Nier le réel est-ce le transformer ?

Abstract

In order to avoid the false dilemma of a utopian idealism and conservative empiricism when the transformation of the real is at stake, the paper attempts to account for the disjunctive synthesis of two distinct yet connected fields of action and thought: the domain of the sexual unconscious and that of political transformations. By questioning the traditional Hegelian and/or Marxian thesis according to which the real can only be transformed by setting out from a true and coherent theory, the paper examines three examples of over-determination that characterise contemporary struggles for emancipation: the “politics of the street”, “revolution”, and the “reorganising dynamic of the sexual unconscious”. Insisting on a contingent articulation of emancipation and “true desires”, the paper analyses real, although unpredictable outcomes as they result from the contingency of their situational over-determination. In producing a non-utopian “beyond”, the three cases of the over-determination of contemporary struggles are considered as localised anti-utopias that, instead of becoming a normative model, present an unlikely yet real “topia” for emancipation.