True, the chimneysweep element is a

particular supplement that gives a

specific coloring to all the preceding terms
(what they really mean in the concrete
historical totality); however, this is not to be
read as if the chim- neysweep element
represents common sense, as in Heinrich
Heines (yet an- other contemporary of Marx
and Kierkegaard) well-known saying that one
should value above all else truth, freedom,
and crab soup. Crab soup here stands for
all those small pleasures in the absence of
which we become (mental, if not real)
terrorists following an abstract idea and
forcing it onto reality without any
consideration for the concrete circumstances.
One should emphasize here that such
wisdom is precisely what Kierkegaard and
Marx did not have in mindtheir message is
rather the opposite one: the principle itself, in
its purity, is already stained by the
particularity of crab soup, i.e., the
particularity sustains the very purity of the
principle. The difference that separates Heine
from Marx is thus clear, and it concerns the
status of univer- sality: while Heine advocates
the commonsensical wisdom that warns us

against a direct literal devotion to and

application of universal norms, Marxs point is
the opposite onethe addition of Bentham
implies that, in capitalist society,
freedom/equality is not authentic, so we
should get rid of Bentham and strive to
actualize freedom/equality in its true
universality.
The chimney sweep is the element
embodying the non-relationship, sus- taining
it as a non-relationship: if we take it away, we
get a simple duality of polar opposites, like
the eternal struggle of masculine and
feminine cosmic principles, instead of a true
antagonism. In other words, it is not enough
to oppose the level of evental flow or of
antagonism to the material elements: the
evental flow or antagonism has to be
inscribed in, reflected into, the field of
material elements as one of its elements, as a
pseudo-element that gives body to what
cannot be reduced to material elements.
One should bear in mind here the two aspects
of the notion of the rem- nant: the rest as
what remains after the subtraction of all

particular content (elements, specific parts of

the Whole), and the rest as the ultimate result
of
the subdivision of the Whole into its parts,
when, in the final act of subdivi- sion, we no
longer get two particular parts or elements,
two Somethings, but a Something (the Rest)
and a Nothing.
Or, in the terms of Lacans formulae of
sexuation: the stand-in for universality
(money among commodities) follows the
mascu- line logic of the exception which
grounds universality, while the supple- ment
to the Two (chimney sweep, rabble) follows
the feminine logic, for it makes the couple
non-All, inconsistent.
In Lacans precise sense of the term, the
chimney sweep effectively stands for the
phallic element. How? Insofar as he stands for
pure difference: officer, maid, and chimney
sweep are the masculine, the feminine, plus
their difference as such, as a particular
contingent objectagain, why? Because not

only is difference differential, in an

antagonistic (non) relationship, it precedes
the terms it differentiates: not only is woman
not-man and vice ver- sa, woman is also what
prevents man from being fully man and vice
versa.
(19)

Desire versus drive, masculine and feminine,

and other similar couples (up to the duality of
waves and particles in physics) form an
unsurpassable parallaxthe alternative is
absolute and unmediated, there is no higher
unity or shared ground between the two
poles. What one should thus especially avoid
is asserting, openly or implicit- ly, the primacy
of one of the sidesto claim, say, that
particles ultimately condense or materialize
the intersections of waves, or, with regard to
La- cans opposition of the masculine All
grounded in an exception and the feminine
non-All, that the dispersed multiplicity of nonAll gets totalized into a universal Whole
through the exclusion of an exception.19
How, then, are we to combine this

unambiguous affirmation of the Virtual as the

site of production that generates constituted
reality, with the no less unambiguous
statement that the virtual is produced out of
the actual?
In this precise sense, class struggle should be
absolutized: what makes it absolute is that
it is never the direct conflict of the two classes
but the very excess which displaces such pure
confrontation. What is absolute is this coincidence of the pure antagonistic difference
with the excess that blurs the differenceit is
as if the pure difference exists as a particular
element aside from the differentiated terms.

laclau/mouffe

articulation is linguistic?

undecidability
what about affect/ transmission

where is hegemony
somewhere in the virtual
not empirical nor rational as totality
annoying to think that its out there
whereas in zizek, we know class struggle is the ground
thats what grounds it
althusser - two interpretations maybe between laclau/mouffe and zizek
at least we know with zizek if we abolish capitalism, we know we can do
something, we can make a choice
why is it just linguistic? (107).

: that is, to have a fully constituted identity

exterior.
(111)
laplanche

which

is not subverted by any