Production of Desirious Space - Fantasies of the Utopian

8/2/2019 Production of Desirious Space - Fantasies of the Utopian

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T H E P R O D U C T I O N O F D E S I R O U S

S P A C E : M E R E F A N T A S I E S O F T H E

U T O P I A N C I T Y ?

Michael Gunder

University of Auckland, New Zealand

173

Article

Copyright 2005 SAGE Publications(London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Vol 4(2): 173199DOI: 10.1177/1473095205054604www.sagepublications.com

Abstract The Lacanian perspective argues that planning, in itsdiscourses and practices, is inherently ideological and the visions andideals shaping the fantasies of the future city are often reflective ofthe homogenic desires of conflicting, but dominant, privileged minori-ties. Here the democratic process fails because the issues ofcontention are pre-shaped and technically determined and the

rationality deployed only allows a limited range of sensible, i.e. pre-framed, dreams of what constitutes the good city. This article drawson both Lacan and Lefebvre to explore the dichotomy betweenseeking a common harmony of social vision while at the same timeavoiding any exclusion of cultural and related difference in livedspace.

Keywords agonism, ethics, ideology, Lacan, Lefebvre


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Introduction

We need a constructive imagination to help us create the fictive world of our

dreams, of dreams worth struggling for. (Friedmann, 2002: 103)

Recent articles and monographs in the theory and case study literature haveexplored planning from a Lacanian perspective (Allmendinger andGunder,2005; Gunder, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Gunder and Hillier, 2004; Hillier,2002, 2003; Hillier and Gunder, 2005). They posit that urban policy formu-lation and related planning processes are valued by society because theyprovide a mechanism for constructing and propagating shared publicvisions, or dreams, as to what constitutes a harmonious and secure future,at least for the built and related socio-economic environment (Gunder,

2003b). To express this perspective in a more conventional manner,planning might be said to be the use of reason and understanding to reducecollective uncertainty about the future (Hoch, 1994: 15). Regardless ofarticulation, planning aids the illusion that these dreams are being achievedthrough the supplement of development assessment and related implemen-tation processes (Hillier and Gunder, 2005).

Yet, this policy process has a cost that this article wishes to explore. Itdoes so in the hope that its arguments may influence the reader to considerthe value of a Lacanian perspective. Specifically, the article will explore the

implications of Lacans (1988a, 2002) thinking as to what resides outside ofsymbolic language and image,what he called the Real. With some help fromLefebvres (1991, 1996, 2003) later works on the urban problematic, thearticle will consider the implication that this Lacanian concept may have forreconsidering plannings roles of social coordination and guidance increating our future cities and regions.

Both Lefebvres and the Lacanian perspective, as well as those of others,argue that planning is inherently ideological in its discourses and practices,so that the visions and ideals shaping the fantasies of the future city are

often reflective of the homogenic desires of conflicting, but dominant,privileged minorities (Flyvbjerg, 1998a, 1998b; Gunder, 2003a, 2003b;Gunder and Mouat, 2002; Yiftachel, 1998, 2002). These are minorities withnot just necessarily access to economic, but also social and cultural, capital(Howe and Langdon, 2002: 21618). They may include networks ofbusiness, intellectual and cultural elites, as well as government functionaries,including policy planners, who jointly seek and shape a common vision asto what the general interest should be (Jessop, 1998, 2000: 335).

Fundamentally, in a Lacanian sense, all actors strive to achieve a vision

that provides them with an illusion of security and harmony (Stavrakakis,1999). This is accomplished for the dominant hegemonic bloc, or group(s),by first articulating that something is missing in the achievement of thegood city. The dominant bloc then imposes its particular desired solutionas the resolution of this lack as if their dreams are universal throughout

Planning Theory 4(2)174


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society, i.e. their views are the public interest (Laclau, 1996; Laclau andMouffe, 1985). Yet, these desires are often at odds with those of otherdiverse, perhaps less articulate or empowered, societal groups, who mayactually constitute, in aggregate, the majority of urban populations(Gunder, 2003b). Often this process is depoliticized because the identifiedlack is technically defined, as is its resolution. Rhetorical tropes claiminglegitimacy of rationality, value neutrality, expertise and science are oftendeployed to advance these hegemonic desires (Gunder, 2003b, 2004;Lefebvre, 2003; Sandercock, 2004: 134). Here the democratic process failsbecause the privileged issues of contention are pre-shaped by unquestionedcultural imperatives and technically determined. The rationality deployedin this societal guidance only allows a limited range of sensible, i.e. pre-framed, dreams, or options, of what constitutes the sustainable, healthy,

competitive, or perhaps creative city as good within the context of anincreasingly globally competitive capitalist world (Hansen et al., 2001;McGuirk, 2004; Stahre, 2004).

The space of political universality is one of ideological struggle. For a

hegemonic group to establish itself at the expense of others, it needs to colonize

this space in its own interests. The political universal is thus usually the exact

opposite of what one might take it to be: not an abstraction from a set of

particulars, but the manifestation of the express interests of a particular group.

(Kay, 2003: 151)

In the contemporary situation, planning policy formulation facilitated bythe social constructs called democratic civil society and private/publicpartnerships of governance, functions as a blunt Orwellian instrument inthis process of hegemonic colonization that shapes the acceptableparameters of what should constitute the future good city (Goonewardenaand Rankin, 2004: 131; Jessop, 1998, 2000; McGuirk, 2004; Miraftab, 2004).Planning discourses and documentation legitimate prevailing tropes,

academic or popular, as to what should constitute and how we shouldcreate the good space as defined by the values of the prevailing bloc orhegemonic group (Gunder, 2003b).

Take, for example, Aucklands (New Zealand) Regional Growth Forum.The Forum comprises one elected representative from each of the Regionsseven local councils and three from the Auckland Regional Council, is giventechnical support by their staffs, and is in partnership with central govern-ment agencies, the Chamber of Commerce and other business anddevelopment interests (Auckland Regional Growth Forum [ARGF], 1999:

54). The role of the Forum was first to develop and now implement a growthstrategy for Auckland through to 2050. In formulating the Strategy issues oftransport congestion, a lack of sustainability and perceived urban sprawlwere addressed so as to ensure that growth is accommodated in a way thatmeets the best interests of the inhabitants of the Auckland region (ARGF,

Gunder Production of desirous space 175


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1999: 2). The strategy is premised on urban containment and promotingcompact urban environments through intensive nodal development alongtransit corridors, consistent with the smart growth planning paradigm. Incompiling the Strategy a market perspective to this process was consideredvital by the planners involved; consequently, interviews were conductedwith representatives of 21 major development companies on issues of urbanboundary expansion versus in-fill housing and urban intensification(Gunder, 2003a: 2756). Gunder (2003a: 276) continued that there was norecord of consultation or similar meetings with representatives of theRegions other 1.1 million residents. That is,Aucklands housing consumers.For the Forum, the only housing market perspectives needing consider-ation appear to be those of its major commercial developers and land-bankproperty holders. The Strategy appears to seek only what is best for them.

