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Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Contemporary Visual Culture and the Acceleration of Identity Formation/Dissolution
Jonah Peretti
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This article demonstrates the psychological link between one-dimensionality and advertising.
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In the time that it
has taken to write and
publish this paper, Internet shopping
has entered mainstream culture. Every
major corporation in the world
has a web site offering
product information, interactive advertisements, and,
increasingly, the ability to buy
products on-line. Discount books (www.amazon.com),
pizza delivery (www.PizzaNet.net),
stocks (www.schwab.com),
and just about anything else
you can imagine (virtumall.com)
are available for purchase in
cyberspace. Internet based commerce exemplifies
and extends the trends in
capitalism that this paper attempts
to elucidate. In particular, World
Wide Web shopping accelerates the
rate at which a shopper
can acquire products. The only
thing that separates an advertisement
from a purchase is a
couple of mouse clicks. My
central contention is that late
capitalism not only accelerates the
flow of capital, but also
accelerates the rate at which
subjects assume identities. Identity formation
is inextricably linked to the
urge to consume, and therefore
the acceleration of capitalism necessitates
an increase in the rate
at which individuals assume and
shed identities. The internet is
one of many late capitalist
phenomena that allow for more
flexible, rapid, and profitable mechanisms
of identity
formation.Connecting capitalism and identity formation
requires extensive contextualization. A considerable
portion of this essay is
spent wading through the murky
waters of Lacanian and post-Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory. Evaluating competing theories
of identification is essential to
my project. What is meant
by identification? This preliminary question
informs my discussion of how
identification functions in the media
saturated world of late capitalism
and, more importantly, the issue
of how identities can be
fostered that resist the logic
of
commodification.
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1. Capitalism and Schizophrenia
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I focus my discussion of
identification by comparing two contradictory
texts. The first is the
groundbreaking essay by Fredric Jameson,
entitled, "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"
(1983). The second is Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari's controversial book Anti-Oedipus
(1983). Jameson's essay and Anti-Oedipus
present two distinct
perspectives on how subjects form
identities within late capitalism. Although
very different, both texts approach
identification through an analysis of
schizophrenia and capitalism. To further
explore these two themes, I
place these texts in conversation
with each other and with
other texts that focus more
narrowly on psychoanalytic studies of
contemporary visual
culture. Jameson associates postmodern aesthetic and
cultural movements with the psychoanalytic
category of schizophrenia. Borrowing from
Lacan, Jameson defines schizophrenia as
"the failure of the infant
to accede fully into the
realm of speech and language"
(Jameson 118). The schizoid neonate
fails to fully acquire language,
and as a result cannot
individuate, because the infant must
enter into a social/linguistic
field to develop an ego.
Jameson writes
that:
According to Jameson, the schizophrenic lacks a personal identity, is
unable to differentiate between self
and world, and is incapable
of experiencing continuity through
time.There are several reasons why
Jameson associates these attributes of
schizophrenia with postmodernism and late
capitalism. In many respects the
media culture of the late
twentieth century simulates schizoid experience.
The rapid fire succession of
signifiers in MTV style media
erodes the viewers sense of
temporal continuity. To use the
same words that Jameson uses
to describe schizophrenic experiences, the
images that flash across the
MTV viewers' retina are "isolated,
disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers which
fail to link up into
a coherent sequence." This postmodern
montage can have the effect
of disorienting the subject, and
may contribute to the egolessness
that is characteristic of
schizophrenia.Jameson is concerned that the
emerging postmodern art forms will
lack the subversive, critical function
that modernist art served. "[M]odernism
was oppositional art," asserts Jameson.
It "did not go well
with overstuffed Victorian furniture, with
Victorian moral taboos, or with
the conventions of polite society" (123-124).
As modernism lost its subversive
nature and became canonized
(i.e. Picasso, Elliot, Sartre, etc.)
it is unclear weather postmodernism
filled in as a radical
social/political movement. By destroying
the distinction between high and
low art, postmodern culture was
able to integrate itself into
the capitalist mass culture. MTV
can serve as our example
once again. For all its
sexual explicitness, MTV fails to
shock, and contributes to capitalist
culture more than it threatens
it. Thus, Jameson concludes that
"postmodernism is closely related to...
late capitalism" (125). Where modernism
often attacked the bourgeois society
from which it emerged, postmodernism
"replicates... reproduces... [and] reinforces... the
logic of consumer capitalism" (125).
