Zizek's Implicature

Speranza

In “The Thing that should not be (and yet...),” (elsewhere) T. Fjeld notes:

“Populism is never right. And yet it exists. Populism thrives in states of exception. Hence it wanes when the populists have taken power and the situation returned to its normality. What's mo(o)re interesting is to consider Chartism as populism -- something political philosopher E. Laclau does in “Populist Reason.” (I’m rephrasing slightly).

“S. Zizek comments that, while "right" in his analysis of populism, Laclau is nevertheless insufficiently clear ("perspicuous") in his prescriptions for a new, post-proletarian, hegemonic Left. First, what about the relation between the symptom ("immigrant", "hysteria") and the system? Zizek notes, as per Laclauian analysis, that while populists are prone to seek to *remove* the symptom, Freudians accept symptoms as indicative of a systemic state.”

This is Griceian – er – Peirceian.

I’m sure Peirce uses ‘symptom;’ he loved Graeco-Roman coinages. I’m not sure Grice does! He was too much of an Englishman! For Grice, all reduces to a short Anglo-Saxon verb, “mean.” So I would rephrase Zikek’s parlance as stating that while a populist is prone to remove the ‘x’ which means “p,” [fill in the variables as you feel like], a Freudian accepts the ‘x’ as meaning “p.”

Grice’s infamous example is “Those spots [symptom] mean measles.” “I mean, they don’t mean one thing to _me_; they mean measles to the doctor, or so he tells me.”

Grice’s obsession was with factivity. Can you have a ‘symptom’ (the ‘x’) without the ‘p’ beneath? Grice finds that:

“Those spots on my son’s skin mean the measles, but of course my son does not have the measles.”

does not sound Oxonian enough. R. M. Hare, in his review of Holloway (“Philosophical Quarterly,” 1952) agrees: “I learn from Grice that if a dark cloud means rain, we shall have rain.”

(Incidentally, Grice is not so much obsessed with Peirce as he is with Stevenson, who uses scare quotes here: “The barometer ‘means’ that the humidity is high.” – (C. L. Stevenson, “Ethics and Language”).

So back to Zizek’s quote:

"For a populist, the cause of the troubles is ultimately never the system as such, but the intruder who has corrupted it (financial manipulators, not capitalists as such, etc.); not a fatal flaw inscribed into the structure as such, but an element that doesn’t play its role within the structure properly. For a Marxist, on the contrary (like for a Freudian), the pathological (deviating misbehaviour of some elements) is the symptom of the normal, an indicator of what is wrong in the very structure that is threatened with “pathological” outbursts. For Marx, economic crises are the key to understanding the “normal” functioning of capitalism; for Freud, pathological phenomena like hysterical outbursts provide the key to the constitution (and hidden antagonisms that sustain the functioning) of a “normal” subject. That’s why populism tends to be nationalist in calling for people’s unity against the (external) enemy, while Marxism focuses on the inner split that cuts across each community and calls for international solidarity because we are all traversed by this split." 

Fjeld comments:

“Now, what about the re-articulation of hegemonic politics after the proletarian turn? Seeking a chain of equivalences between a series of struggles ("feminism", "ecological consciousness", "anti-racist struggles", etc.) is a bit like the old joke about the person who, when calling the doctor, gets the advice to call a doctor. So what does the doctor say (when we finally get a hold of him)? Ask Zizek.”

I hope it’s not the measles!

Zizek: "So why persist in a radical struggle, if today radical change is unimaginable? Because our global predicament demands it: only a radical change can enable us to cope with the prospect of ecological catastrophe, with the threats of biogenetics and digital control of our lives, etc. The task is impossible, but all the more necessary.”

Which reminds me of the Man of La Mancha and his impossible dream. Grice would not be so sure. Grice was obsessed with that Anglo-Latin verb, “to intend.” For Grice, “to intend that p” ENTAILS that the agent must believe that p may become a state of affairs with a probability higher than 0.5.

His example is:

A: I intend to go to that concert tomorrow.

B: You will enjoy it.

A: Of course, I may be in jail by then.

B: What?

A: Yes. I’m being interrogated tomorrow.

B: Then you should  have said, “I HOPE to go to that concert tomorrow.” Leave ‘intend’ for the things you KNOW or believe with a probability higher than 0.5 that you can accomplish!

Grice aside, I think the cognateness of ‘SYmptom’ (from Greek ‘syn-piptein’) and ‘SYstem’ (from Greek ‘syn-histanai) is a neat one! And I’m sure Grice, who held a MA Lit. Hum. Oxon – “Greek was second nature to him,” his classics master at Clifton would recall – would agree!