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The World and the Real: Space and the Political after Lacan

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Abstract

Post-foundationalism departs from the assumption that there is no ground, necessity, or objective rationale for human political existence or action. The edited volume puts contemporary debates arising from the »spatial turn« in cultural and social sciences in a dialogue with post-foundational theories of space and place to devise post-foundationalism as radical approach to urban studies. This approach enables us to think about space not only as socially produced, but also as crucially marked by conflict, radical negativity, and absence. The contributors undertake a (re-)reading of key spatial and/or post-foundational theorists to introduce their respective understandings of politics and space, and offer examples of post-foundational empirical analyses of urban protests, spatial occupation, and everyday life.
The World and the Real:
Space and the Political after Lacan
Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
            
       
Lacan and the Ontological Turn
          
         
         
         
           
            
          
          
         
        
          
            
             
              
          
            
        
          
           
              
           
44 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
         
           

        
        
            
           
          
         
         
            
              
           
         
           
           
          
             
            
              
           
            
            
          
           
           
 
           
            
             
        
             
             
               
                
        
The World and the Real 45
            
            
            
            
           
           
            
          
         
           
          
             
            
         
          
         
            
           
            
             
             
           
            
     
            
         
          
          
            
           
        
                 
             
           
          
            
46 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
          
         
           
        
            
          
     
           
         
         
              
        
              
          
             
      
           
              
           
           
             
             
  
        
              
          
             
          a   
        
              
               
          
 
          
 as            
             
   
The World and the Real 47
            
          
           
            
             
         
             
               
         
             
           
            
          
          
            
               
           
           
          
          
APost-FoundationalTheoryoftheSubject
             
             
             
           
          
             
           
          
               
   
               
          
         
48 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
          
             
           
              
             
            
           
         
           
           
               
            
          
      
          
            
           
         
           
          
            
            
         
           
             
          
            
            
           
            
              
      
             
          
            
            
            
             
The World and the Real 49
            
          
            
            
             
              
 
           
          
           
           
               
           
            
              
            
            
             
            
             
              
           
               
             
             
          
       
The World and the Real
             
              
             
           
           
50 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
             
             
                  
               
             
               
                
               
               
            
            
 
              
              
             
             
           
            
          
           
           
           
          
            
           
    
           
            
            
            
          
               
             
              
  
The World and the Real 51
             
           
          
           
              
            
           
              
          
         
              
              
              
            
          
             
             
                 
               
             
   
            
               
            
             
           
            
         
          
            
          
             
             
             
             
      
52 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
            
          
            
           
             
            
           
           
              
          
            
a    das Ding          
   
            
          
           
          
            
            
          
           
           
               
            
             
             
         
            
         
Politics of Reality and the Political of the Real
          
            
            
            
The World and the Real 53
            
         
            
          
            
            
            
            
           
          
           
          
            
           
        
           
       
          
           
       
           
           
          
         
           
           
            
         
          
          
            
         
          
           
              
           
          
54 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
            

             
            
          
              
             
            
             
         
            
             
          
             
             
          
         
          
            
             
        
             
             
           
            
           
           
          
             

          
            
           
            
          
          
          
            
The World and the Real 55
          
           
            
          
             
             
            
 
               
             
            
           
           
         
           
             
            
            
          
             
          
       
             
              
            
         
            
          
           
          
            
            
           
               
                 
               
            
  
56 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
         
         
             
            
        
           
         
         
             
        
        
           
       
         
           
      
Conclusion
           
           
          
         
           
          
           
          
        
             
              
              
             
            
         
             
          
       
The World and the Real 57
           
              
          
      
              
               
      
         
          
             
              
          
           
              
            
            
          
            
             
          
            
              
           
            
          
           
            
           
           
          
             
           
           
          
           
          
             
           
58 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
        
            
            
          
          
            
            
              
            
           
           
           
          
     
             
            
           
                
            
          
               
                
           
              
              
             
             
         
     
           
               
               
             
The World and the Real 59
References
        
        
   
       
      
            
    
          
     
         
        
    
          
  
          
  
         
   
         
         
    
         
  
           
         
  
       
 
         
        
            
           
   
           
         
60 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
            
        
            
          

           
            
 
           
           
          
        
           
 
           
   
           
   
          
        
       
         
 
       
     
        
   
            
  
        
         
  
        
          

            
        
The World and the Real 61
         
          
   
       
   
      
        
       
   
        
        
       
           

       
         
      
     
        
        
            

           
    
        
         
        
        
           
     
           
  
         
 
        
            
