Agency: The Internal Split of Structure

In this article I first examine the ways in which the dual terms of structure and agency are used in sociological theories. Then, relying on Lacan’s notions of split‐subject, the formula of sexuation, and forms of discourses, and Laclau’s theory of ideological hegemony, I argue that agency in most current sociological formulations is but a posited other of the structure that dissolves if examined closely; it is similar to the Lacanian fantasmic object. To resolve the fundamental paradoxes in structure‐agency theories, I reformulate structures as paradoxical, incomplete, and contingent symbolic formations that are always partial and unstable due to their inclusion and exclusion operations. Consequently, social transformational agency consists in the structural inconsistencies that open structural gaps available to social actors. As a result, agency can be recognized in two moments conceived as two symbolic gestures. From this perspective, agency as such is always a possibility qua potential and its efficacy is always retroactively recognized‐actualized from within a new social structure or symbolic order

Ladrones del mundo, uníos

La repetición de un hecho, según Hegel, juega un papel crucial en la historia: todo acontecimiento que solo se produce una vez, puede considerarse mero accidente, un hecho que podría haberse evitado si la situación se hubiera manejado de otro modo; pero, cuando el mismo acontecimiento se repite, es señal de que está en curso un proceso histórico más profundo. La derrota de Napoleón en Leipzig, en 1813, pudo atribuirse a la mala suerte; pero, tras su derrota en Waterloo, era evidente que estaba acabado. Lo mismo podría aplicarse a la sostenida crisis financiera actual. En septiembre de 2008, algunos la presentaron como una anomalía que podría corregirse introduciendo regulaciones más acertadas. Ahora que hay cada vez más indicios de que vuelva a producirse otro colapso financiero, parece evidente que nos enfrentamos a un fenómeno estructura

With Hegel Beyond Hegel

The Hegel Variations: “On the Phenomenology of the Spirit” by Fredric Jameson. (London: Verso, 2010. pp. 144. $24.95 cloth.

El inconsciente de la economía política

The libidinal tensions described by Freud are not simply characteristic of the subject, but are part of interpersonal politics (family) of the struggle for power. This is the reason why Etienne Balibar points out that, in his description of the crowd formation and the genesis of the superego, Freud does not provide a "psychoanalysis of politics" (an explanation of the political dynamics of the crowds, through processes which are themselves apolitical), but their opposite: the politics of psychoanalysis (the explanation of the emergence of the triadic structure of the Ego-Id-Superego, through family "political" power struggles). This is what Marx does in A Critique of Political Economy: he brings out his unconscious, and that is why he calls the object of his critique "political economy."Las tensiones libidinales descritas por Freud no son simplemente propias del sujeto, sino que forman parte de la política interpersonal (familiar), de la lucha por el poder, es por ello que Etienne Balibar señala que, en su descripción de la formación de la multitud y de la génesis del superego, Freud no proporciona un "psicoanálisis de la política" (una explicación de la dinámica política de las multitudes a través de procesos libidinales que son en sí mismos apolíticos) sino su contrario, la política del psicoanálisis (la explicación del surgimiento de la estructura triádica del Ego-Id-Superego a través de las luchas de poder "políticas" familiares). Esto es lo que hace Marx en su Crítica de la economía política: saca a relucir su inconsciente, por eso llama al objeto de su crítica "la economía política"

The Vagaries of the Superego

Starting from the distinction between “ideal ego”, “ego-ideal” and “superego” structured from the Imaginary-Symbolic-Real triad made by Lacan, this study investigates how is possible to distinguish the a-sexual social space from the domain of libidinally-cathexed interactions. Through the analysis of Balibar’s, Miller’s, Schuster’s and Hägglund’s ideas, paths and strategies are defined to analyze the existing dynamics between symbolic power, law and superego. What emerges is the reconstruction of a new subjectivity which is capable, at the same time, to overcome the jouissance-superego dynamic at the basis of Lacanian reflection and face the challenges of contemporary post-humanism. Therefore, what subject stands for is the inhuman core of being-human, what Hegel called selfrelating negativity, what Freud called death drive. The text proposes, in short, how the Subject is what is in a human being more than human, the immortality of the deathdrive which makes it a living dead, something that insists beyond the cycle of life and death

