Ideological fantasy at work

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 13, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 275-296

  Glynos, Jason ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK; KNOWLEDGE; POLITICAL IDEOLOGY; POLITICAL THEORY; THEORETICAL STUDY; WORKPLACE;

EID: 54049086569     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: 14699613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569310802376961     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Versions of this paper were presented at the Essex Political Theory group forum and at the Annual Political Studies Association Conference, Swansea University, 1-3 April 2008. For their questions and feedback I thank Pete Bloom, Carl Cederstrom, Sam Chambers, Glyn Daly, Derek Hook, David Howarth, Dave Lewis, Aletta Norval, Yannis Stavrakakis, Albert Weale, Hugh Willmott, and the anonymous assessors of JPI. Special thanks to David Howarth and Yannis Stavrakakis, because much in this paper has its origins in long-term and ongoing collaborative work with each of them.
2. J. Glynos and D. Howarth, Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007)
3. M. H. Best and W. E. Connolly, The Politicized Economy (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath and Co., 1982)
4. J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006)
5. E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London: Verso, 1985)
6. E. Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990)
7. A. Contu and H. Willmott, 'Studying Practice', Organization Studies 27(12) (2006), pp. 1769-1782
8. S. Resnick and R. Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987)
9. S. Resnick and R. Wolff, 'The Point and Purpose of Marx's Notion of Class', Rethinking Marxism, 17(1) (2005), pp. 33-37.
10. The focus on workplace practices of course suggests that this contribution would also be relevant to the literature that engages directly or indirectly with the debates around labour process theory and critical management studies. See, for example, D. Knights and H. Willmott (Eds), Labour Process Theory (London: Macmillan, 1990)
11. D. O'Doherty and H. Willmott, 'Debating Labour Process Theory: The Issue of Subjectivity and the Relevance of Poststructuralism', Sociology 35(2) (2001), pp. 457-476
12. Fleming, P. and Spicer, A. (2007) Contesting the Corporation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)
13. R. Sennett and J. Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)
14. and R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character (New York: Norton, 1998).
15. See, for example, S. Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989)
16. J. Glynos, 'The Grip of Ideology: A Lacanian Approach to the Theory of Ideology', Journal of Political Ideologies, 6(2) (2001), pp. 191-214
17. Y. Stavrakakis, Lacan & the Political (London: Routledge, 1999)
18. G. Daly, 'Ideology and its Paradoxes: Dimensions of Fantasy and Enjoyment', Journal of Political Ideologies, 4(2) (1999), pp. 219-238
19. G. Daly, 'Radical(l)y Political Economy', Review of International Political Economy, 11(1) (2004), pp. 1-32.
20. For example: W. Brown, States of Injury (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996)
21. Glynos, op. cit., Ref. 4
22. J. Glynos, 'There is no Other of the Other: Symptoms of a Decline in Symbolic Faith', Paragraph, 24(2) (2001), pp. 78-110
23. Zizek, op. cit., Ref. 4
24. A. Zupancic, Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000)
25. J. Copjec, Read My Desire (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), Chapter 8.
26. For example: C. Ozselcuk, 'Mourning, Melancholy, and the Politics of Class Transformation', Rethinking Marxism, 18(2) (2006), pp. 225-240
27. C. Ozselcuk and Y. M. Madra, 'Psychoanalysis and Marxism', Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society, 10 (2005), pp. 79-97
28. Y. M. Madra, 'Questions of Communism', Rethinking Marxism, 18(2) (2006), pp. 205-224.
29. Gibson-Graham, op. cit., Ref. 2.
30. For more on how ideology and ethics are understood in this article, see Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 117-120.
31. Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 191-199.
32. Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2.
33. In a similar way, Michael Freeden views practices as animated by 'the inevitable tension between the desire for decontestation [or closure] and its impossibility' (M. Freeden, 'What Should the "Political" in Political Theory Explore?', The Journal of Political Philosophy, 13(2) (2005), pp. 113-134 at p. 123).
34. Political logics can be seen, following Laclau and Mouffe, to comprise logics of equivalence and logics of difference. For more detail on this, see Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 141-145
35. Laclau and Mouffe, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 127-134).
36. E. Laclau, On Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005), p. 101.
37. Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 193-197.
38. Gibson-Graham, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 27-41.
39. Gibson-Graham, ibid., pp. 41-49.
40. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 39.
41. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 51.
42. Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 193-197.
