9
imperative and democratic invention, involves objet petit a: just as superego stains the moral
law, it also appears as a stain on the empty place of democracy. Zizek writes: “Before its proper
birth, the Nation is present as a superego voice charging the Convention with the task of giving
birth to it” (262). The stain on the empty place of democracy takes the form of the sublime,
pure, body of the People, that is, of the Nation.
10
Revolutionaries understand themselves as
charged to create a new People out of the old society. But, who gives them this charge? The not-
yet-existent people.
11
In this way, formal democracy is tied to a contingent, material, content, to
some sort of Nation or ethnicity, to a fantasy point that resists universalization.
12
The Nation is
the condition for democracy: who else calls it into being?
13
So, formal democracy is stained by a contingent, material content. The empty place of
formal democracy, the extraordinary achievement of the democratic invention, is impossible. Is
this democracy therefore what the left is condemned to defend? Are we destined to fetishize
democracy, that is to adopt the attitude, I know democracy is a form stained by a pathological
imbalance, but nevertheless I act as if democracy were possible?
14
Is it necessary to remain
faithful to castration and, if so, why?
Thus far, my discussion of Kant, the Jacobins, and psychoanalysis has focused on objet
petit a as the limit of universalization. One result of this has been the claim that democracy is
ultimately inseparable from nationalist violence. But, I haven’t mentioned capitalism, that other
element in Zizek’s disparaging of the present scoundrel time. To get at the link between
capitalism and nationalism, two moves are necessary. The first involves a concept Zizek takes
from Fredric Jameson, the “vanishing mediator.” The second comes from his specific discussion
of capitalism and nationalism in Tarrying with the Negative.
Convention