Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change
Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change

Author: Mark Bracher

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1501722298

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Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people's lives, Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.In this forceful and engagingly written book, Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan's theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse, asserting that the use of this model can promote collective psychological change. While cultural criticism has generally focused on texts, Bracher instead analyzes audiences' actual responses—to a variety of discourses from "high" as well as popular culture: the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson, anti-abortion propaganda, pornography, Keats's "To Autumn," and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Through analyzing these responses, Bracher is able to uncover the unconscious identifications and fantasies of the respondents—an intervention that, he argues, has the potential for altering subjectivity. In his view, such a method of cultural criticism is both unusually powerful and ethnically defensible, since instead of attacking or upholding a group's values, it reveals the psychological conflicts manifest in responses to particular texts.Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change will be essential reading for students as well as specialists in such fields as cultural criticism, feminist theory, literary theory, psychoanalytic criticism, reader-response criticism, reader-response criticism, and Lacanian theory.

The Lacanian Left
The Lacanian Left

Author: Yannis Stavrakakis

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2007-08-09

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780791473290

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Innovative exploration of the relationship of Lacanian psychoanalysis to political and democratic theory.

From the Conscious Interior to an Exterior Unconscious
From the Conscious Interior to an Exterior Unconscious

Author: David Pavon Cuellar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-24

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0429914202

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This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacan’s work bridges the gap between discourseanalytical debates in social psychology and the social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavón Cuéllar provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces (EPR). Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows that Lacan’s psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology, constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner, Soler, and Žižek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of psychoanalytic theory.

Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change
Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change

Author: Mark Bracher

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9780801480638

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Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people's lives, Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.In this forceful and engagingly written book, Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan's theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse, asserting that the use of this model can promote collective psychological change. While cultural criticism has generally focused on texts, Bracher instead analyzes audiences' actual responses--to a variety of discourses from "high" as well as popular culture: the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson, anti-abortion propaganda, pornography, Keats's "To Autumn," and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Through analyzing these responses, Bracher is able to uncover the unconscious identifications and fantasies of the respondents--an intervention that, he argues, has the potential for altering subjectivity. In his view, such a method of cultural criticism is both unusually powerful and ethnically defensible, since instead of attacking or upholding a group's values, it reveals the psychological conflicts manifest in responses to particular texts.Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change will be essential reading for students as well as specialists in such fields as cultural criticism, feminist theory, literary theory, psychoanalytic criticism, reader-response criticism, reader-response criticism, and Lacanian theory.

The Four Lacanian Discourses
The Four Lacanian Discourses

Author: Jeanne Lorraine Schroeder

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-08-18

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1134039735

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This book proposes a taxonomy of jurisprudence and legal practice, based on the discourse theory of Jacques Lacan. In the anglophone academy, the positivist jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart provides the most influential account of law. But just as positivism ignores the practice of law by lawyers, even within the academy, the majority of professors are also not pursuing Hart's positivist project. Rather, they are engaged in policy-oriented scholarship - that tries to explain law in terms of society's collective goals - or in doctrinal legal scholarship - that does not try to describe what law is, or to supply justifications for it - but which examines the 'internal' logic of law. Lacan's discourse theory has the power to differentiate the various roles of the practicing lawyer and the legal scholar. It is also able to explain the striking lack of communication between diverse schools of legal scholarship and between legal academia and the legal profession. Although extremely influential in Europe and South America, Lacanian theory remains largely unexplored (in the English-speaking world) outside of the field of comparative literature. In taking up the jurisprudential ramifications of Lacan's work, The Four Lacanian Discourses thus constitutes an original contribution to current theoretical and practical understandings of law.

Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan
Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan

Author: Gilbert D. Chaitin

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-08-15

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 9780521497657

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This is the first book to explore the full range and import of Lacan's theory of poetry and its relationship to his understanding of the subject and historicity. Gilbert Chaitin's lucid and accessible study of this famously complex thinker shows how Lacan moves beyond the traditionally hostile polarities of mythos and logos, poetics and philosophy, to conceive of the subject as a complex interplay between psychoanalysis, rationality and history. Lacan's incorporation of historical necessity into the formation of subjectivity enables him to illuminate the role literature plays in the creation of selfhood. Lacan's metaphor of the subject, Chaitin argues, draws not only on Saussure, Jakobson, Freud, Heidegger and Hegel but on hitherto unacknowledged sources such as Bertrand Russell and I.A. Richards. Chaitin explores the ambiguities, contradictions and singularities of Lacan's immensely influential work to provide a definitive account of the theoretical development across his entire career.

God and the Excluded
God and the Excluded

Author: Joerg Rieger

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published:

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9781451411102

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Rieger offers an enlightening way to understand the chief strands or options in theology today and a valuable proposal for resituating theology around the crucial issue of inclusion. He sees four competing vectors at work in Christian today's theology: Theology of Identity, Theology of Difference, Theology and the Postmodern and Theology and the Underside.

Interpretation in Political Theory
Interpretation in Political Theory

Author: Clement Fatovic

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1315506041

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Theorists interested in learning more about any given interpretive approach are often required to navigate a dizzying array of sources, with no clear sense of where to begin. The prose of many primary sources is often steeped in dense and technical argot that novices find intimidating or even impenetrable. Interpretation in Political Theory provide students of political theory a single introductory reference guide to major approaches to interpretation available in the field today. Comprehensive and clearly written, the book includes: A historical and theoretical overview that situates the practice of interpretation within the development of political theory in the twentieth century. Chapters on Straussian esotericism, historical approaches within the Cambridge School of interpretation, materialist approaches associated with Marxism, the critical approaches associated with varieties of feminism, Greimassian semiotics, Foucaultian genealogy, the negative dialectics of Theodor Adorno, deconstruction as exemplified by Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. An exposition of the theoretical and disciplinary background of each approach, the tools and techniques of interpretation it uses, its assumptions about what counts as a relevant text in political theory, and what it considers to be the purpose or objective of reading in political theory. A reading of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan to illustrate how each approach can be applied in practice. A list of suggestions for further reading that will guide those interested in pursuing more advanced study. An invaluable textbook for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and even seasoned scholars of political theory interested in learning more about different interpretive approaches.

Bruce Arrigo
Bruce Arrigo

Author: David Polizzi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-09-20

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 303128299X

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This book examines various aspects of the work of Bruce Arrigo related to therapeutic jurisprudence, criminal justice ethics, and the place of critical theory in criminology and related fields. Arrigo’s work spans over thirty years and during that time has been an important voice in the practical and theoretical application of post-modern and critical theoretical approaches to mental illness, the practice of forensic psychology, and a wide variety of critical reflection concerning incarceration, rehabilitation, and the ethical practice within the criminal justice system. Each individual contributor offers their own perspective on his work and its specific influence on the topic under discussion. This book speaks to academics focused on the application of critical criminological theory within a variety of disciplinary contexts. These include forensic psychology, psychological jurisprudence, criminal justice ethics, and philosophically based critiques of the law and mental health and criminal justice activism.

Changing the Subject in English Class
Changing the Subject in English Class

Author: Marshall W. Alcorn

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9780809324279

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Alcorn (English and humanities, George Washington U.) argues that the gradual shift in the teaching of composition from a curriculum that looked at literature as an attempt to represent reality to one that stresses the subjectivity of the student in decoding texts has incorporated an insufficiently complex understanding of subjectivity. The current cultural studies programs stress political ideas over expressive writing, but Alcorn argues that political ideas will never be right unless there is attention to self-expression. Basing his work in the conceptual world of psychoanalytic theory, he outlines a cultural-studies practice that develops anti-ideological identity. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR