Poststructuralism: Faith and Lacan

Abstract

In Chapter Six, in the hands of feminist poststructuralist thinker Hélène Cixous the modernist motif of the conflict of Life vs. Form took on centrality. The notion of a “living writing” employed by Cixous has consequences in that it causes our interest to shift from language seen as an all englobing, even imprisoning, horizon to a principle of natality, within language, in spite of the symbolic order and the symbolic structure that fix the subject in the social order. The keyword for this chapter is “poststructuralism” and discussion considers its wider, far-reaching effects by expanding on the notion of a gift that is simultaneously a paternal donation, presenting it as a neglected aspect of poststructuralism. Poststructuralism usually means the rejection of an idea of reality independent of language. Yet, this chapter follows up Cixous’s recuperation, via Joyce’s modernism, of a beneficial principle in language beyond the Oedipal law. It enlists the help of Jean-Luc Marion’s work on Augustine, of contemporary theology, and of Jacques Lacan’s texts on psychoanalysis and religion to pursue the notion of a paternal donation beyond the Oedipal father and beyond the struggle for recognition.