[The Montana Professor 2.3, Fall 1992 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Michel Valentin
Foriegn Language and Literature
UM-Missoula
Dr. Ellie Ragland Sullivan will be at the University of Montana Tuesday, December 10, for a President's Lecture Series Conference entitled Psychoanalysis and the Philosophy of Jacques Lacan (8 p.m., Urey Hall).
Psychoanalysis is not dead but is alive and well contrary to the prognostics of brain and behavioral scientists. For those obsessed by positivist arguments and "scientifical truth" suffice it to say that Laurence Miller's work on the evidence for key elements of Freudian theory in basic neurosciences (U.of Cal School of Medicine, U. of Mich. Medical Center, the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Inst., etc.) has brought psychoanalysis back into the "hard sciences."
As "teachers of meaning," signification, interpretation, and pedagogics (philosophy, history, literature, political science, etc.) we work on texts and more particularly on these tropes, figures of speech, and writing such as metaphor and metonymy, synecdoche and irony, through which meaning is constituted and articulated. These two tropes are also present at the foundation of language as Roman Jakobson has shown.
Jacques Lacan was a famous psychoanalyst who used the tools of structuralism, linguistics, literature, philosophy, and anthropology to rework Freudian psychoanalysis through Freud's texts. Lacanian theory focuses on language and its key use of these two tropes: metaphor and metonymy. They are also present in the functioning of the unconscious which according to Lacan is structured as a language. During the early childhood period when the visual dimension is cojoined with linguistic signifiers to yield identity, which Lacan calls the stage of the mirror, the child has access to language, i.e., the Symbolic.
According to Lacan, two other orders (the Imaginary and the Real) structure the human psyche. Lacan becomes useful when reading especially difficult texts. Lacanism can be used to give useful interpretations of psychotic, neurotic, or obsessional behavior, or to read the symptoms of our society (from Slavoj Zizek's readings of totalitarianism or Hollywood movies to feminist interpretations of "male agression"). His famous algorithms and formulae about the Master/Slave dialectics, the discourse of science and of the university, the dialectic of desire, etc., will help you understand why basically human symptoms from suffering to oppressive behavior have a tendency to linger or come back in other forms. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
Lacan assimilated the interrelations of the Saussurean notions of significations to his own notions of human subjectivity (one's identity is a text formed mainly by language). The splendid teaching of Lacan has been vulgarized through his often misunderstood "famous aphorisms," e.g., "the other is ultimately unknowable," "one cannot properly speak of a sexual relation of intercourse," "La Femme n'existe pas" (which is a "feminist statement" in spite of what you may have heard). This nexus echoes the current theories of intertextuality. Interpretation is essentially allegorical because interpretation translates one set of terms into another (S/s). Since it is included in the relations defining language and textuality, all interpretations are finally textual and are allied to what can only be called a textual unconscious.
Many a feminist has incorporated psychoanalysis into feminist theory. Feminism activates or criticizes the discourse of Lacanism on many crucial points. The absoluteness of the notion of the Oedipus complex inscribed in our psyche by the linguistic construction of male and female--and not necessarily by their biological underpinnings--is questioned by many feminists. The notion of the primary signifier as "phallus" for instance (a complex Lacanian notion which is difficult to by-pass) is problematized through the concept of "ecriture feminine."
And such pronouncements as "woman does not exist" (in a society defined and centered by male discourse) encounter many an echo. Thus feminism extends the Lacanian discourse towards places and times where it is "lacking" (and not necessarily through questions of theoretical deficiencies) or where it has not had time to go yet, as for instance multiculturalism or Third World (such as the Discourse of the Master or the Discourse of the University, etc.).
Dr. Ellie Ragland Sullivan is chair of the English department at the University of Missouri at Columbus and editor of the magazine Letters from the Freudian Field.
Dr. Sullivan, the author of numerous books and articles, is the foremost Lacan specialist in the United States. Further, she is a remarkably articulate, energetic, and provocative speaker. Her talk promises to be one of those "town and gown" events academics, students, and others interested in the life of ideas will talk about for a long time after. The visit of Dr Sullivan is cosponsored by the Missoula chapter of the Alliance Française and the University of Montana Lacan Reading Group. Professor Richard Drake of the History Department at UM is Director of the President's Lecture Series. He extended the invitation of the University President to Dr. Sullivan. All are welcome.
The Montana Council of Faculty Organizations, a coalition of Montana Federation of Teachers affiliated higher education unions, has announced that the Council's Fall Leadership Conference will be held October 23-24 in Missoula. Conferees will examine Montana's system of financing higher education, will evaluate Montana in the context of national trends, and will work to develop a system of long-term planning and funding of higher education in Montana.
October 23 - Friday
3:30 p.m.
Conference Registration
4:00 p.m.
"Financing Higher Education In Montana: An Historical Perspective"
Richard Barrett
Economics, UM
5:30 - 6:30 p.m.
Reception
8:00 p.m.
"The Future Direction of Higher Education: An Evaluation of Montana in the Context of National Trends"
Richard Novak, Director
Public Sector Programs
Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges
Panel discussion to follow
October 24 - Saturday
8:00 a.m.
"Issues Facing Higher Education in Montana"
Roundtable discussion and breakfast meeting with Montana Board of Regents
9:00 a.m.
"Long-term Planning and Funding of Higher Education in Montana"
Panel discussion with Mike Halligan, candidate for Lieutenant Governor with Dorothy Bradley; Jack Mudd, Chair of Education Commission for the '90s; and Rep. Mike Kadas, member of Education Subcommittee of House Appropriations Committee
1:00 p.m.
"Higher Education Collective Bargaining Issues"
Panel discussion with a representative of each Council of Faculty Organizations local
The conference, which will be held in conjunction with the October meeting of the Board of Regents and the Bobcat-Grizzly Game, is free and open to any member of the Montana University System and to the public. For further information or to pre-register, please call the Montana Federation of Teachers office at 1-800-423-2803 or 442-2123.
[The Montana Professor 2.3, Fall 1992 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]