Planning in Ten Words or Less: A Lacanian Entanglement With Spatial Planning by Michael Gunder & Jean Hillier

Author:Michael Gunder & Jean Hillier [Gunder, Michael & Hillier, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regional Planning, Public Policy, Political Science
ISBN: 9781351910811
Google: iK2oDQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 33344772
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Master Signifiers, Identifications and Difference

To recap briefly, in Lacanian theory, we are constituted as individuals and as members of specific groups in society through our identifications with a range of master signifiers. An aggregate of master signifiers constitutes a person’s egoideal. In turn, each of our abstract intellectual master signifiers shelters a complex aggregate of ordered signifiers constituting narratives – sets of knowledges, practices and beliefs. Lacan (2006, 681) calls these master signifiers ‘button ties’ (as found on old-fashioned sofas, mattresses or quilts) that pin related narratives – networks of signifiers – to both the individual subject and wider society. Our identity-bearing master signifiers constitute us as political subjects. All of our ‘utterances have as a fundamental aim the reaffirmation of both the importance or dominance of the subject’s master signifiers and the subjects of these signifiers, which supports the ego’s sense of oneness and wholeness’ (Bracher 1999, 45). Master signifiers structure socio-political life, where ‘the position of each of us as individual subjects is determined by our place in the system of signifiers; our lives are negotiated in and against a plane of enunciation’ (Elliot 2003, 68).

Ethnic conflict – which may relate to fear of the Other – tends to occur between diverse cultural (or other) groups when few of their master signifiers, or their constituting narratives of meaning, overlap. Moreover, each cultural group as a particularity constructs its own definition as to what constitutes social reality. Each group has ‘its own notion of the Whole and its part within it. There is no “neutral” universality that would serve as the medium’ for discussing each culture’s particular position of belief (Žižek in Butler et al. 2000, 316). Not only are there few shared identifications to facilitate discussion and interaction between diverse ethnic groups, but specifically, there are few shared modes of delegating their identifications ‘to another agent through whom they love or hate,’ i.e., common religious beliefs or shared foundational mythologies (Žižek 1999c, 267).

Conflicting groups are perceived as simply different to each other, sometimes with few commonalities of norms, for instance, in relation to dress or gender. The ‘normal image reflected by the “other” of one’s self then features undesirable traits’ (Germain and Gagnon 2003, 313). For some, Christian European women bare too much sinful flesh, Moslem women hide their faces, masked as though a criminal, and so on.1 Without shared master signifiers it is difficult to undertake socio-political discussion in order to overcome difference, as differences may seem too great and even the Others’ appearance may offend. Even when speaking the same language, our words, stories and knowledges may have diverse meanings and implications when located under different master-signifiers, or narratives, of context and identity. Take the very word ‘knowledge’ to illustrate a simplified example. For New Zealand Maori, knowledge ontologically resides in a basket that may be stolen from the gods. For New Zealanders of European ethnicity, knowledge epistemologically resides in books and education. In such an environment of deep difference, it is easy to see how misrecognition and misconception occur.

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