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Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis
... But, far from this "anti-" implying any kind of aversion, references to philosophers and philosophical concepts are ubiquitous throughout Lacan's corpus (Avtonomova, 1991). What is more, his learned and frequently insightful remarks on philosophy are typically instrumental to the deployment of his own distinctive exposition of psychoanalytic theory and method (Ragland-Sullivan, 1986;Ronen, 2018). What is even more, his usage of major philosophical figures is almost invariably salutary, in that he works in a complementary (and sometimes complimentary) way with and through concepts and arguments drawn from the philosophical tradition-his overt and developed criticisms of the latter being comparatively rare occurrences (when considered over against his often biting reviews of fellow psychoanalysts). ...
In this article, I aim to account for the desire at the root of metaphysical/ontological practice by drawing upon Jacques Lacan’s treatment of the formation of desire and language in human subjectivity. In the section, The Fundamental Ontological Proposition, I condense the practice of metaphysics into the actual declaration of a single, highly peculiar “fundamental ontological proposition,” and subsequently analyze its 12 “formally invariant characteristics.” This argumentatively situates the phenomenon of metaphysical practice squarely within the field of desire in its connection to language. In the section, Castration and the Name-of-the-Father, I explicate Lacan’s approach to desire/language through his notions of “castration” and “le nom-du-père,” which he elaborates in detail through his 1957–1958 treatment of the Oedipal dialectic and the writings of this period. I show the close relationship that erotic alienation possesses to the condensation of a subject of language. In the section, Ontologizing as Autoerotic Fantasy, I return to the set of formally invariant characteristics of the fundamental ontological proposition, and interpret them in light of the just-explained Lacanian understanding of languaged subjectivity. I show that the fundamental ontological proposition can be interpreted as a means by which to, in fantasy, deny the structurally constitutive castration of its speaker. I conclude with several suggestions toward further research at the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalysis and metaphysical theory and practice.
... However, Lacan's lateral thinking, mainly in regard to philosophy, developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, and structuralism renders much of his work hardly digestible (Bailly, 2018). Indeed, the paternal metaphor perpetuates a certain esoterism regularly associated with Lacan's psychoanalytical contributions (Feldstein & Ragland-Sullivan, 1987). ...
Amongst the most significant stages in Lacanian psychosexual development, the paternal metaphor remains at the forefront of Lacanian oedipal ontogenesis. Customarily auxiliary to the signifier of the Name-of-the-father, the occurrence of this stage marks early-stage signifier repression as well as the conceptualization of the phallus up until the castration complex. Namely formulated by Lacan in his Seminar V (and later in Écrits), the paternal metaphor is quintessential to the understanding of primary signifiers in the child’s psychosexual development. This paper will elucidate the normative framework of the paternal metaphor via Saussurean mathemes, hypothetical observations and fundamental Lacanian additions to Freudian psychoanalysis—namely linguistic sign interpretation, hence the signifier (S) and the signified (s).
... 337-338). Lacan explains "without being aware of conscious thought" as "a repressed but organized and intelligent discourse of the other" [27] (p. 99). ...
Toni Morrison discusses the rebirth of the entire Black race through self-recovery. However, her novels are not limited to the identity of Black women and people but are linked to a wider community. Morrison might have tried to imagine a community in which Black identity can be socially constituted. In this paper, we discuss the concept of community by examining communitarianism, which is the basis of justice and human rights. Although community is an ambiguous notion in the context of communitarianism, communitarians criticize the abstract conceptualization of human rights by liberal individualists, but also see that human rights are universally applicable to a community as a shared conception of social good. Communitarianism emphasizes the role and importance of community in personal life, self-formation, and identity. Morrison highlights the importance of self-worth within the boundary of community, reclaiming the development of Black identity. In the Nancian sense, a community is not a work of art to be produced. It is communicated through sharing the finitude of others—that is, “relation” itself is the fundamental structure of existence. In this regard, considering Toni Morrison’s novels alongside communitarianism and Nancy’s analysis of community may enable us to obtain a sense of the complex aspects of self and community. For Morrison, community may be the need for harmony and combination, acknowledging the differences and diversity of each other, not the opposition between the self and the other, the center and periphery, men and women. This societal communitarianism is the theme covered in this paper, which deals with the problem of identity loss in Morrison’s representative novels Sula and Beloved and examines how Black individuals and community are formed. Therefore, this study aims to examine a more complex understanding of community, in which the self and relations with others can be formed, in the context of Toni Morrison’s works.
