davidson 2012 sustainable city as fantasy

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Abstract

Tere can be little doubt that our current ecologi-cal crisis is being ramed through the idea o sustain-ability. As we plan to deal with anthropogenic climatechange, we talk o becoming more sustainable. Weare projecting a sustainability vision; a certain uture

that we desire to achieve. In this paper I o er a Lacanian interpretation o this vision, arguing thatwe must understand how ideas such as the sustain-able city operate as antasy constructs. Here I wantto emphasize the particular operation o this antasy,since it is the very orm o this operation that stymiesthe true politicization o climate change. Te paperdraws on ieks reading o Lacan to illustrate how sustainability (as antasy) relates to our knowledge o climate change. wo brie illustrations o the operationo sustainability as antasy are then outlined. Te rst

draws on recent city planning in London, UK, to show how antasy has gentri ed the traumatic elementso climate change. Te second illustration draws ona brie conversation with an urban policy-maker tosketch out how transgression is a unctioning parto sustainability antasies. In conclusion the paperturns to the question o politics through a relating o Lacans psychoanalytical cure with a politicization o economy.

Key Words: cities, antasy, Lacan, sustainability,Zizek

La ciudad sustentable como fantasia

Resumen

No hay duda de que nuestra crisis ecolgica actualest siendo enmarcada en la idea de sustentabilidad.Cuando planeamos cmo manejar el cambio climticoantropognico, hablamos de ser ms sustentables en

muchas dimensiones. En este sentido proyecuna visin sustentable, un determinado utubuscamos. En este artculo o rezco una interprlacaniana de esta visin, asegurando que deentender cmo las ideas como la ciudad susteoperan como construcciones de antasas. Een particular la operacin de esta antasa, poprecisamente la orma de esta operacin la qula verdadera politizacin del cambio climtiartculo se basa en la lectura que Zizek hace dpara ilustrar cmo la sustentabilidad (como se relaciones con nuestro conocimiento del cclimtico. Para eso propongo dos breves ilustrde la operacin de sustentabilidad como antaprimera es sobre recientes planes urbanos en Lpara demostrar cmo la antasa ha gentri celementos traumticos del cambio climticsegunda ilustracin se basa en una breve convecon un poltico que se dedica al urbanismodemuestra que la trasgresin es una parte untal de las antasas de sustentabilidad. En conel artculo arriba a la cuestin poltica a trarelacionar la cura psicoanaltica de Lacan copolitizacin de la economa.

Palabras clave: Ciudades, antasa, Lacan, tentabilidad, Zizek

Introduction

alk o sustainability saturates urban pTis is, o course, quite understandable giveimpending threats o global warming. Howis not di cult to identi y the numerous parawithin this embrace o sustainability. Tese winclude the continued pursuit o economic gwithout necessary reductions in carbon emissio

or urgent action alongside business-as-usual,

SUSTAINABLE CITY AS FANTASY

Mark Davidson Graduate School of GeogClark Univers


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Mark Davidson

neutral schemes standing alongside coal- red powerstations, extensive suburban expansion with policiesadvocating reduced auto transit. Tese paradoxes canbe explained as being concerned with the distinctionbetween knowing and doing: we know that climatechange requires a much more sustainable city but, atthe same time, we continue to do unsustainable things(e.g. more highways, airports, McMansions etc).Given the structural causes o climate change, theseparadoxes might also be explained as mani estationso inertia, it being very di cult to rapidly trans ormvarious urban development processes. Tis said onecannot escape the act that urgently needed re orm hasnot accompanied a knowing o its requirement.

Slow progress towards urban re orm stands instark contrast to the broad support that sustainability enjoys. Te breadth o participants in sustainability policy-making is testament to the power o the termto evoke. Te operation o sustainability as a mastersigni er (Davidson, 2010) can there ore be consid-ered as very e ective in terms o its ability to coalesceinterest and support. However we are le t with ourglaring ailure to trans orm cities in order to securea more sustainable uture. Te paper explains thissituation using Lacanian-Marxist theory to understandsustainability as a antasy construct. Here I will draw directly upon Jacques Lacans psychoanalytical theory o antasy and Slavoj ieks application o Lacaniantheory into Marxist philosophy.

Te paper makes three main points. First it isargued that the antasy operation o sustainabil-ity and by extension the sustainable city servesto mediate the relationship between climate changescience and public policy. Tis mediation, and my second point, is a crucial unction o antasy since itacts, in ieks (1997[2008]) terms, to gentri y thecatastrophe. Te argument here is that the sustain-

able city antasy must be recognized as a constructthat unctions to mediate our relationship to dystopicurban utures. Here the paper draws briefy on recentplanning policies in London, UK, to demonstratewhere a sustainability-based urban policy programhas removed the antagonism between climate changeand economic growth. Te nal section o the paperexplores how transgression is a necessary part o any

playing out o ideology and related antasies. Ta crucial observation in a context that sees cynica structuring eature o politics and policy. In oto illustrate the operation o transgression the parefects on a conversation with policy-makers who cial policy rhetoric contrasted sharply windividual discourse. Te paper concludes with a cosideration o what a Lacanian theory o antasy m

or sustainability and a politics o economy.

