The Limits of Post-Subcultural Studies
All of the categorical descriptions discussed in the previous chapter, with excep- tion of the closing music section, rely on the dichotomy of identity and difference as such—difference being in the first instance negation. Freaks are separated from Geeks, and both are separated from Jocks/Cheerleaders. Friend and enemy are spaced apart. In post-subcultural studies (Muggleton and Weinzierl 2003;
Hodkinson and Deicke 2007), there is recognition of the increased complexity and pluralism that has emerged among youth subgroups, but identity politics continues to assert itself; boundaries are redrawn in clever ways through new media technologies, the Internet being the most prominent, to secure cybercom- munities like Goth sites (Hodkinson, 2003) and sprout various forms of subcul- tures of cyberactivists, as well as of right-wing militia groups (Kahn and Kellner 2003). A structural plurality is presented with demarcated territories, which estab- lish identities as precariously bounded collectivities.
While identities are seen as unstable, or performative for those sociologists1 who follow Judith Butler (1990, 1993), there is a hegemonicheteronormativity or hegemonicmasculinity that is posited, which as argued below, continues to theo- rize difference within the dichotomy of sameness. For those sociologists who fol- low Pierre Bourdieu,mimesisbecomes a key concept in the form of mediating impressions between the inner and outer world; this then reinstates another dichotomy—inside/outside. If Michel Maffesoli’s tribal theory is adopted,2 the shift is certainly to flows and temporary formations of youth networks, yet the dichotomy of identity and difference is still maintained. We have space conceptu- alized as a homogenous medium in the broadest sense, within which the com- plexity of pluralism exists; the terrain of school is constituted by the identities and differences of groups who struggle to take up discrete geographies (cartographies) within it. The mapped space that is presented in most subcultural and post- subcultural studies, such as Murray Milner Jr.’s (2004) study that was cited in the previous chapter, is already a removed abstraction, a flattened image of a more profound order of movement and relational activity of productive desires—the
virtual as a fully Real excess inhering in Being. In post-subcultural studies the metaphysical categories of essence and accident, inside and outside, universal and particular, form and matter, self and other, and finally universal and particular continue to assert themselves, but they do so with greater complexity, and with finesse.
The relationship between micropolitics and macropolitics of youthful activism, the celebrated rebelliousness and resistance first introduced famously by Manchester’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), suggests yet another dichotomy that is continually strained. Youthful “tactics” as opposed to
“strategies,” as Michel de Certeau (1984) influentially theorized it, can be apoliti- cal (downright hedonistic) or not political enough. On the other side of the ledger, radical democracy that retains its Gramscian roots—for followers of Erensto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), such as Oliver Marchant (2003)—
present an articulation between the universal and the particular. At the level of the particular, each single-issue neotribe comes together in an alliance or network regardless of background to form a universal front in opposition to neoliberal global capitalism or to its more neoconservative leanings that latch onto populist appeals of religion, ethnocentrism, and security. The universal is theorized as a temporalized totality with a “constitutive outside,” characterized as a fundamen- tal antagonism that makes this plurality of differences possible. This continues to be the most sophisticated direction that posits hegemony as a key concept.
Hegemony sets up an already individuatedidealizedmythical position that is con- sidered normative within a changing historical formation, ascendancy to which assures power and status. Such idealized normativity is shaped by the circulation of models of admired social, gendered, and economic conduct exalted by religious organizations, the media, and the state so as to express widespread ideals, fan- tasies, and desires. One learns how and what to desire within a particular social order to ensure being seen favorably. This is a powerful theoretical model for crit- ical sociology.
