[In the process of forming my reading lists for the qualifying exam, I’ve been led to multiple reflections and, as is to be expected, multiple drafts. I have since moved away from geopolitical economy, becoming more conscious of and interested in, for lack of a better word, the overwhelming power of the established order, what…
Tag Archives: Jacques Derrida
[An example of a signifier that différance slides] [Presented in François Raffoul’s class on Contemporary French Philosophy at LSU in the fall of 2008; contains his additions and corrections] Jacques Derrida begins the essay “Différance” (perhaps the most systematic articulation of the non-concept that, according to Derrida, he “ha[s] been able to utilize” in previous…
[A demagogue; Image from Teaching American History] What is a regime of signs? A semiotic machine, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari state in A Thousand Plateaus. In “On Several Regimes of Signs,” they call Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist linguistic of the sign—the linguistic system that privileges the signifier and its signifying function—semiology—but one regime of…
[Rembrandt's Saint Paul in Prison] So, coming straight out of our last conversation (about their playfulness, their promiscuity, i.e. their connectivity), we’re still talking about desiring-machines. (Either) Ryan and I (or, more precisely: /). (Or) Aless and /. S/he asks me (one of them, ‘can’t remember who) (/ suspect after the Dionysian celebration that commenced,…
Parallel to Freud’s three agencies (it, I, Over-I; or the id, the ego, and the superego), Lacan develops the three orders that structure the human subject. There are significant nuances between the two. Freud’s agencies have the implication that they are internal, that they reside somehow inside (or is formed within) the human subject (like aspects of a personality, dimensions of being). Lacan’s orders, on the other hand, while pertaining to the agencies, are analogous to mathematical sets, like realms or worlds, i.e. aspects or dimensions of the world or life itself (the way we live), whose structure has a corresponding effect on the human subject (hence forming the three agencies). Lacan himself, while staying true to the injunction, “Return to Freud!” point out this difference. He says in the Écrits, “My three orders are not Freud’s.”