Jameson leaves open the possibility
that "there is also a
way in which [postmodernism]... resists"
the logic of capitalism (125).
Nevertheless, he reveals his Marxist
background and modernist leanings through
his skepticism toward the political
potential of
postmodernism. Jameson links schizophrenia to postmodernism,
and postmodernism to consumer capitalism.
He is saying, in effect,
that contemporary capitalism has extended
the symptoms of schizophrenia to
the masses in the form
of postmodern culture. His formulation
sees both postmodernism and schizophrenia
as cultural forces that scramble
and confuse. The schizophrenic confusion
destroys the possibility of critical
perspectives, such as those found
in modernist traditions. In a
fragmented cultural milieu, capitalist, consumer
culture can thrive unopposed. When
Jameson diagnoses our culture as
schizophrenic, he is telling us
that our culture is not
fully human. A schizophrenic culture
fails "to accede fully into
the realm of speech and
language." (118) Like the schizophrenic,
such a culture is rootless,
separated from history, and outside
of "human time"
(119). Like Jameson, Deleuze and Guattari
see correspondences between capitalism and
schizophrenia, although they conceptualize the
relationship quite differently. This difference
stems in part from the
philosophies of the authors. Where
Jameson is a Marxist with
modernist sympathies, Deleuze and Guattari
could be classified as postmodernist,
or poststructuralist. Jameson would certainly
consider these author's work to
be part of (schizophrenic) postmodern1
cultural production. Furthermore, Jameson is
a modernist intellectual who studies
postmodernism while Deleuze and Guattari
can be described as postmodernist
theorists. Thus, when Deleuze and
Guattari discuss the relationship between
schizophrenia and capitalism, a postmodern
sensibility is always lurking in the
background.
According to Deleuze and Guattari, Freud does not like the
schizophrenic because s/he is
a direct affront to Freud's
psychoanalytic system. The schizophrenic has
not developed an ego, or
gone through the Oedipal process
of individuation. Thus, the schizoid
is "somewhere else, beyond or
behind or below" the Oedipal
triad that is so central
to Freudian analysis (23). The
schizoid has no "me" and
hence does not have an
unconscious that is preoccupied with
the Oedipal drama of daddy,
mommy, and
me.In attempts to cure schizophrenics,
Freudian psychoanalysts have often tried
to lead the schizophrenic down
the road to ego formation,
and normality. This has often
meant forcibly imposing the Oedipal
cycle, which is supposedly characteristic
of normal psychic development. Melanie
Klein is perhaps "the analyst
least prone to see everything
in terms of Oedipus" (Deleuze
and Guattari 45). Nevertheless, even
she was unremitting in her
attempts to oedipalize her psychotic
patients. When a psychotic child
named Dick came to see
her for therapy she encouraged
him to play with toy
trains. Deleuze and Guattari quote
Kline's first person account of the
session:
Kline's statements terrified the kid, causing him to run into
a closet to hide. Klein
responded to this by saying
that "[i]t is dark
inside mummy. Dick is inside
dark mummy" (45). No matter
what behavior the child exhibited,
Klein imposed an Oedipal interpretation.
The purpose of this treatment
was to make the disjointed
and incoherent behavior of the
patient coalesce into a normal
(i.e. Oedipal) identity
formation.Deleuze and Guattari see this
kind of treatment as a
form of terrorism. In the
course of such treatment
"[a]ll the chains of the
unconscious are...linearized, suspended from
a despotic signifier (i.e.
Oedipus)" (54). Indeed, they assert
that schizophrenics who are treated
this way often digress into
autism, which has unfortunately been
associated with schizophrenia. For Deleuze
and Guattari, it is the
analyst and the psychiatric ward
that make the schizoid sick,
and turn him/her into
a silent and psychologically unproductive
autist. The healthy schizoid has
an essentially productive (un)consciousness.
S/he does not fantasize.
Instead, Deleuze and Guattari assert,
s/he produces and makes the
real. This production of the real
is fundamentally incongruent with Freudian
and Lacanian models of the
unconscious. Freud and Lacan see
the unconscious as symbolic, fantasy
laden, and dramatic filled with
semiotic puzzles and ancient Greek
theater. Hence, for both authors
desire is associated with lack.