Questioning Hegemony
To challenge the hegemonic model appears to be necessary if categorizations of youth are to be overcome. The idea of hegemony—taken asheteronormativein many queer studies, or predominately as hegemonically masculine in gender studies—affirms a pluralism that rests on a politics of horizons and frontiers as fluid territorializations between subgroups, genders, the abjected, and the like.3 But, where there is particularism, there is also totality. What “holds” this totality requires the positing of something beyond its limits (an irrecoverable excess) so that the particularities within can establish a unity in difference. For Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1985), this beyond or “constitutive outside” is characterized by a “fundamental antagonism” generated by a form of radical Otherness (as negated, nonrecognized identities) that is different from the already recognized identities in their differences as such. There is an irresolvable antagonism between genders, for instance, in the case of hegemonic masculinity, or an irresolvable
antagonism of class distinctions when it comes to establishing an egalitarian democracy. Positing this “beyond” is what differentiates his theoretical proposal from a synthetic Hegelian dialectic. He does Hegel one better, so to speak, by escaping closed-system totality as a teleological endgame.
As for the universal, drawing from Lacan, Laclau maintains that this is best theorized as empty master signifiers in the Real, conditioned by the logic of both/and—inside and outside the system at once, thereby overcoming any easy dichotomization. It is the empty place of power that needs to be filled in order to act as a “quilting point” (point de capiton, as a knot of meaning) that temporarily stabilizes the system (master signifiers such as progress, ideal masculinity, free- dom, human liberation, emancipation, and so on). Empty signifiers act as hinge- gates that both open and close the social symbolic system. They also enable the possibility of any one element within the system to become hegemonically uni- versal thereby initiating a new rebinding because of the uneven antagonistic sys- tem of power that exists in such a decentered structure. An equivalency of demands is posited between the pluralities so as to fill out and hegemonize its content (Laclau 1988). However, there will always be exclusions as determined by the mas- ter signifiers. Hence, this nontotalized decentered field becomes a place of play (Derrida) in a struggle for hegemony as the political game. It is an agonistic dem- ocratic system. Further, this empty signifier (as a potential hegemonic universal that paradigmatically temporizes the system) is marked by an unconditional ethics suggestive of the gap that exits between the “is” and the “ought,” requiring radical subjective investment (Laclau 2002).
How far Laclau escapes from G. W. Friedrich Hegel and modernity through his poststructuralist agenda has raised a great deal of debate.4The main con- cern seems to be the way totality is cleverly slipped in through the back door as an implicit appeal as a particular becomes hegemonically universal, propped up by a master signifier on the grounds that this is an instance of radical democ- racy, when all along such a moment proves to be impossible. It requires a total- ity to achieve this hegemony when the theory presupposes that such a gesture is not possible to begin with. For such a master signifier to work, it presupposes that a discourse is in place that totalizes all the particularities. Yet, there is no a priori reason to maintain that it will be the Left that will perform such a total- ization, nor that the competitors vying to assert their “particular universal” are indeed democratic antagonists and not enemies. Worse, the master signifier as the political symbol par excellence that claims the “full” possible community, tying together as many particularities as possible in the name of democracy, always already presupposes an excluded absence. Universal cultural agreement cannot be secured democratically as Laclau would have it. If no particular group can assure universality, but only temporarily occupy the empty place of power so as to claim that this is the best that is possible, then this takes us back to an ideological illusion that the universal (however temporary) truly repre- sents the absent fullness of all the particulars concerned; in other words, this is a fall back to essentialism that was being escaped from (see Boucher 2000). The Left or the Right can claim a particular universal with ethics unable to resolve the dilemma.
Laclau’s revision of hegemony as a radical egalitarian particularism (“radical democracy”) has also been taken to task by Nathan Widder’s (2000) Deleuzian account. One way to characterize Widder’s complex argumentation is to say that it hinges on Laclau’s dismissal of the possibility of particularity (difference) that does not depend on evoking a totality (universalism) even if it remains empty.
Laclau’s dismissal of Foucault for his “pure particularism” is a failure to recognize the possibility ofmultiple negationthat is characterized by a logic of neither/nor, an unlocalizable, excessive difference that is always untimely, a difference that is neitherparticular noruniversal but singular. This reorientation to Deleuzian dif- ference presents a constitutively and virtually hidden realm that underlies the actual organization of differences via identity politics. Widder rolls out the
“disjunctive synthesis” card of neither/nor logic that relates forces according to their differences. Folds and warps become the new figures with which to grasp the complexities of spaces that are no longer separated by distance, as in representa- tional subject-object relationships. As a synthesis through difference, an “excess of the in-between” is opened up.
