GREIMAS AVEC LACAN; OR,

FROM THE SYMBOLIC TO THE

REAL IN DIALECTICAL CRITI CISM
Phillip E. Wegner
[n this essay, I want toexp]ore the ill1plications for a materialist dialectics
of a reading of A.J. Grcimas's scmimics, and in particular what Fredric
Jameson has described as its "supreme achievement," Greimas's "semi-
otic rectangle"I (figure I). My approach challenges what has become a
commonplace for example, in both Paul de
Man's classic essay ;'Thc Resistance to Theory" (1982) and P:lUl Ricocur's
three-volume opus Time alld Narrative {l983-85)- that takes Grcimas's
work and the tools he elaborates as the quintessence of a structuralist
drive to :lbstraction. marked by totalizingltotalltarian tendencies and an
utter rejection of histori city (t he diach ronic) and indeterminacy. (In de
Man's terms. this takes the form of an absolute privileging of the gram-
matical level of a text over the rhetorical; and Ricoeur concludes. "The
whole suategy thus amounts to a vast attempt to do :1way with dia-
chrony."2) While such a reading may be accurate in certain deploymems
of these tools, a different set of possibilities emerges when the semiotic
rectangle is read in conjunction with the work of Greimas's great con-
temporary, Jacques Lacan, and. in pa rt icular, "the fundamenta l cI:1ssifica-
tion system around which all his theorizing turns," the three orders of the
Symbolic, Im:lginary, and Rea!.' Indeed, in this essay, I use the rich semi-
otic resources of the Greimasian rectangle to tell a number of deeply in-
terrelated stories: about the history of the novel; developments in the last
few decades in theory more generally :'!nd in the work of Fredric Jameson
in particular; and lhe value of dialectic:'!1 thinking for our present mornelll
of global iz:lt ion.
This gesture of reading Greimas with Lacan takes its lead from Lacan's
own work, by way of hi s essay "Kant avec Sade." In a footnote to a recent
discussion of this essay, Slavoj Zizek suggests that "f.1r from being restricted
Crlflmm. Spring 2009. Vol. 51. No.2. Pl" 211-H5. ISSN: 0011 -1589.
o 2009 Waync Smc Unil'crslly Prcss. lktroit. :-OIl -48101 1309.
211
212 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
c
N
to Lacan, this procedure of reading'X with Y' has a long Marxist lineage";
indeed, Zizek argues,
Il ls not the main point of Marx's crit ique of HegeJ's specu-
lative idealism precisely to read '; Hcgel with political
economy," that is, to discern in the speculati ve circular
movemcm of Capital the "obscene secret" of the circula r
movement orthe Hegelian N o t i o n ~ ~
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 213
Furthermore, Zizck maintains that we misread this relationship if we see
the latter figure in the couple as "the truth" of lhe former:
lOin the contrary, the Sadeian perversion emerges as the
result of the Kantian compromise, of Kant 's avoiding the
consequences of hi s breakthrough. Sade is the J'ymptom of
Knill: ... the space for the fi gure of Sadc is opened up by
this compromi se of Kant, by his unwillingness to go to
the end, to retain the fu ll fidelity to his philosophical

Something simil:1f, I want to :lrgue, occurs when we read Greimas with
Lacan. The ianer shows us something new aboul the nature of the for-
mer's breakthrough: the always already-existent symptom haunting the
illusory closure of the strllcturalist schemas, a materi:.lizing hori zon of
di:.lectical possi bilities implicit wi thin the Greim:.sian mapping itself.!'
The va lue for any dialect ical criticism of Greimas's work (as wel l as
that of Laca n) has been explored in great detail by Jameson, Greimas's
si ngle most inAuent ial proponent in the Engli sh-language COnlext, and it
will be by way of the shift s that occur in Jameson's usage of Greimas's
semiotic rectangle that the device's full di:.lectical force becomes clcar.7
For readers less famil iar with the workings of the semiotic rectangle,
Jnmeson's description of it from The Political Unconscious (1981) is sti ll
helpful:
BrieAy the semioti c rectangle or "elementa ry st ructure of
signification" is the representation of a binary oppos ition or
of two contraries (5 and -S), along with the si mpl e negations
or contradictories of both terms (the so-call ed subcontrar ics
-S and S): significant slots are constituted by the various pos-
sible combi nati ons of these terms, most notably the "com-
plex" term (or ideal synthesis of the two contraries) and the
"neutral" term (or ideal synthesis of the two
These last two terms, the complex and the neu/ml, will ha ve, as we shall
sec, crucial roles to play in the development of Jnmeson 's intellectual proj -
ect more generally.
Jameson's first extended discussion of Grcimasian semiotics occurs in
hi s 1972 book on Russia n Formalism and its structurali st descendants, The
Prison-House of umgllage. At th is early j LLnctLL re, Jameson's focus remains
primarily on the four internal "5' terms of the sc hema, and the dialectical
214 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
movement he notes between them (see figure 2). Here, Jameson suggests
that the fourth te rm in the sc hema, the -5 in the bottom-left slot in
figure 2, may be identified
as nonc other than the negation of a negation" famil iar
from dialecti cal philosophy. It is, indeed. because the nega-
tion of a neg:Hion is such a decisive leap. such a production
or generation of new meaning, th:a we so frequently come
upon a system in the incomplete state shown above (onl y
three terms out of four given). Unde r such ci rcumstances
the negation of the negat ion then becomes the primary
work which the mechanism is called upon to accompli sh.
9
Jameson goes on to demonstrate how this gene rati ve machinery operates
through a brief discussion of Charles Dickens's HtlJd Times (1854), a novel
in which "we witness the confrontat ion of what amounts to two intellectual
systems: Mr. Gradgrind's utilitarianism ("Fans! Facts!') and the world of
anti-facts symbol ized by Sissy Jupe and the circus, or in other words, imag-
ination."'u Jameson argues that the narrative's plot is to be unde rstood as
"nothing but an attempt to give" the absent fourth term in the schema
im:lginative being, to work through faully solLilions :lnd
unacceptable hypot heses umil an adequate embodi lllem has
been realized in terms of the narrati ve material. With
this discovery (Mr. Gradgrind's education. Louisa's belated
RAW
____________
? COOKED
Flg/4rt' 2. Frrdric }umr,QII. The Prison House or (197l). J66.
GREIMASAVEC LACAN 215
experience of family love). the semiotic rcct:mgle is com-
pleted :Ind the novel comes to an end,ll
What is wonh underscoring at this early stage is that Jameson already
conccplUalizcs the Grcimasian schema in decidedly dynamic terms, as a
presentation (Darstellung) of I he labor of narrat ive. "the all inform i ng pro-
cess of fIllI'rotive," he will later claim, being "the cent ra 1 function or illS/alice
orthe human mind."!!
With his next deployments ohhe Grcimasian rectangle, in his essays on
Mnx Webe r (1973) and Philip K. Dick (1975), and then, even more spec-
tacularly, in the Balzac and Conrad chapters of The Political Unconscious,
Jameson's attention sh ifts to the four outer poles of the schema and es-
pecially the position at its summit, the "complex" term (C).IJ Greimas's
rectangle becomes an ideal means of illustrating the narrative operation
Jameson nnmes "n symbolic act, wherehy real social contradictions, insur-
mountable in t heir own terms, find a purely formal resolution in the
aesthetic realm."H It is in this way, too, that the cuh ural text, conceived
he re fundamentally as allegory, makes av:ri lable LO its later readers its
historical context, encountered by us, he famously maintains. only in this
mediated textual form.
Rather than summarizing one of Jameson's discussions, I would like to
illustrate this first full deployment of the resources of the Greimasian rect-
angle through a brief reading of my own. My case study is one of the most
well known English novels of the early nineteenth century, and one of the
Ll rtexts of the mode rn gc n rc of sc ience fiction, Mary Shelley's Frtlllkenstlin;
01; The Mode'l"l/ Prometheus (1818). The dilemma this gothic fantasy con-
fronts, as numerous comment:ltors have pointed out in different ways, is
that of the modern intellccwal and, more specifically, scientific labor. At
the roO[ of the problem in the novel is the education, or culture, that Victor
Fmnkenstein receives at his modern (i.e., German) universi ty.
Early on, Mary Shelley develops a character schema that enables her to
divide human knowledge in a proto-Kanti:rn fashion into the spheres of
science, ethics, and aesthetics. Viewr observes,
Elizabeth was of a calmer and more concentrated disposi-
tion; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more in-
tense application and was more deeply smi tten with the
thi rst for knowledge. She busied herself with following the
aeri:11 creations of the poets; and in t he majestic ancl won-
drous scenes that surrounded ollr Swiss horne .... it W:lS the
secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn ... my
216 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
inquiries were directed [0 the or in its highest
sense, the physical secrets of the world.
MC:lnwhile, C[cn'al occupied himself with the moral
rcl:uions of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of
heroes. and the actions of men were his theme.
As long as a balance between the three is Ill:lintaincd, trouble is averted.
However, when Victor leaves the companionship of Clerv:.l and Eliza-
beth. he enterS:l much more d:lIlgcrous path: "From this day natural phi-
losophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of
the term, became my sole occupation," II, This sunders the older "natura1"
unity ("Our meddling intellect / I\lis-shapcs the beauteous forms of
things:-I We murder to dissect") champi oned by Shell ey's circle of
Romanti c intellectu;I1s.
