Fantasy and Identity in Critical Political Theory

In this essay I explore the appeal of the psychoanalytic category of fantasy for critical political theory, by which I mean a theory grounded in a political ontology that offers a rationale for both normative and ideological critique. I draw on the work of William Connolly, Susan Faludi, Jacqueline Rose, and Judith Butler, among others, to consider the explanatory and critical implications of the concept of fantasy for questions of identity, and political identity in particular. I argue that fantasy is a useful device with which to explore and probe the political and ideological aspects of a practice or narrative because it foregrounds the combined significance of the symbolic and affective dimensions of life. Moreover, a psychoanalytic perspective can facilitate a move away from an epistemological or moralizing understanding of fantasy and political identity, shifting the emphasis instead toward a more ontological and ethical understanding

Managing Cultural Diversity in the Multinational Corporate Workplace: Solution or Symptom?

The aim of this paper is to show the critical relevance of post-structuralist political theory to cross-cultural management studies. By emphasizing the key role that questions of identity, difference, and struggle play in the multinational corporate context, we argue for a shift in our understandings away from essentialist conceptions of culture to an explicitly critical and political understanding of the way culture and cultural difference is invoked. Of crucial importance in understanding the nature of the shift of perspective we advocate is the affirmation of a negative ontology for which the radical contingency of social relations is axiomatic

?Lacan at Work?

As a site of wealth creation, work and the organization of work receive critical attention from many disciplines and from many traditions of thought. In this chapter I explore why one might want to supplement existing approaches to work and the organization of work ? both psychoanalytic and non-psychoanalytic ? with ideas drawn from the field of Lacanian psychoanalysis. I suggest that there are advantages to organizing this Lacanian intervention around the category of fantasy, but that there are also aspects of this approach that demand further development if we are to offer a convincing critical explanation of workplace phenomena

Discourse Analysis: varieties and methods

This paper presents and analyses six key approaches to discourse analysis, including political discourse theory, rhetorical political analysis, the discourse historical approach in critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis, discursive psychology and Q methodology. It highlights differences and similarities between the approaches along three distinctive dimensions, namely, ontology, focus and purpose. Our analysis reveals the difficulty of arriving at a fundamental matrix of dimensions which would satisfactorily allow one to organize all approaches in a coherent theoretical framework. However, it does not preclude various theoretical articulations between the different approaches, provided one takes a problem-driven approach to social science as one?s starting-point

Postures and Impostures: On Lacan's Style and Use of Mathematical Science

Intellectual Impostures seeks to raise the stakes even further, thus constituting a kind of culmination of Alan Sokal’s initial project. This chapter argues that restricted to showing why Sokal and Jean Bricmont fail to make a case against Jacques Lacan not only on the basis of generally accepted standards of intellectual integrity but also on the basis of standards of their own choosing. It aims to move from questions of style to objections more firmly grounded on issues of substance, by which is meant Lacan’s knowledge and use of mathematical science on the one hand, and the alleged irrelevance of Lacan’s mathematics to psychoanalysis on the other. Lacanians would want to insist that only something as simple as a basic ignorance of Lacan’s work can serve to explain the appearance of the mathematical concepts as enigmatic. In direct contrast with the work of Lacan Intellectual Impostures makes easy, even entertaining, reading

Ideology as blocked mourning: Greek national identity in times of economic crisis and austerity

This article approaches the 2010-2014 economic crisis in Greece from the perspective of loss and mourning, critically exploring what questions and insights this provokes. We argue first that the rhetoric of mainstream political and media elites has been instrumental in framing responses to the Greek economic crisis in patriotic terms, a frame subsequently adopted by groups from across the entire political spectrum, whether part of the establishment or not. We then draw on discourse theory and psychoanalysis to argue that attachments to the dominant austerity and anti-austerity responses to the crisis can be understood-at least in part-in terms of a failure (or not) to properly articulate and thus mourn the nationalist-inflected loss associated with economic dislocation. We sketch out two ideological pathways in the discourses of austerity and anti-austerity, which we designate as symptomatic of ‘blocked mourning’: a melancholic pathway that seeks to contain loss through self-blame; and a pathway of ressentiment that seeks to contain loss by attributing its cause to a series of ‘others’. We argue that blocked mourning bears a direct relation to the ideological grip of the austerity and anti-austerity discourses, and that we can better appreciate the character and strength of their affective pull by drawing out the fantasmatic aspects of the narratives expressing Greek national and economic identity. Conversely, we argue that a critique of ideology can be understood in terms of the preconditions for mourning, whose satisfaction would make possible a less invested relation to the fantasmatic guarantees underpinning the austerity/ anti-austerity narratives. In this view, a critique of ideology proceeds by bringing to light those factors that could facilitate a more open and deliberative articulation of loss, so as to transform and pluralize collective responses to the economic crisis