Subjectivity and Revenge in Karen M. McManus’s One of Us Is Lying

The aim of this paper is to explore the issues of peer rejection and revenge among adolescents through their portrayal in young adult literature (YAL). Adopting the lens of Lacanian theory on subjectivity and desire, the paper analyses a revenge plot in Karen M. McManus’s novel One of Us Is Lying and its origins. It argues that peer rejection contributes to contradictory self-concepts; how adolescent characters view themselves clash at some point with how others regard them, leading them to seek retribution. Their attempt at revenge will be examined along the lines of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the paper argues that their revenge is driven by the impulse to fulfil the Other’s desire, which eventually fails due to the unobtainable nature of the desire itself.

What Is Visible When Acting? Acting-Out, Passage à l’Acte and the Dialectics of the Gaze in Phenomenology and Psychoanalytic Theory

"The paper approaches acting from a phenomenological and psychoanalytic point of view. It sheds light on the intrinsic (i.e., invisible) resorts involved when someone is playing a role – or, better yet, assumes a role. In order to make these mechanisms visible, the paper relies on the premise that acting always involves an act. Using the Lacanian theory of acts, I demonstrate that there is a real process taking place when assuming a role, namely when the subject needs to objectify himself. This process can be traced back as far as the “time” of a pre-existent gaze. The aim of the paper is to substantiate the idea that it is necessary for the gaze to enter a dialectics in order for the subject to find its objective place. For illustration, two works of art are used: the performance The Artist is Present by Marina Abramović and the movie A Woman Under the Influence by John Cassavetes. Keywords: act, desire, gaze, objectify, the Other, presence without assignable present, the Real, (in)visible."

Psychoanalysis in Global Politics and International Relations

Critical and poststructural theories were introduced to global politics in early to mid-1990s. Since then there has been a proliferation of critical thinking in global politics with Derridean and Foucauldian approaches being the most popular. While psychoanalysis made its appearance and gained in popularity alongside other critical approaches to international politics in mid-1995, it has never become one of the “go to” theories. However, since 2010 psychoanalysis has been slowly reemerging on the global politics scene. If initially psychoanalytic approaches focused on a number of different theorists such as Castoriadis, Jung, Freud, and Lacan, the most recent thinking draws most significantly on the contribution of Lacanian psychoanalysis and thinkers such as Žižek, Butler, or Kristeva, all of whom heavily rely on Lacan. In postcolonial studies a distinct psychoanalytic account was also developed by Frantz Fanon. This contribution provides an overview of psychoanalytic approaches in the study of global politics with a focus on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and its derivatives (Žižek, Fanon, Butler, and Kristeva). The reason for the selected focus is simple—this has been the most popular approach since the introduction of this thinking to the discipline. Lacanian theory revolves around concepts such as desire, jouissance (radical/excess enjoyment), fantasy, and drive, and is concerned with explaining the social bond—that is how the subject comes to existence and what social factors determine the subject’s existence in society. Its distinct contribution to the field of global politics is its focus on conscious and unconscious factors. In other words, it focuses on that which can be represented and that which remains unrepresented but still impacts the world. Affects, symptoms, or unconscious material impact the way the subject (and society) behaves. While the theory’s foundations are in psychiatry (and many critiques of psychoanalysis point that out vehemently), psychoanalysis is not a theory of the individual and neither is it concerned with the individual psyche. It is a theory of society; Lacan even characterized it as antiphilosophy. Psychoanalysis has appeared in a number of different contexts in global politics. The presented selection is not exhaustive though the aim was to include the most significant contributions the theory has made to the discipline’s different subfields. Key areas include the state, sovereignty, ontology, Political Subjectivity, law and foreign policy; and subdisciplines such as postcolonialism (the theories of Frantz Fanon), racism, affect, Radical Politics and Cultural Criticism, and development and aid, as well as trauma, populism and nationalism.

Jameson with Lacan

What does it mean to bring Marxism and psychoanalysis together at this conjuncture? Such a project has been a throughline, arguably, for Fredric Jameson’s work for the past four decades. In this review-article, I read his chapter on Lacan and Hamlet for how it helps us to understand, not only how Jameson’s ruminations on desire and neurosis highlight the social tendencies in Lacanian theory (for example, the notion that desire is the desire of the other), but also how that relationship throws new light on both the Marxist project and psychoanalysis proper.

REALISTIC STRATEGY OF POP-ART VIA STRUCTURAL PSYCHOANALYSIS OF JACQUES LACAN

Pop-art challenges the boundaries of art, polemicize with the traditional idea of a valuable piece of art, not only operating its inner, objective substance, but also transforming the external cultural context – art-object becomes a subject of the art-discourse, and its utterances built in a frame of the consumer paradigm. An open integration of a piece of art into the discourses, which are conterminous to the art, permits to speak about a specific realistic quality of the artistic strategies of pop-art. The investigations of American pop-art rely heavily on the aesthetic tradition of postfreidism, foregrounding the methods of the structural psychoanalysis developed by Jacques Lacan. The present article is devoted to the research of the American pop-art realistic strategy in a dialogue with the psychical structure of a perceiving subject. The problematization of the pop-art phenomenon in focus of Lacanian theory, the main concept of which is a subject/person of language, reveals the paradoxical nature of a piece of art as a sign, which in a same time locks the circuit of signifiers and refers something beyond its limits.