43. W. Connolly, Why I am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p. 146.
44. Gibson-Graham, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 51.
45. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 56.
46. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 56.
47. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 59.
48. Gibson-Graham, ibid., pp. 57-59.
49. W. Connolly, Neuropolitics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), p. 48.
50. Gibson-Graham, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 74.
51. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 77; emphasis added.
52. Best and Connolly, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 117-121.
53. Best and Connolly, ibid., p. 121.
54. Gibson-Graham, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 73.
55. Gibson-Graham, ibid., pp. 72-77.
56. Gibson-Graham, ibid., pp. 77-78.
57. Gibson-Graham, ibid., p. 51
58. see also pp. 192-196.
59. Best and Connolly, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 129. Of course counter-hegemonic reinterpretations do not by any means necessarily embody progressive values, but it is precisely because of this that analysts cannot ignore the normative valence of their analyses.
60. (For more detail on the question of judgement and naming see Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 183-187.) The very identification and articulation of social logics and counter-logics thus furnish both elements and an initial direction which can form part of a more concerted political project.
61. For some illustrative suggestions regarding diagnoses and ways forward, see Best and Connolly, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 71-75, 101-108, 117-147, 208-215, 219-220, 226-229.)
62. For example: V. Walkerdine, 'Freedom, Psychology and the Neoliberal Worker', Soundings, 29 (2005), pp. 47-61
63. V. Walkerdine, 'Workers in the New Economy: Transformation as Border Crossing', Ethos, 34(1) (2006), pp. 10-41
64. Y. Gabriel, 'The Unmanaged Organization: Stories, Fantasies and Subjectivity', Organization Studies, 16 (1995), pp. 477-501
65. Y. Gabriel, 'Meeting God: When Organizational Members Come Face to Face with the Supreme Leader', Human Relations, 50(4) (1997), pp. 315-342
66. Contu and Willmott, op. cit., Ref. 2
67. H. Willmott, 'Identities in Organizations' (2007), unpublished
68. K. Byrne and S. Healy, 'Cooperative Subjects', Rethinking Marxism, 18(2) (2006), pp. 241-258.
69. Gabriel 1997, op. cit., Ref. 36.
70. Walkerdine 2005, op. cit., Ref. 36.
71. A. D. Brown and M. Humphreys, 'Organizational Identity and Place', Journal of Management Studies, 43(2) (2006), pp. 231-257.
72. Willmott, op. cit., Ref. 36.
73. Contu and Willmott, op. cit., Ref. 2.
74. On the notion of individual and collective self-transgression, especially in relation to classical analyses of the concept of freedom, see J. Glynos, 'Self-Transgression and Freedom', Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 6(2) (2003), pp. 1-20
75. J. Glynos, 'Self-Transgressive Enjoyment as a Freedom Fetter', Political Studies, 56(3) (2008, forthcoming).
76. S. Zizek, The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso, 1994), p. 55.
77. Contu and Willmott, op. cit., Ref. 2, p. 9.
78. E. Laclau, 'The Impossibility of Society', Canadian Journal of Political and Social Science, 15(1/3) (1991), pp. 24-27 at p. 27.
79. Glynos and Howarth, op. cit., Ref. 2, pp. 177-197.
80. Byrne and Healy, op. cit., Ref. 36.
81. Resnick and Wolff 1987, op. cit., Ref. 2.
82. Byrne and Healy, op. cit., Ref. 36, p. 253.
83. Byrne and Healy, ibid., p. 252.
84. Byrne and Healy, ibid., pp. 250-252.
85. In appreciating the character of the distinction between two modes of enjoyment or subjectivity, it is worth recalling that over-investment in fantasies is perfectly compatible with social and political transformation. Such over-investment can manifest itself in the 'purity' of the ideals espoused by radical groups. In my reading, the work of Jonathan Dean, for example, shows how such over-investment has played a role not only in the political transformations brought about by radical feminist groups, but also in sustaining the characterization of contemporary feminism as deradicalized, because it is felt that in building links with state and other public institutions many feminist organizations have been 'contaminated' by patriarchal social logics (J. Dean, 'Feminist Purism and the Question of "Radicality" in Contemporary Political Theory', Contemporary Political Theory, 2008).
86. Fantasy serves to mediate between the two levels because it comprises elements of socio-political reality which organize the subject's enjoyment, thereby also serving to shape that socio-political reality.
87. S. Zizek, For They Know Not What They Do (London: Verso, 2002), p. lii.
88. W. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995)
89. W. Connolly, Pluralism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
90. Brown, op. cit., Ref. 5, Chapter 2.
91. W. Brown, Politics out of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 56.
92. Brown, ibid., p. 59.
93. See also J. Glynos and Y. Stavrakakis, 'Lacan and Political Subjectivity', Subjectivity: International Journal of Critical Psychology, 24 (2008), pp. 256-274.