Lacanian Fantasy

In Lacanian psychoanalysis antasy is understas constructed in order to veil the subject rom terminal loss brought about by its symbolic castion (Miller, 1991). Tis castration is a consequeno the subjects spilt rom its rst nurturer (i.e

mother) and their entry into the language. Enterinto language (i.e. becoming a speaking beininvolves a pact that renders inaccessible some aspereality. Te subject is there ore bound to the paterauthority o language in order to access/use it (ibTe speaking being emerges as a subject that desia resolution to this castration. Tis desire is constuted inter-subjectively. Lacan uses the exampletwo children playing to illustrate the inter-subjectconstitution o desire. S/he observes how one ccan watch another child playing with a toy. Te chi

without the toy desires to possess the toy. Howevonce the child with the toy stops playing with it, other childs desire disappears. S/he does not dethe toy, but rather want to possess the enjoymeperceived to be held by the other child. In this senthe child with the toy is understood to have accesthe ul lment denied to the other child through thsymbolic castration. Tis trans erence, that the otis supposed to know, provides the basis o Lacconception o antasy.

Each subject constructs antasies to deal with tcastration. Tey do this through supposing that othereally know how to access the objects to ul l dTey have more access to the enjoyment ( jouisissance )that your desire promises. Tese objects Lacan caobjet petit a. Tese arbitrary objects unction promise the ul lment denied by the subjects einto language (Kirshner, 2005). Fantasy there


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consoles the subject by positing that a primordialullness can be restored and the castration imposed by

the paternal authority o language be reversed. A key point or Lacan here is that this primordial complete-ness was never actually there. Tat, in psychoanalyticalterms, the mother-child relationship was never un-split(iek, 1989). Te injunction against enjoyment(imposed by the symbolic castration) is there ore animpossible one. It bars access to something that neverexisted. Fantasy there ore serves to protect the subjectagainst the truly terminal nature o their castration.

As a psychotherapist, Lacans treatment involved a process that would see the patient traverse their antasy (Lacan, 1998). In his Seminar II, he comments thatpsychoanalysis exists in an order that you canmange ton dasein! (eat your existence!). Tis involves an inter-nalization o social relations in the sense o the subjecttaking personal responsibility or their li eworld. Tisinvolves renouncing the idea that others somehow have access to the objects which cause enjoyment( jouissance ). It is to come to terms with the act thatthe subject constructs this very relation in order veilthe traumatic nature o castration.

Within critical theory debates, it has been Slavojiek who has pushed Lacans psychoanalyticaltheory the urthest into social theory. iek argues

that ideology has to rely on some phantasmic back-ground (2008[1997], xxiii-xxvi), that antasy plays a constitutive role within ideology. Ideology or iek is not simply an illusion that stops us seeing the truereality (i.e. a classical Marxian conceptualization o alse consciousness): Te undamental level o ideology, [however], is not o an illusion masking the real state o things but that o an (unconscious)

antasy structuring our social reality itsel (ibid. 33).Ideology is not a supplement that is constructed tostop us comprehending the true nature o things.

Instead, drawing on Lacans understanding o thesubject as something split rom reality (in Lacanianterms the Real) by their entry into language, iek argues that ideology is the structure by which weunderstand the otherwise overwhelming nature o reality. ieks there ore rejects the idea that we livein a post-ideological society (33). We are always anideological entity.

However we do live in times where many prus to be beyond ideology. Te accusation that oideological serves as a strong condemnatioinvokes the notion o being dangerous, un-praetc. As iek o ten argues re erencing Franciamas end o history declaration, we are othat todays society is post-ideological, that bideology is a dangerous legacy o the 20th century. Foiek (1989) this idea that we can distance ou

rom ideology is mani est today in cynicism.can keep an ironic distance to their structideological antasies; that although they do nbelieve in them (e.g. amily, religion, charitcontinue to act them out. iek (1989) therclaims that ideology does not attempt to masklusionary orm. We know that our reality is mby illusions, but nevertheless carry on as thougnot know they are illusions. iek (2008[1997the ollowing example: they know that theirFreedom is masking a particular orm o explbut they still continue to ollow this idea o F(33). Can we not replace Freedom with Suability and include within the re erence to etion an environmental component?