17
However, Victor's real culpabilit y li es less in his giving life to his
"unnatura l" cre:lture-an aestheticall y horrifying reanimatcd assem-
blage of different bodies-than in his subsequelll abandonmelll of that
to which his labor had gi\en rise. That is, Victor's real failure, and his
responsibility for the !>u bscquelll terror a nd innocelll deaths, lies, as the
creat ure itself notes, in his unwi ll ingness to offer it t he gu idance found
in a proper enculturation: "Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had en-
dowed me with perceptions and passions and then cas t me abroad an
object for the scorn and horror
The contradiction with which this novel deals is actually the same as in
Greimas's or iginal demonstrat ion of the sc hema, t hat of culture a nd na-
tlIrel 'l (figure 3). I have already touched on twoofthc resolutions found in
Shelley's work, th:1I on the left-hand side of the schema and that on the
bottom, or what G reimas la bels the 'neutral te rm ,. (N): fi rst, the com bi na-
tion of cul ture, or bourgeois education, and the "unnalUral"'- intellectual
overspecialization, or instrumentalization as Max Horkheimer and The-
odor Adorno will bter describe it- represented by the figure of Victor;
and, second, the destruct ive and improperly educated force of the creature
itself. This mapping thus m:lkes clea r the double structu re of "monstros-
ity" at work in the novel,:lI once meant to include the mode rn intellectual
and hi s creat ion.!O The parallels between lhe two become increasingly evi-
dent as the novel progresses: both arc isolated from intercourse with other
humans, and, in the end, 'revenge" becomes each being's "devouring and
only passion."!!
The resolution directly opposi te Victor :llso suggests the deepl y classed
nature of lhe cr isis being dea lt with here: for this is figured in Ihe novel by
the peasantry, those who may be connected to older natural or agricultural
Victor
Culture
Unl1llturnl
(Monstrous)
GREIMASAVEC LACAN 217
Cler"al
(Romanticism)
Thc Crcature
Nature
Peasmlts
No Culture
(uncducated)
F,g,m' 3. Mury SI",II,,}", Fr"nkenstcin; or, The Modern Promctheus (/SI8).
rhythms ("The untaught peaS;lIlt beheld the elements around him and
was acquainted with their practical uses"), but who lack the proper ethical
education to respond with anything but an imal fear and revulsion when
confronted with the radical mherness of the creaLUfC: "The whole village
was roused: some fled, some altacked me,"!! Of course, these vcry lumpcn
bodies compose the fl esh of the monster and thus encount er in him their
own denaturalized SWle, what Sanre would call their "practico-inert"
form. I n this way. the monster takes on a n additional allegorical resonance,
becoming a figure of a now alienated peasantry recently removed [0 the
new urban environs-or, as Franco Morett i suggests, a fig ure already of
the emergent industrial proletariat, the novel expressing the "elementary
scheme" described by Marx "of simplification and splitting (The whole of
society must split into the two classes .. .')."!l
218 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
And what then of the final space, the complex term, "the ideal synthesis
which would 'resolve' the initial binary opposition by subsuming it under
a single It is filled by Victor's childhood companion, Henry
Clerval. a figure we arc told who stands in the text for Mary Shelley's
husband, the Romanti c poet Percy Bysshe
ClcrvaJ! Beloved fr iend! Even now it delights me to record
your words and to dwell on the praise of which you arc so
eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the "very
poetry of nature." Hi s wild and enthusiastic imagination
was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul over-
flowed with ardcnt affections, and his friendship W:lS of
th:1I dcvQ[cd :lIld wondrous nature that the world-minded
teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even hu-
man sympathies were nOl sufficient to satisfy his eager
mind. The scenery of externalll3ture, which ot hers regard
only with admiration, he loved wilh ardour.!I,
However, here the realism of Mary Shel ley's great wor k comes to the fore,
for this ideal cre:llllre can find no place in the world, and he perishes (as
Shelley himself would do a few years after the book's original publication),
Icaving us at the narrative's conclusion with the apocalyptic scena ri o of
Victor and the creature tormenting each other in a pursuit :lCross a
frozen landscape, a desperate quest that ends only with their mutual
destruction- a terrible object lesson aimed at both the story's narrator, the
ambitiolls young explorer Robert Wahon, and the rcader.2;
The story that Mary Shelley relates here is one of a f:liled cultu ral
revolution, the inability of the Romantic intellectuals to t:lke up a posi-
tion of cultural and social leadership, lO becomc, in other words, theac-
knowledged "legislalOrs of the worl d" (<I fantasy brought LO fruition in
the science-fictional alternate history of William Gibson and Bruce Ster-
ling's The Oiffer(llce h'ngine The consequence of this failure is
immense, for it has left other kinds of irresponsible intellectuals, d ri ven
by "mad enthusiasm," who mold "nature"- litcrally in this case the un-
educated masses of the people- into something monstrous.!" And, with
this turn, the fu ll allegorical significance of bot h ViclOr and his monster
becomes evident: "ViclOr Frankenstein and his startling creation are a
scientific cipher for an overhasty radical intellectual at the time of the
French Revol ution :mim:Hing (like the Ingolstadt Illuminati , so well
known to the Shell eys) the 'I hanlly adequatel materials' (chap. 4) of the
broad popular forces:' !')
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 219
That such a fear waS:1 prominenl one for English intellectuals more
generally in this moment is borne Out by Greimasian mappings of the nar-
rative sehemas in two of FlYltlkenstein's gre:lt contemporaries, \VaIH:r
Scott's The Heart of Midlothi(ln (1818) and Jane Austen's Emma (18 15)
(figures 4 and 5). The strategies for confronting this crisis dirfer in each
case: if Mary Shelley gives us the precursor to the twe nt ieth-cent ury clys-
lOpian narrative (her Utopian mentality, like George OrweJl's, a form of
what Karl Mannheim names a conservative one), Scott, ollth, other hand,
tries to assure his readers that the resolution to the crisis has already oc-
curred with the establishment of the new legal structlJres of Greal Britain
nearly a century earlier, struclllres thaI the British people have freely
chosen. II (Conf-licls in the novel's conclusion are then exported "out there,"
into the rapidly expanding field of the second British Empire.)
AUTHORITY
Ponrous

(ENGLAND)
CRIME
s
Effie', AdnX'nte
Duke of Argyll
Jeame Oeans & Butler'$ Child
(GREAT BRITAIN)


George StaUlOn
Effoe [kan
Madge Wildfin:
Effoe & Ch,ld
(EMPIRE)
PIg/in- 4. Wu/ur Scalf. The of Midlothi:m (1818).
LAW
Deans
Effoe'smal
(SCOTLAND)
INJUSTICE
220 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
"binh"
(Ulle &lor money)
Mi.s
AUgU513
lI(lwkins
lIIbred
s
Em=
("Jane Austen")
-s +-----.....; .. s
Harriel Snllih
"nalure or education"
(breeding)
Jane F a l r r a . ~
No title or money
f"gllrr 5. jlllU: Allst .. ", Emma (/816). "Emma, yo", ",/alU(lIlOn UhQlI1 fhul gIrl bfllldj YOII.
Wlla/ 11ft' Harm" Small J dUtm" <'lInl'r of hlffn, "lltll't' or duell/IO"?" (N(w York: f>('IIglll1l,
lOOl.59-60).
However, Austen's solution is the most ingenious of all. In a classic
reading of the novel, Wayne Booth notes,
"Jane Austen," like "Henry Fielding." is a paragon of wir,
wisdom, and virtue. She docs not talk about her qualities;
unlike Fielding she docs nO[ in Emma call direct attention
to her artistic ski ll s. But we are seldom allowed to forget
abom her for all that. When we read this novel we accept
her as representing evcrything we admire most. ... She is.
in short, a pcrfect human being, within the concept of
perfection est:lbli shed by the book she writesY
In other words. it is not the character Emma who produces what Austen
recognizes to be a necessary and proper (i.e .. gradual and reformist)
GRE1MAS AVEC LACAN 221
rcordering of the social ficld, but rather the ghost who stands hchind her,
the novelist Austen herself, who orchestrates the various marriages that
enable the conflicts of the novel to be dispelled and a new kind of national
imaginary to be set into place (the spatial movemen!s in the plot that this
elllaiis have been effectively mapped by Mon:tti). 11 I n this way, the domes-
tic novel becomes, as Nancy Armstrong has taught us, the preeminelll
political and pedagogical tool-so effective precisely because it presents
itself as feminine, domestic, and apolitical-in a properly British middle-
class cultural revolution. H
It is this deployment of the Greimasian rectangle that becomes such
a significant part of Jameson's work over the next few decades. How-
ever, in the very years that he is finishing work on The Political Uncon-
scious J:1.Ineson points toward another way of using the Greimasian
rectangle, This first occurs in a long review essay, published in a 197i
issue of Diacritics, on Louis Marin's UlOpiques:jt'UX d'cspace (Utopics:
spatial play) (1973). Jameson shows that in Marin's developmelll of his
concept of Utopian neutralization- the figure of the Other Utopian or-
der emerging as a point-by-point cancellation of the historical situation
from which it cmerges-it is the bottom term in the Greimasian schema
that becomes the most significant one, Utopian narration serves in
hands as
the structural inverSIon of myth in the following sense:
where as the narrative operation of myth undertakes fO me-
diate between (he (wo primary terms of the opposition S
and -5, and to produce a complex term that would be their
resolution, Utopian narrative is constituted by the union of
the twin contradictories of the initial opposition, the combi-
nation of-S and S. a combination which, virtually a double
clncellation of the initial contradiction itself, may be said to
effect the latter's neutralization and 10 produce a new term,
the so-called neuter or neutral term
Jameson demonstrates this new usc of the Grcimasian schema th rough
a reading of the Utopian figuration that takes place in the work of com-
poser and architect lann is Xenakis: "Xenak is' cosmic ci ty is both decen-
tralized and concentrated all at once, and designates, ;:IS a figure, that
place in which some future urban conceptuality, the categories of some
concrete coll ective and city life as yet inconceivable [Q use, remain to be
invented" j(1 (figure 6). However, Jameson goes on to point out that what
is at one moment the corrosive clearing away and historical opening
222 PHILLI P E. WEGNER
The City (Complex Term)
COMMUNITY INDIVIDUAL FREEOO\1
CON CENTRA TION DECfNTRAUZA TlON
? (ncull'3l (erm)
FlgMr 6. Frt'dric lalni'W", "Of hhwd; und Tunch..,: Nrlllrali;ullIon and Ilu' ProductIOn of
U10PUlII .. III or Theory (1989). 1:91.
that is Utopian neutralization becomes, at another moment, simply
ideology itse! f:
So the Utopian ncutraliz:lIion of the old ideology ends up
m:rking a cOlllribution to the product ion of that new
communicational one whose var iants may be found in
McLuhanism. systems theory, Habermas' "communica-
tions theory of society," and structuralism, to the degree to
which each of these. above and beyond its value as an in-
strument of analysis, projects a morc properly ideological
3mh ropology or thcory of "human nature" according to
which it is proposed that society he organized.