This author suggests that this process of hegemonic imposition is notunique to Auckland; rather it tends to represent the norm of what isperceived by many as good planning process. Nor is this type of critiqueonly put forward from a Lacanian perspective (see Allmendinger andGunder, 2005). Yet, this article hopes to demonstrate how Lacanian insightcan provide new critical perspectives of understanding, as well as to beginto lay potential openings, or scope, to displace this hegemonic tendency forthe imposition of one dominant set of transcendent ideals as to what consti-tutes the good city and region.

This article seeks to illustrate how Lacan and his adherents can lendfurther insight into understanding how this and similar mechanisms ofhegemonic social coordination occur in our complex and largely globallyconnected societies. It seeks to explore how planning and its related actorsformulate their particular perspectives and then implement their resolutionas urban policies. However, in contrast to the arguments of multicultural-ism put forward by postmodernist proponents, such as Leonie Sandercock(2003, 2004), this article will suggest that societal fantasies for a safe andsecure inclusive city premised on addressing the diverse desires of an

entire population, not just those of the hegemonic minority, are a utopianimpossibility. The article will argue that this is a consequence of what Lacan(1988a, 2002) terms the Real. This registry of negative noumena residesbeyond our abilities for symbolic articulation or even that of our consciousimagination and, at best, resides in our unconscious realms of affect anddrive. Yet, this author suggests the Real is why our plans and dreams sooften fail and, further, that an understanding of this Lacanian concept willmake us better informed and effective planners.

To help in the understanding of the Lacanian Real and its related impli-

cations for urban ideology and planning, the article will draw on the laterwritings of Henri Lefebvre (1991, 1996, 2003).1 The article will suggest thatLacans registries of the symbolic, imagination and the Real were a signifi-cant influence on Lefebvres thinking and his conceptualization of space andthe urban problematic (Blum and Nast, 1996,2000; Hillier and Gunder, 2003:



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229).2 The article will draw on aspects of their perspectives to provide anunderstanding of urban ideology and the role of planning in addressing andresolving issues of the urban problematic. After illustrating the similaritiesbetween some of Lacan and Lefebvres conceptual insights, the subsequentsection will then explore the dichotomy between that of seeking a commonharmony of social vision while at the same time avoiding any constraint ofcultural and related difference. It will consider the role that enjoyment andfantasy play in addressing this contradiction under the prevalent culturalimperative of global capitalism. The article will draw on the work of Lacanand his contemporary followers to illustrate the mechanisms at work in theshaping of our dominant ideological belief sets; the role planning plays inthis societal guidance; and, how critical Lacanian insight can be an aid totransgressing, exposing, and deflating adverse ideological power.

The latter part of this article will argue the impossibility of planning toconsolidate the range of multiple different desires and conflicting ideologi-cal fantasies necessary to create what for this author would be the goodutopian city of vibrancy and diverse inclusion. In response to this impossi-bility, the article will suggest that there is a requirement for a mode ofplanning that does not seek one dominant consensus, but rather activelypromotes a planning related politics beyond that of liberal civil society. Thisis a proposed planning ethos predicated on affable but agonistic dis-sensus(Ziarek, 2001). This is a call for agonistic pluralism initially brought by

Mouffe (1999, 2000) in the political studies literature and recently proposedin the planning theory literature by Gunder (2003a), Hillier (2003) andPlger (2004). This is an agonistic planning ethos we are yet to develop(Plger, 2004: 88), which might constitute an approach to planning that iscapable of accommodating conflict and emotion.

This author suggests that Lacanian insight may provide understanding forsuch an approach as it provides an ethos for facilitating an agonistic planningprocess that has the potential to make possible not a good city of all-inclusive difference, but a mechanism to encourage the affable and produc-

tive confrontation of diverse difference within urban debate. This is aproposed ethos that acknowledges power and desire so that we may developcity changing methods that begin to open the possibilities for a practiceutopia,a city politics of possibility and hope (Sandercock,2003: 2). This ethosattempts to transcend modernist conceptualizations of good and evil whilegoing beyond postmodern nihilism to allow an opening for new potentials.

The similarities in Lacans and Lefebvres thought

Lacan (1988a, 1988b, 2002) and Lefebvre (1991: 407, 1996, 2003), drawingon Freud, both argued that western Cartesian thought had negated anddenied the biological body residing in space as a valid repertory ofnon-formal knowledge outside of discourse. Lacans (1989, 2002) Freudian



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perspective of the unconscious was at odds with the Cartesian worldview ofthe rational cognitive actor. Lacanian subjects are split between a conscioussense of self, drawing on symbolic and imaginary knowledges of the worldas to how they are expected to act, and their unconscious desires and drivesgenerated by affect and trauma that fundamentally seek a repetition of theimpossibility of the subjects primordial state of maternal bliss.

Similarly, Lefebvres (1996: 108) Marxist perspective of everyday life,influenced by Freud, was at odds with the ideological consequencesproduced and reinforced by this instrumentalist Cartesian worldview thatnegated daily life, immediate relations, the unconscious of the urban, whatis little said and even less written. For Lefebvre (2003), the Cartesianrationalist worldview is exemplified by modernist planning and relatedurban policy and design specialists. Plannings instrumental rationalism

negated all that was not readily capable of broad-brush quantification insocial life, particularly the everyday materialized practices that constitutesocial reality in the built environment. As Lefebvre (2003: 1823) observedeven before the implementation of GIS and three-dimensional cyber-spacerepresentations of urban environments:

the urbanist who composes a block plan lookdown on their objects, building

and neighborhoods, from above and afar. These designers and draftsmen move

within a space of paper and ink. Only after this nearly complete reduction of the

everyday do they return to the scale of lived experience. They are convincedthey have captured it even though they carry out their plans and projects within

a second-order abstraction. Theyve shifted from lived experience to the

abstract, projecting this abstraction back into lived experience . . . The

technicians and specialists who act are unaware that their so-called objective

space is in fact ideologic and repressive. (Lefebvre, 2003: 1823)

Or as Lacan (1994: 108) phrases it in regard to the drafting of pictures anddiagrams that illustrate what is desired, wanted, or ought to be: reality

appears only as marginal and peripheral to the lines and points of focus tothat which is desired and wanted of the Other. For the planner, the planningmap, or computer representation, simplifies and illustrates what is wantedof the planned public. Yet, it abstracts, misrepresents and overtly simplifiesthe complexity of social reality in built space and consequently fails, particu-larly without significant textual elaboration (Gunder and Hillier, 2004: 222).

