The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance
140749276
The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance
BRUCE FINK: The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1995, 240 pp, $35. ISBN 0691037604. There are many Lacans. Each person seems to read into Lacan's prose whatever he or she wishes to find there. An entire voluminous literature has arisen as a response to Lacan's ambiguous, tortuous, esoteric pronouncements, many of which, as included in his "seminars," have not been translated into English. There are numerous quarreling schools of interpretation of Lacan's work, and Jaques Alain Miller, his son in law, and appointed heir, has by no means received general acceptance as the correct interpreter of Lacan's seminars. Lawsuits abound in Paris on these matters. The Lacan of Bruce Fink, who is a psychologist from Duquesne University, and who he tells us, is a "practicing psychoanalyst," would be approved of by Miller. Fink enjoys Lacan's obscure "Mathemes," to which he even adds graphs of trigonometric equations. The chapters in this book are of uneven composition. Some can be understood by a reader with little knowledge of Lacan's work while others are extremely esoteric, and made more esoteric by Fink's attempt to stick with Lacan's system of "Mathemes." Fink admits this in his preface, suggesting that the first chapter aims at "simplicity" and that the other parts of the book "become progressively more complex" and that is certainly true. The chapters that might be of greatest interest to our readers if they are not familiar with Lacan's tortuous peregrinations, would be the first and the fifth chapter. One might ask to whom this book is addressed also. Beginners approaching Lacan will find it impenetrable. Therefore I would imagine that only Lacanians who are followers of Miller and who are intrigued by Lacan's "Mathemes" will truly enjoy this book. In spite of all this, certain ingenious ideas of Lacan pop up from time to time in all the pseudo mathematical symbols and gibberish. For example, Children's endless whys are not, to Lacan's mind, the sign of an insatiable curiosity as to how things work but rather of a concern with where they fit in, what rank they hold, what importance they have to their parents (p. 54) The discussion of children's needs and the tasks that children set for themselves of trying to align themselves with every whim and fancy of the mother's desire is well delineated in this chapter. In the same chapter, there is a nice discussion of Lacan's practice of "punctuating" the analysand's discourse with a comment, a cough, a grunt, or a word or, in Lacan's notorious five minute hour, the termination of a session that jolts analysands, "suddenly bringing them back to the realization that they know not what their analysts want or mean, that the latter are looking for something else in their discourse than what the analysands intended, that they want something else from it, something more" (p.
Richard D Chessick
180744047
The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance
Adam Franck Tyar
162251982
Review. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Fink, Bruce
Andrew N Leak
142188108
Lacan and the limits of language
This book weaves together three themes at the intersection of Jacques Lacan and the philosophical tradition. The first is the question of time and memory. How do these problems call for a revision of Lacan's purported ahistoricism,and how does the temporality of the subject in Lacan intersect with the questions of temporality initiated by Heidegger and then developed by contemporary French philosophy? The second question concerns the status of the body in Lacanian theory, especially in connection with emotion and affect, which Lacanian theory is commonly thought to ignore, but which the concept of jouissance was developed to address. Finally, it aims to explore, beyond the strict limits of Lacanian theory, possible points of intersection between psychoanalysis and other domains, including questions of race, biology, and evolutionary theory.By stressing the question of affect, the book shows how Lacan's position cannot be reduced to the structuralist models he nevertheless draws upon, and thus how the problem of the body may be understood as a formation that marks the limits of language. Exploring the anthropological category of racewithin a broadly evolutionary perspective, it shows how Lacan's elaboration of the imaginaryand the symbolicmight allow us to explain human physiological diversity without reducing it to a cultural or linguistic construction or allowing raceto remain as a traditional biological category. Here again the questions of history and temporality are paramount, and open the possibility for a genuine dialogue between psychoanalysis and biology.Finally, the book engages literary texts. Antigone, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Hamlet, and even Wordsworth become the muses who oblige psychoanalysis and philosophy to listen once again to the provocations of poetry, which always disrupts our familiar notions of time and memory, of history and bodily or affective experience, and of subjectivity itself.
Charles Shepherdson
191536474
A tela de Caronte travessia do sujeito de linguagem na narrativa cinematografica
This extended summary originates from the thesis "The screen of Charon: the crossing of the subject of language in the cinematographic narrative" carried out under collaboration between the universities of Brasilia, Brazil, and Nice Sophia Antipolis, Fance. It is a synthesis of psychoanalytic investigation concerning two narrative styles: modern and classical. First and foremost, they are concerned with film production. In this report we discuss the issue of pleasure from the amalgam formed by the French words jeu| (game, play) and jouissance| (the act of experiencing pleasure) Thus, our mot valise| "jeuissance" playsure| will allow us to articulate the experience of pleasure undergone by the subject of language with the narrative production. The categories created in the Lacanian Triskel will be evoked, namely: the pleasure of the Other, the pleasure of meaning and the pleasure of the Phallic. They are articulated on a borromean logic with modern, classical and classical industrial narrative productions. By creating our triskel, we identify, in the figure of the trompe l'oeil, the function of the small object as the narrative field. By crossing the Lacanian inferos, we believe to have found in the figure of playsure| a device for analyzing narration, composed exclusively of psychoanalytic material. Thus, in any narrative production of a subject of language, narratives are either buried in the supposed firm land of science or religion or in the moving sands of the arts. This psychoanalytic journey will take us far beyond the principle of pleasure.
