Diacritics

Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 105-108

Response to Slavoj Zizek

Claudia Breger

Slavoj Zizek. The Rhetorics of Power. Diacritics 31.1 (2001): 91-104.

Perhaps I should begin by, in one respect, pleading guilty as well or, alternatively, with an apology for the sometimes polemical rhetoric of my paper. Part of the harshness of my tone may, however, be explained by a couple of remarks regarding the genealogy of my text. Written in the context of German academia, it originated, a couple of years ago, in an intellectual climate characterized by the omnipresence of Zizek's words and ideas, with—as far as I could tell—virtually no critical questions being asked. This absence of debate seemed particularly conspicuous when compared to the ways in which other theory imports had entered German discourse in recent years, like the long-term fight over postmodernist concepts, with one of its climaxes in the ferocious debate on Judith Butler's Gender Trouble in the early 1990s. Once I had begun to engage more thoroughly with Zizek's concepts, I developed some serious concerns with regard to their political implications, and these concerns were eventually shaped into the ferocious critique published in this issue. Hoping to stir controversy, I intentionally focus, in my paper, on what I believe to be the problematic aspects of Zizek's theory, and I do enlist rhetorical strategies that serve to stress these aspects and to develop their implications. At the same time, my argument is based on a meticulous close reading of many of Zizek's texts, and I cannot plead guilty to falsifying or simply inventing any of the positions I discuss.

After these explanatory words, I would like to thank Slavoj Zizek for his response, which I find very helpful in highlighting some central methodological and theoretical issues. I agree with his suggestion that, on one level, it is rather principal methodological questions that are at stake here: from the "dogmatic" standpoint Zizek claims at the end of his paper, my relationship toward psychoanalysis would probably be described as "disavowal." From my own, more or less "relativistic" position, this is, of course, not an appropriate notion, and I would explain my methodological position approximately in the following way: while I do believe that it is necessary to historicize psychoanalysis, I find many of Freud's and Lacan's theorems extremely useful for describing modern configurations of sexuality, gender, and society, and, like many deconstructivists—and many other scholars—I use psychoanalytic notions as theoretical tools in my own work. I do, however, believe that it is crucial to evaluate, question, and negotiate the theoretical concepts I use. In the case of psychoanalysis, this process includes a critical discussion of the concepts offered, in any specific thematic context, by Freud and Lacan—or by Karen Horney or Joan Rivière. From this "anti-dogmatic" standpoint, I am clearly irritated by Zizek's claim to provide one superior, privileged reading of psychoanalysis via his exegesis of Lacan, and I am willing to defend this stance.

While thus happily accepting the label "anti-dogmatic," I would like to argue with the way in which Zizek stages the choice between the relativist "liberal democrat" and the fully engaged "fundamentalist" at the end of his paper [103]. The opposition reminds me of the debates within gender and postcolonial studies in the course of which [End Page 105] deconstructivist positions were charged with destroying political agency, and essentialism, or at least "strategic essentialism" [see, for example, Fuss], was defended as a political necessity. Zizek justifies his "fundamentalism"—in quotation marks—similarly as a strategic choice. As evidence for its necessity, however, he enlists the topical figure of a "postmodern deconstructionist" who plays his/her academic power games in the safe realm of ironic distance from social struggles. To be sure: with a Foucauldian background, I have no difficulty in acknowledging that the rhetoric of self-relativization is part of academic power games as well—and I do believe that these power games should be subjected to a process of political critique. This very process, however, seems to be the...