This work seeks to address the major texts of Slavoj Zizek using a reading methodology which treats political philosophy as a practice, rather than a series of logical propositions or claims of truth or falsity. Philosophy is herein understood as a field of relations among authors who occupy precise theoretical and political coordinates. Writing produces and reproduces an author's position within this field via the way in which an author communicates with his/her peers, draws on past concepts, and designs new ones. This paper argues that Zizek cannot usefully be grasped as a theorist attempting to provide positive political solutions or analyses, but rather as a 'negative' force who occupies an impossible position by attempting to negate his peers and popular contemporary theoretical concepts - Zizek wishes to create a new intellectual space where political possibilities can be rethought and rediscovered, and he does this in his texts by ephemerally occupying multiple positions only to displace them.

This work seeks to address the major texts of Slavoj Zizek using a reading methodology which treats political philosophy as a practice, rather than a series of logical propositions or claims of truth or falsity. Philosophy is herein understood as a field of relations among authors who occupy precise theoretical and political coordinates. Writing produces and reproduces an author's position within this field via the way in which an author communicates with his/her peers, draws on past concepts, and designs new ones. This paper argues that Zizek cannot usefully be grasped as a theorist attempting to provide positive political solutions or analyses, but rather as a 'negative' force who occupies an impossible position by attempting to negate his peers and popular contemporary theoretical concepts - Zizek wishes to create a new intellectual space where political possibilities can be rethought and rediscovered, and he does this in his texts by ephemerally occupying multiple positions only to displace them.

According to Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, our postmodern era and its correlate political problematic requires a shift in positing socialist strategy. Their wager is that by shifting away from essentialist Marxism, and towards a post-Marxist theory of hegemony which they adapt from Gramsci, the analytic for overturning contemporary hegemony will take the form of a radical democratic politics. My contention is that in shifting away from essentialist Marxism through their post-structuralist deconstructive stance, Laclau and Mouffe overstep and make their analytic for socialist strategy impotent. In order to show where Laclau and Mouffe have gone wrong I use primarily the work of Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek in order to demonstrate how a post-structuralist theory of ideology need not be a post-Marxist theory of ideology. / Master of Arts

<p>This thesis coheres around the issue of collective political mobilisation within one part of the contemporary feminist movement, or more specifically, within the Swedish feminist zine community. A feminist zine, also commonly referred to as Grrrlzine or femizine, is a small non-commercial and non-professional publication, which is distributed by channels other than that of the mainstream media.</p><p>The aim of the thesis is to examine what role the 'name' ' sisterhood' has in the constitution of a feminist zine community. Further, it is to explore the ways in which this 'name' is expressed and the precise function this name has within the community itself. That 'sisterhood' is necessary for a feminist politics is, according to the vast majority of the zines studied, obvious. Nevertheless the issue of what sisterhood 'is' or what it ’ought to be’ is constantly under negotiation. In this thesis I study how the name sisterhood works to create a collective feminist identity – even if this very 'name' comes to be articulated in, sometimes radically, different forms.</p><p>In order to conduct my analysis, I have taken several theoretical decisions. First, I have chosen to frame the zine community in accordance with the term communitas, defined as a collective identity constituted in terms of its opposites, by that which it is not. In this specific case, this Other consists of the commercial media, that is also, conceived as an effect of a wider patriarchal threat.</p><p>Second, to understand the differences which exist within this community, I have chosen to develop three feminist logics, to capture some quite contradictory articulatory strategies. They are referred to as ’liberal feminist’, ’radical feminist’ and ’post feminist’. The concept of logics allows me to interpret how it is that three different (and sometimes competing) feminist traditions can be found in the zine community, and commonly how in a single zine, or a single text, the three logics can coalsce.</p><p>As mentioned above, it is the 'name' sisterhood that provides the glue that holds the feminist zine community together. To understand this I have analyzed sisterhood by way of the concept 'empty signifier', that is, a 'name' which is partially emptied of meaning and which serves as a surface of inscription for a variety of feminist demands, demands that in themselves may have very little, or even nothing in common.</p><p>Finally, the ideas outlined in the thesis call for reflexivity, that is, for an explicit meta-analysis of the conduct of one’s own research process. In this thesis I discuss the problematic arising when the feminist researcher studies a feminist movement, and the inevitable blurring of political partisanship and theoretical analysis that takes place. Here I pay particular attention to the frontiers that a political community is always-already in a process of re-negotiating, and how the researcher is herself part of this very re-negotiation.</p>