Lacan (1988a, 2002) purports that the human subject conceives of theworld and subjects within it via three inter-related registries. These are theimaginary, symbolic and the Real, with the latter residing outside of image

or signification. The Real precedes language, and it is best understood asthat which has not been symbolized, remains to be symbolized, or evenresists symbolization; and it may perfectly well exist alongside and in spiteof a speakers considerable linguistic capabilities (Fink, 1995: 25). The Realwill forever exist despite the comprehensiveness of the symbolic. The Real



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is a rift, or void, where nothing can be said or defined and it resides as alogic of constitutive lack a traumatic kernel or surplus which escapessignification (Newman, 2001: 147). It is an un-definable unthought outsideof language, imagination and signification, an unattainable and un-definablevoid that we desire to fill but cannot (Gunder, 2003a: 296).

The ultimate experience of the Real is not that of realitywhich shattersillusions, but that of an illusion which irrationally persists against thepressure of reality, which does not give way to reality (Zizek, 2001: 166).For Lacan the Real remains the same in all possible universes (of observa-tion) (Zizek, 1999a: 78, 1999b). It just resides outside of the language andconscious fantasies that the symbolic and imaginary are capable of consti-tuting. The Real is why we cannot clearly articulate and define our ideals orspecific qualitative states, such as those signified by the label aesthetics,and

above all what constitutes the good (Gunder, 2003a). The Real is whysomething is always lacking in our articulations. We can never say exactlywhat is or what we desire comprehensively ought to be. Here, whatemerges via distortions of the accurate representation of reality is the Real that is, the trauma around which social reality is structured (Zizek, 1999a:79). Yet the Real is not the Beyond of reality, but its own blind spot ordisfunction that is to say, the real is the stumbling block on account ofwhich reality does not fully coincide with itself (Zupancic, 2003: 80).

Similarly, for Lefebvre (1991: 389, 489) the world and space itself are

composed of a similar triple schema of the perceived, conceived andlived that can be historicized via dialectical terminology into three evolu-tional spatialities he calls natural, absolute and abstract (Blum and Nast,1996). The first is the space that is seen, generated and used the registryof Lacans image(nary). The second is a space of symbolic knowledge andrationality, the instrumental space of social engineers and urban planners the registry of Lacans symbolic. The third space is the evolving qualitativespace of less formal and local knowledges of daily existence, which resistclear articulation (Elden, 2004: 190). The scientific, or symbolic, response of

urban planners to this third abstract space of being is to negate it. ForLefebvre, lived space is an elusive space, so elusive in fact that thought andconception usually seek to appropriate it and dominate it, but they cannot,for theres more there there (Merrifield, 2000: 174):

The qualitative is worn down. Anything that cannot be quantified is eliminated.

The generalized terrorism of the quantifiable accentuates the efficiency of

repressive space, amplifies it without fear and without reproach, all the more so

because of its self-justifying nature (ideo-logic), its apparent scientificity. In this

situation, since the quantitative is never seriously questioned, [there is] no scopefor political action . . . urbanism reflects this overall situation and plays an active

role in applying ideo-logic and political pressure. (Lefebvre, 2003: 1856)

Lefebvres lived space that lacks quantification should not be argued to



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be Lacans (1998, 2002) Real that resides in the human subject and thematerial spatial world, yet is incapable of symbolization. Although thisauthor follows Blum and Nast (1996, 2000) in suggesting that Lacansconceptualization of the Real may well have influenced Lefebvres notionof lived space.3 Rather it perhaps comes close to what Lacan refers to asknowledge in the real (Zizek, 2002b: 185). These are unsymbolic bodilyknowledges of how to unconsciously do lifes many daily activities such aswalking, driving a car, or passing time with a neighbour. These are habitsand techniques of the self that we just do in our daily habitus of lived space(Burkitt, 2002; Howe and Langdon, 2002).

While it can never fully contain the Lacanian Real, natural science seeksto suppress this boundary, this lack, by unsuccessfully attempting to coverover the Real with knowledge of the material world for this open boundary,

mobile and real, between knowledge and the real, is what Lacan calls thesubject of science (Morel, 2000: 68). Yet natural science is never completeknowledge, it fails in its striving for complete articulation of the materialworld. Something always remains unsaid. There always remains a lack orvoid in knowledge. To totally fill this void and create a complete body ofknowledge is modern sciences holy grail; yet, natural science can neverachieve this absolute task (Verhaeghe, 2002: 125).

Applying social science to human subjects fails even more so thannatural science in the attainment of complete knowledge. Unlike that of the

material world, the Real of the human subject is untouchable. It is just notknowable as it resides in our unconscious. It is filtered, framed by fantasy,as though by a window that at best, through psychoanalysis, can betraversed to give a few degrees more freedom (Morel, 2000: 74). The Realof the unconscious the real of the human subject which causes symptomsand discontent in civilization is an entirely different unknowable Real tothe noumenon of the material world (Loose, 2002: 2812). The humansubjects Real is the intrinsic division of reality itself (Zupancic, 2003: 80).This is where each subjects desire for often ideal and unobtainable objects

drawn to them by what Lacan calls petit object a and then consequentlyshocked by exposure to the Real (Zizek, 1989: 183) drives and sustainsthis gap or division between the subject and reality. Consequently, to coverover this void induced by the Real, the subject is lured and deluded intoideological illusion within the imagined and symbolic realms of daily life insocial reality (Zupancic, 2003: 80).

This is a position not inconsistent with that of Lefebvre. Consider thefollowing in relations to Lacans Real and the products it produces in space.Yet the unknowable Thing constituting the Real can only be articulated in

the symbolic language and text which always fails to conceptualize thisunexplainable void, or lack.

This world of images and signs, this tombstone of the world (Mundus est

immundus) is situated at the edges of what exists, between the shadows and the



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light, between the conceived (abstraction) and the perceived (the

readable/visible). Between the real and unreal. Always in the interstices, in the

cracks. Between directly lived experience and thought . . . The world of signs

passes itself off as a true world . . . [yet] this is a fraudulent world, indeed the

most deceptive of all worlds . . . The world of images and signs exercises a

fascination, skirts or submerges problems, and diverts attention from the real

i.e. from the possible. While occupying space, it also signifies space, submitting a

mental and therefore abstract space for spatial practice . . . Differences are

replaced by differential signs, so that produced differences are supplanted in

advance by differences which are induced and reduced to signs. (Lefebvre,

1991: 389)

Both Lacan and Lefebvre would agree that science and scientific method

fails in its ability to articulate the qualitative components of everyday humanlife. Further, the Lacanian position goes somewhat further than Lefebvre insuggesting that in attempting to address this unknowable Real we allconstruct ideological fantasies to paper over this lack of ability to articulateand know this noumenon (Stavrakakis, 1999; Zizek, 1999a). For, as evenLefebvre (2003: 67) asserts, sooner or later radical critique reveals thepresence of an ideology in every model and possibly in scientificity itself.

