The art of shrinking heads

I just read The Art of Shrinking Heads by Dany-Robert Dufour.The book is quite marvelous. I can't recommend it highly enough.  Dufour is a Lacanian. There seem to be some differences between his account of the superego in the wake of the decline of symbolic efficiency and Zizek's. I'll have to work these out in the future. For now, just some summary and highlights.

Dufour argues that capitalism is consuming minds, shrinking heads. The evidence for this is the destruction of the double subject of modernity, the Kantian and Freudian subject. These historical subject forms are dying and the killer is neoliberalism.

Contemporary exchanges refer only to themselves; they do not rely on any external values (such as the gold standard; I'm not sure this is completely accurate, though; it seems that there are some exchanges that rely on the supposition that they are backed or guaranteed by the state; we can think of bonds or even of large investment concerns that are "too big to fail"). At any rate, Dufour's point is the dismantling of symbolic value such that all that matters is exchange value):

the triumph of neoliberalism will lead to the debasement of the symbolic . . .
the weaking, and even debasement, of the symbolic function is the price we will have to pay [for the expansion of the market].

The destruction of the symbolic entails the destruction of the Kantian and Freudian subject and the production of new postmodern subject. The destruction of the Kantian subject entails the loss of a critical, reasoning, subject. The destruction of the Freudian subject means the loss of the neurotic subject with its fixations and repetitions. Neither of these subjects is well-suited to flows, flexibility, and circulation of commodities characteristic of neoliberalism. What neoliberalism wants and needs is a

precarious, acritical subject who displays psychotic tendencies . . . a subject who is open to all kinds of fluctuating identities and who is therefore ready to be plugged into every commodity.

Deleuze and Guattari would call this the schizoid subject. Agamben would call it whatever being. Trends in academia would call it a postmodern subject. Or, rather than installing another repressive name that serves only to difference as it entraps us in a regime of representation, some academics would emphasize what they see as the repressive nature of the modern subject that must be resisted in the name of cyborgs, tricksters, or the real existing specificity of each individual that can never be fully captured within modernity's binaries.

What is necessary, then, is to understand this new subject, the one that arises in the wake of the collapse of symbolic efficiency (Dufour does not use this term). Dufour writes:

What are the subjective effects of the demise of the agency that interpellates and addresses all subjects and to which all subjects must respond . . . One of our most urgent needs is for studies in contemporary psychology which can identify this new disposition, of a subject basically called upon to create oneself--as subject whom no historical or generational antecedent is addressing, or whom none can continue with any legitimacy to address.

To build his argument, Dufour establishes his version of various Lacanian concepts. Most important is his version of the Other as having a history: this historical account of the Other enables his account of the change from modern to postmodern subjectivity.

In postmodernity, there is basically no Other in the sense of a symbolic Other, or an incomplete set onto which the subject can really pin a demand, of which he can make a demand or ask a question and to which he can raise an objection.

To be sure, there are remnants of the grand narratives still running around (in the same way that industrialization does not mean that there is no more agriculture)--religion and nationalism are two of the most prominent. But postmodernity, as Lyotard already told us, entails the demise of grand narratives.

The market, with its endless commodification, might seem to be able to provide a new narrative and support for the Subject. Dufour says no. The market does not and cannot take up questions of origins, foundations, and the infinite (this is akin, I think, to Badiou's claim that capitalism doesn't provide worlds). Instead, it leaves the subject to his own devices, and thereby necessarily and perpetually unsatisfied (and open to the lure of commodities). The subject has to found himself. The same holds for democracy in postmodernity. It's a political form based on an entirely self-justifying individual. And the near impossibility of self-founding produces the pathologies of the contemporary subject.

Dufour uses the concept of hysterology ("a figure of rhetoric based upon the inversion of anteriority and posteriority") to consider the problem of the postmodern subject:

To employ hysterology is basically to postulate something that does not yet exist in order to derive authority for engaging in action. This is the situation in which the democratic finds herself, placed as she is under the constraint "Be yourself." She postulates something that does not yet exist (herself) in order to trigger the action through which she must produce herself as a subject.

Dufour argues that the hysterological subject is trapped in an untenable situation. First, the support provided by the postulated self (or maybe we can just call it a self image) is shakey at best. After all it doesn't exist yet and won't exist until the action is taken to produce it. Second, the act can fail by virtue of being deferred. Third, the act can be accomplished, but this means that the subject has to see herself perform an act she cannot believe in. The result is that she feels like she's a fake or imposter. Because she does not have the support of the Other (unlike the hysterical subject) the hysterological subject is in a weird temporality suspended between before and after. She's also half a subject and a kind reduplicated subject.

The postmodern subject is evolving towards a subjective condition defined by a borderline neurotic-psychotic state. This subject is increasingly trapped between a latent melancholy (the depression we hear so much about), the impossibility of speaking in the first person, the illusion of omnipotence, and the temptation to adopt a false self, a borrowed personality or even the multiple personalities that are made so widely available by the market. Postmodernity, in other words, may be witnessing the decline of what Freud called the transference neuroses and the rise of narcissistic psycho-neuroses. The ultimate defense against the psycho-neuroses is usually perversion.

(In her new book, This Is Not a President, Diane Rubenstein discusses Bush in terms of perversion; I'm pretty sure Joan Copjec does as well in Imagine There's No Woman. I also consider Bush in terms of perversion in a couple of places, the most recent of which is probably an article that appeared this year in Theory and Event. Why am I saying this: because if Dufour is right about the rise of psycho-neuroses and perversion as a defense against them, this could help explain the appeal of the Republican party.)