This dissertation provides a particular Marxian class analytical political economy critique of post-Marxism. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which different positions within post-Marxism continue to essentialize the conceptualizations of class and capitalist economy. What distinguishes this dissertation from other dominant critiques of post-Marxism is the anti-essentialist epistemological and ontological position it adopts. By adopting an anti-essentialist epistemological position the dissertation is able to demonstrate the discontinuities and continuities between post-Marxism and the Marxian tradition. The dissertation does this by reading the heterogeneous and disparate post-Marxian approaches as so many different ways to "resolve" the central tension of the Althusserian mode of production debate of the 1960s and 1970s: The tension between the desire to think the overdetermination of social reproduction and transformation and the effort to explain the stability of class domination . The dissertation argues one of the effects of this tension to be the lapse of the Althusserian mode of production problematic into reproductionism .Drawing extensively on the scholarship of Ernesto Laclau and Étienne Balibar, the dissertation substantiates the ways in which the post-Althusserian post-Marxism has developed a critique of the reproductionist tendency of this problematic and constructed a theory of the social that allows for conceiving social reproduction to be both provisionally stable and overdetermined. The dissertation argues, however, that such "resolutions" have failed in different ways to dislodge the constitution of class and capitalist reproduction from essentialist narratives, with the effect of restaging the ontological duality of the mode of production problematic (i.e., overdetermination vs. determinism qua reproductionism ) in a new form: The contingency of politics and the necessity of class and capitalist reproduction. After showing the limitations of some of the prominent positions within post-Althusserian post-Marxism, the dissertation concludes with an alternative post-Althusserian Marxian perspective, initially developed by Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff, that provides an overdetermined understanding of social and economic reproduction from the entry point of class qua surplus.

This thesis coheres around the issue of collective political mobilisation within one part of the contemporary feminist movement, or more specifically, within the Swedish feminist zine community. A feminist zine, also commonly referred to as Grrrlzine or femizine, is a small non-commercial and non-professional publication, which is distributed by channels other than that of the mainstream media. The aim of the thesis is to examine what role the 'name' ' sisterhood' has in the constitution of a feminist zine community. Further, it is to explore the ways in which this 'name' is expressed and the precise function this name has within the community itself. That 'sisterhood' is necessary for a feminist politics is, according to the vast majority of the zines studied, obvious. Nevertheless the issue of what sisterhood 'is' or what it ’ought to be’ is constantly under negotiation. In this thesis I study how the name sisterhood works to create a collective feminist identity – even if this very 'name' comes to be articulated in, sometimes radically, different forms. In order to conduct my analysis, I have taken several theoretical decisions. First, I have chosen to frame the zine community in accordance with the term communitas, defined as a collective identity constituted in terms of its opposites, by that which it is not. In this specific case, this Other consists of the commercial media, that is also, conceived as an effect of a wider patriarchal threat. Second, to understand the differences which exist within this community, I have chosen to develop three feminist logics, to capture some quite contradictory articulatory strategies. They are referred to as ’liberal feminist’, ’radical feminist’ and ’post feminist’. The concept of logics allows me to interpret how it is that three different (and sometimes competing) feminist traditions can be found in the zine community, and commonly how in a single zine, or a single text, the three logics can coalsce. As mentioned above, it is the 'name' sisterhood that provides the glue that holds the feminist zine community together. To understand this I have analyzed sisterhood by way of the concept 'empty signifier', that is, a 'name' which is partially emptied of meaning and which serves as a surface of inscription for a variety of feminist demands, demands that in themselves may have very little, or even nothing in common. Finally, the ideas outlined in the thesis call for reflexivity, that is, for an explicit meta-analysis of the conduct of one’s own research process. In this thesis I discuss the problematic arising when the feminist researcher studies a feminist movement, and the inevitable blurring of political partisanship and theoretical analysis that takes place. Here I pay particular attention to the frontiers that a political community is always-already in a process of re-negotiating, and how the researcher is herself part of this very re-negotiation.

This article proposes an approach to contemporary transformations of the legal, from the articulation between critical theory of law and the Lacanian left. On the one hand, it is stated that in contemporary times, under the dominance of the capitalist discourse, the legal has undergone a metamorphosis that can be characterized as the passage from bourgeois legal form to the right to jouissance. On the other hand, this paper claims that the law of populism can become, as residue of that discourse that it fails to reabsorb, a device capable of producing cuts on the capitalist circuit. In this context, the capitalist revolution refers to the radical change in policies and institutions and legal forms that lacks an emancipatory orientation and, on the contrary, promotes the consolidation and deepening of its repetition and reproduction. In this sense, identification with the subversive can become a mean by which the law of populism is capable of promoting the production of memories of terrorism that reinstate the social antagonism as a way of extracting a truth from the capitalist discourse for the return-invention of the political in its hegemonic form. / Este artículo propone un abordaje de las transformaciones contemporáneas de lo jurídico desde la articulación entre teoría crítica del derecho e izquierda lacaniana. Por un lado, se afirma que, en la época contemporánea bajo el predominio del discurso capitalista, lo jurídico ha sufrido una metamorfosis que podemos caracterizar como el paso de la forma jurídica burguesa al derecho al goce. Por otro lado, se sostiene que, en tal contexto, el derecho del populismo puede constituirse, en tanto residuo que aquel discurso falla en reabsorber, en un dispositivo susceptible de producir cortes al circuito capitalista. En este marco, la revolución capitalista refiere al cambio radical en instituciones y formas políticas y jurídicas que carece de una orientación emancipatoria y que, por el contrario, promueve la consolidación y profundización de su repetición y reproducción. En tal sentido, la identificación con lo subversivo puede constituirse en una vía por la cual el derecho del populismo sea capaz de promover la producción de memorias del terrorismo que reinstauren al antagonismo social como modo de sustraer una verdad al discurso capitalista para el retorno-invención de la política en su forma hegemónica.