Lacanian theory argues that our very social reality, including space itself,and social interaction is constituted and composed of ideological fantasy

constructs, misrecognitions and misunderstandings (Zizek, 1997). Some-thing is always missing, lacking, not right. We attempt to overcome this voidthrough acquiring and applying knowledge, but never quite succeed (Fink,2004; Lacan, 1998). Hence, we constantly strive to construct new fantasiesto cover over this lack. Fundamentally, Lacan (2002) points out that wecannot even fully know or articulate our own desires, let alone understandthe desires of the Other. Yet it is the desire of an Other that we vitally seekand wish to please in our fundamental unconscious drive to return to ouroriginal desire for primordial maternal completeness (Dor, 1998; Lacan,

1998, 2002). This is a sense of safety and security that, if it ever existed, welost as we gained our place in culture and the symbolic world (Hillier andGunder, 2005). It is the aggregate of these Others that constitutes societyand our social reality. This is in Lacanian jargon: the big Other. Yet thisbig Other is constituted on misrecognition, misunderstanding and ideo-logical constructs of contradicting social logics. Further, planning, as ahuman discipline of governmentality, plays a significant role in shaping thecreation of this social reality of misrecognition and desire, particularly, as itrelates to wants and needs and, especially, desire (Gunder, 2003a, 2003b).

As Lefebvre (2003) acknowledges:

The logic of space subjected to the limitations of growth, the logic of urbanism,

of political space, and housing clash and sometimes break apart when they come

into contact . . . Social logics are located at different levels; there are cracks and



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crevices between them. Desire insinuates itself through these fissures.

(Lefebvre, 2003: 86)

The following section will suggest that this desire, expressed in the seekingof enjoyment via fulfilling our wants and needs against the constraint offinite resources, constitutes and underwrites the now dominant worldview,or fantasy, of the cornucopia of global capitalism. Lefebvre describes capi-talist globalization as an intensely contradictory integration, fragmentation,polarisation and redifferentiation of super-imposed social spaces (Brenner,2000: 361). Since Lefebvres (1991) consideration of the urban problematicin relationship to that of the world market, the seeking of urban and/orregional competitiveness under globalization has become a dominantcultural imperative (Jessop, 2000; McGuirk, 2004). It is the only game

remaining in town (Zizek and Daly, 2004: 14652). This is a global fantasythat negates the role of democratic participation and regulation in itscompetitive worldwide field of play. Globalization is perceived as notrequiring democratic legitimization due to its universality and complexity(Zizek and Daly, 2004: 14652). In this discourse who needs democraticparticipation in the World Trade Organization (WTO), InternationalMonetary Fund (IMF) or other global economic steering organizations,impartial bodies exempt from democratic control, provided one canseek to achieve satisfaction and enjoyment (Zizek, 2004b: 59)! As a conse-

quence, this imperative to enjoy and partake in the mistaken notion of aglobal cornucopia manifests itself in symptoms of pernicious planningprocesses and ideological outcomes at the national and local levels.

You will enjoy, not contest!

Desire as driven and experienced in the loss or gaining of enjoyment (jouis-sance) is central to Lacanian theory (Blum and Nast, 2000: 199; Zizek, 1989,

1999a).Jouissance is what illustrates any object standing between the Realand ourselves so that that object can catch our interest and delude us withits seemingly compelling significance and impose its ideological imperativesupon us (Kay, 2003: 54). Contrary to the classical definition of ideologywhere illusion is but distorted knowledge, for Lacan, ideology is not anillusion masking the real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasystructuring our social reality itself so that our ideological beliefs arematerialized in all our social actions within society (Zizek, 1989: 33).

Something catches our interest as a significant political or related master

signifier of ideological belief and identification when it approaches whatLacan (1992) calls the Thing that acts as a pressure point of the Realagainst the imaginary/symbolic registries. The pressure of the Real is sensedand expressed as an object or concept that has the effect of a transcenden-tal illumination or incarnation of impossible jouissance that is utterly



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compelling, say, the desire for a particular solution, or even utopian ideal,that addresses a known problem, or lack, in the urban fabric (Zizek, 1989:132). It is sublime, it overwhelms, yet cannot be fully envisaged due to itsintensity, hence Zizeks (1989) title: The Sublime Object of Ideology.

Jouissance is one of the four structuring elements of social discourse,4 orsocial interactions, links and relationships, where synchronic languagemeets diachronic speech to evoke an effect on the Other (Lacan, 2004: 3).Zupancic (2004) associates Lacans (2004) theory of the Four Discourses(see Gunder, 2003a, 2004; Hillier and Gunder, 2005) with the Marxiantheory of commodification and surplus-value via Lacans concept ofsurplus-enjoyment (plus-de-jouir). Lacan (2004: 111) contends that surplus-value and surplus-enjoyment are historically equivalent, especially in thesituation of the Masters injunction of No! in the emerging early phase of

Calvinistic repressive capitalism. In contrast to the historical authority andrationality of the Masters repressive command, late capitalism is structuredunder a rationality of the university or bureaucracy. Now knowledge andtechnology, not the Masters injunction, become agency expressing a logicof governmentality and expertise (including that of planning) that does notprohibit enjoyment, but rather channelsjouissance in ways that produces abio-politics (after Foucault) of an alienated subject that has no option,but to enjoy and be satisfied (Hillier and Gunder, 2005; McGowan, 2004;Zizek, 2004b; Zupancic, 2004).

In this regard, a nation exists only as long as its specific enjoymentcontinues to be materialised in a set of social practices and submittedthrough national myths [or fantasies] that structure these practices (Zizek,1993: 202). This is taken further by the barely challenged internationalhegemonic discourse of global capitalization and the fantasies it induces inexternally structuring the nation states very enjoyment (Stavrakakis, 2003a:63; Zizek, 2004b: 61). Even the ruling British Labour government, with itsThird Way, in contrast to its tradition of socialism, has placed economicglobalisation as the most significant factor in shaping Labour Party

thinking since the early 1990s (Allmendinger, 2003: 326). As McGowan(2004) observes:

we trust fully in the staying power of global capitalism. The alternatives, which

once seemed to be just around the corner, have become unimaginable today.

The universe of global capitalism is, or so we think, here to stay, and we best not

do anything to risk our status within it. Hence, we pledge our allegiance to it,

and we put our trust in it. This is the fundamental mode of contemporary

obedience to authority. Only by coming to understand this obedience to the

dictates of global capitalism as obedience can we hope to break out of it. Globalcapitalism seems an unsurpassable horizon simply because we have not

properly recognized our own investment in sustaining it. We see it as

unsurpassable because we dont want to lose it and the imaginary satisfaction

that it provides. (McGowan, 2004: 193)



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Illusion resides under this global fantasy of capital where the basic featureof this dominant cultural imperative no longer operates on the level ofideals and identifications, but directly on the level of regulatingjouissance(Zizek, 2004b: 113). Even in Lefebvres day, this was a capitalism wheresurplus-value was synonymous with surplus-enjoyment supporting theinjunction: you must enjoy!. In this light, the role of planning is to facili-tate enjoyment by sustainably providing the correct space healthy,competitive, fit and attractive where enjoyment can be effectivelymaterialized and maximized under the imperative of global capitalism.Consequently:

urbanism is nothing more than an ideology that claims to be either art or

technology or science, depending on the context. This ideology pretends to be

straightforward, yet it obfuscates, harbours things unsaid: which it covers, which it

contains, as a form of will tending towards efficiency. Urbanism is doubly fetishistic.