Another way (perhaps?) of seeing the dispute is to observe the distinction that can be made between power (still theorized in terms of sameness and difference) and force. The former requires agency that exercises a right or a prerogative, something that is apart from the self, while the latter, in contrast, exerts itself. It does not imply any wielding or willed coercion of one thing by another. While power has an exteriority that imprints itself as form, force has an interiority that is creative. “Forces [. . .] are disjointed singularities. They form a virtual field of relations which in turn generate meaning and sense in accordance with the way they are articulated” (Widder, 127). The fundamental contention is to theorize immanent forces against the overarching hegemonic power of politics. Why this becomes important is because it leads to ethical and critical practices of the self as Foucault developed them, as the “technologies of the self,” which present a differ- ent political agenda by the minority.
The constitutive outside is not Nothing, as in Hegel, which then generates the Something; nor is there a “fundamental antagonism,” as posited by Laclau and Mouffe, but what if it is simply chaos itself, the virtual Real waiting to be actual- ized? The “Real of antagonism” that Z∨iz∨ek rolls out could be interpreted in this way. The “in-between” as the marker of difference is already antagonistic.5Shifting to this possibility has the advantage of linking the nonhuman with the human—
an (a)theistic (perhaps intolerable) radical position.
There is a way to skew this argument and to radically suggest that hegemony as an empty signifier is but another version of God.6The anti-Hegelian anthropolo- gist Ludwig Feuerbach, a materialist from whom Marx drew his inspiration, maintained that God was simply the personification of man—human, all too human. God’s omnipresent gaze becomes a guarantor of identity as literalized by the sacred books of world religions (the Bible, the Qur’an, the Book of Mormon, the Torah). Can one ever do away with God? In Lacan’s terms the existence of the big Other is still preferable to an ensuing psychosis, although the big Other “does not exist,” nor does “society” exist. It is one complex process with no definable boundary. The chaos floods in, since some form of frame of fantasy needs to exist
to keep the Real at arm’s length. The symbolic order becomes the said and unsaid (obscene) rules that give the illusion of relative stability without some secret code waiting to be discovered that would clear it all up. The response to this is either tragic or comic, laughing or crying according to Helmuth Plessner’s (1970) account, and the vast variety that is the “in-between” of these uncontrollable bod- ily breakdowns. I will return to Freaks and Geeks, this time trying to read it as other than a simple representation. But, before doing so, I would like once more to find transpositional ground between Lacan and Deleuze, this time concerning the multiple.
Lacan–Deleuze on Multiplicity
Is a shift toward a D+G position possible within cultural studies?7Could perhaps a hybrid assemblage emerge by reconciling Lacan with D+G? The dominant the- ories of representation in post-subcultural research are characterized by One and its multiples,8where difference is subsumed under sameness. The notion of hege- mony can still be useful if it doesn’t fall into a universalism, but is thought of as a
“singular universal,” a necessary construct to mark the terrain of constant strug- gle, a never-ended becoming, funded by the antagonisms of difference; difference, that is, that escapes sameness. Lacan’s “formulae of sexuation” already presup- poses “difference” as articulated by Deleuze. Masculine/feminine is marked by a difference that can never be symbolized as forms of opposition, inclusion, exclu- sion, and so on. These terms resist any attempt at reconciliation; hence, they name a “deadlock” or trauma, as Z∨iz∨ek would say. Masculine and feminine are two
“different” solutions to an impossible reconciliation. Difference, whether it be Lacanian or Deleuzian, becomes the place of impossibility that remains nonrepre- sentational. Z∨iz∨ek extends such antagonism to politics as well. Left and Right function in the same way as Lacan’s masculine and feminine. For the Left, it will always be class struggle, a question of social injustice; for the Right, it is always a question of moderation and social stability. To reconcile their differences in some sort of complete harmony would be the end of politics. I am tempted to include yet another fundamental antagonism, the a-signifying pair—lack/excess—which are irreconcilable as well if applied to closed and open systems respectively, between-1 (incompleteness) and +1 (excess).