A Lacanian understanding of the southern planning theorists’ identification under the hegemony of western philosophy

As a planning theorist who has studied and taught planning theory in the Global South and North, I grapple with the question – “What does planning theory mean in the Global South?” To answer this question, I ontologically investigate the meaning of Southern planning theory based on a Lacanian approach. Drawing on the Lacanian theory of human subjectivity, this article explains how planning theorists’ identities are constituted through their interactions within academia. Lacanian discourse theory assists in exploring how most Southern planning theorists adopt, internalise, and use hegemonic Western philosophy, ideas, and discourses as the only accepted mechanism of truth. Consequently, this process profoundly alienates Southern planning theorists from their local context, as they often devalue, overlook, and neglect non-Western beliefs, ideas, knowledge, and philosophy. I argue that although the number of Southern planning theorists has increased during the last decades, non-Western philosophy is seldom utilised as the core of their critical studies. Based on the Lacanian discourse theory, I show that they mostly remain in the hegemonic mechanism of knowledge production that is embedded in the colonial era.

The Social Imaginary of Ruination: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Disaster Mediation

Background Although the popularity of ruins has accompanied Western modernity in waves since the eighteenth century, the post-9/11 decade marks a notable resurgence of the imagery, aesthetics, and rhetoric of ruins, especially in American culture. This article was completed a few months prior to the global COVID-19 crisis. Analysis While many scholars dismiss contemporary forms of ruin gazing as a mindless fascination with disaster and destruction in its virtual circulation, the author contends that this contemporary imaginary has significant political and social implications. Conclusion and implications Although each geographic site of ruination has its own social, political, and historical specificity, the author draws from Cornelius Castoriadis’ psychosocial extension of Lacanian theory to designate a broader iconographic and discursive trend in American culture whereby the imagery and rhetoric of destruction contributes to what he calls the “social imaginary of ruination." RÉSUMÉ Contexte Bien que la popularité des ruines ait accompagné la modernité occidentale dans les vagues depuis le XVIIIe siècle, la décennie post-11 septembre marque une résurgence notable de l’imagerie, de l’esthétique et de la rhétorique des ruines, en particulier dans la culture américaine. Cet article a été achevé quelques mois avant la crise mondiale du covid-19. Analyse Alors que de nombreux chercheurs rejettent les formes contemporaines de ruine en les considérant comme une fascination aveugle pour les catastrophes et la destruction dans sa circulation virtuelle, l’auteur soutient que cet imaginaire contemporain a des implications politiques et sociales importantes. Conclusions et implications Bien que chaque site géographique de ruine ait sa propre spécificité sociale, politique et historique, l’auteur s’inspire de l’extension psychosociale de Cornelius Castoriadis de la théorie lacanienne pour désigner une tendance iconographique et discursive plus large dans la culture américaine par laquelle l’imagerie et la rhétorique de la destruction contribuent à ce que il appelle «l’imaginaire social de la ruine».

Fanon/Lacan: Sites of Intersection

Three questions motivate this paper's investigation of various intersections between the work of Frantz Fanon and Jacques Lacan. First, what hitherto under-explored references to Lacan's work are to be found in Fanon's earliest (recently translated) psychiatric work? Second, moving beyond the remit of explicit citation: what subtle conceptual parallels and affinities exist between the work of these two theorists? Third, what contemporary rearticulations of Fanon's thought and political agendas are made possible via Lacanian theory? Exploring Fanon's earliest work shows that a number of Lacanian postulates exercised an influence on the young Martinican, including, amongst others: ideas of imaginary misrecognition, the paranoiac ego, the role of the image, and the notion of a historically founded logic of madness. Reviewing the literature on Fanon–Lacan helps, furthermore, in foregrounding a series of often understated conceptual parallels between the two theorists, including the priority afforded language and speech, the question of sociogeny, the role of social (or symbolic) structure, the notions of fantasy (Fanon's ‘Negro myth’) and of a social (or trans-individual) unconscious (as in Fanon's ‘European collective unconscious’). A notable finding regards how contemporary theorists have applied Lacanian ideas in rearticulations of Fanon's thought concerning the predominance of the topic of racist temporality. There are thus greater possibilities for critical analysis to be found in conjoining Fanonian and Lacanian theory than has generally been acknowledged by Fanon scholars.

Envy, Corruption and ‘Hard Racism’: Studying Antigypsyism as an Ideological Fantasy

Antigypsyism has been frequently said to be a racist ideology. However, although some studies have engaged with the ‘racist’ component of the thesis, almost no work has been done in terms of specifying what ideology is and how a certain conception of it can enhance the understanding of antigypsyism both as a concept and empirical phenomenon. This paper explores the potential of the Lacanian theory of ideology as exemplified by Slavoj Žižek for developing antigypsyism research. Overcoming the problem of false consciousness, Žižek’s conception offers an analytical framework that allows re-examining and elaborating on certain issues from the perspective which weaves social and psychic realities without falling into the traps of psychological reductionism. To illustrate this, this paper presents a Žižekian analysis of three issues that correspond to different aspects of the antigypsyist phenomenon identified via ethnographic research among the non-Roma inhabitants of a declining neighbourhood with a significant Roma presence in Czechia. The issues are called envy, corruption and ‘hard racism’.