A Lacanian understanding o the subject thinsists on understanding the phatasmatic structan ideologically mediated reality. Put di erenmust negotiate the act that our understandnature and society is always, to some extent, meTis has implications or our critical procedure.this involves a move away rom traditional noconsciousness-raising and the quest to reveal thabout reality in a way that is devoid o ideomediation. Secondly, it involves a critical engawith ideology in a context where it is presumedTis implication has a perverse impact in the that phantasmatic constructions appear to carryimportance in a context where their pure apperenders them real, as iek explains:

in the good old days o tradi-tionalIdeologiekritik , the paradigmaticcritical procedure was to regress romabstract (religious, legal...) notionsto the concrete social reality inwhich these notions were rooted;


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today, it seems more and more thatthe critical procedure is orced to

ollow the opposite, rom pseudo-concrete imagery to abstract (digital,market...) processes which e ectively structure our living experience (iek,2008[1997], 1)

What iek points to here is that act that inan ideology that bars the possibility o ideology, a situation emerges whereby imagery (i.e. antasy con-structions) take on the status o really existing. Fantasy constructions do not so much disguise the true natureo things, but actively structure the nature o things.Te Lacanian point to be emphasized here is that thisreign o ideology is not something that can be ended.

o some extent ideology will always be present. TeLacanian psychotherapeutic cure o traversing the

antasy there ore is to live with our ideological status.Te subject must realize that the source o their desireis, in act, a construction o antasy and its ul lmentcan never be achieved. Te subject must come toterms with themselves as a lacking (i.e. ideologicalbound) subject.

Sustainability and Fantasy

Te operation o sustainability as a antasy construct is illustrated by the Lacanian distinc-tion between desire and drive. Lacan, drawing onFreuds theory o death drive, postulates that a driveis something that brings about satis action withouthaving any subjective position (Lacan, 1991). A driveis non-subjectivized since it exists be ore it is realizedwithin the subjects spectrum o meaning. In contrast,desire represents a truth or the subject in that it isinterpreted and recognized by the subject. Tis dis-tinction leads iek (1997) to associate knowledgewith drive and truth with desire. Knowledge has nonecessary assimilation into the subjects li eworldsince it can exist in a dimension prior to its recogni-tion. In contrast a truth is assimilated by the subject.Te distinction is illustrated by iek (1997) using the example o science and its blind insistence:Modern science ollows its path (in microbiology,in manipulating genes, in particle physics) heedlesso cost - satis action is here provided by knowledge

itsel , not by any moral or communal goals scienknowledge is supposed to serve. Te central poihere is that science operates as a drive, its missdisconnected rom subjectivization.

Modern science there ore presents signi ctruth challenges as its accelerating progress creconstant demands in terms o absorbing its produknowledges:

All the ethical committeeswhich abound today and attempt toestablish rules or the proper conducto gene-manipulation, o medicalexperiments, etc. - are they ultimately not desperate attempts to reinscribethis inexorable drive-progress o

science which knows o no inherentlimitation (in short: this inherent ethico the scienti c attitude) within thecon nes o human goals, to provideit with a human ace, a limitation?(iek, 2008[1997], 37)

Tis limitation o science is concerned withe imposition o knowledge onto the ideologlandscape. Science blindly produces knowledge con ronts our ideological landscape in ways thanot already accounted or:

Tus, the properly modern ethicso ollowing the drive clashes withtraditional ethics whereby one isinstructed to live ones li e according to standards o proper measure andto subordinate all its aspects to someall-encompassing notion o the Good.Te problem is, o course, that nobalance between these two notionso ethics can ever be achieved. Tenotion o reinscribing scienti c driveinto the constraints o the li e-worldis antasy at its purest - perhaps the

undamental ascist antasy. (ibid.)

What iek insists upon here is that the clabetween what science produces and what we wanto produce cannot be reconciled. o do so promi


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what Hannah Arendt (2004[1951]) calls a scienti cphilosophy (468), something that pretends to know the mysteries o the whole historical process (ibid.469). Whereas Arendt warns against the totalitariantendencies o ideology, iek insists on both the in-evitability o ideology and its inherently unscienti cbasis. Science is, in psychoanalytical terms, withinthe sphere o drives and, as such, produces substancethat is de-subjectivized: positive science can neverencompass and account or the very horizon o meaning within which it is operative (iek, 2006,163). Whilst iek certainly goes onto complicate thissimple distinction (ibid. 163-6), the point here is thatscience generates content regardless o subjecti cation(desire/truth). Its products must con ront the eld o meaning (i.e. ideology).

Te rst insistence with respect to climate changeand sustainability rom the Lacanian perspective mustthere ore be to recognize their distance. Knowledgeo climate change has represented a monumentalchallenge to our nature/society assumptions. Tisperhaps explains why knowledge o climate changecontinues to be a stake in political debate when con-testing the evidence base seems so ridiculous. Whena presidential candidate can proclaim that I dontbelieve man-made global warming is settled in scienceenough and remain legitimate, our ideological ramemust be considered. It is not that, in this case, exasGovernor Rick Perry appears so ridiculous in the aceo the global scienti c communitys consensus positionthat he becomes illegitimate. Rather his insertion o doubt utilizes the gap between knowledge and truth.Here, ieks (1997) insistence that science belongsto the Real indicates the subjects (and societys) di -

culty o engaging with the knowledge which scienceproduces. Te Real, or Lacan, is the negative spacethat stands beyond the world o meaning. It is thatwhich is beyond prevailing ideological reasoning: thedomain o whatever subsists outside symbolisation(Lacan, 2007[1977], 388).

