Lacanian Psychoanalytic Theory Research Articles

Sexy selfie of hijabed women: Objectification of women's bodies in Instagram account @jilbabootd

<p class="Abstract">Women with hijab
 often generate a controversy<span lang="IN">. </span>Hijabed
 women in a sexy selfie are one example of it. The
 action of selfie photo becomes a new trend in line with the popularity of
 visual-based social media like Instagram. Taking and uploading selfie photos on
 Instagram seems to be indispensable for some people, including hijabed women.
 This paper is aimed to examine photos of sexy selfie of hijabed women uploaded
 in Instagram account @jilbabootd. The purpose
 of this paper is to reveal the practice of
 objectification of a women’s
 bodies by analyzing the comments raised by followers of account
 @jilbabootd. This study is framed by
 Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of desire, lack, and pleasure. The @jilbabootd
 account is intentionally created for the purpose of the self-certified sexy
 self-certified photo shoot. Women who become an admin in the @jilbabootd
 account reproduce the discourse of male gaze. Women who become followers in
 this account also perpetuate the male domination of women by giving comments
 that the language is very male (manly). The hijabed
 women who send sexy selfie photos are "willingly" expose their bodies
 to become <span lang="PT">object</span>s of male fantasy,
 gaze, and pleasure. They get
 their own pleasure by becoming the objects of gaze.<o:p></o:p></p>

Unbehagen: a gallantry with excess

This paper has its foundation in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as a way of understanding, from a scientific perspective, the human impact of material technology under the conditions of capitalism. Two related propositions concerning material technology are interrogated in terms of the Lacanian struggle for subjective articulation. Firstly, if following Frederick Kittler, information and communication technologies retain their autonomy beyond the subject, having emerged as a product of their storage, containment and repetitive usage, and if we as subjects embody technological developments as they occur, it could be argued that such technologies possess imaginary agency in that their ability for self-preservation and reproduction constitutes a commanding of unending enjoyment. Insofar as this command is enshrined within capitalism it tends to ignore subjective division and to bypass subjective struggle with the impossibility of language. Rather than affording the subject a new language, material technology merely hints at a contingent language yet to come. Further, in obfuscating the necessity for disinterest–the intellectual position–material technology operates as a discourse which fails to capture the subject, or more precisely, lalangue. Through its inevitable disappearance (and re-emergence transformed as another technology) material technology localises and thereby obscures conflict within the subject. This leads to the second proposition: as part of the capitalist imperative the quest for jouissance is already being played out alongside obscured subjective struggle, spectacularly so in the case of material technology. However, investment in this imperative has an unforeseen cost: in being confronted with excess of jouissance we are overwhelmed and uncertain. Material technologies command that we integrate excess into our daily lives as a unique discursive network, yet this network is at best opaque. Here, joussiance takes the form of a distinctive compulsion emanating from material technology’s intersection with capitalism. This in turn reconfigures the struggle in which the subject of language is grappling with the connection (if any) between knowledge and technological devices. In order to throw light on this struggle we could take up the position of disinterest regarding material technology under capitalism.

From Querulous to Suicidal: Self-immolation in Public Places as a Symbolic Response to the Feeling of Injustice.

Aim: This paper sheds light on the context that leads some querulous patients to self-immolate in front of, or into, public buildings (e.g., tribunals, city halls, and employment agencies).Method: The author defines paranoid querulousness. A psychoanalytic perspective, but also a judicial and a psychiatric point of view, over querulous claimants is presented. The links between political or social claims and self-immolation are studied. The expression of suicidal thoughts voiced by four querulous subjects is analyzed. Eight examples of self-immolation are presented.Results: The querulous subjects' self-aggressive behaviors seem to be caused by a loss of hope to obtain compensation for a prejudice they allegedly suffered. Querulous individuals tend to self-immolate in front of, or into, public buildings when no answer is given to their claims. These gestures may be both a consequence of some personal distress and triggered by a difficult social or professional context.Discussion: Five sets of assumptions derived from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories are advanced. The status of the object over which the querulous claimants wish to assert their rights is clarified. The meaning of self-aggressive gestures is outlined by making reference to the concepts of instinct for mastery, symbolic other, chain of signifiers, masochism, pleasure principle, and reality principle.Conclusion: Prevention of self-immolation could involve that members of the legal professions, social workers, civil servants, and mental health professionals in contact with querulous subjects openly show their will to listen to these claimants' voice: self-aggressive gestures might be avoided by supporting the querulous person's hope to obtain compensation for the prejudice allegedly suffered.

