lr. the publication of thcs<: crucial thcoretic;d intcn·cntions. :md the risc of the concept of Jtlobalization. for an ull<lerstanding of this hi,toriral context, m ufo brlwt't'n Two IJrallls.

i3. Sbvo) Zi'-ek, Tarrp"g 11'"11,11,, N"gam'r: Kam, l/rgd, alld Ih" Crmqu" of MeolOf[Y (Durham, NC; Duke Vni,ersity Press, 1993), 222.

7-1. Ihid. f\I!-O.-ce Da,id H:tn'CY, Thr Nr", Imf't'riafum (Oxford: Oxford Vni,ersit), Press, 2005): and Naomi Klein, Thr SlIock Doclrillt': Thr Rlir of Diillslt'r Capl/allim (t\'el\" York: Henr) HolI.2007).

75. ?:Iiek, TarrYlfIg wllh Ihr NrgatlV(', 223-24.

76. Ibid., 96-97.

77. Ibid., 124.

78. Ihid., 225. Let me note that allot her Greimasian dialectical schema emerges more recent I)" III Sla,oj Zifek, .. AJ,;~>nst Ih" P"pu!i~t Tcrnpta\lon:' Crll1"allnqllll)' 32 (SprlllJ,; 20(6): 551-74. now included in ZiiS.ck·s "Why Popult~m h (Sorne!lmes) Good E.nouJth in Practice. hut Not in Tht'Ory:' in In Dr/msr of 1..0;1 Callsri. 264-333. And. finall), scc th" diKussion of "di\ inc "iolc:ncc" by :Zitek in [fiolrnlr: SIX Sldrways Rtjfr{"f/on, (New York: PicJdor. 2008).

79. Cite<1 ill ESlher Leslie, Walur UrtlJumln (London: R""ktiol1.1007), 115.

SO. Sec Etienne B"lih.1r. Th,. "IIi1tJiophy ofM<1rx. tr~n~. Chri~ Turner (New York: Verso. I??'i).

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