New knowledge must there ore be incorporatedinto our ideological rame. It is at this point that antasy

unctions: fantasy is the very screen that separates desire from drive : it tells the story which allows the subject to

(mis)perceive the void around which drive ciras the primordial loss constitutive o desire2008[1997], 43;emphasis in original ). With re erento climate change scepticism, the antasy cobecomes doubt over scienti c proo or propeti c conduct. Tis antasy, one concerned witine ciency o science itsel , becomes a constenables the true antagonism between a carbongrowth-dependent capitalist society and nenvironment to be deprived signi cation. It whowever, be a mistake to associate the antasy cwith right-wing Republicans. Te gap between and desire, between knowledge and truth, alsowithin the very community responsible or change science.

Te Inter-governmental Panel o ClimChanges (IPCC) 2007 report made the ollowtinction: Determining what constitutes danganthropogenic inter erence with the climate sin relation to Article 2 o the UNFCCC invalue judgements. Science can support indecisions on this issue, including by providing

or judging which vulnerabilities might be lkey (IPCC, 2007, 64). Tis statement is writtthe concluding section o the IPCC Synthesis a document intended to speci cally addressissues o concern to policymakers in the domclimate change (iii). What this statement insis the notion that the science presented by the must be interpreted. Te IPCC attempts to mainthe persona o objective presenter o scknowledge and, in doing so, divests itsel o aobligation. It simply delivers knowledge withresponsibility to give it meaning. Climate cscience becomes, in ieks terms, indi erenmodalities o its symbolization (2008[1997]that its unctioning is inherently indi erent tthe historically determined horizons o the dio Being (ibid. 52). Here the antasy is cowith the constructed o a position beyond/outssymbolic sphere.

For Habermas, this tension imposed by scmeans that we must curtail science: when thao science monopolizes the guidance o


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conduct, all competing claims to provide a scienti corientation or action must be rejected (Habermas,1989, 36). Within ieks Lacanian raming, such a position is rejected since [ ]he price we pay or thissolution is the etishistic split between science andethics (2009, 427). Te consequence o such a splitrefects the cynical positionality that iek and others(Sloterdijk, 1988) nd indicative o contemporary ideology. It results in the ollowing position: I know very well what science claims, but, nonetheless, inorder to retain (the appearance o ) my autonomy, Ichoose to ignore it and act as i I dont know it (iek 2009, 436). I we adopt this cynical position, we areprevented rom con ronting what iek terms thetrue question:how do these new conditions compel us to transform and reinvent the very notions of freedom,autonomy, and ethical responsibility ? (ibid.;emphasis in original ). Whilst science cannot become ethical interms o operating on the side o drive (i.e. not desire),it must remain engaged in a dialogue with truth. Or,to put it di erently, the antasy construct is the imagi-nation that science, and in particular the articulating scientists, can simply remain in the realm o the Real.

In both the case o the climate scientist and theclimate sceptic, we can there ore see the necessary phantasmic background to their ideological elds.I our knowledge o climate change represents aninsertion o the Real, a traumatic intervention intoour li e-world, we can presume the operation o

antasy. It is in this sense that I want to approach theidea o the sustainable city. I want to argue that wemust understand the sustainable city as a antasy construct that, in its current mani estation, repeatedly

ails to ask the right questions. By this, and to put itin Lacanian terms, we are yet to traverse the antasy in such a way to con ront the traumatic nature o environmental crisis.

Gentrifying the catastropheTe antasy screen, according to Lacans Seminar

IV, is a principle means by which the subject veilsthe trauma brought on my their symbolic castration(Nusselder, 2009). However, as iek (2008[1997] 6)argues, this notion o screening does not capture theconstitutive unctioning o antasy, the thing to add

is that the relationship between antasy and the hoo the Real it conceals is much more ambiguous tit may seem: antasy conceals this horror, yet atsame time is creates what it purports to conceal,repressed point o re erence (ibid.) Fantasy opnot as some hallucinogenic phantasmagorical woview, but rather antasy itsel combines the aand horri c: Te [H]orrible can also unctioas the screen itsel , as the thing whose ascine ect conceals something more horrible than horitsel , the primordial void or antagonism (i2008[1997] 6). Fantasy is not incompatible wiproblems. Indeed, the problem (i.e. horror) itsel prime eature in the antasy screen.

