by Casey Butcher | Vol 40 (4) 2022
Summary: The first section of this paper traces, in brief, a conceptual evolution of psychoanalysis from its Freudian foundation in 19th century empirical science to Lacan’s reformulation of psychoanalytic method, based in part on mid-20th century structural linguistics, as one that is not, strictly speaking, scientific. Throughout this movement, the therapeutic aim and the medium of speech remain at the center of psychoanalytic praxis. The author, therefore, explores the questions: what is speech and what is at stake for human subjects in speaking? In part two, parallels are drawn between four (ana)logical pairings of conceptual moments in Freudo-Lacanian and Hegelian theory in order to elucidate dynamic and topological intricacies in each. The Oedipus complex is described as a dialectical unfolding, wherein Hegelian and Freudian theorizing and Lacanian mythmaking are, similarly, creative retorts to contradiction and ambivalence. These subjective responses effect the Aufhebung or Verdrängung (in neurosis) of the conflictual impasse, and institute a vehicle for the transgenerational transmission of Kultur—what Hegel called Geist and Freud rendered Unbewusst.
by Kobe Keymeulen | Vol 39 (2) 2021
Summary: This paper investigates the significance of filmic analysis in the contemporary theoretical paradigm inspired by Slavoj Žižek, which we term ‘Transcendental Materialism’. After characterising its distinct peculiarities within the history of psychoanalysis and film theory, we demonstrate the limitations of previous (possible) answers, arguing they are partly formulated in response to confrontations with other paradigms. Our own approach is then informed by a study of another popular object of analysis in Transcendental Materialism – the joke. We show how Freud’s understanding of the joke was adapted by the paradigm and supported further by certain philosophical insights by (among others) G.W.F. Hegel. Finally, we demonstrate how parallels can be drawn between this adaptation and the significance of the filmic form within Transcendental Materialism, inspired in part by Alain Badiou’s reading of Hegel.
by Jonas Vanbrabant | Vol 38 (1) 2020
Dit artikel onderzoekt wat Slavoj Žižek aanduidt met de notie christelijk atheïsme. Op basis van zijn vaststelling dat atheïsme niet alleen een deel is van het evangelie, maar er ook de kern van uitmaakt, stelt hij dat christelijk atheïsme de enige consequente geloofsvorm binnen het monotheïsme is. Daarbij wordt beargumenteerd dat zijn appreciatie voor de christelijke erfenis voornamelijk voortvloeit uit haar politiek- revolutionaire mogelijkheden. Het besef van Gods dood of het niet-bestaan van de grote Ander bewerkstelligt namelijk, ten gevolge van de vrijheid en liefde waarop christelijke atheïsten zijn teruggeworpen, een open horizon om subjectiviteit radicaal en emancipatief te herdenken.
by Arthur Sollie | Vol 38 (1) 2020
In this article, we are firstly going to reread Lacan’s famous formula of the subject. This formula, “A signifier represents the subject for another signifier”, remains in some respects opaque to say the least. Lacan, however, will not cease to repeat it throughout his teaching. Secondly, we will read a passage in the Preface to the Phenomenology of the Spirit in which Hegel returns to the dialectic between subject and substance. In these readings, we will outline that defining the subject comes, for both authors, together with its difference from what the subject is seemingly opposed to: structure, substance, Other. This difference is central and accentuates above all an impossible relation. Nonetheless, this impossible relation does not remain silent. Instead of being simply a relation between two terms – which would amount to their difference being only something theoretical (for thought) – it is rather that, in struggling with this impossible relation, both terms become actual (wirklich) in themselves. For Lacan, the relation between subject and Other fails, which makes it ‘not to stop (not) being written’. For Hegel, the relation between subject and substance is contradictory, but this contradiction is understood as the subject itself, which is nothing but substance’s own restlessness becoming ‘in itself’.
In order to define the stakes properly, we will pass through Descartes and (Hegel’s reading of) Spinoza, whose influence on Lacan and Hegel should not be underestimated. The first part of the article investigates how Lacan’s structural formula is an attempt to write the Cartesian subject without rendering it into a thinking substance. Descartes does understand the subject as a thinking substance from the extended substance, or shortly, as thought separated from being (which has become famous as the Cartesian dualism). The second part treats how the problems with this dualism – and with Spinoza’s monism which is to be the response to these – lead Hegel to write his own topology of the subject in relation to substance. The third part is an analysis of a joke during Stalinism which helps to illustrate the impossible relation between subject and Other (Lacan) or – which we read as overlapping – Hegel’s dialectics between subject and substance.