... 5-10). Since Felman's article, numerous books and articles have been published on the implication between literature and psychoanalysis, indicating her success at opening a question (see for example, Gallop, 1985;Ragland-Sullivan, 1986;Mellard, 1991;Brooks, 1994;Stoltfutz, 1996). ...
Departing from Jacques Lacan’s influence on literary and pedagogical studies, this article explores how his conceptualization of “style” informs literature and pedagogy in addition to psychoanalysis. The article suggests that Lacan’s theorization of the human subject as the “letter” of psychoanalysis shows the interminability of reading and teaching due to his description of the “letter” as the literality of the human subject. This literality points to the construction of the humans as social subjects in the symbolic register and thus marks language an indispensable element of style. Dwelling in the function of language in style, the article traces the paths Lacan takes in order to disrupt the idea of the psychoanalytic connection based on the analyst’s mastery. It concentrates on transference and what Lacan calls “passionate ignorance” in a transferential relation for the purpose of explaining how this disruption is realized. Moreover, Lacan’s own style of learning from Freud as well as his own style of teaching is discussed to further emphasize that education, like psychoanalysis and literature, should alternatively open a space for “passionate ignorance” to create the possibility of dialogic interaction.
... Both Lacan and Winnicott have significantly impacted the way we may think of ourselves. Deborah Anna Luepnitz notes that when we theorise the human being, 'the Winnicottian "I" relate' and 'the Lacanian "I" ⁄ it speak(s)' (964) should be added to the canonical composite of 'the medieval "I" believe; the Cartesian "I" think; the Romantic "I" feel; . . . the existential "I" choose [and] the Freudian "I" dream' (Ragland-Sullivan 1986in Luepnitz 2009. Psychoanalyst Peter Green, whose work is informed both by Lacan and Winnicott, regards them as the two most influential thinkers after Freud (in Luepnitz 2009, 960). ...
This article contrasts the theories of ego formation put forward in Jacques Lacan’s ‘The Mirror Stage’ and Donald Winnicott’s ‘The Mirror Role of the Mother,’ and discusses their methodological implications for the field of American studies. While Lacan theorises subjectivity as irreparably split and (self-)alienated, Winnicott offers an optimistic version of a self which is sustained in its going-on-being by a nourishing maternal presence. These disparate conceptualisations of the human being produce two powerful frames through which to approach culture. Yet, while Lacan is widely recognised in the American studies scholarship, Winnicott remains virtually unknown. This article aims to enhance the visibility of the British author by outlining the productivity of his ideas for any cultural or literary analysis. By stressing the foundational significance of the primary bond Winnicott’s theory intervenes in the recent critiques of neoliberal capitalism which remain halted in a Lacanian-like melancholic mode, masked by a cultural command of perpetual enjoyment. The Winnicottian perspective challenges Lacan’s fixation on the unattainable objects of desire, reiterated by the neoliberal myth of self-perfection through consumption, and offers an alternative pattern of human sociality, based on relational, self-reflexive moderation.
In the novels, the diverse worldviews and impulsive
behavior of the protagonists were tested. Topics were
raised and touched upon in the roles played. The
importance of theories helped to understand their roles and
their development at different stages.
This research traces the development of psychoanalytical criticism from its roots in Sigmund Freud's theories to its expansion by Jacques Lacan. Freud's work, primarily “The Interpretation of Dreams,” introduced the concept of the “unconscious” as a key to understanding human behavior and desires. Lacan extended this by linking the unconscious to language and social structures. He shifted the focus from ego-driven impulses to the relationship between a child and its influential figures, notably the mother, in shaping identity. The abstract also situates psychoanalytical criticism within a broader historical context, noting its antecedents in Aristotle and other scholars. The study aims to delve into Lacan's contributions, particularly his ideas on the “unconscious” and the “Real.”