Sensational pedagogies: Learning to be affected by country

ABSTRACTStudent capacities to actively listen, sense and feel are often relegated to lower order skills in an education system increasingly governed by measurable outcomes. While most school-based pedagogies focus their approach on cognition, this paper considers how we might make sense of the affective experiences that often resist the deep thinking, independent learning and explanation so often required of students. The guiding aim is to explore how affective learning can be better understood through an Indigenous Australian concept of Country. We apply the pedagogical work of Elizabeth Ellsworth, along with Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to explore ways in which sensation and affect are already a method of learning, but ones that are substantially under-valued in designed curricula. A series of interviews with senior Aboriginal people are presented to assist in understanding the various ways in which affect can lead to thought. The authors present three case studies to highlight how knowledge can be taught through affective experiences of Country.

Politinis išsivadavimas ir „jautrusis subjektas“: lakaniško kairuoliškumo dilemos

The purpose of this paper is to tentatively explore the plausibility of the application of aspects of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory (and practice) to the purposes of Leftist political discourse. We live in an era when the forces of conservative political reaction are increasingly coming to the fore across Western democracies. In many Western states the reactionary right is in the ascendency: while the Left seems largely mired in political disarray and introspective impotence. Might the theories and insights of Jacques Lacan offer the Left some hope of a revivified intellectual and ideological cogency? This paper will attempt to draw together themes and ideas arising from recent scholarship within the field of Lacanian studies so as to explore ways in which the psychoanalytic theory and practice of Lacan might be utilised in the service of contemporary Leftist politics. In particular recent Lacanian scholarship has suggested that the provocative and fertile work of the scholar Slavoj Žižek might provide the foundation for just such a Lacanian Leftist renaissance. Contrary to this, this paper suggests that psychoanalysis itself should perhaps be regarded as a fundamentally tragic mode of thought – which might thus be intrinsically unsuited to the emancipatory purposes of the Left. Instead the paper will suggest that Lacanian theory might best serve the Left on a tactical level: as a radical interpretative technique whereby the texts and discourses of bourgeois cultural hegemony may be subjected to revivified critical scrutiny.

Humiliation, Justice and the Play of Anxiety in Competing Jurisdictions

In colonial nations, such as the land called Australia, the two registers of settler and Indigenous jurisdictions compete at the level of symbolic certainty. In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory neither can arrive at perfect symbolisation but the struggle and the proximity to their arrival can evoke anxiety. What insists to keep this anxiety at bay, in non-Indigenous Australia, is what Jacques Derrida calls justice. As an impossible object, similar to the Lacanian object petit a, justice must be interminably animated to hold this object of desire in play. Humiliation of Indigenous people in Australia is, I argue in this article, one mode of this play. I interrogate the psychoanalytic discussions of anxiety by Freud and Lacan to consider firstly what might be the cause of anxiety for contemporary non-Indigenous Australians and secondly how this anxiety is ‘played out’ on the bodies of Indigenous people through practices of humiliation. As one example of this work of humiliation I consider several scenes of police practice in the Sydney suburb of ‘Redfern’ from the 1991 documentary Cop it Sweet.

Identity change in a drug-free Therapeutic Community: a Lacanian interpretation of former residents’ perspectives on treatment process and outcome

PurposeIn drug-free Therapeutic Communities (TCs), people with addictions live together in order to achieve recovery in terms of a modified drug-free lifestyle. Central to the TC approach is the assumption that this shift is only achievable when “identity change” has taken place. However, this claim has rarely been addressed in TC research. Further insight into the nature and realization of such identity change might help to understand how this community approach contributes to long-term recovery. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe present qualitative interview study explores the perspectives of ten former TC residents on their treatment and their process of change. To organize the interview data, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory on identity formation/change is used as a framework.FindingsThe common thread in the participants’ process of change is presented in three parts: their life before, in and after the TC. The substeps within these parts are illustrated with several quotes.Originality/valueThe findings highlight the value of innovative qualitative research designs to address the many challenges to addiction treatment research. A Lacanian reading of the data makes it possible to describe the subjective logic of the process of change in the TC, focusing on how substance (mis)use functions as an attempted solution in dealing with identity issues. By linking crucial TC ingredients such as the TC law and TC tools to the process of the identity change, a new reading of this long-term group approach is achieved.