Ii
In this latter claim, we also see some of the first indic:ltions of the line of
thought that will culminate in Jameson's ori ginal and decply inAucntial
theory of postmode rnism as tht: culturnllogic of late capi t:llism.
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 223
However, Jameson would not truly begin to explore this other deploy.
men! of the Greimasian schema until his bter poslJl1odernism study, The
Seeds afTime (1994). In this book, Jameson suggests that each of the three
essays, originally presented as the 1991 Wellck Library Lectures at the
Uni\'ersity of California, I n' ine, "attempts a diagnosis of the cultural prt::s
ent with a view toward opening a perspective onto a future which they are
clearly incapable of forecasting in any prophetic The first essay
offers a mapping of the ccnlfal conceptual antinomies of the postmodern;
the second, by way of a reading of Chevengur, the "rediscovered" 1920s
Soviet Utopia by Andfei Platono\" a confrontation "with what has van
ished from the postmodern scene;")') :lnd the third, of rnost interest to us
here, a Greimasian permutation:11 mapping of [he v:lrious architectural
styles that have emerged in the present moment.
While Jameson claims that only the first chapter is "dialectical" in its
representational form (t he third properl y structural, and the second "prob.
ably best ch:uacterized in more Freudi,m or depth psychological terms"), I
would suggest that there is a larger dialectical Darstellullg:H work in the
book as a whole .... ) Indeed, The Seeds of7i'me has a narrative structure whose
richness and drama approach that of Jameson's great real ist masterpiece,
Marxism and Form: TIlIt'l1tieth.Ct'l1tIllY Oia/ectiCli/ Theories of Literal/Ire
(l971).l) The fi rst section of the book begins by offering a provisional
mapping of some of the antinomies that struct ure the present: constant
change and absolute stasis, spatial heterogeneity and global homogeneity, a
hostility to nature and a renewed sense of nature as limi ts to human energy,
;Ind utopia and :mtilllopia. These provide:ln idcologic:1l to the lived
experience of the particular historical order, or "arrested dialectic," named
the postmodern. The second sect ion begins the movement of opcning up
this imaginary closure precisely by marking lhe absences haunting this
ua tion- Utopia, modcrnism, and, at this momcnt, the quite reccnt and
unexpected disappearance of the Soviet Union and thc end of the Cold
War (and, in this regard, there is a deep kinship betwcen Jameson's project
and that of its contemporary, Jacques Derrid:1's Specters of Marx: The Slate
of Debt, the Work of AlolIl"llil1g, and the New /rlfe1'l1(ltiaf/(J/jI9931).
In the third and final section, Jameson prescms and then eb borates upon
the following two Greimasian mappings of contemporary architectural
practice (figures 7 and 8). Significantly, in the discussion that follows,
son turns his auention away from [he complex term that had been at t he
center of his earlier uses of Greimas. In the first case, he is primarily con
cerned with the tWO side resolutions and the ways that the architectural
practices of Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman ofTer us partial, residual (or
is it reemergent?) modernist architec(Ural practices. Then, in his final study,
224 PHI LLI P E. WEGNER
HIGH MODERNISM
/
totality ,.---------- innovation
/
DIRTY REALISM DECONSTRUCTIONISM 2
/
replication ,.----------+t Part/element/signifier
/
STYLISTIC POSTMODERNISMI
NEORATIONAUSMI
CRITICAL REGIONALISM
Flgllrt' 7. Fredric fUllln/HI, The Seeds of Time (1m), { n.
Replication or imcrtexluality
TI-I E ANTI VANGUARD
(TRANS-AVANT -GARDE
PLURALISM)
CORPORATE '-IEGEMONY
STYLISTIC POSTMODERNISM
part/clemenllsignifier
THE ANTISYSTEM
joints rearguanl
THE ANTISCENOGRAPI11C .,--------_J MARGINALITY AND
tectonic/tactile/telluric THE LOCAL.
THEANTIGRID "" /RESISTANCE
CRITICAL REGIONALISM
Flgllrt' 8. Frdrtc }am('ioll. The of Time (1994), /95.
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 225
hc explores the ways in which what Kcnndh Frampton n,lI11eS Critical
gional ism emerges as a nelltral ization of the dominant practices of a "styl
tic postnloclcrnism," represented by the canonical work of Michael Graves,
There arc two vc ry suggest ivc consequences of this particular
ment of Greimas's schem:1. First. Jameson's reading points IOward an
autonomy (but, as I will show shordy, rcally a semiaulOnomy) of the three
horizontal planes crcated by the exterior poles of the schema, Secondly,
and even more importantly, the final or neutral position takes on a new
ccntrality as the site of potential emergence within thc spatial closure of
the Grein1:lsian mapping, an emergence whose full dialectical forcc is
m:ldc cvident in rhe following passage:
For while it can be said that Critical Rcgionalism shares
with them a systemat ic rcpudiation of ce rtain essential traits
of high modernism, it distinguishes itscI f by attempting at
one and the same time to negatc a whole series of
ern negations of modernism as well, and can in somc respects
be seen as antimodern :'Ind antipostmodern si multaneously.
in a "negation of the negation" that is far from rcturning us
to our st:lrting point or from making Critical Regionalism
ovcr intO:1 belatcd form of
Ja meson is quite carcful not to overvalue the achicvements of this
ment as it currcntly exists: rather. in his reading. it stands as the formal
aliegoricil placeholder for concrete potentialities. "the possibility of
vcming some new relationship to the technologic:11 beyond nostalgic
diation or mindless corporate celebration,"H He subsequently notes,
Frampton's conceptual proposal. however, is not an intern:11
but rather a geopolitical one: it seeks to mobilize a pluralism
of "regional" styles (a term selected, no doubt. in order 10
forestall the unw:mted connotations of the terms national
and international alikc), with a \'iew toward resisting thc
standardi zation of a henceforth global late capitalism and
corporatism, whose "vcrnacular" is as omnipresent as its
powcr over local decisions (and indeed, after the end of the
Col d War. over local governments and individual nation
states as
In Jameson's hands. Critical Regionalism thus comes to function in a way
not unlike Derricla's figure of the specter or, later in the 1990s, Michael
226 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
Hardt and Antonio Negri's multitude-and. as in all three cases, it is this
emergent horizon of possibility that escapes our efforts to represent it
fully.
Jameson will further develop the implications of this retooling of the
Grcimasian rcctangk in his 2005 book, Archal'Ologies oj the FullIre: The
Desire Called Utopia atld Olher Science Fictions, the final volume of his
projected "The Poetin of Social Forrns."fS Here, Jameson con-
cludes that any solution to the problem of representing Utopian otherness
need!> to remain:l purely formal one; otherwise it falls prey to the tempta-
tion of lrony- "it is in Irony til;!! we arc able 10 have our cake both ways
and de ny what we affirm, while affirming what we dcny"- that he first
identifies in his previous book, A Singular Modernity (1002), as "the quint-
essential expression of late modernism and of the ideology of the modern
th:1t was developed during the Cold War:''''' lt is this formal solution that
the semiotic square "seems to promise":
For now, ollr scheme allows us. following 's guidance,
to identify another possible position, namely that "synthe-
sis" of the two negations which Greirnas named the nelltral
term. Not both ar once, but neither one nor the other. with-
out :1Ily third possibility in sight. This nelltral position does
nor seek to hold two substantive fealllres. two positivities,
together in the mind at once, but rather attempts to retain
two negative or privative ones, along with their mutual ne-
gation of each other. ... They must neither be combined in
some humanist organic synthesis. nor effaced and aban-
doned :altogether; but retained and sharpened, made more
virulent, their incompatibility and indeed their incommen-
surability a scandal for the mind. but:l scandal th:H remains
vivid and alive, and that c;mllot be thought away, either by
resolving it or eli minating it: the biblical stumbling block.
which gives Utopia its savor and its bitter freshness. when
the thought of Utopias is still pos!>ibleY
The figu ration of this kind of totalizing Utopian horiz.on can be seen in a
wide range of contemporary cultural texts- including, as in the earli er
book, in Critical Regionalism-and for which, in the present case, the
older term ;'rederali sm" will serve as a weak :md inadequalt' nallle "until
we ha ve a better one.
It is here where J t hink :1 reading oflhis particular and origi nal deploy-
menl of the Greimasian semiOlie rectangle with Lacan's theori zati ons of
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 227
the three orders becomes productive. as it enables us to characterize in
a new set of terms the work of dialectical thinking, or narration, that we
sec taking place in these later works of Jameson. First, the plane of the
Grcim:lsian schema occupied by the complex te rm is that orthe Symbolic
order, the Big Other (A), or "the parasi t ic symbolic machine (l:lIlguagc as
a dead entity which 'behaves as if it possesses a life of its own ')," that oper-
ates as both the third 10, and ground of, any orthe concrete exchanges and
encounters th:n take place on the plane of the T he complex
term- also akin to the Idea of the "constel la tion" in the Platonic Darsfe/lulIg
that Walter Benjamin develops in his great study orthe German TrOIleJ"-
spiel (mourning play)- is thus the name of the totality, encompassing the
lived experience of the Imagina ry and the void of the Rea[:
[n order to conceive what happens in the domain proper to
the human order, we must SUITt with the idea that this order
constitutes a totality. [n the symbol ic order the totali ty is
called a universe. The symbolic order from the first takes on
its universal character.
