Jacques Lacan on George W. Bush

by Adam Kotsko

Conventional wisdom holds that whereas liberals are evil, conservatives are stupid. In his seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (pp. 182-183), Jacques Lacan challenges this assumption in a brief aside about "the political meaning of this turning point in ethics for which we, the inheritors of Freud, are responsible." Referring to a previous seminar in which Plato's Meno was discussed, he notes that "for a long time now, there have been left-wing intellectuals and right-wing intellectuals." Since Lacan was giving this seminar in 1959 and since the conclusion that such intellectuals had existed "for a long time now" stems from Plato, one must conclude that modern left- and right-wing thinkers are each respectively representative of some long-existent options for thinkers throughout at least Western history.

In order to draw out the significance for his theory of the left and right wing, he refers to the English term "fool," as it first appears in Chaucer and then reaches its peak in the Elizabethan theater of Shakespeare. Lacan claims that the "fool is an innocent, a simpleton, but truths issue from his mouth." This is not, however, the relatively banal insight that often the least experienced people will accidentally stumble upon a "good point": the truths of the fool "are not simply tolerated but adopted, by virtue of the fact that this fool is sometimes clothed in the insignia of the jester." That is, the truths that come out of the mouth of the fool qua fool are adopted, precisely because of his role as a powerless individual who exists at the pleasure of the king. Thus while one might assume that Lacan could follow the conventional wisdom and deem the right-winger a fool, instead he says that a "fundamental foolery ... accounts for the importance of the left-wing intellectual." Much to the pleasure of self-important conservative commentators, in Lacan's account, Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag are fools.

For the contrast, Lacan draws on the term "knave," stemming from the same literary tradition. The knave is not "a cynic with the element of heroism implied by that attitude." Rather, he is an "unmitigated scoundrel... your Mr. Everyman with greater strength of character." Very interestingly from my perspective, Lacan says that "a certain way of presenting himself... constitutes part of the ideology of the right-wing intellectual" -- I have argued many times right-wingers have a certain rhetorical style that is fundamentally different from that of left-wingers. This "way of presenting himself" is "precisely to play the role of what he is in fact, namely, a knave." Such an intellectual "doesn't retreat from the consequences of what is called realism; that is, when required, he admits he's a crook." Here it doesn't seem that Lacan is implying that a right-winger will eventually issue a teary-eyed confession of his wrong-doing; there are other ways of "admitting" things.

Lacan says that he'd prefer a crook over a fool, "at least for the entertainment he gives." Yet this only functions at the level of the individual: he would take knaves over fools any day, "if the result of gathering crooks into a herd did not inevitably lead to a collective foolery." This, he claims, is "makes the politics of right-wing ideology so depressing." Here he is not simply claiming that right-wingers end up making stupid policy decisions, as undoubtedly true as that is of the right-wingers currently running our unfortunate nation. The fool is enabled to speak the truth because he is in the role of a powerless individual; here, however, the collective foolery of the right-wing intellectuals takes on a "foolish" relationship with the current state of affairs. "Realistically," of course, the world is not fair, and certainly an individual is justified in resigning himself to being a knave -- yet the great cloud of right-wing intellectuals presumably has some power to change things, and instead end up merely reinforcing and even defending the current state of affairs. This is why the right wing is the "conservative" side.

For Lacan, the collective foolery of the right is well-known. A less noted phenomenon, however is that "the foolery which constitutes the individual style of the left-wing intellectual gives rise to a collective knavery." As an avid reader of leftist periodicals, Lacan admits that his account of the left and right wing has "the character of a confession." He enjoys "the spectacle of collective knavery..., that innocent chicanery, not to say calm impudence, which allows them to express so many heroic truths without wanting to pay the price." Precisely as fools, they are parasitical on the current rulers, but by their empty radical verbiage, divorced from action, they admit they're crooks. "It is thanks to this that what is affirmed concerning the horrors of Mammon on the first page leads, on the last, to purrs of tenderness for this same Mammon."

For the leftist fool, uncovering ugly truths and proposing change comes easy, because it's always up to someone else to do the hard work of changing things. Yet the collective foolery of the right-wing ideologists also, in its own way, tells the truth about the situation, while abdicating responsibility -- ultimately to God, who, according to Lacan, is dead and always was. I'd probably have to write a whole other article to explain why maybe that isn't contrary to the gospel, but then I'm of the idiosyncratic opinion that psychoanalysis, Marxism, and the gospel have a whole lot of stuff to discuss amongst themselves.

In any case, how can I fulfill the promise of my title? I think it should be fairly clear how many points of intersection there are between Lacan's account and the political reality of left and right today. Yet what would Lacan say about George W. Bush? Certainly, Lacan would note that Bush exemplifies the modern phenomenon of the "master-fool." This is a master who does not sieze power, but rather abdicates himself of responsibility, simply rubber-stamping "reality." Accusing Bush in person is always awkward, because he is presented as a complete tool of the ideologues who are really running things. Even a sharply critical article on Bush always ends up accusing the knavish underlings more than Bush himself, and Bush, when called upon to explain himself, can always, justifiably, claim that he was just doing what he was told. Even the master, in our modern age, is a parasite on real power, which is always somewhere else and is never my responsibility.

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