Manicheism delirium: desire and disavowal in the libidinal economy of an emerging economy

This paper explores the motivations behind the outward foreign direct investment (ofdi) decisions in the past decade of an East Asian government-linked corporation (glc), the largest company of its kind in the world in terms of sectoral specialisation. This glc has travelled far from its origins as an agent of European imperialism to its current controversial role spearheading postcolonial extra-territorialisation strategies. I argue that financial predation is the synechdoche for territorialisation in the new imperialism. Consequently emerging economies pre-empt the financial siege by embarking on ofdi strategies themselves to create economic buffer territory. I construct a psychoanalytical framework for examining how anxiety is acted out in the global economy. I apply concepts of the traumatic moment, anxiety and the defence mechanisms of disavowal, splitting, introjection and projection to analyse the glc’s investments as territorial displacements of the libidinal economy.     

Lacan, Science, and Law: Is the Ethnography of Scientism Psychoanalytic?

By adopting an idealized conception of the scientific enterprise, mirroring scientists' own self-conception, courts minimize the social and rhetorical aspects of science as ornamental, contingent, and eliminable. Lacan's reflections on science, and on the question of whether (or in what sense) psychoanalysis is scientific, parallel and enrich the efforts in science studies to show that the social and rhetorical aspects of science are co-productive, constitutive, and inevitable. Specifically, Lacan's identification of science as a discourse in denial of its subjectivity leads to a psychoanalytic re-orientation of ethnomethodology - an anthropological approach now favored in science studies. In the context of litigation involving scientific expertise, attorneys already assume, in their depositions and cross-examination, the role of ethnographers on foreign ground, but to the extent that the discourse of science replaces or dominates the discourse of law, legal ethnographers should also assume the role of analysts exploring the unconscious of science. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

欲望表征的缺失——对《老人与海》的一种拉康式解读

对《老人与海》的一种拉康式的解读揭示出海明威无意识欲望所体现的无法满足的缺失,这种缺失表征在老人/海明威对“王者”地位、博爱的宗教观、完美女性的渴望中。这三方面的缺失通过开放性的能指交汇重叠,构建了海明威基本的人生观,其无意识欲望表征的缺失就是《老人与海》的所指。这是对《老人与海》作“重压下的风度”或“没有女人的男人”的传统僵化解读的一种颠覆。     

Guessing in the Gaps

The genesis of this conversation was the forthcoming new Penguin edition - under the general editorship of Adam Phillips - of the works of Freud. Mark and Phillips consider the concept of a 'literary' Freud alongside the 'scientific'or 'clinical' Freud, and discuss the related issues of translation, representation and interpretation, particularly as they bear on psychoanalytic writing. Adam Phillips's relationship to the institutions of psychoanalysis is considered, and the perpetuation of these institutions through the training of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. Also discussed is the project of psychoanalysis: the nature of psychoanalysis as a therapy as well as a body of ideas. Mark and Phillips make reference to the work of Freud, Lacan, Klein, Winnicott and Laplanche, and to concepts such as the 'enigmatic signifier' and 'transgenerational haunting'.     

极权主义何以是一种伦理的“恶”——与齐泽克一起聆听“极权主义的笑声”

齐泽克对"种族屠杀"和"假审判"的分析表明,极权主义的"伦理之恶"总是披戴着不容争辩的"道德命令"。从拉康后精神分析的微言大义看,极权主义的秘密在于"不可能性的实在界"隐蔽着的意识形态缝合点上的悖论,即伦理的"不道德"。齐泽克-拉康的"第四种伦理"预设了一种"驱动力的伦理"和一种"后革命"的妥协立场,它并不提供斩杀极权主义"巨龙"的"屠龙刀",其孜孜以求的"极权主义笑声"更类似于一种"翻墙术":既然我们面临的问题是要避开最后的也是最致命的陷阱,那么,至为重要的乃是,通过保持欲望的鲜活和永不放弃的对他者欲望的抵抗,翻过极权主义的"围墙"。