It isn't constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol
arrives, there is a universe of
The middle plane occupies the place of Lacan's Imaginary, primarily a
matter of dualities and oppositions-"most notably all those which accu-
mul:lIe around the self and the other (or the subject and object)"- the
antimonies whose apparent irresolvabililY constitute the lived experience
of a particular situation.
s,
Finally, the neutral term is homologous to the Lacanian Real, which
Lacan describes in his first seminar as "what resists symbol is:u ion abso-
lutely," and which in Jameson's earliest characterization becomes another
name for "simply History Or, as Lorenzo Chiesa more precisely
frames the isslie in his br illiant book, Subjcaitliry and O,hernf'ss: A Philo-
sophica/ Reading of LoCUli (2007), "t he re is something real in it which
escapes the Symbolic. something which renders t he symbolic Other 'not-
:,11' :lnd, for the same reason, makes it possible precisely as a differential
symbolic slruClme."5J Crucially, in a way whose significance will become
clear in a moment, it is this resistance to symbolizat ion, or to incorporation
into the reigning order. that both accounts for the trallm:ltic experience of
any encounter with such a Re;!l (hence, the monstrous figuration of the
Real of revolution in Mar), Shelley's Melion) and, even more significantly,
:lssures the nonclosure or suturability or any reality, here represented by
the other [\\'0 planes of the G rei masian schema.
228 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
The deeply di:llcctical nature of IXlth Lacan's conceptualizat ion of the
three orders and Greimas's semiotic reClanglc li es in their emphasis on tht
inscp;1 rabi I ity of I hese multiple levds. I ndeed, there is in this light an inter-
est ing figural resonance between the full Greimasian rectangle and Lacan's
late typology of rhe Borrolllean knot. Moreover, the outer reClanglc formed
by the four terms of interest to us here ma y be productively understood as
a figura ti on of the fourth ring Lacan describes in his fina l scminars as the
sinthome."I At the S:Ime time. there i .. a resonance between Greimas's figure
and Lacan's earlier schcma L, the latter. howeve r, rotated as shown in
figure 9 . ~ ~ A properly dialectical criticism conceivcd in this fas hi on thus
re\ealS;1 deep kinship with the work of analysis as Lacan prescnls it in
h i ~ early work: intervening from the posit ion of the Symbolic order . mal y-
sis attempts 10 ellt through the deadlock, or disabling antinomies of the
I nl.1ginary, and en:l ble an encounter with the traumatic Real.
Thi s emphasis on the Re:l l also re presents a signific:Hlt shift wit hin
Laean's own projeCl, a shift that occurs, Chi esa argues, around the lime of
A (Othcr) (Symbolic Ordcr)
a' (other) L-----------------------7 a (ego)
Imagi nary relationship
S (Es) (Rcal)
l-"igul'l' 9. Laca" s schema f.. rl'Vlud. ()rtgi"al apprars I" tcrilS (2006). m. 458.
CREIMAS AVEC LACAN 229
the 1959-60 seminar on The Ethics of Ps),cho(lfl(l/ysis. This t:lkes the form of
a mO\'emcnt :nv:ly frolll the eMlier dominant formub, "There is an Odll:r
of the Other:' Chiesa unpacks this for mula in the following way: "(T(he
fact that the re is:l (symbolic) Other of tile (symbolic) Other indicates that
the Other as the order of signifiers is guaranteed by anothe r transcendent
Other. namely the paternal Law."'iI, I n this moment in Lacan's project,
wh:n Chiesa identifies as Lacan's structuralist phase, "the order of the Real
is enti rely separated from the Symbolic. The Real can be defined only
negatively as tha t which t he Symbolic is not" (i.e., what resists symbol-
iz.:llion absolutely). 57
Howeve r, beginning with his 1960 essay "The Subversion of the Sub-
ject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious"-an essay
that engages d irectly and critically with the "schema Hegel gave LIS of
History" in The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807}---Lacan begins to turn his
att ention to the consequences of the new fOflllllla, "(T(here is no Other of
[he Chiesa sUlllmarizes this move in the following way:
Consequently, the most imporwnt effect of the passage from
"t here is an Other of the Other" (A) to "there is no Other of
the Other" (A b:lrred) is that the lack in the Other-the fact
that. beC:lllSe of the d ifferential logic of the signifying
st ructure, a signifier is always missing from the battery of
signifiers-is no longer imrasymbolic but should be consid-
ered as real, as a presence of the Real in the open structure
of t he
It is precisely this opening up of the structu re of the Creimasian schema
t hat, I want to a rgue here, Jameson effects when he shifts his attention
from the complex term (a structuralist deployment of the rect:wglc) to ,he
nelltr:ll, [he la ner best understood:ts a hole in the whole of the C reimasian
figure-and indeed, t here is a striking resonance between Chiesa's figure
for the formula "There is no Othcr of the Other" and the Creil1l:lsian
rectangle as I reimagine it here-something that becomes fully apparent
only when we read Creimas with Lacan.
The ultimate conclusion Chiesa draws from this reconceptualization is
worth citing here, as well, as it important implications for the qucs-
tions I will t:lke up in the final sect ion Ofl his essay:
It goes without saying that such a direct politicization of
jOllissance is comp:ltible wi th Lacanian psychoanalysis only
if the fund:tmental fant:tsy it sets up is radically net//: in other
230 PHILLIP E, WEGNER
words. a is progressive and consequently
worth fighting for only if it closely follows the temporary
assumption of fhe real bck in the Sy mbolic,jollis-suns, At
the risk of oversimplifying an int ricate issue which is only
introduced here, I would go so far as to suggest tha t any
possible politicoll elaboration of the extreme ethics of the ex
nihilo should rely on the equation between what is new and
what is
hypothesis would be that the Greim:lsian schema reconceived in
this way offers us a representation of the labor of dialectical thought and
writing (the two being inseparable), Most immediately, th is claim enables
us to read in a new way th<.' labor of thought occurring in some of Jame-
son's own earlier schemas, For eX:llllple. in his foreword to the Grcimas
collection On Me(ll/ing (1987), Jameson develops a mappi ng of Hayde n
\Vhite's masterpiece, The .. toricallm(lgil/(ltio1J ;11 Nilleteenth-
Century Europe (1973). that places the resolutions represented by the fig-
ures of Nietzsche and Hegel/Marx opposite each other on the plane of the
Greim:lsian schema that I h;we suggested corresponds to the L:lCanian
In1:lgin:lry,
However, Jameson also notes that White ultimately gives a "tentative
priority of Nietzsche over the other two positions insof;l f as Nietzsche
'includes' thei r moments of Tragedy and Comedy and then projects
funher new and original possibilities, and Irony (properly
linguistic or reAexive moments), Olll of the earl ier pai r,"(>' Nietzsche
"begins with :11) idellfific:ltion of Tragedy and Comedy, which lumi-
nOlls ly eclipse each other and in their indistinetion give rise to some-
t hing else. which will be an Ironic sense of the powers of language that
now once again releases the great Metaphoric energies,"I.! This privileg-
ing of the Nietzschean view over the classical Hegel ian one
wkes all t he force in White's moment of the early 19705 of:l conceptual
breakthrough. suggest ing that we rotate Jameson '$ graph so that Nietzsche
now occupies lhe neutral position we have identified with the Lacanian
Real (figure 10),
This in turn makes clear the degree to which White's book serves. in
Jameson's representation at least, as a symptom of an emergent post mod-
ernism: /IIcwhiuO/y represents anot her example of the "communicational
ideology" that we already have seen at work in Jameson's discu<;sion of
Xcnakis I referred to ea rl ier, while also offering the intimations of some
radically new and currently uni maginable way ofbcing in the world (as
wit h the Nietzsche of Derr ida or of Dclcuzian afflnnation),
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 231
l lege!
S\ ' MIIOUC
com.!-<l)'
'ynccdochc
IMAGINAKY
Optimism
romance
metaphor
s -s
-s ;....--------=. s
Nietzsche
cragcdy

satire
Irony
Pessimism
FlglII't' 10. Frt'drir jomCio'l,jorcU'Qrd to On Meamng: Selected W rilings in Semiotic
Theory, by A. /. Gmma. (1987), rt'vlst"d. XXI.