This research attempts to unearth the contrasting discourses that constitute the subjectivity in Basharat Peer’s memoir. By highlighting the circulation of these multiple discourses, the research further endeavours to trace the resistance in the subject's agency. These discourses, often resorting to violent modes of disciplining, relentlessly struggle to configure the subject. However, with its potential for resistance, the subject's agency subverts all these hegemonic configurations. Drawing upon Lacan's imagery and symbolic orders along with Lacanian discourses: master's discourse, university's discourse, analyst's discourse, and hysteric's discourse, this paper reads the incidents as symptomatic of a problem beyond their literal signification. This paper concludes that the Kashmiri subject becomes a battleground for these contradictory forces: the military and the militants. However, their modes of fashioning and disciplining the subject go awry with the agency's resistance.
This article compares repetition in Zhuangzi and Jacques Lacan from three perspectives: repetition as a mechanism, a revelation, and a solution. First, repetition enables us to detect underlying structures. Zhuangzi loses himself in observing the intricate animal relationships (the mantis, cicada, magpie) without any knowledge of being watched over by a garden-keeper. Lacan rewrites these positions into three stages of human development. Repetition also serves as a revelation. The four repetitions of the magus’ diagnoses reveal the shift from the transparent subject to the opaque subject. Lacan absorbs this mysterious Daoist concept and rewrites repetition as “an encounter with the real.” Finally, to restore the symbiotic coexistence with things, Zhuangzi resorts to repetition. Like Zhuangzi, Lacan acknowledges the capacity for repetition to enable our encounter with the Real; unlike Zhuangzi, Lacan holds that the primary function of repetition is to “haul” the subject from collapsing into the Real.
Anthropocentrism and the fact that some animals are just considered a means to an end while others are loved are often subject to criticism in animal ethics. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, the author examines how the apparent ambivalence in human–animal relationships is based on different forms of enjoyment. Referring to the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary, which according to Lacan define human reality, the author shows how enjoyment and its limits shape, for example, how we think about pets, farm animals or wild animals. This alternative perspective will contribute to a better understanding of the challenges in human–animal relationships.
Anthropocentrism and the fact that some animals are just considered a means to an end while others are loved are often subject to criticism in animal ethics. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, the author examines how the apparent ambivalence in human–animal relationships is based on different forms of enjoyment. Referring to the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary, which according to Lacan define human reality, the author shows how enjoyment and its limits shape, for example, how we think about pets, farm animals or wild animals. This alternative perspective will contribute to a better understanding of the challenges in human–animal relationships.
The present article explores psychoanalytical discourse of Jacques Lacan on human subjectivity. Jacques Lacan is an important psychoanalyst who extends Freud’s ideas about the human mind. If closely seen, Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis is far different from Freud’s psychoanalysis. As stated above, Freud’s emphasis was on intra-psychic processes that take place during childhood and their role in making an individual to be a member of the civilization. They have greater impact on entire life of the individual. Freudian theory of psychoanalysis was later expanded by Jacques Lacan. He, like Freud, made his contribution to the development of psychoanalysis. Poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Louis Althusser (1918-1990), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), Roland Barthes (1915-1980) and Jacques Lacan, disagreed with the humanistic notion of an individual as rational being capable of thinking and understanding the outer reality and as separate from the ideological structures. The individual becomes subject of unconscious with the imposition of language and culture which are already there before the birth of an individual, says Lacan. The present article also unfolds his analysis on the three registers of human life i.e. imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The role of unconscious into psychic development of human subject is also discussed.
There are forms of enjoyment in Catullus that cannot be understood within the norms of pleasure as opposed to pain or unpleasure. This is an enjoyment that Freud would claim is beyond the pleasure principle, and thus integrally related to aggression, violence, and death: an enjoyment that is at once abject and sublime. Taking off from Mario Telò’s Archive Feelings, this paper examines these forms of enjoyment and how they function within the aesthetic structure of four poems by Catullus.