First, it implies the fetishism of satisfaction. What about vested interests? They must

be satisfied, and therefore their needs must be understood and catered to,

unchanged . . . Second, it implies the fetishism of space. Space is creation. Whoever

creates space creates whatever it is that fills space. The place engenders the thing

and the good place engenders good things. (Lefebvre,2003: 159)

This is exacerbated further in the current milieu of consumerist post-democ-

racy personified by the master signifier: global capitalism. Post-democracyis founded on an attempt to exclude the political awareness of lack and nega-tivity from the political domain, leading to a political order which retains thetoken institutions of liberal democracy but neutralizes the centrality ofpolitical antagonism (Stavrakakis, 2003a: 59). In response to the dominantlogic of global competitiveness, the technocrats and experts includingplanners, shape, contextualize and implement public policy in the interest ofthe dominant hegemonic bloc. This is constructed under the logics andknowledges of university discourses (see Gunder, 2004), with an objective to

remove existing or potential urban blight,dis-ease and dysfunction detract-ing from local enjoyment and global competitiveness (Gunder, 2005;McGuirk, 2004). Of course, the hegemonic network, or bloc, initially shapesthe debate as to what constitutes desired enjoyment and what is lacking inurban competitiveness. In turn, this defines what is blighted and dysfunc-tional and in need of planning remedy. This is predicated on a logic, or moreaccurately a rhetoric, that a lack of a particular defined type of enjoyment,or competitiveness, is inherently unhealthy for the aggregate social body.

Planners, programmers, and users want solutions. For what? To make peoplehappy. To order them to be happy. It is a strange way of interpreting happiness.

The science of the urban phenomenon cannot respond to these demands

without the risk of validating external restrictions imposed by ideology and

power. (Lefebvre, 2003: 141)



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Yet this lack and its resolution are more often technical in nature, ratherthan political. As a consequence, the technocrats in partnership withtheir dominant stakeholders can ensure the impression of happiness forthe many, while, not to mention, achieving the stakeholders specific inter-ests.

Material happiness for all but that evil other

Lacanian theory suggests that a subjects jouissance is given freest reinwhen an act of desire contains a dimension of transgression. It is the littlesin that gives the most pleasure; it is the prohibition as such which elevatesa common everyday object into an object of desire (Zizek, 2004b: 177). The

bio-politics of contemporary planning are predicated on enjoyment youwill enjoy! not the prior duality of repression/freedom of the Weberiancapitalist masters injunction: No you cannot do that!. The achievementsof traditional utopian goals were ones of freedom to act against the repres-sion of the negative injunction. Contemporary injunctions are to enjoy orat least to sustain our happiness regardless of what we actually desire.Happiness is not a class of truth, but one of an ontological class of beingwhere:

happiness relies on the subjects inability or unreadiness fully to confront theconsequences of its desire: the price of happiness is that the subject remains

stuck in the inconsistency of its desires. In our daily lives, we (pretend to) desire

things which we do not really desire, so that, ultimately, the worst thing that can

happen is for us to get what we officially desire. Happiness is thus hypocritical:

it is the happiness dreaming about things we do not really want. (Zizek, 2002a:5960)

Planning continues to succeed because it underpins the primal desire of

most subjects in society for a conflict-free, safe and assured happy future,even if it can only deliver this as a fantasy-scenario of material happiness,rather than as an impossible reality that actually sates all desires (Gunder,2003a, 2003b). This is a fantasy predicated on an obedience to a shallowconsumptive quantitative imperative to be materially happy, which oftenoccurs at the expense of our actual qualitative psychic desires. In ourcontemporary global society the moral law is no longer the imperative thatacts as a limitation, stopping us from enjoying too much. Instead, thecultural imperative, the now dominant moral Law itself, in its injunction for

us to enjoy becomes the ultimate transgression should one wish topursue a life of moderation (Zizek, 2004b: 174).Further, the fantasy of a utopian harmonious social world can only be

sustained if all the persisting disorders can be attributed to an alien intruder. . . a certain particularity which cannot be assimilated, but instead must be



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eliminated (Stavrakakis, 1999: 108). This is the stranger, the Other that isnot us that can act as the scapegoat to be stigmatised as the one who isblamed for our lack, the Evilforce that stole our precious jouissance andstopped the fantasy from achieving its utopian vision (Stavrakakis, 2003a:58). Even our complex contemporary societies rely on the basic dividebetween included and excluded (Zizek, 2004b: 86). Zizek (2004b: 86)continues: in any society there is a multitude within the system and a multi-tude of those excluded, and simply to encompass them both within thescope of the same notion amounts to the same obscenity as equating star-vation with dieting.

It is continually this Other that permits the delusion of harmony in ouridentity defining groups and for this to transpire we require an Other,external to the group for the group to define itself. We require a disparity,

or gap, to allocate a degree of difference to an Other to conceptualize thegroup identification as who we are not and on this Other we can attributeall the signs of disharmony that jeopardize our shared fantasy (Zizek, 1997:5). Difference is essential to complete our fantasy of harmony, but only byproviding the sacrificial Other on which we can blame the disappointmentof the fantasy to deliver (Zizek, 2004a: 1589). In this light,planning,as partof the apparatus of the modern state, makes its own imprint, has its ownpowers for good and evil (Sandercock, 2004: 134). This is especially so asplanning identifies, or at least names and legitimizes, what constitutes an

urban pathology that detracts from what is desirous of the globally compet-itive city. Planning then sets out to remedy this lack or deficiency. Civilsociety, i.e. the public stage, and media of information dissemination arecentral to this process.

Of course, our media are not ideologically neutral. As a consequence,media access for putting forth particular tropes of desire constitutes acentral component of social, as well as economic, capital. This is well docu-mented by Flyvbjerg (1998a) where the Aalborg Chamber of Commercecontrolled the editorial content of the local newspaper. This argument is

central to that of Chomskys (2003) multinational corporate steering ofmass media content in the, so-called, free press. This is where the massmedia are free to publish almost anything, provided, of course, they do notalienate their corporate clients who provide their majority of income andprofits via their advertising payments.

Gunder (2003b) documented how planning actors and their affiliatedpartners gained public agreement via the rhetorical use of culturally sharedmaster signifiers and their related metonymies and metaphors. Here eachsignifier was linked to associations in the publics unconscious that induced

a conscious expression of desire for a particular set of values or specificconsequential actions. Effective deployment of rhetorical tropes can seducesubjects to relinquish previous desires (including identifications andembrace new ones) or alternatively, to invest all the more completely inold ones (Bracher, 1993: 512). For example, does anyone wish to live in a



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city that is losing enjoyment to other locations because it lacks the fitnessto compete?

