In his essay American Utopia (2016), Fredric Jameson proposes a utopian vision based on a fundamental distinction between base and superstructure: Base indicates the organization of social necessities by the allocation of citizens’ labor-time, whereas superstructure indicates the cultural activities that the citizens enjoy in their free time [1]. In Jameson’s utopian society, two essential institutions manage these two aspects of life: The function of the Universal Army is to establish the base, and the function of the Psychoanalytic Placement Bureau (PPB) is to organize the superstructure.

In Incontinence of the Void (2017), Slavoj Žižek suggested a distribution of Lacan’s four discourses among capitalism and anti-capitalism:

if capitalism is characterized by the parallax of Hysteria and University discourses, is resistance to capitalism then characterized by the opposite axis of Master and Analyst?

Žižek’s pair of anti-capitalist discourses perfectly correspond to Jameson’s two institutions: The Universal Army exemplifies the Master’s discourse whereas the PPB exemplifies the analytic discourse. Thus Jameson’s utopia effectively stages a collaboration between the Master and the (psycho)analyst [2].

For both discourses, the top-left element indicates its agent, whereas the bottom-right element indicates its product. These two discourses interact through S₁ and objet a, each of which are the product of one discourse and the agent of the other discourse. The Master’s ultimate function is to shape the citizens’ desire and enjoyment (objet a) that will in turn feed the analysis, whose ultimate function is to generate the Master-Signifiers S₁ that will in turn feed the Master.

For both discourses, the bottom-left element indicates its truth. What is the truth of the Army? In Jameson’s utopia, “the state [withers] away into some enormous group therapy.” This enormous group therapy occupies the place of the divided subject $ at the truth of the Master’s discourse. What is the truth of the PPB? According to Jameson, the PPB “will, in conjunction with unimaginably complex computer systems, handle and organize all forms of employment as well as all manner of personal and collective therapies.” These unimaginably complex computer systems occupy the place of the knowledge S₂ at the truth of the analytic discourse.

Early in the essay, Jameson attempts to construct a fourfold by adding a fourth term to these three terms: Universal, Particular, Singular.

Jameson proposes, “but only provisionally,” that the fourth term should be “penciled in as sheer standardization.” The unsaid truth of Jameson’s “Standard” is “Generic”:

Jameson’s utopia is a “provisional proposal” with the Universal Army and the Psychoanalytic Placement Bureau as its “standard” institutions. In fact, this “standard” utopia stages the “generic” structures of the Master’s discourse and the analytic discourse.

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] These are basically Exigency and Enjoyment, see “Exigency and Enjoyment”

[2] The capitalist axis of University discourse and hysteric’s discourse correspond to McKenzie Wark’s vectoralist class and hacker class, see “Hysterics are the true hackers”