En este trabajo se propone un modelo actancial de la obra maestra de Luis Vélez de Guevara, Reinar después de morir, publicada en 1652. Este esquema trata de solventar ciertos problemas de recepción, especialmente respecto al género de la comedia y el problemático ethos de sus personajes. El triunfo de Tánatos al final de la pieza, de propensión senequista, pone cierre, aparentemente, a una visión de la historia que solo podría sobreponerse bajo condiciones gubernamentales disímiles a las de los hechos lusitanos aquí representados. Si la redacción de la obra ocurrió entre 1636 y 1640, como apunta Henry W. Sullivan (144), o si 1635 es el terminus ad quem de la obra, como sugiere Donald R. Larson (20), Reinar pudiera indicar que los asuntos de Portugal, sin la continua colaboración del pueblo ibérico vecino, no podrían reavivarse. Esto explicaría el tono macabro y pesimista de la obra, la cual es una tragedia patética de dos mudanzas. Este proyecto se basa en varios modelos especulativos modificados: 1) el tipológico de Vladimir Propp, apto para la narrativa corta; el funcional de Étienne Souriau, utilizable para el drama; y el discursivo de Algirdas Julien Greimas, aplicable a la lingüística. Se han tomado en cuenta también dos modelos adicionales: el lógico de Keir Elam (98-134), basado en Souriau, y el estructural de Anne Ubserfeld (58-118), fundamentado en Greimas. Las modificaciones procuradas han sido las siguientes: 1) Se han delimitado los tipos de personajes de Propp (79-80), así como alterado varias modalidades que fueran acaso demasiado particulares para nuestros propósitos. 2) Se han mantenido las categorías nominales de Souriau, incluso sus notables denominaciones astrológicas, las cuales ayudan a captar, en forma objetiva y universal, como notó Elam, las funciones de los actantes nominales (Souriau, 83-112). 3) Se han aceptado las categorías de Greimas (207), las cuales son apropiadas para el discurso dramático, como planteara Ubersfeld. No obstante, las hemos modificado por clasificaciones esencialmente sintácticas. Por ende, el presente modelo consiste en las siguientes ordenaciones actanciales nominales, las cuales siguen la práctica de Tzvetan Todorov (7) de usar las letras mayúsculas finales del alfabeto europeo en uso: 1) la del (U) sujeto agentivo (el Héroe de Propp, el Lion o fuerza temática de Souriau o el Sujet de Greimas); 2) la del (V) sujeto disyuntivo (el Villano o Agresor de Propp, el Mars u Opositor de Souriau o el Opposant de Greimas); 3) la del (W) complemento acusativo (la Princesa y su Padre de Propp, el Soleil de Souriau o el Objet de Greimas); 4) la del (X) complemento dativo (el Remitente de Propp, la Terre de Souriau o el Destinataire de Greimas); 5) la del (Y) árbitro o complemento ablativo circunstancial (el Donador de Propp, la Balance de Souriau o el Destinateur de Greimas); y 6) la del (Z) ayudante o complemento comitativo (el Ayudante de Propp, la Lune de Souriau o el Adjuvant de Greimas). Z refleja a cualquiera de los otros actantes; por ende, su signo se coloca inmediatamente antes de este, con una barra (vírgula > 'y'), v. gr., Z/U (el ayudante del sujeto agentivo). Respecto a esta última categoría, propondríamos la función suplementaria ZZ para designar a un actante comitativo (Z) de función dupla (ZZ), como sería generalmente la figura del donaire de la comedia española. Dada su condición inestable (o dupla), proponemos la denominación de Mercurio. También proponemos una función suplementaria para Libra (Y), la de Escorpio o juez transcendental (YY). Esta función tiende a modificar la captación de la obra desde una perspectiva ulterior a la realizada por la figura habitual del juez (Y) o árbitro (Libra). Consta
Maurice, a bildungsroman by E. M. Forster, revolves around the theme of homosexuality. By presenting homosexual characters, who are on a futile quest for their actual identity, Forster attempts to be the voice of the unspeakables in the Edwardian period in England, where all acts of homosexuality were considered illegal. In this paper, the identity of the characters is analysed through the lenses of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory by focusing on the concept of mirror. This paper attempts to reveal to what extent cultural codes and societal norms of the Edwardian period are functional in forming the identity of the characters. Besides, this study uncovers that Forster wisely uses Lacanian concepts such as imaginary order, symbolic order and real order in creating his characters. It is concluded that the mirror, which reflects the actual self of the characters, just like dreams and music, plays a significant role in (re)forming the identities from compulsory heterosexuality to voluntary homosexuality.