Dufour lists some of the repercussions of the crisis of subjectivation (the hysterological constraints of postmodernity). These postmodern pathologies revolve around the subject's self-foundational task (hence they are related to foreclosure). Here are a few of them:

--depression (Prozac, anyone?)

--narcynicism and the politics of the stepladder (a need to keep moving up that becomes manifest in display, a need for ever more attention)

--an egalitarian drive that negates hard work and celebrates intention as what really matters (thus supporting the illusion that we are all really creative and that are lives are works of art)

--new sacrificial forms (amputation, random violence)

Finally, Dufour considers arrangements that attempt to compensate for the loss of the Other/decline of symbolic efficiency: gangs, cults, addiction, omnipotence. The market feeds and exacerbates these alternatives. In sum, Dufour argues that neoliberalism attempts to do away with the critical Kantian subject (whom Freud revealed was neurotic and haunted by guilt). And neoliberalism wants to replace this subject with an acritical psychotic subject that will be receptive to commodities and communicative flows.

Comments

[Bob Allen]

"neoliberalism wants to replace this subject with an acritical psychotic subject " , a subject that can be plugged into a commodity like Sarah Palin, maybe, her being a construct of not hard work but intention (I mean her sudden rise was not due to decades of national level service, etc, but instead she was "activated" seemingly out of nothing for a specific intent).. this is a fascinating post, and one that clarifies some murkier, for me, concepts having to do with Lacan etc, much appreciated...

[Glen]

hi jodi, i agree with bob, this is a great post. It seems like a book i should probably read. I can certainly see my self in the description of the postmodern subject.

Does Dufour discuss questions of generationalism? The body as a material process of habits has durations or rhythms that 'plug' into various situations, and if a new form of subjectivity exists that are useful (neoliberal) or appropriate (modernist), then it needs to be produced through youth and/or through the biopolitical reconfiguration of adults.

Perhaps this is why the popular discourse of 'kiddults' has emerged when describing narcissitic workplace cultures and infantalising advertising refrains as it seems all the various qualities described above also describe children.

[Joe Clement]

I wonder if Dufour relates "a border-line neurotic-psychotic state" to Jacques-Alain Miller's notion of "ordinary psychosis."

http://www.lacan.com/lacinkXXXI11.html

This is definitely a book I need to check out this month though.

[parody center]

--an egalitarian drive that negates hard work and celebrates intention as what really matters (thus supporting the illusion that we are all really creative and that are lives are works of art)

this rings true. in my horrid last job experience the official mantra that everybody had to receive in the form of proselytism was that we're all equal and that our equality matters more than the result of the work (which was mediocre by default). in fact true creative excellence is frowned upon, because it disturbs the ''egalitarianism''.

And neoliberalism wants to replace this subject with an acritical psychotic subject that will be receptive to commodities and communicative flows.

well that's what happens when you invaginate men and let wymin take over with their diffuse power and uncontrollable flow. i'm not arguing for a return to fuckwad patriarchalism, but the rule of the Vagina Monologues isn't fun either.

[Joe Clement]

This Alter-Net article connects well with the book:

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/97934

[Joe Clement]

I'm glad I just got through the section on hysterology. The comment I quote below appeared today under Alter-Net's main article, "Amid a Painful Economic Meltdown, Will Obama Be Bold Enough to Win":

"No matter who wins, live as if the candidate whose changes you want to see ALREADY affected those changes!"

http://www.alternet.org/election08/98495/amid_a_painful_economic_meltdown,_will_obama_be_bold_enough_to_win/?comments=view&cID=1007346&pID=1007160#c1007346

I am surprised that Dufour did not bring up Gandhi in the section on hysterology. "Be the change you would like to see in the world" is a perfect example of the self-foundational trope as political maxim for the last few decades.

[ktismatics]

I've just now reached the hysterology section of the book, but there's an issue preceding it that perplexes me. Dufour argues that throughout premodern and modern history there's always been a third party that mediates relationships and against which one defines oneself. Examples include God, the soil of the homeland, the blood of racial purity, the proletariat, nature. Dufour contends that the marketplace doesn't operate like these other Big Others, largely because there is nothing tangible around which its structure is organized (no more gold standard). Consequently, human selves have nothing to push against, no externally-imposed expectations to get neurotic about. People must define themselves by themselves, leaving them vulnerable to something akin to psychosis.

On the other hand, Dufour already acknowledged, as does Lacan, that the old-fashioned Others aren't Real either: they derive their power entirely within the Symbolic order. The marketplace is like this too. Market value isn't "real," as we've just seen in the collapse of housing values; it's symbolic. Still, people act as if the marketplace were a sentient entity wielding an invisible hand in human affairs. People define their interactions relative to the marketplace: buyer-seller, employer-employee, etc. And people define themselves relative to the marketplace: my job, my pay, my stuff. Certainly people become neurotic in trying to keep up with the market's demands for success, job satisfaction, wealth, etc.

In short, it seems to me that, in Lacanian terms, the market is as efficient and powerful an Other as God, nation, etc. ever were. Its demands may differ, but it serves a similar function within the Symbolic order. No?

[BG]

Thanks for the tip, Jodi. I read this book recently. I found it deeply engaging. Since reading, I have had a couple of second thoughts about some of his interpretations and examples. I do wonder if this is at least in part due to his heavy usage of French examples. Down here in Australia, some of the education stuff didn't wholly ring true. Much of it did, but not all....

I would be interested to read some further thoughts of yours about this book and the thesis.