That is to say, desire
desires that which is fantasized,
repressed, wished for, or absent.
Desire is engaged entirely with
that which is lacking and
needs to be represented. Hence,
"desire gives way to a
representation" of that which is
lacking the phallus, the Oedipal
escapade, the ideal "I", etc.
(54). The schizoid, on
the other hand, is incapable
of experiencing lack. For him
or her the unconscious is
always productive and never fantastical.
Desire itself produces the real
and creates new
worlds. The Freudian unconscious is too
unproductive and otherworldly to entice
the schizoid into normality. It
has nothing to offer the
schizoid. Hence, the schizoid scrambles,
decodes, and reconfigures the psychoanalytic
dialogue transfiguring signifiers into the
real, and refusing to be
Oedipalized. Schizophrenics "escape coding, scramble
the codes, and flee in
all directions...[they are]: orphans
(no daddy-mommy-me), atheists
(no beliefs), and nomads
(no habits, no territories)" (Seem xxi). Deleuze
and Guattari's schizophrenic will not be
trapped by the power-laden and
despotic webs of signifiers that
saturate society and psychoanalytic
practice.It is the schizoid's ability
to scramble and decode that
Deleuze and Guattari associate with
contemporary capitalism. Like the schizophrenic,
capitalism can insert itself anywhere
and everywhere as a decoder
and scrambler.
Although,
Mobile, flexible capital is capable of inserting itself into any
cultural milieu. In countries as
different as Japan, Brazil, France,
and Kenya, capitalism is able
to take advantage of the
local symbolic order (Harvey 1989).
The forms that capitalism takes
in these various countries reflect
the symbolic order that the
capitalist machine has plugged into.
Thus, Deleuze and Guattari do
not characterize the capitalist machine
as monolithic or unitary it
does not have an "I",
an ego, or a unified
identity. It works instead as
a polymorphous destroyer of codes.
It continually breaks down the
cultural, symbolic, and linguistic barriers
that create territories and limit
exchange. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari
assert that "[c]ivilization is
defined by the decoding and
deterritorialization of flows in capitalist
production"
(244). It would seem that Deleuze
and Guattari are making a
move similar to Jameson's by
asserting that schizophrenia resembles and
is associated with the logic
of late capitalism. "Yet it
would be a serious error,"
assert Deleuze and Guattari, "to
consider the capitalist flows and
the schizophrenic flows as identical,
under the general theme of...
decoding" (244). Capitalism "produces schizos
the same way it produces
Prell shampoo or Ford cars"
but the schizos are not
salable. (245) Indeed, the schizophrenic
is locked up in institutions,
and turned into a "confined
clinical entity" (245). If the
schizophrenic really exemplified the culture
of capitalism, why aren't schizos
celebrated as heroes and heroines
in contemporary capitalist society? Deleuze
and Guattari conclude
that:
As capitalism decodes and deterritorializes it reaches a limit at
which point it must artificially
reterritorialize by augmenting the state
apparatus, and repressive bureaucratic and
symbolic regimes. The schizophrenic never
reaches such a limit. S/he
resists such reterritorialization, just
as s/he resists the
symbolic and despotic territorialization of
the oedipalizing
psychotherapist. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari disagree
with Jameson's argument that schizophrenia
reinforces and contributes to the
hegemony of capitalism. Instead, Deleuze
and Guattari see the schizophrenic
as capitalism's exterminating angel. For
them the schizo is a
radical, revolutionary, nomadic wanderer who
resists all forms of oppressive
power. They believe that radical
political movements should "learn from
the psychotic how to shake
off the Oedipal yoke and
the effects of power, in
order to initiate a radical
politics of desire freed from
all beliefs" (Seem xxi). Schizophrenic
sensibilities can replace ideological and
dogmatic political goals with a
radical form of productive desire.
