Showing papers on "The Imaginary published in 1982"

The Imaginary Signifier

Abstract: Reduced to its most fundamental approach, any psychoanalytic reflection might be defined in Lacanian terms as an attempt to disengage the cinema-object from the imaginary and to win it for the symbolic, in the hope of extending the latter by a new province:* an enterprise of displacement, a territorial enterprise, a symbolising advance; that is to say, in the field of films as in other fields, the psychoanalytic itinerary is from the outset a semiological one, even (above all) if in comparison with the discourse of a more classical semiology it shifts from attention to the &nonc6 to concern for the inondation.

Psychoanalysis and Cinema: the Imaginary Signifier

Abstract: PART I THE IMAGINARY SIGNIFIER The Imaginary and the 'Good Object' in the Cinema and in the Theory of the Cinema The Investigator's Imaginary Identification, Mirror The Passion for Perceiving Disavoal, Fetishism 'Theorise', he says...(Provisional Conclusion) Notes and References to Part I PART II STORY/DISCLOSURE (A NOTE ON TWO KINDS OF VOYEURISM) Notes and References to Part II PART III THE FICTION FILM AND ITS SPECTATOR: A METAPSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY Film and Dream: the Knowledge of the Subject Film and Dream: Perception and Hallucination Film and Dream: Degrees of Secondarisation Film and Phantasy The Filmic Visee Notes and References to Part III PART IV METAPHOR/METONYMY, OR THE IMAGINARY REFERENT 'Primary' Figure, 'Secondary' Figure 'Small-scale' Figures, 'Large-scale' Figures Rhetoric and Linguistics: Jakobson's Contribution Referential, Discursive Metaphor/Metonymy: a Dissymetrical Symmetry Figure and Substitution The Problem of the Word Force and Meaning Condensation From the 'Dream-work' to the 'Primary Process' 'Censorship': Barrier or Deviation? Displacement Crossings and Interweavings in Film: the Lap-dissolve as an Example of a Figuration Condensations and Displacements of the Signifier Paradigm/Syntagm in the Text of the Cure Notes and References to Part IV Index

Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution

Abstract: Freud prophesied in 1914 that the final decisive battle' for psychoanalysis would take place where the greatest resistance [had] been displayed.' Wary of America's too easy acceptance, he suspected a dilution and distortion of his most vital and therefore most unacceptable doctrines. Among Western countries, France may well be the one that resisted Freud the longest. Yet quite suddenly, in the late 1960s, France was seized by an infatuation with Freudianism.' By the end of that decade, France had more than a psychoanalytic movement: it had a widespread and deeply rooted psychoanalytic culture. At the heart of this development was Jacques Lacan's reconstruction of Freudian theory, a reinvention' of psychoanalysis that resonated with French culture in the aftermath of the uprisings of 1968. While, in America, psychoanalysis has become increasingly identified with an essentially conservative medical establishment, the French rediscovery of Freud, in a dramatic enactment of Freud's prophesy, became associated with the most radical elements of French philosophical and political life. The story of Lacan, and why his work so profoundly influenced the French psyche, is told clearly and unerringly by Sherry Turkle in this groundbreaking work. Already acclaimed as an absolutely indispensable contribution to the history of psychoanalysis, ' this second edition of PSYCHOANALYTIC POLITICS contains two illuminating new additions. The preface explicates Lacan's impact on the French by laying out a theory of the conditions for the dissemination and acceptance of a set of philosophical positions by a culture. The final chapter, Dynasty 1991, provides a fascinating portrayal of the last years of Lacan's life, the intrigue and power struggles that resulted in the break-up of the Freudian School he founded, and the events which unfolded in the years following his death in 1981. The heart of the book is Sherry Turkle's first-hand account of the psychoanalytic culture that developed in France--as a politicized, Gallicized, and poeticized Freudianism, deeply marked by the work of Jacques Lacan. The clearest introduction in English to Lacan's teaching, the work explores how cultures appropriate theories of mind. It is an intimate sociology of how ideas come to connect with individuals. Providing an inner history' of the sciences of the mind, this book will be invaluable reading for anyone with an interest in psychoanalysis, history, social theory, communications, film theory, and contemporary literary criticism.

Jacques Lacan: Feminism and the Problem of Gender Identity

Abstract: Lacan never tired of repeating that Totem and Taboo (1912) was wrong, and that the Oedipus complex was Freud's own neurosis. Lacan offered instead his own theory of the paternal metaphor and the Oedipal structure which make use of his innovative concepts of the Phallus, Castration, Desire andjouissance.' By recasting Freud's realist picture of the Oedipal complex away from both myth and biology, Lacan introduced the concept of a structure which is formed by the intervention of a third element into the original infant-mother dyad: the Law of the Name-of-the-father. Moving from the realm of the Freudian sexual triangle to that of symbolic effect, Lacan leaves the scene of the incest taboo to dramatists and anthropologists. Sexual identity is not based on biological gender, or any other innate factor, but is learned through the dynamics of identification and language. One finds two different systems of meaning within Lacan's epistemology, each complete in its own sphere: the one of language, and that of an unconscious discourse. In the unconscious system which Lacan calls the Other discourse, meaning does not come from substance or essence, but from structural associations and signifying effects. Within this context, not only the Oedipal myth, but myth in general is simply "the attempt to give epic form to that which operates itself from structure."2 In the early 1950s Lacan used the word "structure" to mean that which functions like a language; i.e., by transformations. In the same way that speech and lexicon are governed by the fundamental laws of language which Roman Jakobson names as metaphor and metonymy, Lacan has depicted an unconscious which transforms its representational networks of imagistic relations through analogous procedures of combination, condensation, substitution and displacement.3 In light of Lacan's structural picture of the unconscious, any direct linking of his Oedipal structure to biology through body configuration, gender, genital experience, or its "resolution" in genital

The imaginary audience and age, cognition, and dating.

