Lacanian Approach Research Articles

Hegel in Analysis: Slavoj Zizek's Lacanian Dialectics

In the following paper I shall be developing a critical discussion of the contemporary interpretation of Hegel proposed by a Yugoslavian, and more specifically Slovenian, philosopher named Slavoj Zizek, whose principal theoretical allegiance is to the thought of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The very existence of this body of work raises many intriguing questions about the theoretical, cultural, and political context from which it has arisen. Why, for example, should the notoriously obscure and difficult thought of a Parisian psychoanalyst be of such interest not just to Zizek, but indeed to a whole circle of Slovenian intellectuals? Furthermore, why should a Lacanian approach be considered the most promising way to unlock the ‘secret of Hegel’? And why should Zizek and his fellow thinkers insist on the convergence of the thought of Hegel and Lacan, even in defiance of many of Lacan's own pronouncements on the matter?In a sense, the answer to the first of these questions already provides the answers to the other two. It is necessary to bear in mind that, for the most part, Yugoslavian philosophical life since the Revolution has been dominated not by the creaking orthodoxies of Soviet-style dialectical materialism, but by the far more plausible and congenial positions of what has come to be known as the Praxis School. The Marxism of the Praxis School, whose tradition still lives on, in the form of the journal Praxis International, is much closer, indeed can be seen as part of the philosophical current known in the other half of Europe as ‘Western Marxism’.

REFLECTIONS: A LACANIAN APPROACH TO CHRISTIANE PFLUG'S ART

(1985). REFLECTIONS: A LACANIAN APPROACH TO CHRISTIANE PFLUG'S ART. American Review of Canadian Studies: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 433-448.

Lacan and literature: A case for transference

Traditionally, psychoanalytic knowledge is applied to literature. Lacan, however, asserts that literary studies are a foundation for psychoanalysis, so a truly Lacanian approach to literature would institute a reversal whereby psychoanalysis is a regional application of literary studies. This reversal would run counter to the humanistic ideology currently reigning in academia which ironically has rendered the ‘Humanities’ ineffectual and irrelevant. Finally, however, beyond this reversal, the paper envisions a mode of reading which, by including the transferential aspect of psychoanalysis as well as the interpretive relation, would provide a means of analyzing the power hierarchy structuring interpretation. This would necessitate a ‘psychoanalytic’ mode of reading that attends to the specific dynamic of the literary relation, rather than merely ‘importing’ knowledge from another field.