Fantasy can there ore gentri ying the catastro(iek 2008[1997] 6) but in a ways that need not nessarily ob uscate it. Rather, it teaches us to interwhat it is we want rom our traumatic situatiFantasy teaches us how to desire: antasy medbetween the ormal symbolic structure and the ptivity o the objects we encounter in reality (ibidIt is this interceding o antasy between the traumsituation (i.e. climate change and environmencrisis) and our desire o what we want rom thisthe sustainable city) that I want to explore here. Tcentral point I want to make is that we have thoughly gentri ed the catastrophic situation o climchange within our imagining o the sustainable cTe antasy o the sustainable city does therenot deny the existential challenges o climate charather it unctions to deny certain antagonisms condition others in such a way that the very sachallenges appear to demand little trans ormatioour ideological coordinates.

A caveat from London...

A strange thing has happened within urban poldebates over the past decade. In the early 200climate change was becoming thoroughly incorrated into urban policy documents. Organizatiosuch as the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Grou

ormed in 2005, were established to promote a msustainable kind o urbanism. Te primary idea hewas that cities were (a) overwhelmingly respons

or the production o greenhouse gas emissions


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consequently, (b) urban re orm has to be central inany e ort to reduce greenhouse gas-related climatechange. Te C40 group, whose current chairpersonis New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, hasbeen organizing and coordinating work to introducemore energy e cient buildings, low emission publictransit (e.g. natural gas-powered buses), tree planting,integrated waste management and renewable energy sources. Te actions o the C40 group refect thosebeing undertaken across the globe.

At present this mission contains within it a major antagonism in that reducing environmentalimpact conficts with economic growth agendas. Tecentral problem or many cities has become how toresolve environmental crisis rom within an economiccontext that demands growth. From this perspective,the central policy problem is a politico-economicone, not an ecological or technological one. However,this (traumatic) conclusion has not been con ronted.Rather, this particular problem has been thoroughly gentri ed. Tis has involved a radically di erentnarrative being imposed on ecological crisis: Untilrecently, the predominant reaction to similar ominousnews items [polar ice melting] was a call or emergency measures: we are approaching an unthinkable catastro-phe, and the time to act is quickly running out. Lately,however, we hear more and more voices enjoining us tobe positive about global warming (iek, 2010, 328).Tere has been a (phantasmic) impulsion to re-narrateclimate change: rom crisis to opportunity. Tis re-narration is exactly what is happening in urban policy circles. Climatic challenges are being re-inscribed as(economic) opportunities.

London is an illustrative example. In 2011, theMayor o London Boris Johnson introduced his spatialdevelopment strategy, identi ying it as a keystone inrealising my vision or London as the best big city in

the world (5). Te Plan has two primary objectives:London must retain and build

upon its world city status as oneo three business centres o globalreach. It must be somewhere peopleand businesses want to locate, withplaces and spaces to meet their needs.

Tis economic dynamism is vital toensuring the prosperity o Londoners(and the rest o the United Kingdom)need, to maintaining the world-beat-ing innovation increasingly neededto address global challenges, and tosecure the highest quality develop-ment and urban environments (5).

What this opening statement establishes is compatibility between economic growth and enmental improvements. Te rest o the 2011LondoPlanpushes con dently orward in moving ptensions o economy and environment in suchto make both their utures co-dependent.

Te London Plans introductory chapters introd

the problems and challenges acing the city. favoured by the Conservative mayor, the proand challenges outlined are commonly ideacross large cities. Tey include the questions oto do about economic development? How to maquality o li e? How to control migration? Wdo with respect to ecological crisis? In responslatter question theLondon Plan(2011) attempts tunite ecological crisis with economic crisis:

London has always been at theore ront o enterprise and innova-

tion... Te next 20 years are likely tosee continued changes to the Londoneconomy, with new sectors and en-terprises emerging... Tis period may,

or example, see signi cant growth inthe environmental sectors, driven by an increasing shi t to a low-carboneconomy with new knowledge andtechniques been applied to the chal-lenges acing the planet, across thecreative sectors and in new orms o business services meeting the needso new markets and a changing world(30)

Te ecological limits to economic growthundesired Malthusian message delivered by tho Rome in 1972, are here trans ormed. Eclimits are removed by trans orming ecologic


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into growth opportunity. Te same message can beheard rom the Obama administration where a greeneconomy is heralded as the new economic rontier, thesolution to our current crisis o over-accumulation.

Whilst the global city may epitomise environmen-tal crisis or some (e.g. excessive wealth and consump-tion; resource intensive; political power) in Londonsplanning program its global city status (i.e. center

or global capital and associated services) is made toequate with sustainability. Not only can the city planand develop itsel in a sustainable manner (e.g. moreenergy e cient buildings) the latest planning policy also spells out how it can be [A] city the becomesa world leader in improving the environment locally and globally, taking the lead in tackling climatechange, reducing pollution, developing a low carboneconomy, consuming ewer resources and using themmore e ectively (Mayor o London, 2011, 32). My point here is not that London cannot achieve somecombination o these re orms to some extent. Rather Iwant to the fag the way in which the irreconcilability o ecological crisis and economic growth has beenthoroughly removed. Instead we nd the potentialcatastrophe o climate change gentri ed, the problemremaining present but now becoming opportunity.