        
62 Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw
       

        
Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl, Nikolai Roskamm (eds.)
[Un]Grounding
Post-Foundational Geographies
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Cover layout: Nikolai Roskamm
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Contents
Introduction
Friederike Landau, Lucas Pohl and Nikolai Roskamm

9
Theoretical (Re)Positionings
The World and the Real:
Space and the Political after Lacan
Lucas Pohl and Erik Swyngedouw

43
Encountering Post-Foundationalism in J.K. Gibson-Graham’s
Space of Pregnant Negativity
Or, Ungrounding the Ground Itself
Jens Kaae Fisker

63
On Shaky Ground:
Thinking Lefebvre
Nikolai Roskamm

81
Institution and Dislocation:
Philosophical Roots of Laclau’s Discourse Theory
of Space and Antagonism1
Oliver Marchart

99
Badiou as a Post-Foundationalist
Matthew G. Hannah

117
Spacing Rancière’s Politics
Mark Davidson and Kurt Iveson

133
[
Un
]
Grounding Geographies
[
Un
]
Grounding Agonistic Public Space:
Approaching Mouffe’s Spatial Theory via Museums
Friederike Landau

153
Always Geographize!
Fredric Jameson and Political Space
Clint Burnham

175
The Most Sublime Geographer:
Žižek with Place, Distance, and Scale
Lucas Pohl and Paul Kingsbury

197
Modelling the Market as a Socio-Spatial Structure:
Theory Triangulation between Post-Foundational Discourse Analysis
and Relational Sociology
Tomas Marttila

217
Post-Foundationalism in the City
(Non)Building Alliances:
Approaching Urban Politics through Siegfried Kracauer’s Concept of
Nonsolution
Gabu Heindl and Drehli Robnik

243
Politicizing Air:
On the Political Effects of Spatial Imagination
Anneleen Kenis and Matthias Lievens

261
Materialization of Antidiscipline:
Small-Scale Post-Foundationalism Using Michel de Certeau’s Clash
of Strategies and Tactics
Sören Groth

279
How Does The [Un]Grounded Interface Generate Possibilities for
Spatial Alternatives?
Mohamed Saleh

301
A Post-Foundational Conception of Politics and Space:
Henri Lefebvre and Jacques Rancière revisited in Resisting Athens
Daniel Mullis

