42.Lacan’s politics of lack is misguided --- it’s too abstract and can’t solve politics
Thomassen, Department of Government, University of Essex, 4 (Dr Lasse, “LACANIAN POLITICAL THEORY: A REPLY TO ROBINSON”, BJPIR: 2004 VOL 6, P558-561)//trepka
In the May 2004 issue of this Journal, Andrew Robinson (2004) reviewed recent books by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, SlavojZizek, Chantal Mouffe and Yannis Stavrakakis under the heading ‘The politics of lack’. Robinson argues that a post-structuralist conception of politics oriented by a notion of constitutive lack and inspired by Lacanian psychoanalysis is fundamentally misguided. This approach to politics and political theory is guided by the idea that identity is constituted around a fundamental lack at the heart of the subject, and that identity is constituted through the identification with external objects, thus temporarily filling the lack. There are three basic problems with this approach to politics, according to Robinson. First, as it relies on an abstract ontology, it is unable to properly engage with concrete politics, and the study of politics is reduced to the subsumption of empirical cases to pregiven ontological categories, which the former merely exemplify. Second, the kind of radical democratic theory emerging from the lack/Lacanian approach is only radical in name, but in fact uncritical of existing liberal democracy. Finally, this approach is conservative and nihilistic, according to Robinson, because it refuses the possibility of progress.
43.Lacanian politics are too pessimistic --- too theoretical, precludes action and reinforces the worst aspects of the status quo
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