Topic
The Imaginary
About: The Imaginary is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 4807 publications have been published within this topic receiving 87663 citations.
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01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In the most comprehensive study of Jacques Lacan yet to be published in English, David Macey challenges many of the assumptions that have come to surround Lacan s work as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In the most comprehensive study of Jacques Lacan yet to be published in English, David Macey challenges many of the assumptions that have come to surround Lacan s work. He shows that key elements of Lacanian thought relate not to structuralism, as is often claimed, but to surrealism, Bataille and the early French phenomenologists. The famous return to Freud is shown to mask Lacan s adherence to a psychiatric tradition and to trends within French psychoanalysis which were opposed by Freud himself. A detailed and challenging reading of work by Lacan and his associates on femininity reveals its reliance upon a virulently sexist discourse and upon an iconography derived from surrealism. The view that Lacanian psychoanalysis has a positive contribution to make to feminism and to theories of gender and sexual difference is contested. As well as providing a new and provocative reading of Lacan s work, "Lacan in Contexts"is an important contribution to psychoanalytic history and to the history of French intellectual life."
73 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: In this paper, D. A. Miller offers an album of moments in an imaginary homosexual encounter between himself and Roland Barthes and responds to various names, phrases, images, and themes in Barthes s work that provide him occasions for assessing, across differences of nation and generation, some characteristic strains of modern gay experience.
Abstract: In this essay, D. A. Miller offers an album of moments in an imaginary homosexual encounter between himself and Roland Barthes. Miller responds to various names, phrases, images, and themes in Barthes s work that provide him occasions for assessing, across differences of nation and generation, some characteristic strains of modern gay experience."
72 citations
TL;DR: Gonzalez et al. as discussed by the authors explored the development of womanhood among young Mexicanas with a multimethodological approach of trenzas y mestizaje, the braiding of theory, qualitative research strategies, and a...
Abstract: In this article Francisca E Gonzalez shifts the focus from a deficit view of cultural knowledge to an imaginary of the formation of identities and integrity braided with the law, policy, and social formations. In this way, cultural practices cultivate a unique worldview with implications for K-12 educational excellence and academic achievement. Gonzalez situates her research within the national discourse on educational reform so as to direct educational researchers', policy makers', and educators' thinking of young Mexicanas as pensadoras who interrogate the social order, and who give meaning to learning, knowing, and power. She describes a study intended to explore the development of womanhood among young Mexicanas beginning with an explanation of a theoretical lens, a looking prism of critical race feminisms and Latina critical theory interpretive frameworks. Then she explains the study's multimethodological approach of trenzas y mestizaje, the braiding of theory, qualitative research strategies, and a ...
72 citations
TL;DR: Dwyer as mentioned in this paper argues that anthropologists need to question the kind of objectification of others, and of ourselves, that we as anthropologists create, in our interaction with people.
Abstract: Dante, in The Inferno, encoutered Muham? mad, the Prophet of Islam, in the Eighth Circle, among the Sowers of Discord. Muhammad's body was split open from the chin to tho anus, and "Between his legs all of his red guts hung/ with the heart, the lungs, the liver, the gall bladder/ and the shriveled sac that passes shit to the bung" [ 1 ]. This was cultural mediation of a sort, a communication about "self" through use of the "other", and was spoken in an historical context which witnessed a direct challenge to Christian dominance in Europe from Muslim Spain. Dante's polemic against Islam was the other face of his defense of Christianity. It was not uncommon, however, throughout the Renais? sance and the Enlightenment, for the other to serve as a weapon in the critique of self. The exemplary use of an Islamic other to this end is probably Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes (1721), in which fictional Turkish visitors to Western Europe, and to Paris in particular, correspond with their countrymen at home and abroad, exposing what are seen as irra? tional and extravagant aspects of European life. This discourse, whether prompted by a defensive impulse similar to Dante's or by a critical one like Montesquieu's, whether the other was purportedly historical or explicitly imaginary, objectified the other as part of a strategy to objectify the self. Anthropology is today a major vehicle for this discourse. It too creates otherness and objectifies it. Although such objectification is probably a necessary moment in any con? scious attempt to transcend the self, it is not, of course, a sufficient one. As we acknow? ledge this moment, we must now begin to move beyond it, to ask further questions con? cerning the kind of objectification of others, and of ourselves, that we as anthropologists create. These questions are particularly vital when we phrase them with reference to con? texts where our social action is most imme? diate and most suspect, in our interaction with people. This is not the place to embark upon an extended critique of anthropological practice, especially since excellent ones already exist. Let me simply outline what I take to be central to such a critique, in order to situate these remarks within the latter, and as an effort to extend it. The emergence of anthropology as a dis? cipline was intimately connected to "a histor? ical process which has made the larger part of mankind subservient to the other" [2]. Corre? ctively, anthropologists conceptually and practically apportioned their human contem? poraries into two corresponding classes: "informants" and "public". Furthermore, since anthropology evolved in a social system, whenever relationships between people tended to be viewed as relationships between things, the connections between anthropolo? gists and informants, and between anthro? pologists and public, were transmuted in a similar way. Kevin Dwyer was most recently Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
71 citations
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: A collection of important analyses by many of the major Lacanian theorists and practitioners of Seminar XVII can be found in this article, where the contributors examine Lacan's theory of the four discourses, his critique of the Oedipus complex and the superego, and his prophetic grasp of twenty-first-century developments.
Abstract: This collection is the first extended interrogation in any language of Jacques Lacan's Seminar XVII . Originally delivered just after the Paris uprisings of May 1968, Seminar XVII marked a turning point in Lacan’s thought; it was both a step forward in the psychoanalytic debates and an important contribution to social and political issues. Collecting important analyses by many of the major Lacanian theorists and practitioners, this anthology is at once an introduction, critique, and extension of Lacan’s influential ideas.
The contributors examine Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, his critique of the Oedipus complex and the superego, the role of primal affects in political life, and his prophetic grasp of twenty-first-century developments. They take up these issues in detail, illuminating the Lacanian concepts with in-depth discussions of shame and guilt, literature and intimacy, femininity, perversion, authority and revolt, and the discourse of marketing and political rhetoric. Topics of more specific psychoanalytic interest include the role of objet a , philosophy and psychoanalysis, the status of knowledge, and the relation between psychoanalytic practices and the modern university.
Contributors . Geoff Boucher, Marie-Helene Brousse, Justin Clemens, Mladen Dolar, Oliver Feltham, Russell Grigg, Pierre-Gilles Gueguen, Dominique Hecq, Dominiek Hoens, Eric Laurent, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Jacques-Alain Miller, Ellie Ragland, Matthew Sharpe, Paul Verhaeghe, Slavoj Žižek, Alenka Zupancic
71 citations