In Lacan, the construction of reality is continuous with the field of desire.

Desire and reality are intimately connected . . . The nature of their link can only

be revealed in fantasy . . . when harmony is not present it has to be somehow

introduced in order for our reality to be coherent. It has to be introduced

through a fantasmatic social construction. (Stavrakakis, 1999: 623)

This is where, from a Lacanian outlook, by accepting rationalization as themeans to fulfil a desire for completeness via the utilization of falsifyingwords man does not adapt himself to reality; he adapts reality to himself(Roudinesco, 1997: 114). Ideological fantasies as to what constitutes an

enjoyable and satisfying city are deployed to hide the dysfunctions andunpredictabilities that are ubiquitous throughout all social spheres, particu-larly for those lacking in sufficient capital to offset adversity. Social realityis sustained by the as if, the fantasy of what things are like (Dean, 2001:627). Rationalization, or realrationalittas Flyvbjerg (1998a) calls it, existsbetween the everyday activities of social life and the held universal idealsor values of what ought to be, even if it is not so, in social reality.

The belief that planning is not political, but technical allows the mythsof objectivity, value neutrality, and technical reason to persist, and thereby

fosters a certain delusion about planning practice (Sandercock, 2004: 134).Sandercock (2004: 134) continues: planning helps to redefine politicaldebate, producing new sources of power and legitimacy, changing the forcefield in which we operate. Lefebvre suggests that planning is based on astrategy of mixing scientificity and rationality with ideology. Here, as else-where, scientificity is an ideology, an excrescence grafted onto real, but frag-mentary, knowledge (Lefebvre, 2003: 166). In particular, Lefebvre arguesthat quantitative expertise including the technology of urban planning islargely a myth. This is because planning administrators:

and bad administrators at that, rarely use much actual technology. However,

they have the ability to persuade the people as a whole that because these are

technological decisions they should be accepted. In other words, a large part of

Lefebvres criticism [of planners] is not that technocrats are technocrats, but

that they are precisely the opposite. Technology should be put to the service of

everyday life, of social life rather than being precisely the condition of its

suppression and control. Urbanism, for example, is an ideology that operates

under the cover of this myth of technology. (Elden, 2004: 145)

Social reality can only exist in the symbolic and imaginary registries as it iscomposed, that is constructed, as a result of a certain historically specificset of discursive practices and power mechanisms (Zizek, 2001: 66).Flyvbjerg (1998a) illustrates this well in his expos of the Aalborg Chamber



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of Commerces intervention in that citys planning process. Here thisgrouping of dominant business people is given hegemonic voice to deter-mine what constitutes acceptable transportation modes and spatialdevelopment in Aalborgs town centre. In this example the planners tech-nical facts, by themselves, produced the weaker argument. This was perhapsbecause the dissemination of these facts and their implications for planningaction were ineffectively articulated to the public, if at all, via the local infor-mation media controlled by the Chamber of Commerce.

In contrast, in Sydney, McGuirk (2004) documented how plannersactively participated in and facilitated the dominant network of actorssuccessfully pushing for a series of local, regional and national policiessupporting Sydneys global competitiveness. It appeared to be of littleconsequence that these policies induced adverse effects on the rest of the

country, not to mention many of Sydneys residents. Not dissimilarly, theAuckland case cited in the introduction illustrates how the planners activelyconsulted the dominant commercial stakeholders in developing theirgrowth strategy, yet failed to have direct consultation with the Regionsactual residents (ARGF, 1999; Gunder, 2003a). Planners and their govern-ance forum of dominant stakeholders appeared to inherently know what isin the best interests of their regions residents.

Planning as agonistic ethicsNotwithstanding the full rendering of the antagonisms which traverse oursociety, we indulge in the notion of society as an organic whole, kepttogether by forces of solidarity and co-operation (Zizek, 1997: 6). Planningis one such instrument that shapes and justifies the governing ideals ofutopian desire and in this sphere, the fantasmatic ideal of harmony isdominant (Stavrakakis, 1999: 110).

The subtle and not so subtle application of power defines truth, reason

and rationality and this particularly comprises the deployment of power inour planning and related practices (Flyvbjerg, 1998a). Moreover, aLacanian line of reasoning about knowledge and truth indicates that theconstituting components of these induced fantasies of truth and rationalityare mediated on the wants and needs of actors with the capacity to inflicttheir desires and wants on the Other and, as if, these desires belong to thosewho have been imposed on. This is via assertions of unquestionable truth,which are often supported and empowered by selected distorted knowl-edge, practices and language put forward by their ideological supporters,

employed professional experts and controlled media. Further, in this lighttraditional Kantian and related enlightenment ethics is nothing more thana convenient tool for any ideology that tries to pass off its own command-ments as authentic, spontaneous, and honorable inclinations of thesubject (Zupancic, 1998: 41).



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In contrast to traditional ethics, Lacans (1992) theorizing may providean alternative way to develop new values beyond those already constitutedby society as traditional morals of good or evil shaping acceptable behav-iours. Traditional ethics is predicated on a reality principle as to what ispossible without transgression in social reality. As Zupancic (2003: 77)observes, this reality principle itself is ideologically mediated; one couldeven claim that it constitutes the highest form of ideology, the ideology thatpresents itself as empirical factor or (biological, economic . . .) necessity.

This beyond good or evil does not have to lead to postmodern nihilism,rather Lacan lays a groundwork for an ethics of the Real, where throughacknowledgement of this Real that we cannot know or articulate we canestablish new truths in relationship to the good (Stavrakakis, 2003b;Zupancic, 2000, 2003). This is through a mechanism of ethical sublimation

where we create a certain space, scene, or stage that enables us to valuesomething that is situated beyond the reality principle, as well as beyondthe principle of common good (Zupancic, 2003: 78). It is the space,or stage,created when the planner, or other actor, makes the ethical decision torecommend an action or permission that is contrary to existing regulations,precedence, professional expectations, or cultural imperatives. This isperhaps because somehow for the planner, perhaps simply driven by strongfeelings, the correct and expected action is perceived as not being the rightthing to do. From the Lacanian perspective of the ethics of the Real, to

make the sensed wrong into a rightness is the ethically correct task, even ifthis requires the agent to act against what he/she thinks society expects ofthat actor. This act of transcending the reality principle, and being true tothe actors desires,5 makes possible a new good, a new potential, it changesthe rules as to what is possible (Gunder and Hillier, 2004: 230).

The ethical, then, is the constellation of events in which the subject freesherself from the symbolic law (freedom), commits herself to an act(agency),and thereby makes it possible for the law to be rethought (Kay,2003: 109). The ethical act is an excessive, trans-strategic intervention

which redefines the rules and contours of the existing order (Zizek, 2004b:81). Viewed from this perspective, Kants categorical imperative must berethought itself as purely transgressive:

the ethical act proper is a transgression of the legal norm a transgression

which, in contrast to a simple criminal violation, does not simply violate the

legal norm, but redefines what is a legal norm. The moral law does not follow

the Good it generates a new shape of what counts as Good. (Zizek, 2001:

170)

This is a transgression that introduces new spaces for what can beconsidered good and hence a wider space for jouissance, beyond that ofmere technically produced materialist satisfaction.