This essay examines the ways Graham Swift’s novel Shuttlecock critically examines the dialectical construction of masculinity as the discourse of the patriarchal Other. Foregrounding a Lacanian reading of the text which locates the absence of signification at the level of the Symbolic which then paradoxically produces imaginary figurations and fictions of desire, I read the novel as using the paradigm of espionage (itself premised on possessing and inhabiting the secret of the Other) as a powerful way of interrogating Prentis’ construction of his father’s masculinity as well as his own understanding of power and violence within the social economy of patriarchy. I argue that Lacan’s reading of psychoanalytic desire provides a useful paradigm through which to understand not only Prentis’ unconscious projection of Oedipal ambivalence against father figures such as Quinn, but also Swift’s deconstruction of the social and political constructs of masculine heroism as focalised through the war hero.
This thesis study aims to analyze the poetry of two female poets who committed suicide, Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara, within the context of the psychoanalytical perspectives to death and self-destruction. By rendering a psychoanalytical analysis of their poetical lines that are intermingled with pains and traumas centered around the obsession of death and self-destruction, this study attempts to trace and unearth the mutual poetical mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that turn the poetry of both poets into ‘art of dying’ as in the wording of Plath and ‘swan songs’ as in the wording of Marmara. Emphasizing the undeniable attachment between Plath and Marmara, this study also investigates how the poetry of the American poet, Plath, as a predecessor has influenced the poetry of the Turkish poet, Marmara, as a successor and how their poetical approaches to death and suicide display resemblance, parallels and contrasts. By rendering a comparative analysis within the context of suicide, this thesis also aims to reflect that although their social and cultural contexts may vary, both female poets manifest that poetry has been a distinct sphere of both isolation and confrontation with the various psychic ‘demons’ inherent in their self-alienated poetical personas. Through psychoanalyzing their poetic personas in their ‘art of dying’, this study attempts to highlight how Plath and Marmara became both the victims and the victors of their poetry via various psychological scars and existential dilemmas.
Keywords: death, suicide, psychoanalysis, poetry, Sylvia Plath, Nilgün Marmara.
In Modernism, Ireland and the Erotics of Memory Nicholas Miller re-examines memory and its role in modern Irish culture. Arguing that a continuous renegotiation of memory is characteristic of Irish modernist writing, Miller investigates a series of case-studies in modern Irish historical imagination. He reassesses Ireland's self-construction through external or 'foreign' discourses such as the cinema, and proposes new readings of Yeats and Joyce as 'counter-memorialists'. Combining theoretical and historical approaches, Miller shows how the modernist handling of history transforms both memory and the story of the past by highlighting readers' investments in histories that are produced, specifically and concretely, through local acts of reading. This original study will attract scholars of Modernism, Irish studies, film and literary theory.
Das Buch lotet Dimensionen der Mehrsprachigkeit auf theoretischer Ebene und in Fallstudien aus dem Alpen-Adria-Raum aus. Unter anderem werden Bedingungen von Mehrsprachigkeit als "Lernraum" am Beispiel der slowenischen Minderheit in Kärnten, des Friaulischen in Italien, des Ladinischen und des Deutschen in Italien/Südtirol untersucht.
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The book explores dimensions of multilingualism on a theoretical level and in case studies from the Alps-Adriatic region. Among other things, the conditions of multilingualism as a "learning space" are examined using the example of the Slovene minority in Carinthia, Friulian in Italy, Ladin and German in Italy/South Tyrol.
Die Pädagogik der Inklusion ist, wie jede Pädagogik, auf Utopien angewiesen. In unserem Beitrag wird sich die Annahme einer Vollinklusion des Subjekts als ein sog. Bernfeldsches großes Wort und somit auch als Utopie erweisen. Wir untersuchen mögliche zugrundeliegende Phantasmen der Utopie einer Vollinklusion und arbeiten dabei auch die Kehrseiten dieser Utopie heraus. Als Referenzdisziplin dient uns hierbei die strukturale Psychoanalyse Jacques Lacans.
Schlüsselwörter: Pädagogik der Inklusion, Inklusion, Utopie, Phantasma, Spiegelstadium, Lacan, Bernfeld
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Inclusive pedagogy, like all pedagogy, depends on utopias. In our contribution, inclusion will prove to be a so-called Bernfeldsche big word and thus also a utopia. We will examine possible underlying phantasms of the utopia of full inclusion and also work out the downsides of the utopia of full inclusion. We will use the structural psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan as our theoretical framework.