Fantasys reliance on transgression

Tis example o Londons city planning illustratesthe ways in which a antasy acts to mediate ourencounter with the problem o climate change. Temessage delivered by climate science is thoroughly placed within the sphere o desire, making it largely compatible with our current ideological rame (i.e.capitalist, liberal democracy etc.). But the secondpoint that must be made here is that this antasy construction always operates at a distance. By this Imean that the antasy construct o the sustainable city as deliverer o economic prosperity and ecological res-toration relies on a distance towards to it: ... antasy has to remain implicit, it has to maintain a distancetowards the explicit symbolic texture sustained by it,and to unction as its inherent transgression (iek,2008[1997], 24). Tis points towards the distinc-tion between antasy and ideology, the latter servesas a background texture with the latter providing a

mechanism o support or it. Fantasy serves withiideological structures, but it cannot be our ideologstructure. Tis distance is crucial since the equatino antasy with ideology would undermine the abo ideology to make meaning or the subject:ideological-edi ce can be undermined by a too-litidenti cation, which is why its success ul unctirequires a minimal distance rom its explicit ru(ibid. 29). Te consequence o this is that an idelogical identi cation exerts a true hold on us preciwhen we maintain an awareness that we are not identical to it (ibid. 27). Dis-identi cation with

antasy is there ore key in ensuring the ideoloedi ce does not become undermined by a too-litidenti cation (ibid. 29).

With this in mind we there ore have to careanalyse our interpretation o the type o plannoutlined above. It might be easy to dismiss a narratthat has brought ecological crisis and economgrowth into relation as pure ideological manipulatito assume that all those ormulating and impleming these initiatives are simply duped into believthat capitalisms incompatibility with global ecologwell-being can be solved by strengthening capitalBut, according to iek (2008[1997]), this interpretion does not adequately incorporate an understaning o how ideology relies on a transgressive elem As he argues o art: Te arti ce o true art is thmanipulate the censorship o the underlying anin such a way as to reveal the radical alsity o

antasy (26). We must not simply be concernwith the sustainable citys construction and obvparadox. We must also have concern with the utioning o those transgressions and acts o censothat render the antasy more e ective as an ideolodevice.

A caveat from the elevator...

A short while ago I was conducting an interviwith a policy-maker responsible or sustainabpolicy-making and related initiatives in a large cTe interview went pretty much as expected. My inteviewee and his manager (who had accompanied hto ask me about my research and why I was pursuquestions about sustainability) sat in a small con


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ence room on the seventh foor o the citys o ces. Ibegan to ask questions about the status o their policy making and re orms. Te interview lasted about 90minutes. I covered all my main questions: How waspolicy-making progressing? What challenges hadthey aced developing policy documents and relatedre orms? What types o conficts had been involvedin the policy-making process? What kinds o unding issues were sustainability initiatives acing? All went toplan. I had been an academic researcher interested inurban policy and they had represented themselves ascity bureaucrats carrying out the wishes o the citysrepresentatives.

At the end o the interview, my interviewee kindly walked me out o the o ce and into the elevator. A

unny thing happened in the elevator. On the short-ride down we began chatting about my stay in the city and what my wider research interests were concernedwith. As most geographers probably do, I reeled outmy standard response about what I do as a geographer,trying to keep things simple and concise. But thenthis polite chit-chat was transgressed. Tis somewhatsuper cial data sharing exercise went o -script whenmy interviewee asked me: You dont happen to know Pro essor X do you? I responded yeh, I know X.My interviewee then commented so you must know all the Marxist geography then, Harvey, Castells, allthat? Tey continued, yeh, all that stu is great, weneed more o that stu . In what ollowed my policy-making interviewee spoke at length about the Marxistgeography he read in college and how ormative ithad been to his own thought. Our in ormative andpredictable interview has suddenly taken a turn. Wehad gone rom a detailed and supportive discussiono sustainability policies to an outright embrace o radical Marxist politics.

Tis elevator conversation appeared as a transgres-

sive moment since we had spent 90 minutes discuss-ing the citys sustainability policies devoid o any critical content. Questions o class interests, structuralconstraints and cynicism had been o -the-table. I hadtaken their policy-making process on its merits and my interviewees had been keen to be assured they were notgoing to be an accessory to some revealing or criticiz-ing commentary. Indeed, a managerial presence had

served to assure this. So why did my interviewto bring up Marxian geographers and their damcritique o the type o policy-making my intehad been directing?