This "desiring-production" brings the unconscious
into the real, and unleashes
its radical world-making potential. Productive
desire need not be solipsistic,
and includes the "group psychosis"
induced by radical postmodern artistic
creations and political movements. Neither
is desiring-production limited to clinical
schizophrenics. Desiring-production marks the schizophrenic
potential in everyone to resist
the power of despotic signifiers
and capitalist
reterritorialization.Deleuze and Guattari see schizophrenia
as a central part of
a subversive postmodern politics with
the radical potential to bring
down capitalism. Jameson's view could
not be more different. For
him, postmodern schizophrenic culture "replicates,"
"reproduces," and "reinforces" the logic
of capitalism (Jameson 125). How
can we resolve this contradiction
which transverses the divide between
modernism and postmodernism and highlights
the fundamentally different political sensibilities
of these two groups? It
is a contradiction which causes
us to question how psychoanalytical
concepts and capitalism resist and
reinforce each other. Most importantly,
it is a contradiction that
informs our reaction and resistance
to consumer capitalist
culture.
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2. Identification and Late Capitalist Visual Culturee
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Hoping for some insight into
a possible resolution to this
conflict, I turn to Jacques
Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Jean
Laplanche. I use Lacan to
show the importance that images
play in the process of
ego formation and identification. Barthes'
work helps to extend this
analysis to capitalist culture. He
explains how media images act
as Lacanian mirrors that cause
identity formations to be ideologically
laden. Laplanche's work adds a
much needed temporal dimension. Laplanche's
theory of time provides a
tool for understanding the contemporary
acceleration of visual culture and
its impact on
identification. Lacan's concept of the mirror
stage describes the process by
which the schizoid, polyperverse infant
first gains a sense of
having a unified identity. Lacan
asserts that this experience of
identity formation "leads us to
oppose any philosophy directly issuing
from the Cogito"
(1). The Cartesian concept of the self,
grounded in the self-evidence of the Cogito,
assumes that the
ego is pregiven, requires no
formation process, exists before the
world, and even goes so
far as to posit the
self as the analytic precondition
to the world's existence. Lacan's
work refutes this view by
demonstrating that the neonate is
forced into a world of
already existing social and semiotic
structures. The newborn must be
inserted into this linguistic order
and can only gain an
ego in relation to this
order. As Jameson told us
earlier, there is no "self", "ego", "I",
or "me" without
language. Perhaps the first semiotic stepping
stone on the road to
ego formation is the recognition
of one's own reflection: the
"Ideal-I". Lacan describes the process
whereby an infant first comes
to recognize itself in a
mirror. Before this point of
identification the child does not
conceptualize itself as a physically
and psychologically bounded individual. If
it is shown a mirror,
it will not recognize itself,
and will take little interest
in the light bouncing off
the glass. This changes sometime
after the infant's sixth month
when an identification occurs. Identification
is "the transformation that takes
place in the subject when
he assumes an image," or
imago (2). When the child
recognizes its own image "the
I is precipitated in a
primordial form" which Lacan refers
to as the "Ideal-I" (2).
In this way, ego formation
begins with a misrepresentation the
neonate mistakes itself for its
reflection.The reflection is a "mirage"
which represents an "exteriority in
which...[the child's] form is
certainly more constituent than constituted"
(2). That is to say,
the child's image is merely
a single component of the
child's being that metonymically represents
the child as a totality.
The ideality of the image
"contrast[s] with the turbulent
movements that the subject feels
to be animating him" (2).
The bounded and coherent symmetry
of the visual image, an
image which serves as a
(mis)representation of the child,
is utterly incongruent with the
polyperverse, schizoid nature of the
little "hommelette." Nevertheless, the force
of this misrepresentation is undeniable,
and marks the establishment of
"a relation between the organism
and its reality" (4). Thus,
it is at the mirror
stage that the neonate first
realizes that it is one
object among many. At this
point, it is able to
compare the way the imago
of it's own body relates
to other images in the
exterior
world. The child is normally exceedingly
happy with its new imago
often laughing and smiling at
the reflection. The situation changes
however, when the fictional nature
of the imago becomes apparent
to the child. The child
begins to realize that the
"Ideal-I", with which it was
so jubilant to identify, is
in fact incongruent with the
child's more complex constitution. This
results in "the identification with
the imago of the counterpart
and the drama of primordial
jealousy" (5). That is to
say, the child becomes alienated
from the "Ideal-I" and begins
to see it as another,
competing subjectivity. The love for
the "Ideal-I" gives way to
jealously and fear of competition.
This is the point at
which humans first learn to
desire the other, which in
this case is the idealized
imago of ones own body.