Keywords: Inclusive Pedagogy, utopia, phantasm, Mirror Stage, Lacan, Bernfeld
This essay offers some new perspectives on affinities between the writing and thought of Percy Shelley and Jacques Lacan, focusing on aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis sometimes identified as “tragic,” especially its notions of the divided subject, and of that subject’s alienation by language. It first explores parallels between these notions and Shelley’s representations of language in Julian and Maddalo. Developing this, by engaging with deconstructive and psychoanalytic approaches to history and language in “The Triumph of Life,” it then highlights how Shelley and Lacan each seem to endorse a similar pessimism, a tragic perspective on our efforts to achieve self-understanding, and on human knowledge and potential more widely. Drawing on Fredric Jameson’s reflections on Marxism and psychoanalysis, and on his interpretation of Lacan’s concept of the “Real,” the essay then concludes by bringing Shelley and Lacan into a more positive, politically energizing encounter with one another, via a reading of Prometheus Unbound. © 2019
Belén Gopegui´s 2001 novel, Lo real, and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón´s 2011 novel, El día de la mañana, follow their respective protagonists from adolescence into adulthood covering years roughly coinciding with Spain´s transition from dictatorship to democracy. Despite certain similarities in intellectual aptitude and social ambition, the Gopegui´s and Martínez de Pisón´s respective protagonists meet very different fates. Political stances or social position fail to explain such opposite outcomes. The key to understanding their opposite fates, instead, lies in the protagonist´s relations, on the level of story, to their mothers and lovers, and on the level of narration, to the choruses who narrate their stories. While protagonists pursue material wealth, mothers insert religion into the novels while choruses narrate the desire or lack thereof for a hero. The desires of mothers and choruses foreground the radical differences between protagonists. Martínez de Pisón´s protagonist believes in people and causes. Gopegui´s protagonist believes in information. Spain´s Transition leaves the former behind while providing the perfect conditions for the latter´s triumph. Their opposite fates invite us to consider what we mean when we speak of the Transition and particularly the triumph of democracy in Spain. What is a democracy that leaves behind the classical liberal subject while exalting the uber post-ideological nihilist?
The U.S constitutional tradition finessed the question of the social bond. The decline of the modernist era makes it important to address the matter of the social bond and to reorient the field to this generic issue. A psychoanalytic perspective, specifically the one developed by Jacques Lacan, is helpful in providing a framework for such a reorientation. This analysis demonstrates that the failed bond of modernism is being replaced by the one implicit in the market economy. Since this bond is unstable and necessarily temporary, public administrators now and in the future must establish a new kind of social bond with others in the process of carrying out the work of public agencies. In order to accomplish this, public administrators must develop a different, psychoanalytically informed relationship to themselves.
This study investigates the relationship between Lacan's theory of desire and Jay's questing character in Hanif Kureishi's novella, Intimacy. The paper argues that Intimacy explores the passionate desire hardly satisfied through social and familial relationships. When it is read in Lacanian terms, the narrative reveals that the protagonist's unrelieved desire is fuelled by prolonged dissatisfaction. As the present paper will show, Intimacy portrays the protagonist as constantly fleeing from any kind of attachment. Presented as a self-producing motive, Jay's desire acts in relation to the other, beyond language, law, and reality. Even though the desiring subject in Intimacy nearly achieves his demanded object, his ultimate satisfaction seems possible only in protracted fantasy. Key Words: desire, lack, relationship, intimacy, fantasy.
Beowulf (2007), the film directed by Robert Zemeckis, retells the story in the Old English epic Beowulf with a shifting of perspective. While the epic looks at the conflict between Beowulf and Grendel from a patriarchal vantage point, the film offers a view of things from Grendel’s Mother’s perspective. In the film Grendel represents the return of the repressed violating the order of the symbolic in Heorot. Thus, Grendel’s Mother appears as the subversive heroine who resists the humanizing/castrating elements in the symbolic and stands for the unsymbolised cause of desire. In the course of the film, she metamorphoses into the incarnation of the (m)Other, the discourse of the unconscious. The Kings, in the aftermath of their encounter with the (m)Other, betray what they represent in the epic and this time the roles are reversed as in their case the (m)Other conquers the representative of the paternal metaphor. In such a context, the film makes the (m)Other central to its account of culture and society, and it evacuates the male rationality and control in its patriarchal discourse. Due to the emphasis put on the (m)Other and the bankruptcy of the paternal metaphor, the internal and external otherness, and how the internal otherness determines the course of things in the symbolic, this article aims to offer a psychoanalytical reading of the film using Lacanian ideas as the conceptual backcloth.