I we interpret this brie conversation as gression o the earlier policy line it equates witnotion o the distance we have towards antasuses Robert Altmans television series MASH (an antiVietnam War, anti-military series) to illustratdistance. He claims that [C]ontrary to its mislappearance, [...] MASH is a per ectly con ormis or all their mockery o authority, practicand sexual escapades, the members o the crew per orm their job exemplarily, and thus absolutely no threat to the smooth running mmachine (2008[1997] 26). Such an example reclosely with my transgressive elevator conveMy interview had illustrated the e ective and eway in which sustainability planning was place in the city. In this case, the job o mainglobal city status and economic growth alobecoming sustainable was proceeding withomany hitches. Tis is not to claim that the citybecoming sustainable (i.e. carbon neutral, sharmonious, stable and secure economy) but rawas doing things enabled it to legitimately clait was becoming green and sustainable (e.bike lanes, community gardens, extra public Yet my interviewee had transgressed this mesour short journey out o the building, explainithe true problems o the city have to be identits economic structures.

Tis transgressive moment signals to a key pao ideology and, by extension, the phantaoperation o the sustainable city. Te transgreindicates how antasy operates not just in tea belie /veil that relies on the ability to oper

distance rom it. Ideology also works in part it is acted out. iek (2001) illustrates this out and its constitutive nature within ideologyBlaise Pascals wager on God. Pascal wager iis prudent to believe in God since the risks ated with not believing outweigh the costs. HoPascal recognizes that this wager is based onand argument. A conclusion that leads Pas


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emphasize that true belie (not calculated reason)comes only rom ritual. Te actual act o belie is, orPascal, preceded by ritual. Believe rst mani ests inrituals (e.g. kneeling at the altar) and then can become

oundational as belie or the subject (i.e. the believertruly believes that they believe). But here iek is quick to supplement Pascals understanding by emphasising the cynical basis o belie .

Drawing on Peter Sloterdijk (1988), iek arguesthat todays ideology is shot through with cynicism.Tis cynicism is mani est in the distance to whichpeople have between themselves and their believes (inpolicy ideas, religion etc.): Cynical distance is justone way one o many ways to blind ourselves to thestructuring power o ideological antasy: even i we donot take things seriously, even i we keep an ironicaldistance,we are still doing them. (iek, 1989, 33).So here Pascals believer (i.e. a ter the interpolation via ritual) becomes a cynical believer:

...in the normal; cynicalunctioning o ideology, belie is

displaced onto another, onto a subject supposed to believe, so thatthe true logic is Kneel down andyou will thereby MAKE SOMEONEELSE BELIEVE! One has to take

this literally and even risk a kind o inversion o Pascals ormula... Tat isto say, what i one kneels down andprays not so much to regain ones ownbelie but, on the opposite, to GERID o ones belie , o its over-prox-imity, to acquire a breathing space o a minimal distance towards it? (iek,2006, 308)

Te point here then is that the transgression, thatact o not really believing, becomes the method by which ideology operates. Fantasy operates to gentri y the catastrophe, but we operate at a distance rom suchconstructs. Ideology works with antasy, as opposed to

antasy working on ideology. It is our cynical acting outo the antasy construct (i.e. our not really believing init) that sustains the ideological rame. We only have toassume that someone believes in the sustainable city,in order that we act out this belie .

In this context we can better understand thtransgressive moment. Te inherently unsustainable nature o our cities (i.e. they are integral tounsustainable set o structural processes) means any well-in ormed policy maker can come too cto their belie . A literal engagement with the untainable nature o most cities (within the current vironmental and technological context) would revthe unbearable proximity to the antasy construcis only the act o creating (cynical) distance that kthe traumatic antagonism o the Real (knowledgimpending climatic changes and the relationshipunsustainable urbanism) at bay. But, o course, distance does not change the ideological backgrouRather it cements it by externalize the operationideology.

Conclusion: fantasy and radical politics

City politics are dominated by economic growagendas, making the job o policy making and management very much the concern o doiHowever, as climate change warnings have contially pronounced, we ace tremendous challenges respect to making cities sustainable as they contito expand and consume. A strange situation hconsequently emerged whereby cities have continlong-established development trajectories whils

the same time generating a radical discourse o ch(Davidson, 2010). Tis paradox o business-ausual and calls o trans ormation can be understobeing resolved, rom a Lacanian perspective, throthe gentri ying and cynical operation o anConsequently, we might explore the social theory plications o Lacans psychotherapeutic cure in teo changing this environmentally not to menteconomically and socially destructive process.

For Lacan antasy must be traversed. By this Lmeans something very speci c. He is not talkabout removing antasy rom our knowing oworld, as i we could li t the ideological veil anprecisely how things are. Rather Lacan nds that experience o reality is supported by antasy. It iswhen a antasy construct ails to explain our rethat we become aware o some other level o psraversing the antasy is there ore not a removal

but a more direct association with it: o traverse


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antasy there ore paradoxically means ully identi y-ing onesel with the antasy - namely with the antasy which structures the excess resisting our immersioninto daily reality (iek, 2009, 329). Our option isthere ore not to reject the phantasmatic rame. I wecompletely reject the antasy construct the subjectundergoes a loss o realty and starts to perceive reality as an unreal nightmarish universe with no rm on-tological oundation (iek, 2000, 51). Our choiceis not whether to be phantastical or not, but rather torecognize that we collectively utilize antasy and haveto conduct social action accordingly in order to e ectchange.