By linking desire with alterity,
the child moves beyond the
mirror stage into the world
of "socially elaborated situations" that
force the child to reconcile
its own ego with the
desire of the other
(i.e. that which is lacking),
and social, linguistic, and symbolic
constraint.This is how Lacan explains
ego formation and the subsequent
identification and alienation with idealized
(mis)representations. The story is
useful in the present context
for two reasons. First of
all, it details how the
schizoid comes to identify with
an imago and develops an ego.
Secondly, the conception of
the mirror stage has been
used extensively by media critics
to explain the force images
have in the regime of
consumer capitalism. The mirroring that
Lacan describes happens when a
woman looks at idealized images
in a fashion magazine, when
a teenager stares at a
poster of a rock star,
or when the man on
the street gazes up at
the Marlboro man on the
billboard. Such examples are omnipresent
in this media saturated
society.Roland Barthes experiences the pleasure
of the Lacanian mirror when
he visits the cinema: "In
the movie theater, however far
away I am sitting, I
press my nose against the
screen's mirror, against that "other"
image-repertoire with which I narcissistically
identify myself" (Barthes 348). Barthes'
short essay, "Leaving the Movie
Theater," illustrates how visual culture
lures viewers, producing pleasure, but
also communicating and transmitting
ideology.
The viewer "narcissistically identifies" with
an image-repertoire that defines the
ideological content of a period
in history. Barthes connects the
pleasure of a Lacanian identification
with ideological indoctrination. Like all
Lacanian identifications, this filmic experience
produces a misrecognition. The viewing
subject, "glued" to the screen,
mistakes himself or herself for
an ideologically laden "image-repertoire." In
this sense, the very process
of ego formation reinforces the
logic of a capitalist
society.Barthes implies that understanding the
image-repertoire of a society will
elucidate the types of (ideologically
laden) subject formations possible within
that society. What, then, is
the image-repertoire of late capitalist
society? Paging through a fashion
magazine such as Vogue
or Elle,
we encounter a variety of
radically different images: some models
are child-like, some are butch,
some are waifs, some are
tattooed, some wear elegant party
dresses, some lounge in torn
jeans. Closing the magazine and
taking the TV remote in
hand, we encounter a similar
visual cacophony. The viewer is
encouraged to identify with cops,
thieves, surfers, businessmen, princes, paupers,
house wives, and athletes, to
name but a few. Indeed,
on MTV all of these
characters may make an appearance
in the course of a
two minute video. Newspapers, movies,
billboards, and video games also
offer a stunning array of
images. Not only does each
of these mediums contain a
surprisingly varied image-repertoire, but a
late capitalist subject may encounter
all of these mediums in
a single
day.Thus, it is difficult to
isolate a particular ideology from
the image-repertoire of late capitalism.
What is noticeable is not
the content of the images
but the efficiency and rapidity
with which they are circulated
and consumed. Nevertheless, to promote
consumer capitalism the images must
have some content to create
the possibility for a mirror
stage identification. It is this
identification with a model, athlete,
or actor that encourages the
purchase of the product being
pitched. In order for an
advertisement in GQ
to be successful, it must
provoke an ego formation that
makes the product integral to
the viewer's identity. This fragile
ego formation must persist long
enough for the GQ
reader to purchase the
product.It is this commitment through
time, dependent on a Lacanian
ego formation, that is required
for advertisements to successfully entice
people into buying products. The
schizophrenic would make a terrible
shopper, because s/he "does
nothing, since to have a
project means to be able
to commit oneself to a
certain continuity over time" (Jameson
119-20). But, if the schizophrenic
is a terrible shopper, why
is schizophrenic consciousness associated with
consumer capitalism? This question forces
us to consider the relationship
between temporality and identity. Jean
Laplanche's recent work explores this
theme, providing us with a
psychoanalytic theory of
temporality. Following Freud, Laplanche associates the
experience of time with rhythm.
It is through changes in
excitation and the movement between
pleasure and unpleasure that we
develop our experience of time.
