John Barnet and the Materiality of Desire in James Hogg’s Justified Sinner

2020 ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
David Sigler
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Sexual History ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Bartleby The Scrivener ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories ◽  
The Church

This chapter examines a neglected scene in James Hogg’s novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, in which the church groundskeeper John Barnet is fired for insubordination. Barnet, like an earlier version of Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” makes innuendoes about his employer’s sexual history and refuses to deny spreading rumors about the paternity of the boss’s son. The ensuing confrontation becomes an allegory of labour relations and a parable about the materiality of desire. The chapter analyzes Barnet’s innuendo through the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan, who similarly saw desire as having a certain materiality.

I Want More of You: The Politics of Christian Eroticism in Postwar Guatemala

2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Lewis O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Teenage Girl ◽  
Media Relations ◽  
Intense Pain ◽  
Eyes Closed ◽  
The Face ◽  
Mystical Experiences ◽  
Great Love ◽  
The Church

The image appeared on the cover of a Sunday bulletin, produced and distributed by one of Guatemala City's most conservative neo-Pentecostal mega-churches. The picture presented the face of a young teenage girl, her eyes closed, lips wet, and skin kissed by a soft, transcendent light; the young woman's head was even tilted to the side in what Jacques Lacan would call jouissance (1998). Across her pink lips read Psalm 4:6: “In peace, I lay myself down.” This image, stitched together by the church's media relations department, makes a sly reference to Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture, St. Teresa in Ecstasy (1652). The statue in Rome presents one of Teresa of Ávila's (1515–1582) mystical experiences of God, which the sixteenth-century Spanish saint narrates with unblinkingly erotic imagery. In her autobiography, St. Teresa writes how “the great love of God” often left her “utterly consumed,” “penetrated to [her] entrails,” and made her “utter several moans” for both the “intense pain” and its “sweetness” (Peers 1927: 197). With St. Teresa in mind, my own reaction to the church bulletin parroted Jacques Lacan's response to Bernini's statue. “She's coming,” Lacan commented, “There's no doubt about it” (1998: 76).

scholarly journals A Desire for the Marsupial Space: A Lacanian Reading of Lacan

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Mehdi Aghamohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Huge Impact ◽  
Father Relationship ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

Jacques Lacan is regarded as an influential French psychoanalyst in the 20th century. In the present article, first, a brief biography of this interpreter of Sigmund Freud is presented and then his key psychoanalytic theories, largely about the infant-mother-father relationship, are summarized. These data are finally analyzed mainly according to Lacan’s own ideas. In other words, this article is aimed at providing a Lacanian reading of Lacan. It reveals that his family in particular had a huge impact on his theories, which strongly reflect Lacan’s desire for his mother, specifically her marsupial space. The article is concluded by exploring a quatrain by the famous Persian poet Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi in order to further substantiate the claim about Lacan’s desire for the space through theorization.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Sara H. Lindheim
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Augustan Age ◽  
Latin Elegy ◽  
Geographical Space ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theories

The introduction provides an overarching view of the book’s questions, texts, and theoretical concerns. It moves from a concrete detailing of the physical extent of geographical space the Roman empire added in the late Republic and in the Augustan age to a consideration of the effects that such an expansive increase in territory might have on a people’s worldview, relying on theories of cartography and the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan in conjunction with questions about how Romans conceptualized their world and what light the (no-longer-extant) late first-century BCE or early first-century CE map of Agrippa can shed on it. The emphasis of the inquiry is on the subject in Latin elegy (including Catullus) in poems that turn out to be chock full of geographical references. The book traces the different ways in which, and the varying consequences with which, the elegiac subject encounters the space of empire depending on gender in the works of Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid.

Spiritual Healing, Sick Kids and the Law: Inequities in the American Healthcare System

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 269-299
Author(s):  
Janna C. Merrick
Keyword(s):  
Medical Science ◽  
Spiritual Healing ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
Religious Minority ◽  
Human Need ◽  
East End ◽  
The Church

Main Street in Sarasota, Florida. A high-tech medical arts building rises from the east end, the county's historic three-story courthouse is two blocks to the west and sandwiched in between is the First Church of Christ, Scientist. A verse inscribed on the wall behind the pulpit of the church reads: “Divine Love Always Has Met and Always Will Meet Every Human Need.” This is the church where William and Christine Hermanson worshipped. It is just a few steps away from the courthouse where they were convicted of child abuse and third-degree murder for failing to provide conventional medical care for their seven-year-old daughter.This Article is about the intersection of “divine love” and “the best interests of the child.” It is about a pluralistic society where the dominant culture reveres medical science, but where a religious minority shuns and perhaps fears that same medical science. It is also about the struggle among different religious interests to define the legal rights of the citizenry.

Ideas and Leaders in Contentious Politics: One Parish Priest in El Salvador's Popular Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 76-101
Author(s):  
PETER M. SANCHEZ
Keyword(s):  
Collective Action ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Contentious Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Parish Priest ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Resource Mobilisation ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis paper examines the actions of one Salvadorean priest – Padre David Rodríguez – in one parish – Tecoluca – to underscore the importance of religious leadership in the rise of El Salvador's contentious political movement that began in the early 1970s, when the guerrilla organisations were only just beginning to develop. Catholic leaders became engaged in promoting contentious politics, however, only after the Church had experienced an ideological conversion, commonly referred to as liberation theology. A focus on one priest, in one parish, allows for generalisation, since scores of priests, nuns and lay workers in El Salvador followed the same injustice frame and tactics that generated extensive political mobilisation throughout the country. While structural conditions, collective action and resource mobilisation are undoubtedly necessary, the case of religious leaders in El Salvador suggests that ideas and leadership are of vital importance for the rise of contentious politics at a particular historical moment.

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