Whilst critical research has thoroughly criticizedthe idea o sustainability (and related ideas), it mustalso consider the prospect o taking it seriously i this imaginary might bring about societal changes toredress/address ecological degradation and climatechange. Cynical distance and transgression must beconsidered devices that, at present, serve to allow the unctioning o a politico-economic system thatis generating environmental problems. Criticism,whilst taking di erent orms, can there ore be con-sidered omnipresent. Te question there ore becomesconcerned with our choice o antasy (i.e. what it is wedesire). Tis choice can be illuminated by examining the question o what trauma our sustainability rameis serving to gentri y. Te trauma is two- old. Onthe one-hand, the trauma is the ull realization o the dystopic uture promised by unmitigated climatechange (i.e. drought, starvation, natural disasters).On the other hand, it is the ull signi cation o how this ecological circumstance is generated by politico-economic conditions. Te political question there orebecomes how to e ectively generate a politics thattraverses the current antasy o sustainability. For thisLacans psychotherapeutic cure suggests we need tolearn to live with our reliance on antasy in such a way that (a) causes us to identi y with it and (b) does notreduce us to blind adherents to it. In this sense, weneed to pair gentri ying and traumatic elements.

iek (2009) attempts such a pairing in his discus-sion o a renewed le tist politics and its embrace o egalitarian terror. What he suggests here is a travers-ing o antasy in the sense that a socialist politics must

necessarily involve some impositions (e.g. redtive re orms that will impose new circumstansome populations). Put di erently, achieving apolitics will involve severe disagreements thresult in certain viewpoints not being incorpoTe point here is not to gentri y our antasassociate directly with it in a ways that con rdoing so, we have to reject the premise o a cobased politics that promises some orm o co-operative politics. Instead, our antasy o more egalitarian world has to incorporate ethdemanding (i.e. un-gentri ed) elements.

We might there ore ask what such a pairingmean or the sustainable city. At present wegentri ed antasy that has been constructed ta harmonious urban vision (i.e. ecologically economic growth and social cohesion). As argued, this gentri es the traumatic aspect o change and relies on a cynical distance in ormaintain the acting out o a social arrangemunderstand as unsustainable. o traverse this is there ore to (re)introduce the question o ec A more direct association with the sustain

antasy is to con ront traumatic economic quTis means more than simply questioning Weli estyles, as the IPCC does. Rather, it meantioning the very economic system that has consthe Western li estyle and, urthermore, itsel through the development promise to prothis consumption- renzied li estyle across thPerhaps then the true dystopic horror o sustainlies right here, in the current need to deny thio li estyle and concomitant orm o urbaourselves and others?

References

Arendt, H. 2004[1951].Te Origins of otalitaanism. Schocken: New York.

Davidson, M. 2010. Sustainability as ideolpraxis: the acting out o plannings master sCity: analysis of urban trends, culture, theoraction, 14(3), 390-405

Habermas, J. 1989 Jurgen Habermas on Soand Politics: A Reader . Beacon Press: Boston.


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Kirshner, L. 2005. Rethinking Desire: Te ObjetPetit A in Lacanian Teory, Journal of the AmericanPsychoanalytic Association, 53(1), 83-102

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report . Available at: www.ipcc.ch [last accessed 21st December2011]

Lacan, J. 1991.Te Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book II: Te Ego in Freuds Teory and in the echnique of Psychoanalysis . W. W. Norton: New York.

Lacan, J. 1998.Te Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: Te Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XI .Edited by J.A. Miller. W.W. Norton: London.

Lacan, J. 2007[1977]crits: A Selectiontranslatedby B. Fink. New York: W.W. Norton.

Mayor o London 2011.Te London Plan: Spatial Development Strategy for Greater London. GreaterLondon Authority: London.

Miller, J.A. 1991.Lacan and the Subject of Language . New York: Routledge

Nusselder, A. 2009.Interface Fantasy: A LacanianCyborg Ontology . MI Press.

Sloterdijk, P. 1998.Critique of Cynical Reaso translation by M. Eldred. University o MinnesPress: Minneapolis.

iek, S. 1989.Te Sublime Object of Ideolog.Verso: New York.

iek, S. 1997. Desire: Drive = ruth: KnowledUmbra , pp. 147152

iek, S. 2000.Te icklish Subject . Verso: New York.

iek, S. 2001.On Belief . Routledge: London.

iek. S. 2006.Te Parallax View . MI Press:Cambridge, MA.

iek, S. 2006.Universal Exception. Continuum:London.

iek, S. 2008[1997]Te Plague of Fantasies .Verso: New York.

iek, S. 2009.In Defense of Lost Causes . Verso:New York.

iek, S. 2010.Living in the End imes . Verso:New York.

davidson 2012 sustainable city as fantasy

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