Suture Criticism As Political Analysis——Slavoj Zizek Students

This paper is an attempt to make a thorough examination of Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural theorist, treating Zizek’s theoretical writings as a kind of suture criticism, a production of universal knowledge, and a political criticism that aims to reach and solve the contemporary political impasse.The concept of suture had been theorized by Lacan since1960s, and it had been adopted by various theorists such as Jacques Alain-miller, Daniel Dayan, Heath and Ernesto Laclau in fields of psychoanalysis, film studies, politics. As a result, this concept opens up a flexible and broad space for thinking. Engaging with the dialectical relation between interior-exterior, subject-object and concrete-universal, Zizek revolutionizes this concept and breaks down the thinking paradigm of post-structuralism and de-constructionism, and finally returns to the problematique of universality and counter-attacks Post Theory’s abandonment of critical theory. Have that said, I tend to generalize Zizek’s theoretical writings as "suture criticism as political analysis". With two complementary signifiers—fantasy and objet petit a—Zizek sutures a significant fracture in Lacan’s psychoanalysis, that is, the opposition between the real and reality, and at the moment of finishing, produces an entirely new ideology and theory of subject.As political criticism, suture criticism as being-in-itself leads to the defending of the concept of ideology and the recreation of theory. Zizek conceptualizes contemporary thinking as "post-political" in the sense that, as the collapse of Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall, the struggle of ideologies and political debates are no longer necessary, and what matters is practicable ideas and well-ordered society. But Zizek refuses to accept this cynical reason embodied in this post-ideology world, so he tries to revolutionize Marx’s narrative and points out that, the symptom of the world today is that "they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it." Living in this thinking atmosphere and context, Zizek tries to maintain the legitimacy of the concept of ideology, and by reinventing this concept, returns to the political dimension of theory. The problem with traditional concept of ideology is that it holds that a certain group, by fabrication and cheating, make their partial interest universal, so the task of ideology criticism is to uncover this mechanism of universality. As a result, the traditional ideology criticism is trapped in a vicious circle:it is always deconstructing and de-enchanting, but still people are doing it. Considering that, Zizek boldly declares that the secret of ideology is nothingness, while the successful operation of ideology lies in the concealing of this nothingness, pretending that this nothingness is a secret that you can never find out. In spite of this conundrum, Zizek applies Lacan’s remark that "psychoanalysis ends with the identification with symptom and go through fantasy" to the field of ideology criticism, and rejects Derrida’s attempt to treat Marxism as a specter. He holds that ideology can never be erased easily, since all of our experience of reality is constructed by fantasy, and we can not get rid of symptom easily, either, because the coherence and continuity of subject is supported by symptom. Just like Lacanian psychoanalysts encouraging patients to identify with symptom, suture criticism is to reveal the wound and dare to admit that the world is finished constructing but imperfect, and the subject is a limited and failed existence.Based on that, Zizek turns to the task of reinventing subject, as subject of political action, capable of changing the objective world and the whole symbolic order. Zizek makes a distinction between subject and subjectivation. Subject results from the failure of interpellation, so Zizek points out that "subject is substance" emphasizing that subject is a void existence that can never signify itself. In this sense, Zizek distances himself from all post-structuralist versions of subject, which believes that the subject is fractured, fluid and highly instable, but it does nothing but reveals that Other—symbolic order—is fractured, incomplete and void. In the stage of being-in-itself, what suture criticism reveals is that the reality we are living in and experiencing is a fantansy construct for escape, while in the stage of being-for-itself, the limitedness of subject means the limitedness of the objective world, and as universal nothingness, the subject is to fill the void of Other. Zizek reinvents a subject of nothingness and void so that various subjectivities (of homosexual and minor ethnic) can be sutured, in which process, through the radical negativity of death drive, subject completely bury the symbolic order in actions, regain life and make plan for future. This is the subject that Zizek is calling for, and it will reinvent the symbolic order in actions.In the process of being-in-itself and being-for-itself, suture criticism realizes the production of new knowledge, i.e. the concrete university. Zizek agrees with post-structuralism’s judgment that we can never gain the real universality, and universality can only be maintained in concrete context. But via the criticism of Laclau’s concept of hegemony, Zizek remarks that there are more than one possibility of each concrete circumstance’s relation with universality, and each particularity, though can sublimated to be universality in the struggle for universality, is not equal to each other in the process of negotiation and struggle, as far as opportunity and power is concerned. This is why Zizek tries to open new space for suture criticism, and what suture stands for is the short circuit between particularity and universality. This is Zizek’s theoretical writing and the future of theory that he opens up.