Hegel and the Object, Or, the Idea's Constipation

One of the standard motifs of the pseudo-Freudian dismissal of Hegel is to characterize his System as the highest and most over-blown expres­sion of oral economy: is the Hegelian Idea not a voracious eater which "swallows" every object it stumbles upon? As Hegel likes to point out, however, we can only grasp the object if this object itself already "wants to be with/by us." The standard critical reading constructs the Hegelian absolute Substance-Subject as thoroughly constipated - keeping in itself the swallowed content. But what about the counter-movement, the Hegelian shitting, excrementation? Is the subject of what Hegel calls "ab­solute Knowing" not also a thoroughly emptied subject, a subject reduced to the role of pure observer of the self-movement of the content itself

Globokar, or the Effort to Write Materialist Music

In what precise sense is Vinko Globokar's music materialist? Music at its most elementary is an act of supplication: a call to a figure of the big Other (beloved Lady, King, God...) to respond, not as the symbolic big Other, but in the real of his or her being (breaking his own rules by showing mercy; conferring her contingent love on us...). Here we might say that music in this sense is an act that is the breaking in of the fantasized Other. Music is thus an attempt to provoke the "answer of the Real," to give rise in the Other to the "miracle" of which Lacan speaks apropos of love, the miracle of the Other stretching back his or her hand to me. The historical changes in the status of "big Other" (grosso modo , in what Hegel referred to as "objective Spirit") thus directly concern music – perhaps musical modernity designates the moment when music renounces the endeavor to provoke the answer of the Other. Modern music is thoroughly and really atheist, MATERIALIST, not in the sense of the ridiculously pathetic spectacle of the heroic defiance of God, but in the sense of the insight into the irrelevance of the divine, again, along the lines of Brecht’s Herr Keune

Konsistentnost ocen sestojnih gostot in njihova variabilnost v gozdnih inventurah na slovenskem

The national estimates of forest resources in Slovenia are based on data aggregation from forest inventories conducted in forest management units of Slovenia Forest Service (SFS) and on the parallel forest inventory established within the Forest and Forest Ecosystem Condition Survey (FECS) as a continuation of international forest monitoring programme. Since the difference in sampling design and temporal dynamics of data collection is of key importance for inventories at the level of forest management units compared to large-area forest inventories, the consistency of stand densities was checked in both concepts. Comparing growing stock estimates in FECS on the systematic 4-km grid of sampling plots from SFS forest management planning, no overall significant differences in temporally comparable periods have been detected. We propose a basis enabling consistent estimates of structural forest characteristics at the national level for the process of forest inventory harmonization in Slovenia.V Sloveniji so ocene o gozdnih virih na ravni države sestavljene iz podatkov gozdnih inventur v gozdnogospodarskih enotah Zavoda za gozdove Slovenije (ZGS) in vzporedne gozdne inventure, ki je bila zasnovana v sklopu Monitoringa gozdov in gozdnih ekosistemov % popis MGGE Gozdarskega inštituta Slovenije. Ker je za inventure na ravni gozdnogospodarskih enot v primerjavi s konceptom nacionalnih gozdnih inventur ključna razlika v zasnovi vzorčenja in časovni dinamiki zbiranja podatkov, smo preverili konsistentnost sestojnih gostot, ki jih ocenjujemo v obeh sklopih gozdnih inventur. S primerjavo lesnih zalog, ocenjenih v popisu MGGE in na prilagojeni sistematični 4-km vzorčni mreži vzorčnih ploskev gozdnogospodarskega načrtovanja ZGS, nismo odkrili značilnih razlik v časovno primerljivih obdobjih. Za proces harmonizacije gozdnih inventur na Slovenskem predlagamo izhodišča, po katerih bo mogoče usklajeno ocenjevati strukturne značilnosti gozdov na ravni države