To tcst this proposilion more properly. howeve r. I would like to show
how thi:. is the case in two orthe mosl significant achievements in
cal criticism produced in the lasl few decades: Micl13c1 McKeon's The Ori-
gillS of the English Novel, 1600-1740 (1987) and SI;Jvoj Zizek's Tanyiflg
with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (1993). On the
most general plane. McKeon sets for himself the t:'l5k of explaining "how
c:llcgorics. whether '[iterary' or social,' exist in history: how t hey first
alcsce by bei ng understood in terms of-as transform.nions of -other
for ms tha t have thus fa r been taken to define the fiel d of possibil ity."61
Taking his lead from the dialectical analysis of the concept of production
found in Marx's Gnmdrisse (1857-61), McKeon shows how the "simple
st raction" of the novel comes into being as the culmination of a
long debate over the two intertwined sets of epistemological and social
concerns that McKeon names, respec tively, questions of Truth and ques-
tions of Virtue. What ul t imately occurs is a neutralizat ion of both the older
sense of the authori ty of established texts as the final epistemological cou rt
of appeals and an aristocratic roma nce idealism found manifest in the
232 PHI LLI P E. WEGNER
Authority:
Tradition
Na'ivc
(Progressive)
Romance
s -s
-s =-----------.::..
s
The Novei
Rornanl'c Idcalism
(Ariqocr.lti c)
True HiSlOry
(Rcalhrn)
Flglirr II. MIt'hue! Mr Kt'on. Th., Ori}(ins or !I,., '\'",.:1, I(,(){)- I i40 (J987).
great chivalric romances- a neutralization tlUII ultimately will be named
"the novel" (figure I I),
While McKeon's study offers it rich and exemplary model of a dialecti-
callitcrary criticism throughout, and one whose vcry breadth of his tori -
c:ll scholarshi panddemon:.trat ion it such:l n imposingachicvemcnt,
it is the climax to his narnltive th:l\ is of most intCresl to me here, i\IcKeon
challenges two lines of inquiry that would privilege as the first true novel
eit her Samuel Ri chardson's work (a move exemplified by Ian Wan's clas-
sic study) or that of Henry Fielding. McKeon argues that "within the
present accounl of the origi ns or the English novel-as a long-term his-
torical process that consists bOlh in the experimellwl conAation of epi ste-
mological and social concerns and in the experimental oppos iti on of
narr;nive strategies-there is little sense in seeking the identity of ' the
first noveli st:"
Rather, McKeon maimains, "[T[he novel is conSTituted as a d ial ectical
unity of opposed parts."'''' That is, the novel :IS a simple abst raction, or
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 233
I <1111 c<l lling the n<lllle or Ide<l of <I Symholic order, encompasses the
of both of the "two stylistic lines of development" in the novel
identified by Mikhail M, Bakht in: those of Ri ch;lrdson- wh<lt McKeon
describes <IS <I nai\'e empiricism <lnd a progressive ideology, originall y
imagined as:, negation of <I preexisting rom:mce idealism and aristocrati c
ideology, combined with <I moralizing focus 0 11 the internal and [he sub-
jective (t he latter becoming fully evident only wit h Fielding's 1:ller
rejoinder)- and those of Fielding- the combination of r:ldic<ll skepticis m
and conservative ideology, a negation of Richardson's intervention, and
the disavowal of Ri ch:trdson's artifice that Fielding names "nature" or
"true history," and that will shortly simply be referred toas realism (which,
McKeon still points Out, "is only art by anothe r
The publ ic contro\'ersy between the two is thus properl y an Im;lginary
one, the two authors employing "ant itheti cal methods of writing what is
nonetheless recognized as the same species of narrative": indeed, each
adopts the str:ttegies of the othe r in their later works- works that now
occupy the fully established institution of the novel"" (figure 12), One of
the real va lues of mapping McKeon's narrat ive in this way is that it helps
SVMIIOI.lC
Nah'c Empirici"n
(Progre'si\c)
IMAGINAR
Samuel
Rlch3rdson
Anifice
Subjcct:
(8's Slyli,ric trendl
The Novel
s -s
-s --------. -
S
REAL l'ristrnm 511mull-
Nature: True History
(RcaliMn)
Society
(8 's 20<1 stylistic trend)
Ilcnr)
Fielding
Radical
(Conscl"\'ali\c)
Flgllrt' 12, Mlchad McKt'QII, The Ong,ns ofd1C EnglIsh NOICI, 1600- 17-10 (1987).
234 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
us to see more clearly how the plane of the Imaginary at oncepl'eceties his-
toricall y and yet is COWlifllted by the totality named by the Symbolic.
However, this is not quite the end of McKeons sLOry. In a final note
whose implication5 for the future study of the development of any genre
call for Illuch further exploration. McKeon writes.
Of COlHse the claim lO historic it)' cont inues to be scrvice-
able, in various ways, to future gener:Hions of novclists. But
in a more general sense, both the claim and its subversion
end in the triumph of the creative human mind. a triumph
already prefigured at the moment of the novel's emergence:
in Ri ch:lTdson the triumphant mind is th:n of the protago-
nist; in Fielding it is that of the author. The implications of
the formal breakthrough of the 17-40s arc pursued with such
feverish intensity over the next two decades that after "/iis-
lram Shandy 11759-671. it may be s:lid, the young genre set-
des down to a more deliberate and studied recapitul:nion of
the ame ground, this time for the next IWO centuries.
t
.?
In short, McKeon :Irgues that we see already prefigured in the uncatego-
riz;lble masterpiece of Laurence Sterne the end of the nove]"' that will
nOI occur until much later in a practice that brings together under the
name of mOl/t'I"flism {he skepticism ahoul the representational possibilities
of realism with an emphasis on psychological interiority (keep in mind
T. S. Eliol's dictum Ihal whatever else it was, Ulysses was "not a
It is no coincidence, then, that Sterne's work is 'rediscovered' in Ihe mo-
ment of rl1Q{icrnism by Victor Shklovksy, Vl:llter Benjamin, J;lmes Joyce.
and others.
There is a further insight to be gained from this m;lpping of
narr:ltivc. If we read in conjunction the twO Greimasian schemas I have
produced (modeled, of course, on the double mapping Jameson generates
in The Seeds oJTime), such that the concept of the novel in cach-occllpy-
ing the neutral or Real position in the first presentation and that of the
complex or the Symboli c in the second-becomes the point of overlap, an
interesting historical bifocality emerges, what Zitek call s the 'par;ll1ax
view:' a "constantl y shifting perspective between twO points between
which no synthesis or medi:ltion is possible.''''') On the one hand, the novel
serves as the name for;l particular Symbolic order, or what we wOlild con-
ventionally refer to as a "period" within literary history. On the other
hand. as our perspective shifts to the two end points of the larger mapping,
the novel becomes the name of a transitional phase- what Jameson calls a
GREIMA$ AVEC LACAN 235
"vanishing mediator" and Lacan the "space between two deaths"- be-
tween the orders of the romance and that of modernism, i!! Such a dialect i-
cal p:lrallax is char:lcteristic. Jameson has more recently suggested, of
every periodizing narrative."
The case I would like to look at from L:izek's Tarrying wirll the Negatit1e
also comes from the book's fina l chapter. "Enjoy Your Nation as Your-
sci fl " However, whereas McKeon's discussion remains centered on the
eighteenth ccntury. Zizek t;lkcs us directly into the contested ::lIld unst:lblc
ficld of the final decadc of thc fwcntieth century. Thus. while McKeon's
work opens up ontO:1I1 historic:ll question- why does il t:lke a century
and a half for the breakthrough figured by Sterne to become actualized on
a brger social institutional scale?-Zizek's analysis focuses on what he
takes to be the fundamental political question of the post- Cold War mo-
ment (and, in this, Ttmyillg with the Negative is also:l contemporary of Tile
Seeds of Time and Specters of lIofarx); how do we begin 10 break through the
closures of the Symbolic order oflate capitalism--or what we now c:lII. to
use the term whose r;lpid ascent to prominence is just beginning in the
years of the publication ofZizek's book,g/obalizalioll ? 7 ~ On the b'c! of the
geopolitical Imaginary, this closure takes the form of the global deadlock
of "to day's liberal del1locr:lcy," Ziiek offers this description of the current
SItuatIon:
The problem with liberal democracy is th:n a priori, for
structural reasons, it cannot be universalized. Hegel said the
moment of victory of a political force is the vcry moment of
its splitting: the triumphant liberal-democratic "new world
order" is more and more marked by a frontier separating its
"insidc" from its "outside"-a fromier between those who
manllge to remain "within" (the "developed." those (Q whom
the rules of human rights, social security, etc.. apply) and the
others. the excluded (the main concern of the "developed"
apropos of III em is to contain their explosive potential. cvcn
if the price to be paid for such containment is the neglect of
elementary democratic principles),-\
Zizek argues that the then-recent and unexpectcd disappcarance of the
socialist bloc's third way ("a desperate auempt at modernization outside
the constraints of capitalism") has set into place a new fundamental op-
posit ion between, on the one hand, the corporate :lnel state sponsors of
ncoliheralism advocating the violent dissolution of all traditional and pre-
existing social and cultural formations (processes David Harvey c;llIs
236 PHILLI P E. WEGNER
'accumulation by dispossession" and Naomi Klein calls 'shock therapy"):
and, on the other, the various fundamentalisll1'i, which include for Zizek
bOlh religious fundamemalisrns and nco-ethnic nationalisms, which. un-
de r the mantle of the maintenance of (invented) traditions, resist these
(A similar vision of the antinomies of globalization is
on display more recently in the critically and popularly acclaimed Da nny
Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire 120081.) Crucially for Zizek, any full ac-
count of globalization must take into aC((Junt both of these poles.
However, in what we now should recognize as the indication of a dia-
lectical thought under way, Zizek's analysis docs not stop here
and, indeed, mon's into what was surely intended by Zizek and will be for
many readers a far more scandalous terrain:
This antagonistic splitting opens up the field for the Khmer
Rouge, Sendero Luminoso, and other similar movements
which seem to personify "radical Evil" in t()(lay's politics: if
''fundamentalism'' functions as :l kind of "neg:ltive judg-
ment on lihcral capitalism, as an inherent negation of the
univers:llist claim of liberal capitalism, then movements slich
as Sendero Luminoso enact an "infinite judgmenl" on it."'i
The full Greimasian mappinJ! ofZizek's narrative would thus appear
in figure 13.
Earlier in the book, Zitek defines the Kantian concept of radical E\"il as
a force which disrupts the panern of the organic substantial whole'- The
example he offers us of this is a fasc inating one:
Suffice it to recall Thomas r-,lore, the C:ltholic saint who
resisted the pressurc of Henry VIII to approve of his di-
vorcc .... I Flrom a 'cornmunitarian" point of "iew, his rec-
titude was an 'irrational" self-destructive gesturc which
was "cvil" in the sense that it cut into thc texture of the so-
cial body, threatening the stability of the crown and the reby
of the entire social order. So, although the motivations of
Thomas More were undoubtedly "good,' the very formal
slrtu:fttre of h,s (let W(lS "radically evil": his was an act of radi-
cal defiance which d isregarded the Good of community.'!'
