Some notes on Michaels's method and argument in The Gold Standard

I have been reading Michaels along side Slavoj Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology, and several things about this juxtaposition strike me as noteworthy. Initially, Michaels's use of William James's psycho-philosophizing of the self seems jejune--if only because of James's historical position near the beginning of psychology--next to Zizek's use of Lacan (whose greater "sophistication" is probably mostly explicable by his more arcane writing). But of course, Michaels has deliberately chosen a contemporary of naturalism to illustrate his points. (For the same reason, he will use Josiah Royce in chapter 6.) But he never says anything like "these ideas were in the air" or refers to a sense of zeitgeist, so we have to wonder just what are "his points" in using by now outdated intellects to articulate the "logic of naturalism." I think the best answer to this question is to see that not insisting upon any universal status for his claims is merely a way of qualifying his argument. Nevertheless, he is articulating a logic of naturalism, and clearly William James is more useful for this purpose than is Jacques Lacan. Michaels's project is, after all, historicist, and thinking through this difference in method (between Michaels and Zizek) has helped clarify what should have been an especially familiar notion to me by now: what distinguishes the project of new historicism.