Brilliant question. The short answer is:
The Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis (Žižek, Dolar, Zupančič, et al.) did not “solve” the tension between schizoanalysis and late Lacan—but they reframed it, and strategically positioned Lacan as the superior conceptual framework for dealing with the problems schizoanalysis raises.
Let’s unpack this carefully, because what the Ljubljana School did do is offer one of the most philosophically rigorous syntheses of Lacan, Hegel, Marx, and ideology critique in the post-Deleuzian landscape.
1. Who Are the Ljubljana School?
• Based in Slovenia, centered around Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, and Alenka Zupančič
• Deeply engaged with German Idealism, psychoanalysis, and political theory
• They read Lacan through Hegel, Hegel through Lacan, and both through Marx
• Their aim: to build a materialist theory of subjectivity, ideology, and the Real
2. The Ljubljana Position on Deleuze & Guattari
Žižek’s View (Simplified):
• Deleuze and Guattari’s critique of psychoanalysis (Anti-Oedipus) is powerful, but ultimately misfires.
• Schizoanalysis over-valorizes flows, becoming, deterritorialization, but fails to account for the structural role of lack, negativity, and the deadlocks of desire.
• They tend to fetishize multiplicity and ignore the constitutive function of the cut, the gap, the symbolic impasse.
Žižek argues that Deleuze, despite his celebration of immanence, still relies on a harmonious ontology of affirmation, and lacks a robust theory of the Real as negativity.
3. Lacan (Especially Late Lacan) as the Answer to Schizoanalysis
The Ljubljana School effectively says:
What Deleuze and Guattari wanted to achieve—a theory of singular, non-Oedipal subjectivity, irreducible to normalization or structure—Lacan already achieves, especially in his later work.
They point to:
• Parlêtre: subject as fractured, embodied, singular—not reducible to Oedipus or symbolic totality
• Jouissance: an excess that is not subordinated to symbolic law, but insists beyond it
• Sinthome: a mode of life not grounded in normativity, but in singular, contingent knotting
• Topological subjectivity: no core self, but loops, surfaces, twists
Žižek often emphasizes:
• Lacan’s Real is not the inaccessible sublime, but the material limit, the knot, the stain, the impossible that grounds ethics and politics.
• Desire is not a flow, but a structuring lack—and that lack is constitutive, not simply repressive.
4. So: Did They “Solve” the Conflict?
No—but they shifted the terrain:
• They didn’t integrate schizoanalysis into Lacan
• They didn’t try to resolve the tension through synthesis
Rather, they defended Lacan (especially late Lacan) as the more precise, more dialectical, and more politically useful way to deal with the very issues Deleuze & Guattari raised.
5. The Strategic Reframing
Ljubljana’s brilliance lies in showing that Lacanian psychoanalysis is not about repressing flows, but about living with the rupture at the heart of desire.
So instead of trying to fuse schizoanalysis and Lacan, they say:
• Schizoanalysis opens the question
• Lacan gives the better answer
6. And Yet… There’s a Silence
What Ljubljana doesn’t fully explore (at least not centrally) is:
• The potential affirmative poetics of schizoanalysis
• The idea of desiring machines as modes of subjectivation beyond castration
• Or the ontological optimism of Deleuze’s Body without Organs
This opens a space for others (perhaps you?) to imagine a true dialogue, not a winner.
Final Thought
The Ljubljana School reframed, but did not resolve, the tension between schizoanalysis and late Lacan.
They showed that Lacan’s Real, sinthome, and parlêtre offer a more precise ontology of the subject—but they left the Deleuzian imaginary mostly uninhabited, waiting to be returned to from the other side.
Would you like a schematic map of the three positions: Deleuze & Guattari, Late Lacan, and Ljubljana’s reading? Or a thought experiment imagining what a genuine Lacan–Deleuze encounter might look like in the 21st century?