From the perspective of the degree of mechanization (machine to human capital, constant to variable capital), some of the machines presented in this chapter should be placed at the one end of the spectrum of technologies of calculation-computation of the mechanical and electrical eras, whereas some of the graphs presented in Chap. 5 should be placed at the other. The calculating machines (mechanical calculators) presented in Chap. 6 and the slide rules presented in Chaps. 2 and 3 would fill the space in between. If we had to choose one name to refer to the great variety of the machines and associated mechanisms of this chapter, this would have to be “analyzer.”
The history of computing before the electronic era is frequently reduced to the history of calculating and tabulating machines, which are a posteriori designated it as digital and therefore qualify to be considered direct ancestors of our electronic computer. As I perceive it, we face a two-dimensional historiographical challenge. We have to check if it is correct to privilege the history of computing with calculating and tabulating machines when it comes to the mechanical and the electrical eras. At the same time, we have to explain why computing with calculating and tabulating machines emerged as the privileged ancestor of electronic computing. The understudied history of the comparatively limited use of calculating and tabulating machines in engineering offers a contrast that is worth considering when it comes to address the aforementioned challenge. More specifically, in response to the first dimension of the aforementioned challenge, I will in this chapter present evidence that suggests that calculating and tabulating machines were not as important in engineering as we would expect based on the canonical emphasis on these machines as inherently technically superior. On the other hand, in response to the second dimension of this historiographical challenge, I will present evidence that shows that, in comparison to other computing artifacts of the 1914 Exhibition (e.g., in comparison to slide rules), calculating machines were more compatible with the pursuit of the further advancement of the capitalist division-of-computing labor.
The centuries-long and widespread use of the slide rule qualifies it as one of the most important computing artifacts of historical capitalism to date. Yet, the literature on the history of computing with the slide rule is extremely limited. This chapter offers an introduction to the history of the slide rule based on the presentation of the slide rule in engineering and other technical texts. The emphasis is placed on retrieving and interpreting representative comparisons between the various versions of slide rules and between slide rules and other computing artifacts, mostly calculating machines (mechanical calculators).
This paper analyzes narrative strategies used by Leonardo Sciascia in Porte aperte to create, among readers, sympathy for and identification with his (nameless) protagonist, a judge and an opponent of capital punishment. The judge has been called on to preside over a murder trial in 1937, a decade after Fascism had re-instated the death penalty, considered by the Regime a deterrent that would allow Italians to sleep with “open doors.” To that end, I consider the historical context in which the novel was written—given that Italian Constitution, in force since 1 January 1948, had abolished the death penalty—and the impact Sciascia sought to have on his readers. That is, Sciascia’s long-time opposition to the death penalty is to some extent pretext for ‘re-litigating’ in 1987, a decade after the fact, two polemics of the late 1970s. The first public controversy had been sparked by his declaration (issued during the trial of colonna torinese of the Red Brigades) of personal neutrality in the struggle of the Italian State to suppress terrorist subversion, the other by Sciascia’s contention that the political parties who refused to negotiate with the terrorists for the release of Aldo Moro had indirectly re-introduced the death penalty in Italy.
Jacques Lacan has creatively grafted Zhuangzi’s concept of the subject on the Western tradition of Logo-centrism. Lacan rewrites the triangle positions of the subject as the Real, the Imaginary, the Symbolic, expresses them in the vocabulary of detective stories, and achieves his scholarly reputation. The insufficiency of his theory could be redressed by Zhuangzi’s idea of ‘the poetics of oneness.’ For Zhuangzi, a man can forget his ‘Social I’ and ‘Corporeal I,’ arrive at the phase of ‘the equality of things’ in his symbiotic fusion with the surrounding things. These two thinkers complement each other and enrich our understanding of the subject.
It seems natural to think about literature in terms of dreams. Like dreams, literary works are fictions, inventions of the mind that, although based on reality, are by definition not literally true. Like a literary work, a dream may have some truth to tell, but, like a literary work, it may need to be interpreted before that truth can be grasped. We can live vicariously through romantic fictions, much as we can through daydreams. Terrifying novels and nightmares affect us in much the same way, plunging us into an atmosphere that continues to cling, even after the last chapter has been read — or the alarm clock has sounded.
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