Maysa Puccinelli Victor Rodrigues
200992451
A Tela de Caronte Travessia do Sujeito de Linguagem na Narrativa Cinematografica
This extended summary originates from the thesis "The screen of Charon: the crossing of the subject of language in the cinematographic narrative" carried out under collaboration between the universities of Brasilia, Brazil, and Nice Sophia Antipolis, Fance. It is a synthesis of psychoanalytic investigation concerning two narrative styles: modern and classical. First and foremost, they are concerned with film production. In this report we discuss the issue of pleasure from the amalgam formed by the French words "jeu" (game, play) and "jouissance" (the act of experiencing pleasure) Thus, our "mot valise" "jeuissance" "playsure" will allow us to articulate the experience of pleasure undergone by the subject of language with the narrative production. The categories created in the Lacanian Triskel will be evoked, namely: the pleasure of the Other, the pleasure of meaning and the pleasure of the Phallic. They are articulated on a borromean logic with modern, classical and classical industrial narrative productions. By creating our triskel, we identify, in the figure of the trompe l'oeil, the function of the small object as the narrative field. By crossing the lacanian inferos, we believe to have found in the figure of "playsure" a device for analyzing narration, composed exclusively of psychoanalytic material. Thus, in any narrative production of a subject of language, narratives are either buried in the supposed firm land of science or religion or in the moving sands of the arts. This psychoanalytic journey will take us far beyond the principle of pleasure.
Maysa Puccinelli
145128332
AN ETHICS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
This paper is written from a Lacanian perspective and considers Lacan's development of his theory of ethics from its origins in Freud's exploration of psychic inscriptions to a notion of ethics oriented to the Real of the unconscious, the Real that is not symbolizable. The aim of analysis is to change the way the subject enjoys his symptom, a change from suffering to a satisfaction that comes from having a choice. Using the conceptual tools of Lacanian psychoanalysis which differentiate between Imaginary (the image and its lures) the Symbolic (the signifier and the structure of language) and the Real (enjoyment in the body that language does not reach) the argument moves beyond an idea of truth attached to meaning. That is the truth that the analyst's interpretation might produce; its beyond is a notion of truth grounded in the enjoyment of the symptom outside meaning, a truth that will allow for an ethics of psychoanalysis that is oriented towards the Real of jouissance by the compass of affect.
Susan Schwartz
191119290
{keulrarisa} yi barokeu tenebeurijeum(Tenebrism)gwa gyunyeolyi alregori
This paper aims to reveal the baroque aura of Clarissa by focusing on the notion of allegory and tenebrism, the baroque artistic technique embodying the dynamic and dramatic contrast of light and darkness. Informed by Lacanian thought, the baroque can be defined as the art of jouissance with a Christian trait, the extreme enjoyment in pain. In this context, the baroque can be called the art of theological eroticism, which is powerfully manifested in the experience of the modem subject in its encounter with religious and corporeal excess. In Clarissa, Lovelace is a genius of the baroque in the erotic and delirious dramatization of 'his perverted self reflective vision of Clarissa's virginity' and 'his conscience itself through tenebrism. In contrast, Clarissa reveals a deep repugnance for Lovelace's erotically deceptive and excessive images, and aspires to create herself as the Protestant baroque virgin martyr through constructing her sacred father's house with austere, restrained and condensed language. Richardson ultimately aims to embody Clarissa as an absolutely idealized sacred icon through the mode of allegory grounded upon his stark dichotomous perspective on good and evil. As a result, the ending of Clarissa loses the intensity of the baroque that has been dramatically embodied in the masterful execution of tenebrism. Of importance here is that the core of Clarissa lies not in a moral and biblical allegory that Richardson intends to employ but in the allegory of rupture penetrated by the baroque jouissance that he cannot fully control. There is indeed a gap between the mode of allegory which Richardson strongly wishes to employ and the baroque allegory which he actually creates. Viewed thus, Richardson can be called a failed allegorist. Intriguingly, however, it is at the point of failure that Clarissa becomes a far richer and more fascinating baroque masterpiece.
162185921
Cinema and Modernism (review)
Association Freudienne Internationale text, p. 69. 2 Lacan, Encore: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972 1973, ed. Jacques Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998) p. 26. 3 Miller, "Lacan Clinician," Critical Essays on Lacan, ed. Ellie RaglandSullivan (New York: G. K. Hall, 1999) p. 23. 4 See, for instance, Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996) Joel Dor, The Clinical Lacan (New York: Other Press, 1999) Dany Nobus, ed. Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (New York: Other Press, 1999) and Slavoj Zizek, How to Read Lacan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007) 5 Lacan, Le Seminaire de Jacques Lacan (Livre XXIII, Le sinthome 1975 1976) ed. Miller (Paris: Editions de Seuil, 2005) 6 Luke Thurston, James Joyce and the Problem of Psychoanalysis (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004) p. 152. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the text.
Louise Hornby
144523355
The inherent transgression
Abstract The 'inherent transgression' refers to the notion that the very emergence of a certain 'value' which serves as a point of ideological identification relies on its transgression, on some mode of taking a distance from it. Ideology depends upon the 'gap' that the symbolic order produces between itself and the subject as an effect of bringing the latter into being as a subject of language. Since there is no direct, unmediated relationship between the subject and the authentic, true value, the problem of 'belief takes on vital importance. But the very separation between belief and knowledge requires that the' true believer' must always be someone else. The 'Lacanian' decentred subject has to live out the authenticity of his being or her jouissance through the Other. The problem, then, is how to sustain the fiction of the Other, the Other who believes and is worthy of belief. Belief in the Other never goes away but returns in the more excessive, threatening form of nameless powers 'pulling the strings.
Slavoj Zizek