323
Authors
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343
... The world of psychoanalysis is an unstable, shifting and incomplete register that does not exist as a whole, because there is something 'revolting' against it. This revolt is the Real (see also Pohl and Swyngedouw, 2021a). 4 Since the Real is nonrepresentable from the standpoint of the world, it can only be registered in a distorted way. ...
Article
The world of today has been increasingly described in post-apocalyptic terms. This paper is dedicated to the ruin as an emblematic image of this post-apocalyptic present. In contrast to the debates surrounding ‘ruin porn’, which critically engage ruin imagery as creating apocalyptic fantasies that distort the non-apocalyptic social realities of places facing urban decline, this paper claims that the ruin image is providing a proper image of today’s post-apocalyptic condition. Based on Jacques Lacan’s concept of the Real, which is defined as designating ‘what does not work in a world’, the paper traces how the ruin can be considered as a ‘piece of the Real’ that allows to condence and materialize the non-working dimensions of the world today. The paper identifies three motifs in ruin porn as Reals of the post-apocalyptic present: the wastelands produced by the catastrophic drive of capital, the unnatural natures faced by the ecological crisis, and the absence of humans, which resembles the radical absence of any common sense of humanity today. By identifying these motifs in ruin porn, the paper aims to offer a referential frame for navigating through a world haunted by the specter of permanent crisis. In the conclusion, the paper addresses the hopelessness expressed in ruin porn as a starting point to reflect on the possibilities of building a future in the ruins of the present.
... It causes disturbance, disorder and disruption. Some claim that the political is structurally compatible with the psychoanalytic expression of 'the unconscious' as it denotes something that cannot be symbolized by the existing/dominant order and can only be discerned in contingent ways (Pohl and Swyngedouw, 2021). Others consider the political as a spectral category with reference to Jacques Derrida. ...
Article
Full-text available
The paper turns to interdisciplinary museum and ruin studies with the objective to think about space, politics and the political. Situated in a post-foundational understanding of political difference, which roughly distinguishes between ‘politics’ as the realm of standardized, normalized positions and procedures of power, and ‘the political’ as the irreducible antagonistic dimension of political life, we explore the mutual interpenetrations as well as political divergences between ruins and museums. For this purpose, we consider ‘museumification’ as a socio-spatial process that tends to inscribe an order of ‘politics’, whereas we view ‘ruination’ as a potentiality to create socio-material voids, which may (re)activate moments of ‘the political’. In this framework, the museum signifies an attempt to conserve, exhibit and transmit selected narratives of the past, potentially evoking a topographical notion of space, whereas the ruin dislocates, ambiguates and dismantles orders of the past, possibly leading to a topological understanding of space. After revisiting accounts of the museumification of ruins, we argue that the latter can be understood as a process which disambiguates, commodifies and thus depoliticizes ruins as polyvalent matters. We introduce the ‘ruination of museums’ as a material, discursive and affective process, bringing attention to the interrelated and conflicting modes of absence and presence in time and space. In ‘ruined museums’, museums and ruins coalesce into spatio-temporal tropes that attend to complex and complicated narratives of time, space and history. In ‘ruined museums’, the ossified politics of place(s) become mobilized via ‘the political’. To illustrate this conceptual proposition of the ‘ruined museum’, we engage with the 9/11 memorial museum Reflecting Absence in New York City. Through this empirical case, we hope to advance a post-foundational understanding of space that acknowledges (urban) public places as inhabited and politicized by the agency, materiality and spatiality of ghostly presences.
... Psychoanalytic Lacanian thought has been central to such post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored and repressed (see Pohl and Swyngedouw 2021). Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of 'the political' can help opening up a space for traversing the fantasies sustained by the cosmopolitan liberal intelligentsia. ...
Article
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This paper engages centrally with the political impotence of much of critical theory today and suggests how a Lacanian-inflected perspective may offer a possible way out of the present intellectual and political deadlock. Lacanian thought has been central to many post-foundational theorizations of the political, yet the radical implications of a Lacanian-inflected reading of the political remain largely unexplored. Our prime objective is to demonstrate that a Lacanian theorization of ‘the political’ can help to open up a space for articulating the current deadlock that locks the Left in a state of melancholy, anxiety, depression, and/or impotent acting out. After a brief conceptual introduction to the notion of ‘the political’, the paper mobilizes and develops the Lacanian theory of the subject. This permits opening up the terrain of psychoanalyisis to the question of the political as that what does not work in the world. The key insights of a Lacanian-inflected political theory are then explored through the work of some of the key critical political theorists: Jacques Rancière, Slavoz Žižek, and Alain Badiou.
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The current epoch is often described by cultural theorists as facing an ontological turn with regard to the question of nature. In the Anthropocene, ‘Mother Nature’ makes space for ‘Gaia’, a nature that is inseparably related to culture. In turn, Gaia has vehemently been criticized as a harmonious figure of whole-ism. Utilizing a psychoanalytic framework, this paper traces the shift from Nature to Gaia through Jacques Lacan's ‘formulas of sexuation’. From a Lacanian standpoint, sexual difference paves the way towards two different ways of relating nature and culture. Addressing the case of ruination, the author engages with the two underlying ontologies taking place in debates on nature: the narrative of Mother Nature based on a ‘masculine’ ontology, and the notion of Gaia as following a ‘feminine’ ontology. The paper concludes by outlining a feminine reading of the Anthropocene that captures nature and culture as ruined and immanently out of joint.
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If there is one object that characterizes the rising interest of human geographers to study the ruins of the recent past, it is the Michigan Central Station in Detroit. While no city has more often been used as a blueprint for contemporary urban decline than Detroit, its ruined train station has become the global symbol for ‘ruin porn’. Ruin porn is often criticized for stimulating the viewer’s imagination instead of taking into account what ‘really’ goes on in the city. However, in this article, I argue that ruin porn does not create a fantasy of ruination, but on the contrary eliminates the space for fantasy. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, I explore how local ruin gazers turn Michigan Central Station into what Jacques Lacan calls a ‘sublime object’, a remainder of loss that triggers a strong nostalgia. Subsequently, I retrace how ruin porn ‘desublimates’ the ruin by exposing its ‘naked’ materiality, and how the first reopening of Michigan Central Station during its renovation ‘resublimates’ the object by projecting a comeback of Detroit onto its dilapidated walls. In conclusion, I call for deeper consideration of the intertwining between fantasy and materiality in geographic research on urban decay.