Laplanche quotes Freud: "Perhaps it [
the experience of time] is
the rhythm, the temporal sequence
of changes, rises and falls
in the quantity of stimulus"
(165). In my view, the
"rhythm" of consumer capitalism is
defined by the "flickering" (Burgin
10-11) images of the mass
media. As the word "flickering"
suggests, in late capitalist societies
the rhythm that constitutes temporality
is extremely rapid. How does
this historically specific rhythm influence
the formation and dissolution of
identities?Laplanche links temporality and identification
with the concept of "de-translation"
and "re-translation." The process of
de-translation is characterized by "the
splitting up of signifying sequences,"
that causes an individual to
question his or her current
identity (171). The psychoanalyst stimulates
de-translation in the analysand, so
that s/he can develop
an alternative, and, they hope,
less repressive, identity. This process
works because "the individual has
only too great a tendency
to recompose a unity, to
re-translate, to recast a synthetic
vision of himself and his
future" (171). It is this
proclivity to "recompose a unity"
that allows the individual to
project an identity into the
future.Hence the experience of time,
defined by Laplanche as rhythm,
is created through the continual
pulse of de-translation and re-translation.
De-translation requires a temporal discontinuity
which produces a re-translation. Thus,
in Laplanche's terms, time's rhythm
is marked by the ceaseless
pulse of de-translation and re-translation.
Re-translation produces a temporal commitment,
and de-translations allow that same
commitment to be revised or
replaced. This dual relation proves
essential to the workings of
consumer capitalism. It allows an
individual to identify with an
advertisement (re-translation), and project an
identity into the future that
requires the purchase of a
product. Simultaneously, other advertisements will
bombard the viewer, "splitting up
signifying sequences (de-translation)," and creating
the possibility for fresh identity
formations
(re-translation).In Lacanian terms, consumer capitalism
needs subjects who continually reenact
the infantile drama of mirror
stage identifications. These subjects must
oscillate quickly between schizophrenic consciousness
and idealized ego formations. Laplanche's
concept of translation adds a
temporal dimension to this analysis,
showing how the rhythm defined
by the capitalist media continually
renews the process of identity
formation and dissolution. Laplanche's work
leads me to a conclusion
that Laplanche never drew himself.
I assert that the increasingly
rapid rate at which images
are distributed and consumed in
late capitalism necessitates a corresponding
increase in the rate that
individuals assume and shed identities.
Because advertisements link identity with
the need to purchase products,
the acceleration of visual culture
promotes the hyper-consumption associated with
late
capitalism.Put differently, capitalism needs schizophrenia,
but it also needs egos.
The contradiction is resolved through
the acceleration of the temporal
rhythm of late capitalist visual
culture. This type of acceleration
encourages weak egos that are
easily formed, and fade away
just as easily. An essentially
schizo person can have a
quick ego formation, and buy
a new wardrobe to compliment
his or her new identity.
This identity must be quickly
forsaken as styles change, and
contradictory media images barrage the
individual's psyche. The person becomes
schizo again, prepared for another
round of Lacanian identification and
catalogue shopping. The "Ideal-I"s
that the capitalist media offer
are perhaps even less complex
than the infantile imago of
the child's own reflection. Needless
to say, such an ego
wears out fast, inspiring the
consumer to shop around for
another one.The acceleration of the process
of de-translation and re-translation has
necessitated new modes of shopping.
The consumer must be able
to make a purchase before
one fragile identity is replaced
by another. Late capitalist society
has seen the emergence of
numerous techniques to make purchases
more instantaneous: the global acceptance
of the credit card, catalogue
shopping, infomercials, the home shopping
network, and the emerging Internet-based
commerce. As I mentioned at
the beginning of this essay,
computer based shopping makes purchasing
as easy as double clicking
on the image of the
product you want. In this
instance, an identity formation would
only need to last 10
seconds to successfully engender a
purchase. When the process of
identification becomes this rapid, it
closely resembles the inability to
identify that characterizes
schizophrenia. The similarity between rapid fire
identifications and schizophrenia elucidates Deleuze
and Guattari's claim that schizophrenia
is "the very limit of
capitalism" (35). If we understand
the word "limit" in its
mathematical sense, we see that
the acceleration of visual culture
aims to produce a subject
that approaches, but does not
reach, a truly schizophrenic state.
In this respect, Jameson is
correct to be concerned that
postmodernism and schizophrenia reinforce, instead
of resist, consumer capitalism. Yet,
Deleuze and Guattari are quick
to point out that if
the schizophrenic flow transgresses a
certain limit, ego identification becomes
impossible altogether. In this scenario,
the urge to buy would
be utterly defused, and capitalism
would become
impossible.Despite the allure of Deleuze
and Guattari's revolutionary schizophrenic, it
is questionable how such a
figure could oppose capitalism. The
clinically schizophrenic live miserable and
solipsistic lives. Although they do
not contribute to the hyper-consumption
of late capitalism, they can
hardly be called revolutionary. Of
course, Deleuze and Guattari do
not propose that we should
actually strive to become schizophrenic.
