Couching Politics: Zizek's Rules for Radicals

Abstract

Lacan's theory of the four discourses and recent work by Slavoj Žižek indicate interesting new approaches to integrating politics and psychoanalytic theory. In the end, however, both of these approaches raise more questions than they answer. In particular, Žižek's political strategies fail at crucial points to differentiate themselves from the existentialist ethic of authentic gratuitous acts, from which they derive much of their inspiration as well as rhetorical force. In this paper, I turn to the neglected work of Saul Alinsky for help in adapting the work of Lacan and Žižek in formulating an alternative psychopolitics, which grounds its practices in “Real” political struggles. In particular, abstracting from Alinsky's case studies, I argue that publicity provides the engine that multiplies the effects of individual acts to the point that they take on social effects.