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There is a broad consensus that psychoanalytic theory cannot offer an account to further engage with the ontological turn toward the object that human sciences face today. In particular, the structuralist side of psychoanalysis, most prominently promoted by Jacques Lacan, is supposed to be unable to grasp an object independently from the subject. Against this background, it is no surprise that ‘object-oriented’ geographers ignore psychoanalytic theory. My aim is to investigate the interstices between the object-oriented turn and Lacanian psychoanalysis. I argue that the critiques miss a crucial aspect of Lacan’s ontology: he does not question that there are objects located ‘out there’, but rather adds that psychoanalysis engages with another object whose location remains uncertain. I follow Lacan’s most important invention, the object a, to argue that this object is crucial to understanding the ontology of Lacan as an ‘object-disoriented’ ontology. While object-oriented approaches in cultural geography give ontological priority to the material conditions of existence, Lacanian ontology allows us to understand how material objects become spectralized through an immaterial surplus. To substantiate this claim, I explore the role of anxiety with regard to the Sathorn Unique Tower, an abandoned skyscraper sitting in the middle of Bangkok. Widely known as the ‘Ghost Tower’, this ruin is internationally considered to be haunted. By focusing on a movie and an interview about the Ghost Tower as well as my own ethnographic observation of it, I not only explore the topological dimension of the ghost but also demonstrate that it is precisely the impossibility of localization that enables an object to disorientate the subject.
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A sharp increase in racism and xenophobia, alongside an increase in philanthropy and charity, mark Europe’s Janus-faced reaction to the social consequences of the economic crisis. This paper goes beyond the racism/xenophobia vs. charity/philanthropy dualism, arguing that these seemingly antithetical responses have more in common than we may think. (1) Both are equally divisive and ‘othering’ practices. Whilst racism transforms human beings into de-humanized entities in order to be able to hate them, charity transforms human beings into dependent objects in order to be able to offer aid. (2) Both are strongly affective yet deeply apolitical reactions of people who lose their political agency as they become imbued with fear and insecurity; of citizens who turned into indebted apolitical objects, when social solidarity and welfare provision turned from a collective responsibility into a private affair. When housing, healthcare, etc. became accessible mainly through private loans and mortgage markets, private welfare debt became the biopolitical tool that enrolled the workforce into volatile financial speculative practices and turned citizens into fear-imbued ‘idiots’, i.e. private individuals who can only care for their private matters. Understanding the biopolitics of privatized welfare and increased household debt as the process that drives this transformation of citizens into ‘idiots’ allows us to move beyond the false dilemma of charity vs. racism, in search of a politics of solidarity.
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There is an emerging intellectual body of thought on the dynamics of de-politicisation and the “disappearance of the political”. In the first part of the paper, I shall consider the process of post-politicisation. In a second part, I shall re-centre the political by drawing on the work of a range of political theorists and philosophers who have begun to question this post-politicising process. The theme of the final section will consider the contours of a reawakening of the democratic political understood as a political order contingently based on the axiomatic presumption of equality of each and every one in their capacity to act politically.
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This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.
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The current epoch is often described by cultural theorists as facing an ontological turn with regard to the question of nature. In the Anthropocene, ‘Mother Nature’ makes space for ‘Gaia’, a nature that is inseparably related to culture. In turn, Gaia has vehemently been criticized as a harmonious figure of whole-ism. Utilizing a psychoanalytic framework, this paper traces the shift from Nature to Gaia through Jacques Lacan's ‘formulas of sexuation’. From a Lacanian standpoint, sexual difference paves the way towards two different ways of relating nature and culture. Addressing the case of ruination, the author engages with the two underlying ontologies taking place in debates on nature: the narrative of Mother Nature based on a ‘masculine’ ontology, and the notion of Gaia as following a ‘feminine’ ontology. The paper concludes by outlining a feminine reading of the Anthropocene that captures nature and culture as ruined and immanently out of joint.
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Harm reduction is generally presented as the compassionate, pragmatic alternative to prohibitionist drug policy. This article examines harm reduction in relation to debates over the revanchist city in urban geography, arguing that it should be understood as an ambivalent social policy. I advance a psychoanalytic conceptualization of ambivalence to explain the often contradictory character of contemporary drug policy, including harm reduction. Calling attention to the centrality of enjoyment (jouissance) in debates over drug policy, I argue that fantasies about the enjoyment of the Other play a crucial role in drug policy, with profound consequences for marginalized drug users.
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Nationalism is central to global sports events such as the Olympics and the men's football World Cup. Recognizing the unique capacity of these multibillion dollar 'mega-events' to stage captivating spectacles and generate intense enjoyment for vast numbers of people, researchers usually examine sport-induced nationalism in terms of the socioeconomic staging of national identities, meanings. and ideologies. And yet, few theoretical and empirical studies ask the following questions: Why are nationalist sports spectacles so emotive for so many people? How do sports fans enjoy these televised global events in concrete local settings of, for example, cafes, streets, and sports bars? This paper attempts to provide answers by drawing on Slavoj Zizek's Lacanian concept of the "national Thine" and one month of research on the 2006 FIFA World Cup on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I explore how the national Thing-a specific incarnation of social enjoyment -takes place in people's consumption of the World Cup in terms of community, belief. and anxiety.