Rather, they feel that we
can learn from the schizophrenic's
ability to escape the fascism
of despotic signifiers. But how
can we learn from the
schizophrenic's ability to de-translate oppressive
technologies of identification, and still
retain our
sanity? Deleuze and Guattari think that
the schizophrenic can teach us
to resist the psychoanalytic association
of desire and lack. It
is this association, Deleuze and
Guattari contend, that prevents desire
from becoming an essentially productive
faculty. For these authors,
"[d]esire does not lack anything;
it does not lack its
object" (26). Indeed, "[t]he
objective being of desire is
the Real in and of
itself" (27). These assertions are
paradoxical because they criticize psychoanalytic
theory using its own technical
language. Within the context of
psychoanalytic language, the idea that
desire produces the Real is
completely ridiculous. If the clinical
schizophrenic acts as if desire
produces the Real for psychoanalysts
it is only because s/he
is delusional and completely
isolated from the
Real.
2 Nevertheless, Deleuze and Guattari's concept
of a productive unconscious has
value if one moves outside
the strictures of psychoanalytic theory.
In contemporary society, there are
political actors who embody Deleuze
and Guattari's vision of the
radical schizophrenic. Who are these
schizos? Or as Deleuze asks
elsewhere, "Who are our nomads
today, our real Nietzcheans?" (Deleuze
20). Three groups, I believe,
practice a desire that is
divorced from the concept of
acquisition and lack: contemporary queer
activists and theorists, Slackers, and
postmodern artists. I conclude by
evaluating these movements in particular,
and schizophrenic politics in
general.
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3. A Radical Anti-Capitalist Schizophrenia?
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Among queer theorists, Judith Butler's
concept of performative politics is
compatible with Deleuze and Guattari's
notion of desiring-production. She identifies "
queer" politics as a milieu
that uses desire as an
essentially productive force. Butler refers
to,
In these examples the border between performance and politics is
blurred or erased. As this
border erodes, so does the
separation of desire and the
Real. Kiss-ins and excessive displays
of lesbian sexuality celebrate precisely
that which is not lacking:
homo-erotic affection and desire. In
these instances, desire is not
defined by lack. Instead, we
encounter a positive conception of
desire that is capable of
producing subversive politics. It is
desiring-production, and not "identity politics,"
that is essential to the
subversive politics that Butler
describes. Queer political practice is probably
the most fruitful use of
Deleuze and Guattari's concept of
the radical schizophrenic. Furthermore, other
late capitalist subjects have also
managed to separate desire and
lack. One example is the
"Slacker" phenomena. These media-savvy youth
consume the accelerated visual culture
of late capitalism, yet do
not develop ego formations that
result in consumer shopping. It
is as if the light
and sound from the television
is sufficient to satiate their
desire. Actual products become superfluous
the media itself is the
final object of consumption. This
refusal to consume defuses the
capitalist media's efforts to accelerate
the process of identity formation/
dissolution and capital accumulation. Although
hardly revolutionary, the Slacker's refusal
to identify may facilitate "forms
of community that are played
out over and above the
logic of commodity exchange" (Durkee
1995).The final schizophrenic subject I
will address is the postmodern
artist. According to Martha Rosler,
these artists produce "quotational work"
that appropriates material from diverse
sources often based on advertising
images from the dominate popular
culture (Rosler 73). Warhol's soup
cans, Liechtenstein's "cartoons," Duchamp's ready-mades,
and Koons' Michael Jackson statue
are all examples of this
form of appropriational or quotational
work. Such work can potentially
produce a schizophrenic consciousness for
art viewers by dissociating advertising
images from consumer products. By
transforming media images into "isolated,
disconnected, discontinuous material signifiers," these
artists make identification more difficult
(Jameson 119). Such work magnifies
the schizophrenic tendencies inherent in
capitalism, threatening to transgress what
Deleuze and Guattari call the
schizophrenic "limit of capitalism" (246).
If this limit is transgressed,
an advertisement can no longer
function as a Lacanian mirror.