The Symptoms of the Political Unconscious: Introduction to the Special Issue

The political unconscious “speaks”; it displays itself in the symptoms of the political world, in the speech of policy, of decisions, of laws, of images, icons, and gestures, and in protest, resistance, and ordinary violences, and, insofar as it speaks, psychoanalysis can say something about it. In this article, we consider how psychoanalysis can speak to some of the symptoms of the political world as they emerge as a form of the political unconscious. We employ Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to elaborate the unconscious and discuss how some of the symptoms of this unconscious has emerged in the form of Brexit, Trump, and the rise of the right in Europe and the Antipodes. We then elaborate on the contributions to this special issue as well as mentioning how these contributions speak to these latest events.

The Real at the Origin of Sovereignty

This article revisits the concept of sovereignty in political theory by applying tools adapted from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. It critically reviews the premises of political subjects assumed by sovereignty and formulates a widened concept of sovereignty based on a general understanding of the “self,” “self‐relation,” and “identity” as the fundamental components of sovereignty. With this concept in hand, the article then focuses on the concept of the “Sovereign Good” common to French histories of political thought and of particular interest to Jacques Lacan in his 1959–60 seminar on the Ethics of Psychoanalysis and his 1963 article “Kant with Sade.” By reinterpreting the sovereignty of the Sovereign Good, Lacan points to a path according to which an idealized and universalized notion of the sovereign is made possible and energized through an identification of the real with the Sovereign Good. By understanding sovereignty as supported by the Lacanian real, we can better understand both the forces that drive it to self‐preservation and the insecurities that make its survival and longevity powerful hindrances to its dissolution

What Is “Enjoyment as a Political Factor”?

The notion of “enjoyment as a political factor” is a key motif in Lacanian psychoanalytic social theory. This article explores the notion of enjoyment/jouissance—a type of “negative pleasure” or intense libidinal arousal—as an instrument of political analysis. Crucial here are a series of qualifications that refine an understanding of the concept. The article clarifies that enjoyment is: sexual (or libidinal) in nature; bodily rather than unconscious; necessarily excessive (since it is “beyond the pleasure principle” and linked to the functioning of the death drive); and illicit, incurred in acts that apparently transgress laws or socially prescribed limits. A series of critical arguments are noted, such as the idea that jouissance cannot be extrapolated to the level of the social, and the contention that as “extradiscursive,” modes of enjoyment float free of the symbolic. Contrary to such contentions, I offer a series of examples—most typically of racism—to demonstrate how jouissance occurs within the symbolic, implies a dialectic of possession, involves the functioning of the law and superego, entails particular rules and contracts of enjoyment, and is structured by fantasy. Jouissance understood in these ways necessarily supports and extend social structure.

On the topological structure of a mathematical model of human unconscious

On the basis of two our previous works, in this paper, following Jacques Lacan psychoanalytic theory, we wish to outline some further remarks on the topological structure of a mathematical model of human unconscious.

Decoupling: A Key Fantasy of the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda

Central to the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda grounded in the Sustainable Development Goals is the notion of ‘decoupling’: the need to divorce economic growth from its ecological impact. For proponents, decoupling entails increasing the efficiency with which value is derived from natural resources in order to reconcile indefinite economic growth with environmental sustainability. However, even advocates admit that the idea of decoupling remains poorly conceptualized and subject to scant empirical investigation. This persistent commitment to a highly questionable idea suggests the possibility of a deeper psychological dynamic at work here. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, in this article we therefore analyze decoupling as a ‘fantasy’ that functions to obfuscate fundamental tensions among the goals of poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and profitable enterprise that it is intended to reconcile. In this way, decoupling serves to sustain faith in the possibility of attaining sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalist economy that necessitates continual growth to confront inherent contradictions.

MIND YOUR P(EDERAST)S AND Q(UEER)S: THE SCHOOL AS PHALLIC PARENT IN MARK BEHR’S EMBRACE

This study examines the role of the school in Mark Behr’s Embrace , and situates the institution’s location at the nexus of gender studies, children’s literature scholarship and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The article argues that in the novel, the school is a phallic parent in loco and an agent of the apartheid state, eager to enforce white male and heterosexual hegemony in psychologically and physically violent ways. Behr focuses on the vicious abuse of queer boys particularly. The article applies contemporary scholarship in children’s literature to what is unquestionably a novel for and by an adult, precisely so because of the book’s bold grappling with the questions of what is a child, what constitutes sex, who or what is the phallus, and what constitutes violence; it also situates Behr’s thinly veiled autobiography in a (queer) school story tradition. Specific thinkers on whose work the article draws include Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault; gender theorists Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick; psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan; and children’s literature scholars Karen Coats, Kenneth Kidd and others.

