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Lacan: Topologically Speaking
The study of topology examines the way something can change shape while still retaining the same properties. Jacques Lacan devoted the last part of his teaching to the topology of the subject. During the 50s, he gauged the topology of surfaces (torus, Moebius strips, Klein bottles, crosscaps) and from 1972 on, he studied the topology of knots (Borromean, the sinthome). Showing that bodily and mental life function topologically, he did what no one had done he added to the logic of how representations function, the logic of jouissance or libidinal meaning that "materializes" language by making desire, fantasy, and the partial drives ascertainable functions of it. For Lacan, topology is neither myth nor metaphor. It is the precise way we may understand the construction and appearance of the subject. Space is multidimensional in terms of both meaning and logic.
Lacanian topology answers questions of post-structuralism while revealing the flaws in its theories. It also advances a 21st-century teaching that obviates symbolic logic and its positivistic assumptions. Applications are made to the clinic, to literature, and to the social sciences.
The authors collected here include world renowned Lacanian topologists such as Jacques-Alain Miller, Jeanne Lafont, Jean-Paul Gilson, Pierre Skriabine, Juan-David Nasio, Jean-Michel Vappereau, and several new theorists from the United States and Europe.
Lacanian topology answers questions of post-structuralism while revealing the flaws in its theories. It also advances a 21st-century teaching that obviates symbolic logic and its positivistic assumptions. Applications are made to the clinic, to literature, and to the social sciences.
The authors collected here include world renowned Lacanian topologists such as Jacques-Alain Miller, Jeanne Lafont, Jean-Paul Gilson, Pierre Skriabine, Juan-David Nasio, Jean-Michel Vappereau, and several new theorists from the United States and Europe.
440 pages, Paperback
First published August 17, 2004
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April 22, 2010
I particularly recommend the opening essay, Jeanne Lafont's "Topology and Efficiency". The unconscious is not separated from the conscious except by the time it takes to go there. Remarkable.
Everybody knows these moments where the spoken words do not present the things suffered. Topology explains these things, neither by affect, nor by hidden secret, nor by sentimental dimension, but by the set itself.
Read this with Cavell's Wittgenstein, to help show how Freud can help secure the latter from behaviorism. We might say that while everything may well be on the surface, ontologically speaking, the surface is not on the surface. Or in Lafont's terms, is "is not entirely present in the moment of enunciation." Or back to Wittgenstein: How odd that we spoke of a 'present moment of enunciation'!
Everybody knows these moments where the spoken words do not present the things suffered. Topology explains these things, neither by affect, nor by hidden secret, nor by sentimental dimension, but by the set itself.
Read this with Cavell's Wittgenstein, to help show how Freud can help secure the latter from behaviorism. We might say that while everything may well be on the surface, ontologically speaking, the surface is not on the surface. Or in Lafont's terms, is "is not entirely present in the moment of enunciation." Or back to Wittgenstein: How odd that we spoke of a 'present moment of enunciation'!
Displaying 1 of 1 review