Radical Evil is thus the name the dominant order gives to any social force
that appcars as a traumatic disruption. Moreover. Zizek is even more in-
tcrested in the way ideology coll:lpscs the twO quite distinct positions of
SYI' IHOI.I C
Modem'1)
HY<lcric S
I \ I AGIS ,\KY
Nco-
lihcnlli,m
AnlHrad,Uon
.S
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 237
I..:ue Cap,lali'"'
(Globah/.allOnl
D)na""c
Kno,,"lcdge
s
. -
S
Radi<::l] E\,I
Infinite Judgmem

(lklid)
Trad,hOn!
culiu<e
MlSlcr
FuooM1cn{.OI"ms
Neg jlldgmenl
AnlHI""""m
Stll/V} 2I't<,1(. wilh Ihe Negal!\c (1991), 221-25.
the judgment :l nd the infini te judgment-the origi nal reference
for this latter fi gure bei ng, Zizck argues, the Prench Revolution itsclf-
into the undifferentiated ethical figure of evil. Such an et hi cal gest ure
serves as a w:ly of avoiding any encounter with the Real, both blinding us
to the formal existence of radicall y other possi biliti es of resistance within
OLlr world and preventing us from :"my specific political d iscussion of the
valut: and limitations of tht:se other movements as they currently exist.
Ziiek then goes on to describe this other force in a way that brings us fu ll
cirelt: back to Mary Shelley's novel:
It scems that only today. wit h the advent oflate capitalism,
has this IHegelianl notion of "rabble" achieved itS adequ:ue
realization in social reality, through political forces which
par:ldoxicalty unite the most radical indigenisl anti modern-
ism (the refusal of everything that defines modernit y: mar-
ket. moncy individuali!>m .. . ) with the eminently modern
238 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
project of the entire symbolic tradition :'Ind lx:gin-
ning from a zero-point (in the case of Khmer Rouge, this
meant :'Ibolishing the entire system of education ;lIld killing
imdlectltals), What, precisely comtitlttes the "shining path"
of tht: Senderist:ls If not the idea to reinscrbc the construc-
tion of socialism within the frame of the return to the ancient
Inca empire? The result of this desperate endeavor to sur-
mount the antagonism benveen tradition and modernity is
a double negat ion: a radically anti-ca pitalist movcment (the
refusal ofimcgration into the world market) coupled wit h a
systematic dissolution of all traditional hicrarchical links,
beginning with the
Zizek concludes in a way that hears out precisely how these forms of radi-
cal Evil occupy the nelilral position on our Grcimasian mapping:
The Khmer Rouge and the Senderistas therefore function
as :t kind of "infinite judgment" on late c:tpitalism in the
prt:cisc Kaillian sense of the te rm: they are to be located in a
third dOlll:lin heyond the inherent antagonism that defines
the late c:lpitalist dynamic (the antagonism between the
modernist drive and the fundament:llist b;tcklash), since
they radically reject both poles of thc opposition. A!> such,
they are-to put it in Hegdese-an integral part orthe no-
tion of late capit:llism: if one wallts to comprise capitalism
as a world-system, one must take inlD account its inherent
negation, the "fundalllentalism," as well as its ahsolute ne-
gation, the infinite judgment on
Lest one conclude th:!1 such an approach is limited only to contempo-
rary theoretical texts, I would like to end this essay by bridly outlining
twO additional examples taken from earlier moments in the rich history of
dialeClical criticism. The first takes as its case study Walter Bellj.llnin's
Ursp/"l/lIg des deulScht'll Iirwe/"spicls (The Origin ojGcn11(l1I Tmgic Drama)
(1928), a work, Benjamin wOlild later nOle in a leiter to Max Ryncher,
while not yet materialist, "was dialectical." ;"'} Wh:lt becomes evident in a
re:lding of Benja.min's narrative through the lens ofCreirnas's semiotic
schema is th:n Benjamin's figllr'Hions of the German mourning play
(7hwerspie/) and Ihe device of allegory occur through a dialeClical nClilral -
ization of the dominant institutional modes of tragedy and the symbol.
Moreover, in Benj:l1nin's study, the THlllerspiel form becomes an :lllegory
SYMIIOU C

Rcpetition
P"s,;v;ty
IMAGINARY
Ruin
Frngmcnt5
0","

GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 239
s
Tmgcdy
Symbol
An
( H"hi!ilwim'nchri/I)
"m'qual,amsm
-s
-s '-------------=.. s
Trnuen.piel
Allegory
Modernism
(Urspnmgbuch)
Radical Hi<!oric.;;tn
Monumcnt
Unity
Closure
Succc"s
Event
Shock
Will
Flgllfl'14. lVoltrr limjumlll, Ursprung de) DeuI.ehen Traucr$picb (/928).
in its own right of modernism-not the least of which includes lhe mod-
ernist practice of Benj;tmin's HahilitatiollsschriJt-and the means by which
Benjamin is able [Q bre:lk through to his own radically original mode of
historicism (figure 14).
My final schema is the most far reaching, offering an open dialectical or
totalizing presentation of the problemat ic of Marxism itself. Marxism is
the science of the mode of production of capitalism, and its Imaginary
unfolds, as Etienne Bal ibar so brilliantly suggests in The Philosophy of
Marx (1993), into the :mtinomics of ideology and rcification (and the ho-
mologous political opposition of voluntarism ;Hld dl'lerminism).JQI The
only way to break through such a deadlock is through a rigorous formal-
ism that will enable a confrontation with the traumatic rnaterial---class
consciousness, revolution, and communism itself-that is too often evaded
240 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
S),MIIOUC
Ideology
lCriti'loe)
' MAGINAR),

Imerpcllallon
jVolumarism)
Struggle
(11<,,,,,ming Subjl.'C11
s
s
Mode of Produ'llon
(Tmalilyl
Chis, ConSl:iousne"
He'olUlinn
O;>mmonlsm
(Utopia)
s
s
ConmlOdlly

(Obj<-clific'lIon)
KcificallOO

EcoJll)l]lIC Dc\'elopmclu
(Poll1ltaJ Economy)
in lOllay's illlcllcclUal Mafxisms, a si w :nion of which Zizck, Jameson,
and other contcmpor:lry dialectic;.1 thinker:. offer a powerful an:11ysis.
The lesson final schema nicely sums up the real val ucof thc model
of dialectical crit icism that I have been arguing for throughout rhis essay,
for it shows us, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that a map of Marxism today
that does not include Utopia is not wonh even glancing at (figure 15).
-Uni vcrsity of Florida
NOTES
!. Frc,lnc lameson. foreword !O 0,1 Mrunmg: St/rcud II'mmgi III St'IIIIOI/C ","roll", b)'
Alglrdas 'ul1<':n Irans. Paul l. Perron :lnd Frank H. Collms. Theory and
I-I "wr)' of I.ilcr"\,,rc, ,,,I. 38 (:'-'hnncapolis: Uni\'crm}' of 1-1'11ncso\;\ Press, 198i), "-X)<II.
(]umation un lti,. Grcima' tim de"dIJps Inol in his essay. (O;/ll\h,)rcd wnh
GREIMAS AVEC LACAN 241
Rasticr. "The [nteractiun "fSc:ulII.tic ([9(i8). rC(Jrlllted 11101/
Mrllllmg.48-62.
2. Paul ,Ie "The hi Theorl:' }alr Prel/ch SI/ul,r$, no. 63 (1982); H . IS; and
Paul RlCocur. 'limr u",1 NllTrolll:r. H.L 2, I "ms. Kath[een o\Id,'"lghlin 'mtl
Pdlaucr (Chicago; Unl\cr,il}, of Chic:.gu Press. I 98S). 4b. AI<o!.IT R,cocur. "Greimas's
Narrati\e GrJ11lmar:' Nm' Llferury Hiiful)' 20, no, ) (1989); S81-608. espeeiall)' the lun).:
notes on the <emiolic reCTangle in footnotes anti 12: and now Fre{lric ' :lIne<flll's
re3'SCSSlllent o( Ricocur's 111 Ihe lin:d chapter, "\'alenees o( Hi<tory:' in I'a{enui
of rhe Dlulemc (i\'C\\ York: \'crw. 20(9).
3. D)'lan E\'am. /In IlIIroJllnory J)1(-ri(}I1ury of LocUli/I III ",-,,('hllUlII/IYii,
Brunner-Routledge. 2(01). 132.
4. Sla\,ul l:i2ck, The I'amllax 1'1t,", (Calllbridge.1'.I,\: MIT I're,s,l()(}(,). 399.
S. 11m!.. 94.
6. Lei mc add, 100. th'1\ somelhing 5IIllibr c'Hlld be s:ud IO(){:(Ilr Ullllan)" oflhe "'her great
structuralist splcms, For example, in T 7_el\3n Todoro'-'s strllcturali,t /-:enrc study.
IlIIroJlI('fWI/ iJ la IwlnHltre [ullfumqlfe (l9;O). the genrc's fun.bmental rhetorical dC\icc uf
"hesiI:IIIOn"- of uncertaint)""' acccptancc ur a world of magic,
and hencc thc <hift into the kin gmrc of the mJne[ml'. or tho:: introduction of a
"o;cicnlific" cxplanation fot thc c's uccurrcnc<'s, chataett"ristic or the
related gcnre Todaro\' n,lInes the "uncanny"-ha, the dICet. as long 3S it is
(inddinilcl)" as is the (;I>C in a "'(Irk not lhscusscd br ToduTO'. Jalllcs Hugg's mastcr
picce of the form. The I'm'(Jf(" Mell/om alld COl/ftJi/om ofll Jlufljicd S/I1I1("r 1111241>, or
undamining the gr of the genrc's "thclllcs" thai TodorO\ dahoratcs in tht"
second half or thc book (Tlct,an TodoTO\. The FUllfllific: A StruCfllrul Approach ro a
Gt"nr(" NY: Corncll Un;\'cnit) 19;5I. 2S).