This meeting place of Lacan and Deleuze concerning the “purity” of difference is the virtual Real, a place of ontological groundlessness oflifeitself, Nietzsche’s will to power. We are also closer, I believe, to seeing some transpositional room concerning the concept of multiplicity. Lacan’s objetis an immanent cause of desire that is constitutiveof desire itself. Desire is notpreexistent, nor is it transcendent or an emanative cause.Objet a, after all, is a virtual object. There are three points that come to mind concerning Other, gaze, and the formula for fantasy, which establish Lacan’s own multiplicity. First, “the desire of the Other” is a constant and reoccurring claim in Lacan, yet Other here cannot be pinned down to representa- tion. It is a chameleon of many colors, about which no one can say, “this is it.” This indicates the complexity of “Other” in Lacan’s lexicon.
Mark Bracher (1993) attempts to explain its ambiguities within the field of desire. First, desire can take either the passive form (to be) or an active form (to have). Second, Lacan’s formulation of the word “of ” further complicates things concerning desire. “Of ” functions as both subjective and objective genitive, “indi- cating that the Other can be either the subject or the object of desire” (20). Third,
“the Other” can be “either the image of another person in the Imaginary register, or the code constituting the Symbolic order, or the Other Sex and/or the objet a of the Real” (ibid.). This schema generates a plethora of possibilities: It can mean that we desire to be desired or to be recognized by the Other. It can mean we desire the Other. It can mean that the Other structures our desire; or that desire can be the Other’s desire or the desires of the Others with whom we identify; the Other can also refer to the discourse of the unconscious.
Second, the gaze (as a reconceptualization of the superego) fares no better in being less complex. No “One” possesses the gaze, although the “look” tries to cap- ture it but can never fully control its power. This already suggests the circulatiuon of micropower equally complex and complicated as Deleuze’s or Foucault’s expli- cations. The gaze in S XI,Four Fundamentals,is ephemeral, radically deanthropo- morphized, identified simply as “light” and hence nonrepresentational. In effect, what Lacan does by introducing the gaze is to deconstruct the perspectival space of the look, thus subverting the spatialization of time and, like Deleuze, he intro- duces movement intime of the Real. In his example in S XI,Four Fundamentals, of light reflecting back at him from a floating sardine can, when this “object looked back” at him is an instance of a movement in time. He is no longer “in the narrativized picture,” his being is “out of joint” as a gap in his Imaginary is im(pressed). The gaze, in effect introduces the Real of time, its interiority and intensity as a force, thereby its relation to poweris further complicated.
To complicate things even further, Joan Copjec (2006), who has steadily theo- rized the gaze throughout her theoretical career, adds another twist by arguing how Lacan’s nonsensible gaze is activated by the subject’s own surplus-jouissance as “the libidinal knock or beat of the signifier on some part of the body” (102).
This is an interior, not an exterior, affect. Such a contingent moment of time (not accidentaltime) is, once more, time that is “out of joint.” It is jouissance(or affect in Deleuze’s language game), the inhuman “X” that “not only singularizes us, but also doubles and suffocates us” (ibid.).
Finally, Lacan’s formula for the frameof fantasy is $⬍⬎a. This is most often read as “the barred subject related to the object that it lacks.” But why is there an insistence on lack? The lozenge between complicates things and further intro- duces the multiplicity that the Other and the Gaze already indicate.9In his S X, Anxiety(1962–63) (Seminar 14: Wednesday 13, March 1963), the fantasy frame that emerges in the relation between a barred subject and its virtual object is
“a relationship whose polyvalence and multiplicity are sufficiently defined by the composite character of this diamond shape ⬍⬎, which is just as much disjunc- tion, [or], as conjunction [&], which is just as much greater,⬎, and lesser,⬍, $ quaterm of this operation.” In this formulation, lack would be only oneformation of the fantasy frame and only oneof many possibilities as a regime of signs most often associated with the sacrificed remainder in Oedipalization.10