v anglickém jazyce Proposed thesis focuses on the writings of french theoretician Jacques Rancière. Particular emphasis is put on a manner, in which the spheres of aesthetics and politics appear and intervine in Rancière's works. The consequence of forementioned delimitation of the subject of my interest is that the thesis doesn't fully embody Rancière's thought. Mainly because of the restricted space, i omitted Rancière's historiographical works and also texts that deal with the narrowly defined questions of literature and film. Despite of those limitations, my goal is to provide a monographical introduction to Rancière's thought. This monograph, on the one hand, doesn't claim the complete coverage of Rancière's works, but it aims, on the other hand, to provide the overall insight into the essential questions that shaped (and still shape) Rancière's thought.

社會大眾普遍認為台灣乃是一個開放的社會，階級之間存在著流動的可能。然而，由文獻資料以及近期報導皆可發現，台灣的工人確實存在著階級流動障礙，這使得工人階級複製的現象產生。 階級複製不僅確保了資本主義的生產，更延續優勢階級的利益。在此過程中，意識形態扮演了重要角色。對此，文化馬克思主義主張以「文化」作為分析的類別，以瞭解特定階級的常識與生活方式，並進而解構意識形態對特定階級的作用。本研究藉由文獻資料與個案訪談方法，探討工人家庭與學校教育所傳遞的意識形態在階級複製過程中的作用。 雖然，現今本研究無法發掘這些受訪的工人階級，具有後馬克思主義所提的真正解放特質的反抗。然而，即使如此，以葛蘭西的觀點來看，我們可以相信工人階級潛藏的工人意識，將可藉由知識份子的表達與行動而被激發成形。觀察近來台灣的社會運動，我們知道已有知識份子起而行動，進行改革了，而這正是台灣社會開始改變的基礎。 / It is generally believed that Taiwan is an open society in which it is possible to move among classes. However, according to both recent news reports and research literature, there are in fact substantial barriers against class mobility, which, in turn, lead to the emergence of the phenomenon of working class reproduction. Class reproduction not only ensures the proper functioning of the capitalist production process, but also the preservation of the interest of the privileged classes. In this process, ideology plays an important role. Regarding this, cultural Marxism proposes using “culture” as a category for analysis in order to understand the common sense and life style of specific classes and to further deconstruct the effect of ideology on those classes. In this study, we use both reference materials from the literature as well as case studies to investigate the effect of ideology transmitted through working class families and school education on the process of class reproduction. Even though our research cannot ascertain if the working class people interviewed indeed possess the “authentic emancipatory promise” as proposed by the post-Marxists, we still could believe, in accordance to Gramsci’s point of view, the hidden class consciousness of the workers will be realized through stimulation by the expressions and actions of the intellectuals. Through observations of recent social movements in Taiwan, we realize members of the intelligentsia have already started to act to introduce reforms. This will sow the seed for the beginning of a wave of change in the Taiwanese society.

This thesis is empirically grounded in New Zealand's restructuring of unemployment and taxation policy in the 1980s and 1990s. Theoretically it is inspired by a post-Marxist discourse analytical approach that focuses on discourses as political strategies. This approach has made it possible, through an analysis of changing citizenship discourses, to understand how the neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime proceeded via debate and struggle over unemployment and taxation policy. Debates over unemployment and taxation in New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s reconfigured the targets of policy and re-ordered social antagonism, establishing a neoliberal citizenship regime and centring political problematic. This construction of a neoliberal citizenship regime involved re-specifying the targets of public policy as consumers and taxpayers. In exploring the hegemonic discourse strategies of the Fourth Labour Government and the subsequent National-led governments of the 1990s, this thesis traces the process of reconfiguring citizen subjectivity initially as 'social consumers' and participants in a coalition of minorities, and subsequently as universal taxpayers in antagonistic relation to unemployed beneficiaries. These changes are related back to key discursive events in New Zealand's recent social policy history as well as to shifts in the discourses of politicians that address the nature of the public interest and the targets of social policy. I argue that this neoliberalisation of New Zealand's citizenship regime was the outcome of the hegemonic articulatory discourse strategies of governing parties in the 1980s and 1990s. Struggles between government administrations and citizen-based social movement groups were articulated to the neoliberal project. I also argue that in the late 1990s, discursive struggle between the dominant parties to define themselves in difference from each other reveals both the 'de'contestation of a set of neoliberal policy prescriptions, underscoring the neoliberal political problematic, and the privileging of a contributing taxpayer identity as the source of political legitimacy. This study shows that the dynamics of discursive struggle matter and demonstrates how the outcomes of discursive struggle direct policy change. In particular, it establishes how neoliberal discourse strategies evolved from political discourses in competition with other discourses to become the hegemonic political problematic underscoring institutional practice and policy development.