;. s.:c. for example, Frc(lnc J:lrncs<>n, "I 11l3gm3r), anll S}mbuhc m I..;"an," m Thrldi'Ologu';
ofThro ... ,.: r;';IIY>. 1971-/986, \01. I, SmwfIQII;ofThro')' (Mmneapolis: Uni\er<il)' or
Press. (989), ;S-IIS: and Jameson, "[..lIcan and the Dillc<:lic: A Fr"),:l1lenl," in
U('ml' "'''e Silr", 1)1I"flIers, cd. Sl,woj Zizek (New Ynrk: \'ersll. 2(06). 365--97,
8. Frcdnc J:'meson, The PolwCI1II.'flCo",.iolli: XamIlwr a, a Sooally S}mbolic .. let (ithaca,
NY: Cornell Uni\C:tsilY Prcs., 190'11).166.
,). Fredric Thr I'moll HOllse of {.ongltllgr: A Crlli('u/ A(,("()11tI1 ofSmu'(/ll11/l>m und
RIISiIUI/ Porn/allim (prmccton. NI: Prmceton Un1\'ersity 19i2). 166-67,
lU. Ibi{!.. 16;,
II, Ihid .. 168. For another deployment of the SCI1lIlJl/C rewlIlglc Ih31 dndops in
some richly producll\c Ihc di.lk'<lic,,1 or "explosive" possibilities of the Internal
fourth term, sce Ronald Schlei!Ter, I. J. Gmmas I1l1d Ihe NI1IUrc ofAft"l1nwg: ,-mg"'i/lCi,
Semiolla al/d Dli("Ollrir Thea,)' (Lincoln: Unn crsit), ufNcbr:lsb Press, 198;). Schlei/fer's
superh ,tlldy al5tl ha. the a,1<Iiti"n31 \-aiue of already callin/-: illto question the stereotypi-
(al charaCterizalion ofGrcil1l3s's work :lIld exploring In hrilli:tlll detail ils d)'IIJmic
ilO; well ns;to; kin,hip wilh Ihe I:ller work of [xrrid:., dc and [p1ca!l.
12. Jame<on.l'o/lll<"ul UI/WmnOtIi, 13.
13, Sec F redr;c 'The \"lIIishin)l '\1cdiator; or. Max WeI)!;r as Stur)teller," in Th ..
Idrologlei ofThrory: 1'Siuy;. 1971-1986, ,'oJ. 2: The S},lIfa;r of HUlol)'
Ullivermy or Mlnllc<ola Prc's. 1'}89). _'I-H; ,lnd Jamcson. ",\(tcr Armageddon:
Char,.clcr System, HI f)r. in /lrchllrologiu ofrh .. Fllfllrc: 'I'll .. f)mTc CuI/cd
Uropia alld Olha Snellce Flerlolls (1\'e\\ Yurk: Vcr",). 200') . H9-62.
242 PHI LLIP E. WEGNER
14. IlIid .. 79.
15. Shdk). Frullkrmlrill. or. Thr Modall I'romrlhr/U' (New York: Signel Cbs,ic.
36-'i.
16. Ih,d.,4'J.
17. William Word.worlh. 'The l;,bln Turned," in Engllih RomlJlllir II'rurrs. ed. D ... id
Perkins (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1967).209.
18. Sheik), Prullkmi/(II1. 1 B. Imcres!lngly, the no\eI suggests early on:l SlImb. failure on
the p.1rt of\'icwr\ f'Hher:
If. instc"d of remark. m}' (ather had taken Ihc pains to expbin
10 me that the principles o( Agripp., had heen emirel)' exploded .1I1d
Ihat a mudem sptetll of Klcnce had been inuooucnl which flO'!;esscd
much grcaler powers Ih:m Ihe Jlle.;enl I should certainl)" h3\'e
Ihrown Agrippa . side :md haH' e<)I1tented my imagination. warmed
as ;1 was. hy rCHlming lI'ilh g'''':Oler :ordnur to my former 'HldlCs.
(Shelley. Frullf(.-nirrlll, 3S-3'J)
19. Gr",imas .md R:ISllcr, nl(fanion ofS<;miollc Constrain!)," 'B-'H.
20. ,\Iso') now sce the discussion o( other le\'cb of mon,uusit)' in Ihe no\'cI offered br Sla\'oj
Zil.ek in III of 1..0;1 Calliri (Ne\\ York: \'erso, 2008), 73-S1. Fur" disclNiun "f
more po,ill'e figuralions of modern mon'lroslcy, sec Phillip E. Wegner. "We 're Family:
Monstrous KlIIships. :lnd the 1':' er1\ U\ HuffY tht' 1'IImr"'- SlilVr anJ Butler\
I',/rahi" No't'Ii," ch .. p. 8 In L1" brtWUII 'fim iJ,,"/hs, f981)....1oo/ US. C"III"" III/h" Long
1\ 'WCtlt'J (Durham. NC: Duk" Unil'ersllY 10(9),
11. Shellc}, Frullkmift'lI/, 190,
12. 11",1.,39, 101.
13. Franco 5,!!"! Tak"" f(lf Wmld"fs: r:.;,ayIIII fh" S'Kiolog), of LIt"'"")' Pomli, 'C\'. cd.
(New York: \'e"o, 1988),88. Also,,,,, the rc:tding oflhe wa) Ihe work
stages Ihe: "unreprcscntability" of Ih", prole:lari,ll in thi' specific hi.\wrieal conlunclure in
Warren ,\ lollla)!, Worksholl of Filth) ere,lIion ': A ;\brxi51 Reading of Frullkm-
itcm," in Cili" SlIld/f'i 111 CQlllcmpol'ury C,mc/sm __ MilT)' Shd/f')', "Fl'illlkmJICm,"
Johanna Smith (Boston: Hnlfonl. 19')2), quot3tion un 3 II.
H. J:uneoon.l'ollllcu( VI/COI/SCWIlS, 168.
15. "Henry Cle:nal hnth an alter cgo of Victor Franktlle;n and Ihe embodiment o( all
Ih<' qualilies of PerC)' Shellq 10:11 mOSI lo,,,,d" (Anne K. Mllr)' Shrllr,.: I-/"r
Lift', flu F,Cflon, I-/u MOl/if"" 1 New Y/lrk: Routledge, 19891,74).
26. ShellC}, Fra'lkr/lif<'I'/, H9.
27, 1\10;0 s<:e discus'lon of Ihe "milar imp<l"iblc resolut!on represented b)' th<'
figure of Ihe ComIC de T/OiSlil1c in Balzac's Lu 1'""11,, Fifl" (1836), m I'uflticu/ Ullam-
Ino/ii,168--()9.
18. I ,liKu,S Gibsun and Sterling's novclm "Th", Last Bomb: I hsm.y in Terr)'
Bis.)On's FII'''olllh<, MOIWIIlIII and Gibson and Slerling's Th, DiffirmCl' I-:nglll","
Comparallit 23 (19'.n): HI-51.
29. Shellc)', "'rullkmi.f"III. 17S.
[)arko SUI in, JI"lumorrho'''J of Sn"'ICl' FictlOlI 0" rh" l'Ol'tlri ami rilswry of a LII"ru"i
Gmf" (New 1--1 :1''''11, CT: Yale UnivCTsity 1""'5', 1979), 133.
GRE1MAS AVEC LACAN 241
31. J discuss the Uloplan coll!>Cn':nil'c in "Modernity, NoslJIgia, and the t-: nds uf
Nation5 in Orwell's Nlrlt'/l'l'1I EigfIlY1Q/If," (, in Imagi!J(IIY Commllllilit's: Utopia, thf'
NatlOlI, IJIIII (!If Spallul H,l(Qr/rs oJ Moor,,,,,), (Berkelc)': Umvcrs1\)' of California Press,
2002),183-218.
Jl. W:lync B(>IHh. Tilt' Rhnoric of Pierion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19( 1),
ciles lh,s passage in (ull,n h" discussion ofBouth's book III Man,sm
11r1/1 Porm: 7ium"('fh-Ct't1imy Du,lallcul Thront's of Lilt'YUlur .. (Princeton, NJ: Princc[()r1
Uni\'crSll)' 1(71),356.
B. Sec Franc!) Morelli. Ar/.Ii of Ihc NOI;('(. 1800-J9()() (New York: Verso, \998),
H. s.:c Nancy Armstrong. /),,-'''(' tIIllIDonl(,l/I' Piman: A Poflf/f"1l1 Hwory of tilt' Notd
(Oxford: Oxford UniH,rsily Press, 1987),3' wdl as her discussion ofSeoll and Shdlq in
1I0w Novr{s TIIUlt Till' LllllluoJlndividlldllimJrom 1719-1900 (New York: Columbia
Unil'efSlly Pre$5, 1005). Lc<s wdt known is some of A rlllsirong's earliest
explore the \;tlue and lililits for reading the nOl-eI of Greim asian M:lIliotics, and include a
rnapp1l1g of Prldr UIIJ Pup,dlu ( 1813) Ih:ll a kinsh;p With 1I1y
di5Cll5slon of Emmll (sec Nanq :, ronstroog, 'Inside Greimass Square: The Game of
Semiotic ConsTramts in Jane AU5Icns Fiction: 111 Till' S/gll /II M,,;/(" /llld Ult'rdt/lrl', e(l.
'Vendy Steiner [ .. 'u51;n: Umvc:rsit) of 1981 r, ;2---l>6; and Armstrong,
'Oomes\!cJting the Foreign DCI II: Strucluralism 111 EnglIsh Letters a IXcadc L,ter,O>
Sl'miOf/l'd 421 19811: 2H- 7;). The bttn essay als(> has the additional bcocfit of offering a
Grcim:man mappmg. :Ikin to that dcplo)'cd in Schlclffc:rs work. of'dlc relationship
amon): contcmling structures of discourse withm lucrJry criticism' (272), the rc:solutlon
of whose final opp0'litiun- poSt-structuralism :lnd Mnrxi<m amI psychoanalysis'-
cffccti"d)' ,har"ctcrizcs the nriginallllcth",lology Arm.trong deploys in hCT suhsC(lliCOI
dl-cply intll1enual book.
