In many of my texts on Žižekian Analysis I have repeated the following mantra without explaining its content: The ground of authorization is will. Now the time has come to focus on what happens between these two terms and spell out how will grounds authorization.

There is a pipeline of a few terms here: Will leads to Freedom leads to Engagement leads to Knowledge leads to Valuation leads to Authorization. Since the subject is divided and barred (as a dividual), the whole pipeline is traversed by the deep divide between the Symbolic and the Real so that there is a “Symbolic X” and a “Real X” for each of the terms. Let us now go through them one by one.

1) Symbolic Will and Real Will: There is a good reason why “false consciousness” is a very catchy term in Marxist politics despite its rarity in the original texts. This popularity is because there is something inherently false about consciousness. This is why psychoanalysis was invented: In order to transcend the falsity of consciousness by reaching towards the truth of one’s unconscious desires. I use the term “symbolic will” to designate this false consciousness that psychoanalysis and ideology critique aims to transcend. Symbolic will is how the subject symbolizes their own existence in the form of an ego. It is the subject of the statement, it’s what the subject calls “Me!” or “Moi!” It is an initial confusion that is to be superseded (immanently transcended) by the subject’s confrontation with their desires and their traversing of their fantasy which leads the subject to a post-fantasmatic situation, which brings the subject to a newfound political decisiveness. This post-fantasmatic decisiveness is what I call the “real will” [1]. The symbolic will of an ego stands on the fantasmatic and shaky ground of the unknown knowns, which is why it must obsessively maneuver its posture to keep itself straight, “normal”, “useful” and socially symbolizable. The real will, in contrast, is in touch with the negativity of the unconscious and it’s immersed in the sea of the known unknowns [2]. The real will is in touch with the constraints and impossibilities and if it acts in one way it’s because it knows it cannot act otherwise. This gives us two kinds of freedom.

2) Symbolic Freedom and Real Freedom: The symbolic freedom of the symbolic will is a freedom to choose from a set of possibilities that are positively given, whereas the real freedom of the real will is to enact the reality of impossibilities in order to reconfigure the present coordinates of the possible. Symbolic freedom acts in the present world, whereas real freedom re-worlds the present. The form of freedom determines the form of engagement.

3) Symbolic Engagement and Real Engagement [3]: In symbolic engagement, the subject’s social engagement with the others is symbolized under a “relationship”, “membership”, “citizenship” etc. The existence of a symbolic engagement is supported by positive efforts: In order to fulfill a symbolic engagement, you have to spend time, you have to be there, you have to show up in time, you have to be thoughtful, at least you have to be nice and polite, otherwise the social engagement is broken and rendered void. This is called a break-up or “parting ways”. In Lacanian terms, symbolic engagement is the subject’s alienation under a social symbolic order, whereas breaking up and “parting ways” is the subject’s separation from the social. This separation is both (1) the subject’s separation from themself and (2) the society’s (big Other’s) separation from itself. Although separation is associated with what is socially and commonsensically unacceptable and denigrating (e.g. if you lose your symbolic engagements, you are called a “loser”), this separation is in fact constitutive of the social. The prototype of separation is the child’s weaning from the mother’s breast, and psychoanalysis reveals that the failure to “lose” the mother’s breast has grave consequences for the subject’s sanity: It may even lead to madness, psychosis. One sometimes needs to be a “loser” to protect one’s sanity (“loser” is separated in contrast to “sucker” who is alienated). So let us redeem the positive aspect of separation and loss, and call the symbolic disengagement, a real engagement. Parting ways or breaking up is not only destructive but also productive and creative. But breaking up should be contrasted to “giving a break”: Keeping away from the object of love in order to revive one’s desire is based on the re-construction of a fantasmatic space, whereas the separation of a real engagement is post-fantasmatic and non-spatial. In this sense, real engagement is an engagement with a ghost. At least initially this is the ghost of your mother. The real engagement with the ghost opens up a universal dimension that lets one re-world the present, as in the famous ghost of communism. The main difference is that a symbolic engagement “tries to be useful” in the present world, whereas a real engagement is “non-productivist” and it instead aims to change the present presuppositions about utility [4]. In any case, engagement leads to knowledge.

