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Pasolini and Exclusion

Zizek, Agamben and the Modern Sub-Proletariat

Cardiff University

This article combines a reading of Pasolini's first feature film, Accattone (1961), with an investigation into what the theory of subjectivity of Zizek and Agamben might mean for a critique of today's liberal-democratic, late-capitalist hegemony. More precisely, my article claims that Pasolini's scandalous over-identification with the Roman sub-proletariat quaexcluded social class, in the context of Italy's modernization, should be read in conjunction with both Zizek's and Agamben's defence of the `abject subjects' of today's global order. Arguing against the de-politicizing trends of contemporary cultural studies, I suggest that it is only through the identification of (a politically rehabilitated notion of) universality with the point of exclusion of today's late-capitalist experience, that our cultural discourse can radically disturb the socio-symbolic field.

Key Words: class • ideology • Lacan • subjectivity • universality • void

Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 20, No. 5, 99-121 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/02632764030205005


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