Abstract: (1982). The Imaginary Audience and Age, Cognition, and Dating. The Journal of Genetic Psychology: Vol. 140, No. 2, pp. 317-318.

The Illusion of Politics: Politics and Rationalization in Max Weber and Georg Lukacs

Abstract: In his treatment of Albert Soboul, which ranks among the most brilliant polemics of the present, Frangois Furet develops the thesis that modern political theory, which achieved a breakthrough in the French Revolution, is not really as modern as it might appear at first glance. Instead of opening a completely new discourse about the realm of the political, as the accepted ideology of a caesura maintains, the political theory of 1789 or more exactly, of 1794 profoundly bears the marks of the political theory and practice of the ancien regime. The sudden collapse of absolutism and the lack ofa bourgeois political culture produced a vacuum, according to Furet, in which the revolutionaries created for themselves a substitute image of power that was only a copy of the absolute power of kings, merely inverted in the people's favor. The 'illusion of politics': Furet uses this term to describe a situation in which power, up to that time absolute and unattainable, has become free and attainable and allows everything to appear to be possible. The French Revolution, writes Furet, is unthinkable without the conception of undivided power that is a legacy of the old monarchy. On the contrary, it consists of an attempt to force this conception onto society, instead of seeing in it just a representation of God. "Out of this attempt to reestablish an undivided power in a society without contradictions emerges the revolutionary consciousness as an imaginary construct of the political realm, and it corresponds precisely to an inversion of the imaginary construct of the ancien rgime." Furet's interpretation model is cast in the mold of the French Revolution, and more precisely that ofJacobinism; but the extent of its

Labor Violence — A Reply

Abstract: Our discussion of collective violence among Russian labor in the late nineteenth century has raised more questions than it has answered and created considerable heat as well as light in this murky corner of Russian social history. There is a consensus that the subject deserves serious attention, but beyond that point, agreement ends. The questions raised by the discussants center on the typology and dynamics of labor violence, but include as well issues relating to the formation, popular culture, behavior, and urban acculturation of the Russian labor force. There is much we do not know about workers of the late tsarist years. Ronald Suny provides an impressive list of the authors of recent works on Russian labor history, but is quite justified in his complaint of the absence of an interpretive survey. We lack a real social history of Russian jabor (though the gap may soon be filled as a result of a recent conference on the subject). Consequently, we must each compose our own work, constructing a conceptual framework and selecting material to fit our own tentative argument. Not surprisingly, my imaginary survey includes a chapter on the origins and evolution of labor violence in the years prior to 1905. The scholars who have joined this discussion have, if one may judge by their comments, taken different paths. Suny relegates the subject to an "earlier period," presumably the midnineteenth century. Diane Koenker chooses to view it as one part of "collective action," profoundly modified by urbanization. Robert Johnson appears to be of two minds, on the one hand calling the subject "important," while on the other emphasizing the rationality and "discipline" of the late-century worker movement, leaving the impression that (as in his book on Moscow labor) he minimizes violent protest and views strikes as the dominant mode throughout the period. How is the reader to judge the relative merits of the arguments? The task is made no easier by the controversy surrounding the subject. Discussion of worker violence touches sensitive nerves among those who believe the very mention of the topic is a reflection on the ethical standards of Russian labor or on the quality of social relations among Russia's lower classes. The issue comes to us weighed down with the ideological baggage of a century of debate among radicals, for whom labels like "backwardness," "rebelliousness," and "Pugachevism" revealed one's attitude toward revolution and progress in Russia. I admit to some disappointment at having terms like Bakuninism applied to my views and at being labeled a "modernizer" (does this make me a "Westernizer" in contemporary garb?). Some controversy enlivens debate and stimulates interest in a topic, but the use of polemical terms merely throws up clouds of confusion where clear vision is needed. All the discussants refer to the work of Western social historians, such as Hobsbawm and Sewell, whose conceptualizations of labor history provide analytical models for the study of Russian labor. Johnson is correct in warning of the dangers of using these models to force the Russian worker into an "alien mold." The misuse of comparative historical methods creates as many "stereotypes" as does ideological bias. Clearly great care is needed in employing the concept of "primitive rebels," which I used as a method of analyzing one pattern

The Imaginary Library: An Essay on Literature and Society.

Abstract: In this speculative treatment of literature as a social institution, Alvin B. Kernan explores the inability of contemporary writers and critics to maintain a literary vision in a society that denies their values and methods.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.