Of course, a key question becomes: how can a credible planner, or other



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actor, transcend the accepted norms and expectations of a society to createa new space for a new concept of good? Further, how can one effectivelyand reasonably mobilize such an ethics of the Real in everyday life when itis so contrary to the consensual instrumental rationality of the modernproject and its ready-made solutions, that are, arguably plannings purposeand foundations? Planning theorists (e.g. Gunder and Hillier, 2004;Plger, 2004) and researchers in other disciplines (e.g. Mouffe, 1999, 2000;Stavrakakis, 2003a; Thrift,2004a, 2004b) are currently attempting to addressthese complex issues that essentially require new insight and perhaps evenprofound change in our very relationships towards social reality, itself.Further, they are attempting to do so in a manner that does not simplyimpose a new intransigent set of ideals to replace our late-modern culturalimperatives, but rather to encourage diverse opportunities for multiple

opening in which imminence may continually occur (after Deleuze).Coherent and implementable means to achieve this desired state are yet toemerge as new knowledges and practices, if they can ever do so. Yet, thisauthor suggests that mere awareness and articulation of the impossibleimplications that the Lacanian Real has on traditional rationality areperhaps one of many points of commencement. Of course, this discoursealso may fall into the trap leading to transcendental idealism, i.e. a processof identifying a lack, or void, in our knowledge and practices and thenpresenting a hegemonic solution that must be implemented, regardless of

effect and affect!This author suggests that to change social reality, to begin to question

and where necessary traverse our norms and laws, while avoiding theimperative of idealism, calls for a return to agonism that reawakens thepolitical awareness of lack and negativity in place of the technical injunc-tion: you will enjoy! This permits a space for an inclusive acceptance ofstrife or agonism that does not exclude the Others voice attempting toarticulate their desires and wants in response to the irreducibility of theReal (Stavrakakis, 2003b: 331). Rather this re-politicization of the planning

problematic from that of the technical, quantified, solution is one thatvalues Lacans Real and Lefebvres lived space by making the key jumpfrom quantity to quality, from antagonisms subordinated to differences tothe predominant role of antagonism as pure agonism (Zizek, 2004b: 92). InLefebvres city unconscious desires and passions lay dormant, dormantbeneath the surface of the real, within thesurreal . . . waiting for . . . the daythey can be realized in actual conscious life (Merrifield, 2000: 178). In thisregard, rather than continuing to fill the lack generating the urban problem-atic and produce a largely phallic enjoyment, Stavrakakis (2003b: 332)

reminds us that in Lacans later teachings he spoke of another form ofjouissance female or feminine jouissance which values this lack per seas something that entails a different kind of enjoyment.

Perhaps this femininejouissance may be more appropriate to politicizethe needs and wants of lived space. Yet, to do so would require a politics



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that acknowledges the impossibility of the Lacanian Real. In contrast tothe notion that what is meant by an utopia is an imagined ideal society;what characterizes utopia is literally the construction of a u-topic space, asocial space outside the existing parameters, the parameters of whatappears to be possible in the existing social universe (Zizek, 2004b: 123).This proposed utopia is one that may permit, at least aspects of Lefebvreslived space of the qualitative to be both visible and articulated inconscious life.

Rather than contestant cities and regions competing globally under onecultural imperative to attract and retain finite capital and resources via onelogic and vision, this article calls for a planning ethos that encouragesdiverse groups within cities and regions to actively contest their perspec-tives and desires without threat of exclusion. To achieve such a state

requires planning to find ways of working with agonism without automati-cally recurring to procedures, voting, representativity, forced consensus orcompromises that inherently exclude (Plger, 2004: 87). This requires aplanning ethos predicated on a central awareness of the irreducible Real.This is an understanding that any forced resolution always excludes aremainder, what cannot be articulated or perceived. Further, this remain-der will continue to have unconscious effect in terms of what drives ourmaterialized actions.

This suggests an overt democratic planning process, representative of a

society that is explicitly and overtly hegemonic for all participants, nottacitly hegemonic in its privileging of specific groups with access to powerand technocratic justification that is constituted under a logic implicitlydesiring social order (Critchley, cited in Zizek, 2004b: 95). This is in contrastto the existing social reality, where political processes, such as planning,appear to strive for public participation culminating in an harmoniouspublic consensus, when of course this is but an ideological foil that excludesin the name of a general interest defined by a privileged few and legit-imized by technocratic reason. In contrast, a strong society places conflict

and power at its centre by guaranteeing the very existence of conflict(Flyvbjerg, 1998b: 229).

Our current dominating fantasy of harmony is sustained by the illusionof continued consumer abundance produced and brought by the cornu-copia of global capitalism, at least for the first world. This enjoyment ofglobal capitalism constitutes a (partial) reality with hegemonic appeal, ahorizon sustained by the hegemony of an administration of desire withseemingly unlimited resources (Stavrakakis, 2003a: 61). Of course,resources and global carrying capacities are axiomatically finite. So perhaps

must be our desires, for they can never be sated.



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Traversing our fundamental fantasy for harmony:

a start, not a conclusion!

Lacan and his followers, such as Stavrakakis, Zizek or Zupancic, producevalid arguments for a psychoanalytically derived philosophy of reality andideology capable of theorizing the ways our deepest commitments bind usto practices of domination (Dean, 2001: 627). Revealing and transversingthe ideological constructs that shape and structure our social reality isinadequate in itself as a mere academic critical exercise of knowledgeproduction. This author argues that we must radically challenge our under-lying beliefs for ourselves, and, in particular, not externalize them to largercultural practices and technologies so that hegemonic networks, or part-

nerships, of dominant actors, including intellectuals and bureaucraticprofessionals, can do our believing and desiring for us through planningand related diverse agencies of social guidance (Dean, 2001: 628). To do sowe must traverse our fundamental fantasies that seek harmony andsecurity.

This articles application of Lacan, augmented with some of Lefebvresurban insights, gives us a combination of Freudian and Marxist thought thatis considerably at odds to that conjured up by the Frankfurt Schools visionof society as a liberated collective culture with little space for the indi-

vidual histories of unique subjects (Jameson, 2003: 8). The latter is theSchool, or project, drawing on Marx and Freud, which eventually createdthe Habermasian product of communicative rationality. This is a rationalitythat sought as its seldom if ever achieved ideal, to produce undistorted(ideologically free) speech acts based on recognition of the correspondingvalidity claims of comprehensiveness, truth, truthfulness, and rightnessconstituting a basis for consensually agreement as to how we should act(Habermas, 1979: 3). Yet, as Hillier (2003) illustrates, this is an ideal ofundistorted speech that is an impossibility because of the Lacanian Realand the incompleteness it always induces in language, not to mention theimpossibility of absolute truth. Yet, this author would agree with Habermascall for the supremacy of discourse over mere technical reason. Habermaslast two validity claims oftruthfulness to our desires and the need to act inregard of what our unconscious feeling says is rightness, even if this senseis perhaps not readily justifiable with symbolic knowledge and reasonedargument, should be given due regard through our discourses.