Instead, it will be consumed
as art, and the consumer
product will be forgotten
altogether.Finally, Jameson's question remains: Can
schizophrenic social movements be effective
at resisting the logic of
late capitalism? The three political
and cultural movements of queer
activists, slackers, and postmodern artists,
suggest that a schizophrenic attitude
can effect some level of
resistance. Yet, these same examples
also highlight the limits of
a schizophrenic political practice. Queer
political movements have been quite
successful at subverting and challenging
heterosexist norms. More work needs
to be done, however, to
make this movement more than
just oppositional, subversive, and shocking.
What positive political vision do
we have for a world
where two men kissing in
public is no longer shocking?
This lack of a positive
political vision is more evident
in Slacker culture. Although, "slacking
off may produce endless local
instances of noncommodified social relations,
it cannot envision modes of
association that truly challenge...economic
structures" (Durkee 1995). These youth
may not contribute to capitalism,
but they do not mount
a challenge to it, either.
Postmodern artistic production encounters similar
problems. Rosler is skeptical about
the "alternative vision [that] is
suggested by such work...We
are not provided the space
within the work to understand
how things might be different"
(Rosler 72). The idea of
a different, better society is
absent or underdeveloped in these
examples of schizophrenic cultural and
political
movements.Returning to Laplanche's analysis, we
can say that Deleuze and
Guattari's revolutionary schizophrenic is skilled
at effecting "de-translations." This is
necessary in a society dominated
by heterosexist, racist, colonialist, and
sexist norms. As I have
argued, schizophrenic acts of de-translation
may also be somewhat effective
for resisting increasingly flexible and
accelerated modes of capital accumulation.
Yet, for Laplanche, de-translation is
followed by "a tendency to
recompose a unity" (179). This
is impossible a priori for
schizophrenic movements. Nevertheless, new unites
can prove to be politically
strategic and socially beneficial. Laplanche
imagines "a new synthesis of
translation...that is less partial,
less repressive, less symptomatic" (171).
In political terms, this new
translation evokes a vision of
a society that is more
inclusive. It also replaces a
schizophrenic refusal to identify, with
a directive to form identities
that oppose those offered by
the capitalist
media. I am not proposing that
the unity produced by re-translations
is politically superior to schizoid
de-translations. Instead, I encourage radical
people to explore the political
possibilities of both de-transitional and
re-transitional stances. Advertising has successfully
used both these strategies to
accelerate identity formation/dissolution and,
by extension, consumer capitalism. There
is no reason that radical
groups could not use similar
methods to challenge capitalism and
develop alternative collective identities. The
contemporary focus on critical and
deconstructive social theory offers fertile
ground for positive and collective
re-translations. The fear of unity,
although understandable, can be limiting
to radical political movements. The
unity produced by re-translations are
not necessarily oppressive, especially if
these moments of unity are
periodically disrupted and re-configured by
schizophrenic outbreaks. A successful contemporary
politics has stakes in defining
the rhythmic flow between schizophrenic
and identificatory impulses. Hopefully, alternative
rhythms can challenge, or at
least syncopate, the accelerating rhythm
of late
capitalism.Special thanks to Victor Burgin, Gabe Brahm, and Lorraine
Kahn.
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Sources
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Notes
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1
When I use
the term postmodernism, I mean
it in the sense that
Jameson defined in his essay.
This might not be the
best definition, and the term
itself is currently a site
of contestation. An incomplete list
of alternatives to the term
"postmodernism" (Lyotard, 1979) follows:
hyperrealism (Baudrillard, 1983, Eco, 1983),
late capitalism (Jameson, 1984), ultramodernism
(Kroker and Cook, 1986),
flexible capitalism (Harvey, 1989), amodernism
or nonmodernism (Latour, 1991 Haraway,
1992), and metamodernism (Rabinow,
1992). 2 Deleuze and Guattari's
attempt to make the Real
assessable is in line with
the general post-structural move to
challenge extra-linguistic, non-representable, and metaphysical
concepts. This approach has been
criticized for its tendency to
reduce everything to language and
discourse. Deleuze and Guattari's formulation
is interesting because it resists
the "linguistic turn." Instead of
language and signification, Deleuze and
Guattari describe "Real" and "productive"
forces, flows, and desires. The
result is an ironic
materialism. | ||