Concrete Universality and Substanceless Subjectivity:On ?i?ek's Lacan-Hegelian Interpretation of Marx's Concept of the Proletariat
Contemporary Western radical left-wing philosopher Žižek creatively interprets Marx's concept of the proletariat through his intertextual readings of Lacan and Hegel.As far as the proletariat is excluded from civil society,the term embodies concrete universality and is the barred subject($),the form without content.Insofar as the proletariat is pure labor,the term is substanceless subjectivity,directly equivalent to money as capital,namely the object a,the formless content.Žižek focuses his criticism on the goal of proletarian revolution and refuses to regard communism as the material content of the proletariat reoccupying alienation in revolutionary action.Žižek's greatest contribution is to inject Lacanian psychoanalytic resources into the classical concept of the proletariat,and answer why the proletariat has the most complete revolutionary consciousness(death drive).However,we should also keep a clear critical thinking of his misinterpretation.