In contrast to Habermas validity claims oftruth and comprehensiveness,Lacans theorizing suggests a much more fundamental contextualization ofurban ideology based on the fantasies we construct to paper over the lack

induced by the Real. This is a perspective that situates our very socialreality, including space and social interaction, as principally constituted andcomposed of ideological fantasy constructs, misrecognitions and misunder-standings (see Hillier, 2003). As Jameson (2003: 378) observes, we owe to



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Lacan the first new and as yet insufficiently developed concept of thenature of ideology since Marx. Drawing on Althusser, Jameson (2003:378) continues that ideology is the representation of the Imaginaryrelationships of individuals to their Real conditions of existence, so thatthe individual subject invents a lived relationship with collective systems.This is a symbolic, materialized, relationship of practices and rituals (Krips,2003: 149). Here, it is the desire of this Other that we fundamentally seekand wish to please as we constantly strive to return to our idealized prim-ordial desire for infant maternal security and contentment (Hillier andGunder, 2005). So we construct and share illusions and fantasies ideolo-gies that we are somehow achieving this impossible task. It is the aggre-gate of these Others, and the illusions we generate about them andourselves, that constitutes the social reality that is our lived space.

This critique considered the role that enjoyment and fantasy play in thedominant discourse of global capitalism. The text illustrated the mechan-isms at work in shaping our dominant ideological beliefs and how criticalLacanian insight can be an aid to transgressing, exposing,and deflating theirideological power. In particular, it allows us to confront negativity anddifference by allowing us to adopt an ethical position beyond the fantasyof harmony (Stavrakakis, 2003a: 62). Further, Lacans psychoanalyticalderived ethics of the Real allows us a perspective to develop a radicalagonistic planning process predicated not on symbolic knowledge that

quantifies and totalizes, but rather on an understanding that there is anoutside to knowledge that we can never know or express.

This work demonstrates the impossibility of planning to consolidate therange of multiple different desires and conflicting ideological fantasiesnecessary to create what for this author would be the good utopian city ofvibrancy and diverse inclusion. The text concludes that an acceptance of theLacanian Real requires a much different mode of planning that does notseek one dominant technical consensus, but rather actively promotes aplanning related politics beyond that of traditional liberal civil pluralism.

This article proposes a planning ethos predicated on affable but agonisticdis-sensus that can confront and even transgress dominant norms andtraditions to present new potentials for social reality and our cities andregions.

This author does not encourage physical conflict, anarchy and dis-harmony. Rather he asks the reader to stop privileging the avoidance, miti-gation or elimination of agonism and strife as an unquestioned objective ofgood and hence effective planning practice. Accepting and even privileg-ing conflicting positions and the contesting of multiple voices without

forcing agreement or false consensus may allow the enhanced potential forthe valuing, or creation, of the Others diverse liveable spaces. This is anOther that may constitute the majority of populations within our cities andregions. Indeed, a passionate planning that cares about the Other andvalues and encourages constructive agonism may facilitate totally new



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unforeseen or even impossible potentials and possibilities for all Others,including ourselves. Of course, it will also open up a whole new range ofissues to do with power, morality and ethical justice.

To achieve this planning for the Real, which values the qualitative andconflicting, may well require us to not privilege the hegemonic articulationof dominant blocs or networks even when these may appear to us as thebest rational, or most efficient and competitive, argument. A positiveengagement with strife and agonism predicted on an ethics, politics, or evenplanning, of the Real may be one potential step eventually leading towardsthe impossible utopia of a truly inclusive society that values the Other. Forjust continuing to strive for modernist consensus inherently will persist infailing to produce the good city of inclusive desired space for all.

Acknowledgement

As always, my thanks go to Jean Hillier, and to the very constructive andwell reasoned comments of the anonymous referees. The remaining errorsin thought and omissions in this article are fully the fault of the author.

Notes

1. Lefebvres representations of space have been deployed extensively in thegeographical and related planning literature to define alternativeconceptualizations of conceived, imagined and (often overlooked) everydayspace (Benko and Strohmayer, 1997; Dear, 1997; McCann, 2000; Soja, 1989).

2. Even if Lefebvre might disagree and disavow Lacans influence, for he wasprofoundly hostile to structural analyses, including those of Doctor Lacanwhom he accused of performing with stunning virtuosity the formalization oflanguage and of detaching this form from any support in the movement of thereal (Lefebvre, 1996: 17). Lefebvre (1991: 356) disavowed Lacans privilegingof language over that of space. In addition, Lefebvre (1991) is critical of

Lacans two-dimensional delusional representation of the body (in the mirror)and landscape vistas of the world (as a picture) where in fact space and itsobjects are three-dimensional (Blum and Nast, 2000: 1935). While Lacansstructuralist inspired psychoanalysis was largely at odds with LefebvresMarxist phenomenology, both thinkers occupied the same space-time ofmid-20th-century Paris, the period and space of what Eagleton (2003) calledthe golden age of high theory. Both thinkers were concerned with thefundamental questions of human existence with particular foci on what escapesarticulation and representation within modernity. Lefebvres (1991, 1996, 2003)particular value to this article was his exposure of urban ideology drawing

partially on what this author suggests are some of Lacans conceptual insights,as well as his call for revolutionary change as to how we perceive and value oursocial reality. This is in contrast to Lacans (2004) largely dismissive and cynicalattitude to profound societal change, because, for Lacan, all revolution does isreplace one master with another.



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3. See in particular the footnote and surrounding text in Lefebvres (1991: 136)The Production of Space.

4. With the other three elements being: knowledge, desiring subjects who do notknow their unconscious desires, and master signifiers that constitute eachsubjects identifications.

5. When this point first is raised with students or colleagues, almost immediatelysomeone raises the observation that then anything goes. Of course, thisLacanian injunction to be true to your desires does not apply to our shallowand base impulses, rather it applies to our deep strong feelings of unease thatsomething is wrong, or needs to be done, be it for yourself or others.

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Michael Gunder is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Planning,University of Auckland. He was in professional planning practice beforereturning to the academy in 1994 where he took up his current position and

completed his mid-life PhD. He served as Head of Department from 1999 to2001. Michael has research interests in post-structuralism, particularly as it isapplied to understanding human practices and the development of urbanpolicy.

Address: Department of Planning, National Institute of Creative Arts andIndustry, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, NewZealand. [email: [email protected]]

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Production of Desirious Space - Fantasies of the Utopian