4) Symbolic Knowledge and Real Knowledge (Knowledge-at-work): Symbolic knowledge functions as an end-in-itself. It has two forms: (1) knowledge as the dominating power in the university discourse, (2) knowledge that is the end-product of the hysteric’s discourse. University discourse represents a positive symbolic engagement that pulls off the power of knowledge to induce subjectivity, whereas the hysteric’s discourse represents a negative symbolic engagement that pushes knowledge to further multiply itself. Examples of these two figures are the “vectoralist” and the “hacker” in the Warkian sense [5]. In contrast, real knowledge, also called knowledge-at-work, functions as a means to an end. It has two forms: (1) knowledge that serves the master in the master’s discourse, (2) knowledge as the veiled truth of the analytic discourse. In master’s discourse, knowledge-at-work serves a positive real engagement that produces surplus-value; whereas in the analytic discourse, knowledge-at-work is the veiled truth of a negative real engagement that produces master-signifiers. Examples of these two figures are respectively the manual worker (including craftsmen) and the intellectual worker (I don’t mean a white-collar bureaucrat with a Graeberian “bullshit job” but e.g. a writer). The next step after knowledge is valuation.

5) Symbolic Valuation (Evaluation) and Real Valuation [6]: Let us now focus on the position of the master-signifier in the four discourses. In the discourses where symbolic knowledge reigns (university and hysteric’s discourses) the master-signifier is subjected to some negation: It is either positioned as the disavowed truth below the bar (university) or it’s positioned as the addressee who is being complained about (hysteric). Since the master-signifier is the contingent element that constitutes the materialist basis of reality, the negation of the master-signifier leads to an emphasis on “general social necessities” and the display of a sham universalism of idealist utilitarianism: The agent is either “trying to be useful to the general necessities of the society” by concealing the contingent material basis of the social (university discourse) or (s)he is openly complaining about the material contingency of the master-signifier by declaring it unjustly arbitrary (hysteric’s discourse). Both discourses assert the necessity of a utilitarian evaluation, which I call symbolic valuation. In the case of the discourses where real knowledge (knowledge-at-work) reigns (master’s and analytic discourse) the master-signifier is openly asserted: It is either positioned as the very agent that initiates the discourse (master’s discourse) or it is asserted as the final product of the discourse (analytic discourse). These two discourses thereby show their materialist stance by asserting the primacy of the contingent element at the basis of the social. One must distinguish here the cynical materialism of the master who simply demands to gain surplus-value, from the theoretical materialism of the analyst who recognizes the inherent contingency of sense-making. One must also acknowledge the link between them: They are like the two irreconcilable sides of the “philosopher-king”. But what really makes the master-signifier contingent and material is its other side: objet a as the object-cause of desire, which is also openly asserted by these discourses where real knowledge reigns. This is why these two discourses achieve the materialism of a real valuation, as opposed to the other two discourses which can only propagate the idealism of a symbolic valuation (evaluation). The master-signifier and the objet a are still operative in the symbolic valuation but their being is sacrificed for displaying a neutral symbolic knowledge. This is why, even though real valuation is systematically sacrificed to conserve the being of symbolic valuation, real valuation is still determinative over symbolic valuation: The principles and criteria followed by the evaluations (maybe not so) secretly serve the hidden master and the hysteric’s complaints come from his/her desire.

Although valuation is the basis for authorization, for the time being let us keep open the gap between valuation and authorization [7].

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] See “Desire to Repair and Desire to Decompose”

[2] See “Making the combinatorial unworld of the unconscious permeable”

[3] See “Symbolic Engagement and Real Engagement”

[4] See “Knowledge-at-work is an Effort with Real Engagement”

[5] See “Hysterics are the true hackers”

[6] See “Symbolic Valuation and Real Valuation”

[7] See “Symbolic Authorization of Fetishes and Real Authorization of Symptoms”