35. Fredric Jameson. "Of IsI,Ulds :lnd Trcnchcs: i':nllr:llizalion and Ih(O Production of
Utopian Dlscoursc: in fJrologll'J oJTht'Qry. 2:79.
36. 11)1(1.. 91.
37. Ibid .. 92.
311. Fredric Jamcson, Thr Srrd, oJ"fimr (New York: Columbia UI1I\,crslIy Press, 1994), XUI.
39. Ibid., ni. Also nnw scc Ihe discussion of AndreI Pblo1\ms (1926--19) in
Jonalhan Fbllcy, Mdpfmg: and lilt' Pof/lln of Modl'mislII (C:l1n-
bridge. MA: Har\;trd Uni\er\ily
'alllcsun.Satiso["li'mt'. XiII - XVI.
41. 1 di5Cuss thc rC:llism of Marx/sm und "-orm 10 Pctlodlz1I1g /3mesun, 111 On /amt'io,,-"
F.'Qr" f'o;/modal1lim 10 Glob.lh-:dtlon, ,<I. Carcn Irr and lao Buchan:1I1 (Alb3ny: 5ta[(O
Uni,'crSll), of New York I'rc<s. 2006). 241-80.
H. Jamcson,S .. rdioJTIII/l',I'J'(l.
H. Ibid . 201.
H Jbj<1..202.
4;. Volume 4 of )nmcsons The POClles of Social Forms is composed of the books A Slngll/ar
Mo<ll'rl1l/)'.' }:s.u,y olllhe Ontology of Iht' Prl'Jellt (New York: VClSi', 1002) and Tht'
ModulII!t I'd/'l'ff (New York: Verso. 1007). and ,olumc 5 includes f'ostmodl'mljm: or, Thr
Cu/tllrol LegicoJfAIt' Clip/Ill/ism (Durham. NC: Duke Univenit)" Press, (991), wilh Lull'
Marx/jill: , Idomo: or Thl' /'rrs/Sll'na oJthl" /)//l{r("fic (New York: Verso, 1990) as
somethmg of an "cpiStemfl-ctillcal prologuc' to [he bst. Thc work-in-progress I"olume 3
244 PHILLIP E. WEGNER
WIll takc up the prohlem of realism: and the propo5Cd I and 1 will d",,1 with
'"lth .,,,,1 n.,rr:l1;\,C and wilh aU,,!!ory.
4(.. ,.mle".n. Irdltll'o(og"'J ,if ,nr f"wurr. 177-7'1, Fredric Jamc..ol1 . Sillgu/"r
Mrx/t'I"IIIII,I(,]-11O.
4/. Jamc'><>I1, .1!'charologlt'J of ,h,. FUlu,r, .
.fl{, lbl<l., 114. I dISCUSS b 'l1C,On'Si ll"ch<lr%gJ('s III much more dela,l '" my essa)' "J.1mcs<>n\
,\lo..J.:rfllsrns; or, the [)nm: Calkd UWI'I:O," /J",(rll/CS 37. no. 4 (1007): 3-10,
W. Zii.ck.I"Halluxl'it'w.121.
5U. /Jcql1t" l":lcafl, Tht' Srmlllur of Jactfllri I..JlColll, IJook II: Tht' I:'go III "',o"I's Throry and 1/1
,hI' Tnh""I"" of /J;yrhO<lIItlIF's. 1954-1955, $)'hall" TIlIll.I'I(:l1i (New Y(>rk: 1\'urton.
19<}1),19.
51. /amto;un, "Lac;IIl 11 .... DI:llcClic,"
51. ,.ICqllC l,a(.ln. Thr Srrnmar of jacqllri Lucan. Jlook f: ' '"''rlld'> Papa" Qn Tt:.hmqllr.
/951-1954. uans. 'ohn Forrc'ter (New York: Norton. I '1)l). (,(,; Fredric
Tht: fdt:offJglri ofThrory: J:S<ll)'i. /971-/986. vol. I: Sill/allQm ofThrol)'
UllIH:rsi() or I\ linnc<ota Prn . 1989). 104.
S). Loren/_" Chiesa. SUb;t'CIIl'IIY ulld Olhrmru:.1 Phllosophicdl Rrudmg ofl..u.ulI (Cunbridge.
;\IA: 1\1IT I'rc".1007), 10'i.
'H. Sec /"({Iue, L.acan. Lr Jlmmdlrr LlI'rr XX/II. /1 Jllllhomr, /975-1976 , cd. /Jcquc,.,\I.lin
I\liller (I'Mi,: du Seuil.100'i): anJ Elans.llII,-oolfcIOry /)tr/IOIIUI)'. 18-10, 188-90.
S5. The prnposlI,oll (h;u it would he I'tlssili!c I<J read "L:lc;U\'s 'iChCIll;ui7.:llil)ll 11\ rebt ion I\>
,\. I. Creil1l3<'s 'cl1limic '<.Ju;orc" is IIndl)' ,dlmlcd tv h), l:llnc. 1\1.l\klbrd. Usmg
l..u<,m. RNdlllK FIr/lOll (Urh.ln", Un'\'Cfsit)' or 111,"0;$ Press. 1991). (00-(,1.
5(,. Ihid., tn"
57. Ihid .. IllS,
'is. '''C{I"l'' 1_1",", Eam. (",ns. Brucc Fink (Ke" York: :--:"lIon. 2(06), 6i I. 691.
;'). (:hil'<a, Slfb;rCflI'lfJ ulld 119.
{,(l, Ihid .. II}I-n.
(,1. Ibid .. X'I-xxi.
(,t ,\Itehad Thr Orlgllls of thr English ,\'Ol'rl. I{,(}I)-J 740 (Ib lt ilnorc, MIJ: Inhn$
H()pkms Vnt,'eNt}
64. 11))(1..167. Aho S-t'e ,\!CKl'()I\, "A Derense or Method m
History," f)iltcrlllcs 19, nu, I (1989); 8 )-%.
(,S. ,\ !eKc'''', OnCIIl> (lfthr f:"gltjh 1\'(WrJ, Also $CC Mikh"il .\!. Ihkluin, Thr /)wlog'c
IlIIo1K"'o1l1tm Four l".hu),!. eM)'1 Emerson !l)lquisl (Au5Iin:
Uni,erslt}' Press, 1981). l'.i.
(>Ii. Origllii ofthr English N(wrl, 166,
(,7.
ull. T. S. Fli"l. "t.:I}'Jiri. Order. ,lIId (1913), in Moorrlllsm: .II/Allthology. cd. I ... wrenec
Rainey (Oxrord: Oxror{1 Urmersity Press, 1OOS). 16'5-67, quot31ion on 166.
C REIMAS AVEC LACAN 245
69. Zi'-ek. Parallax I',,w.-l.
iD. Scr Fredric Jameson. '"The Mediator; or. Wd><:r :I, Storytel1er.
M
in Mrola
glrs afTlleory )aC<lues Til.: Sml/lU/r of Jacqu.:s I..acan, UOlik. VII: Til,.
/;'llIlrJ af I',ydl(xlIIu/Yii, 1959-1960. trans. Dennis ]loner (New York: NUT!oll. 1992).
il. See the theori;-;atioll of I><:riodi;-;"tion in p.ut 1 of J'ltnesoll. SmEII!ur Moc1rrtuly,
17-95. [ <!iscuss this dK'(>riz:ui()n in more (let"i! in the imruduelion to /..iff Tt<'O
Drallls.
n. [discuss in !-Ome the significance of. among other the "end" of the Cold
W:lr. the publication of thcs<: crucial thcoretic;d intcncntions. :md the risc of the concept
of Jtlobalization. for an ull<lerstanding of this hi,toriral context, m ufo brlwt't'n Two
IJrallls.
i3. Sbvo) Zi'-ek, Tarrp"g 11'"11,11,, N"gam'r: Kam, l/rgd, alld Ih" Crmqu" of MeolOf[Y
(Durham, NC; Duke Vni,ersity Press, 1993), 222.
7-1. Ihid. f\I!-O.-ce Da,id H:tn'CY, Thr Nr", Imf't'riafum (Oxford: Oxford Vni,ersit), Press,
2005): and Naomi Klein, Thr SlIock Doclrillt': Thr Rlir of Diillslt'r Capl/allim (t\'el\" York:
Henr) HolI.2007).
75. ?:Iiek, TarrYlfIg wllh Ihr NrgatlV(', 223-24.
76. Ibid., 96-97.
77. Ibid., 124.
78. Ihid., 225. Let me note that allot her Greimasian dialectical schema emerges more
recent I)" III Sla,oj Zifek, .. Ih" Tcrnpta\lon:' Crll1"allnqllll)' 32 (SprlllJ,;
20(6): 551-74. now included in ZiiS.cks "Why h (Sorne!lmes) Good E.nouJth in
Practice. hut Not in Tht'Ory:' in In Dr/msr of 1..0;1 Callsri. 264-333. And. finall), scc th"
diKussion of "di\ inc "iolc:ncc" by :Zitek in [fiolrnlr: SIX Sldrways Rtjfr{"f/on, (New York:
PicJdor. 2008).
79. Cite<1 ill ESlher Leslie, Walur UrtlJumln (London: R""ktiol1.1007), 115.
SO. Sec Etienne B"lih.1r. Th,. "IIi1tJiophy ofM<1rx. Turner (New York: Verso. I??'i).
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Greimas avec Lacan; or, from the Symbolic to the Real in Dialectical
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Criticism 51 no2 Spr 2009 p. 211-45
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