拉康与法国女性主义

本文在介绍精神分析同女性主义关系渊源的基础上,分析拉康的精神分析学对法国女性主义的影响,及法国女性主义者对拉康精神分析学的批评与接受,重点突出拉康同三位法国女性代表的关系,她们是克里斯蒂娃、艾瑞格瑞和西苏。     

超现实主义视域中的达利与拉康

超现实主义思潮的表现方式和颠覆现实的内里逻辑是拉康早期理论兴趣的重要来源之一。但是,与超现实主义的旨趣,即力图打破现实的物性生活,追求未被世俗物欲毒化的理想境界这个兴奋点不同,拉康并不是在现实生活背后肯定性地发现惊异之美,而是致力于颠覆式地揭露出人之生存面相背后的倒错悲剧。     

BritCrits: Subversion and submission,past, present and future

This article explores some of the intellectual influences which have shaped the development of Critical Legal Studies in Britain and the contexts in which these influences made themselves felt. It then considers which influences might or should steer Critical Legal Studies in the future. In terms of the past, specific attention is given to the influence of Marxism, Freud and Lacan, feminism, Foucault and Derrida, and recent genres of history-writing. As to the future, the question is asked whether Critical Legal Studies will engage constructively with recent developments in the life sciences and the philosophy of science, and, more generally, whether it will be able to surpass its established mooring in the philosophy of history. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sinthome Law: Theoretical Constructions upon Lacan’s Concept of the Sinthome

Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory is of interest to legal theorists for a number of reasons. In particular, the concept of the Name of the Father allows a sophisticated theorisation of law and legal institutions. However, the Name of the Father was not Lacan’s only theory of law. In his final Seminars, Lacan developed a second and fundamentally different theory of law: the sinthome. By drawing upon Roberto Harari’s commentary on Lacan’s concept of the sinthome, the sinthome can be investigated in terms of topology, chaos, and morphogenetic theories. This can allow a complex theory of the sinthome to be put forward as real, immanent, emergent ordering through the de-limiting of singularities. From this a concept of Sinthome Law can be developed as a novel concept of law, and as a potential way to understand some contemporary problematics in law. The example of the emerging law on electronic signatures is introduced to indicate this.     

American Indian Tribes: ``Not as Belonging to But as Existing Within'

This article is an extended analysis of the historyand anomalies in the doctrine of American Indiantribal sovereignty. I explain that America gainedindependence, but took Indian land and colonized thetribes just as it had been colonized under theBritish. It asserted sovereignty for itself, butsubordinated the once independent tribes with aparadoxical semi-sovereign status as `dependentdomestic nations', all of this justified by the racialand cultural otherness of Indians. Using a Lacanianperspective, I show that America was founded on a`wound' or inconsistency at the heart of itsideological and constitutional order. In order torectify the inconsistencies that the initial `wound'produces, the law and political order havecontinuously had to adopt fictions (legal and racial). American law and policy has never been able to settlethe ambiguous doctrine of Indian sovereignty. As aresult, the law circles round and round in trying todefine it, and asserting and denying it, all in anunsuccessful attempt to make the constitutional orderwhole. It cannot succeed, however, since the ultimatesolution is an American sovereignty which, like God,admits of no limitation.     

Psychoanalysis and development: contributions,examples, limits

This article examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing on the work of Lacan and ?i?ek, the article will emphasise three key points: (1) psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development – its gaps, dislocations, blind spots – thereby elucidating the latter’s contradictory and seemingly ‘irrational’ practices; (2) the important psychoanalytic notion of jouissance (enjoyment) can help explain why development discourse endures, that is, why it has such sustained appeal, and why we continue to invest in it despite its many problems; and (3) psychoanalysis can serve as an important tool for ideology critique, helping to expose the socioeconomic contradictions and antagonisms that development persistently disavows (eg inequality, domination, sweatshop labour). But while partial to Lacan and ?i?ek, the article will also reflect on the limits of psychoanalysis – the extent to which it is gendered and, given its Western origins, universalisable.     

His master’s voice: H.L.A. Hart and Lacanian discourse theory

H.L.A. Hart’s jurisprudence seems antithetical to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Professor Schroeder argues that, in fact, Hart’s concept of law has surprising similarities to Lacan’s ‘discourse of the Master’. Both reject a command theory of law: subjects do not obey law out of fear. Moreover, both insist that the authority of law is completely independent from its content. Anyone seeking to develop a psychoanalytically sophisticated critical legal theory should reconsider Hart. As insightful as his concept of the symbolic is, Lacan has no expertise in legal systems and does not discuss positive law per se. Although he posited a theory of ethics in his Seventh Seminar and the seeds of a jurisprudence are implicit within his theory, he offers no account of legal right, justice or what Hart misleadingly calls ‘morality’. A Lacanian jurisprudence must, therefore, be supplemented by other sources. Moreover, legal positivists should not dismiss psychoanalysis. As insightful as Hart’s jurisprudence is, his theories of legal subjectivity and linguistics are simplistic and his concept of law too narrow. He describes only one aspect of legal experience: obedience to law. He ignores what most legal actors do: Hart’s concept of law excludes the practice of law. Although Lacan’s ‘master’s discourse’ surprisingly parallels Hart’s jurisprudence, Lacan does not restrict the symbolic to the master’s discourse. It requires three other ‘discourses’. Lacan, therefore, supplements Hart. Specifically, Lacan’s fourth discourse describes the excluded practice of law and provides the mechanism by which ‘morality’ can critique law.

The Critical Instance ‘After’ The Critique of the Subject

The central argument of this piece involves the idea that insofar as␣critique, with its two basic tropes of question and judgment, has been central to the ȁ8classical’ configuration of subjectivity, the critical instance ȁ8after’ the critique of the subject is to be found re-situated on a different philosophical terrain where the question of the question is re-thought and the logic of judgment displaced by an ethic of encounter. It is on this terrain that we can then start sketching the emergence of a different set of critical instances: critical ontologies, critical analytics and critical erotics.     

Writing On: Robert Creeley's The Death of Venus

This is a piece which explores how the reading of a poem, in being mediated both by the reading of other poems and by a certain experience of reading as such, involves the constitution of a layered, non-unified, field of readings. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mothers,Maidens and the Myth of Origins in the Irish Constitution

This article examines the ``hidden' ideological appeal which the 1937 Irish Constitution attempted to make by the invocation of the rural ideal, a hybrid of Irish nationalism, Catholicism and, most importantly, Gaelic romanticism. In this move, the historical legitimacy of the new state could be defined through the constitution by an appropriation of diverse symbols from an imagined past, a golden age of Gaelic unity and moral certainties. Particular attention will be paid to the image of woman as a representation of the nation in the 1937 Constitution, and to the context of Irish nationalist discourse generally, where she repeatedly appears in the archetypal forms of either mother or virgin. The predominance of the image of woman as mother in the Constitution, in contrast to her appearance in pre-independence nationalist discourse (where she regularly figured as a combination of mother, helpless maiden, seductress and destroyer) will be examined in terms of the Lacanian themes of Lack and jouissance (or enjoyment). This cultural (and legal) shift will be examined in terms of the renunciation of enjoyment inherent in this new national imagery, and in relation to the redemptive potential of the image of woman as mother; themes which appear significant in relation to post-colonial political formations generally, and to post-independence Irish political discourse in particular.