Challenging convention: Methodological explorations in contemporary qualitative inquiry

Based on a recent inaugural lecture, this article presents a critical appreciation and analysis of the application of different research methodologies to selected social and educational research contexts. The analysis is set against the backdrop of an ontological question concerning the possibility of truth. Specifically, it seeks to explore the untenability of any notion of absolute truth in contemporary qualitative inquiry, and examines the corollary implications for determining the nature, role and status of research. It is argued that the ability to challenge convention offers the possibility and the productive capacity to unsettle dominant research methodologies, while also critiquing normative social and professional research practices. Utilising three contrasting methodological frameworks – Gadamerian hermeneutics; Foucauldian theory; and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory – the narrative follows a journey of personal development and shows how seemingly different and diverse theoretical perspectives can reveal critical new insights on contemporary social research issues and practices, cultures, and communities.

The Cat, the Cradle, and the Silver Spoon: Violence in Contemporary Art and the Question of Ethics for Art Education

Against the backdrop of objective and subjective violence, two contemporary artworks are interpreted through theories of the Other. Zhu Yu’s Eating People (2000) is considered through Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and, in particular, through an Ethics of the Real. Teemu Mäki’s My Way, a Work in Progress (1995) is analyzed through Levinasian theories of ethics and the Third. It is argued that both artworks, which address violence, may instigate an affective antagonism between jouissance and social prohibitions and raise ethical questions about subjectivity and goodness. These ethical questions have import to art education in terms of rethinking the field’s relationship with contemporary art, prompting a pedagogy of provocation.

Perverting the course of therapy: the fetishisation of governance in public sector mental health services

In this paper, I draw on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to consider the notion of perversion and fetishisation within the context of contemporary UK public mental health services which have been subject to New Public Management restructuring. Offering an organisational case example based on clinical experience within an expanded NHS mental health service, I explore how services that are subject to neo-liberal regulatory and performance management systems sponsor a perverse organisational solution to the anxieties and difficulties of dealing with psychologically distressed patients. I conclude that theorising the unconscious dynamics of perversion and fetishism may provide an opportunity to rethink governmentality, offering a potentially fruitful means of addressing recent political concerns about the negative impact of a ‘target culture’ on public sector health services.

Verso un'archeologia tematica: lo sguardo delle cose

This paper examines the contribution that Warburg's theories can bring to thematology. It does so concretely, above all, through a discussion of historical-literary material. The author hypothesises that the literary representation of non-inert objects took place, in the 18th- and 19th-century fantastic genre, also by using spatio-temporal constants and recurring figurative formulae. By analysing not so much the linguistic, but rather the iconic or imaginative aspect of such constants and formulae (which can be considered as loci communes), these end up resembling Pathosformeln, or moving themes. Through the example of a canonical text such as Berenice, the author illustrates the basic characteristics of this sort of imaginative rhetoric. Subsequently, he shows how the image of things' gaze, which is arguably part of such rhetoric, in the 19th century is transposed also to non-literary texts, and above all to Lacan's psychoanalytic theory. Lastly, on the basis of the arguments and the data collected, the paper proposes an archaeological approach to the study of themes.Keywords: Literary theory, Theme, Thing theory, Fantastic

Identity, Alterity, and the Gospel of John

Post-classical narratologies are beginning to appreciate the ways in which identity and alterity are central to narrative. The Gospel of John has long been considered an artistically crafted narrative, yet little scholarly attention has been given to the dialectical interplay of identity and alterity in the Gospel narrative, except as this dialectic forms part of a larger examination of postcolonial discourse in John. Using insights from Monika Fludernik’s “natural” narratology and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, this article argues that issues of identity and alterity are pivotal to the Gospel of John, particularly in the Gospel’s rhetoric of belief and its anti-Jewish tenor and substance.

The sublime objects of education policy: quality, equity and ideology

Quality and equity are touchstones of education policy in the twenty-first century in a range of global contexts. On the surface, this seems fitting: after all, who could object to more quality and greater equity in education? Yet what do we mean by quality and equity, and how are they related? This paper draws on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to argue that not only are quality and equity far more complex than education policy formulations typically imply, but also that despite their elevated place in policy debates they remain elusive, serving as sublime objects that function as sites for the investment of desire, while simultaneously covering over and compensating for the ultimate impossibility of a complete and harmonious society. The paper argues that it is a result of their occupying this empty place, and through their holding out the (illusive) promise of enjoyment, rather than as a consequence of their specific or intrinsic content, that sublime objects such as equity and quality exert their particular ideological force.

Separation, death, the thing, Freud, Lacan, and the missed encounter

Abstract The author re-examines the relationship between Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of the death drive and how they relate to our conceptualization of one's own end.