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From self-reflexion to self-reflexion
acknowledging the inhuman
pp. 29-46
Abstract
The various television series examined in this book require a rethinking of both narrative structure and the subject as theorized in the space between Lacan and Deleuze. In this chapter, I want to argue for a richer, more nuanced understanding of subjectivity that develops by attending to both a Deleuzian and a Lacanian understanding of the subject. Some broad assumptions are made that claim that there are many transpositional concepts between these two systems of thought that coalesced after the French publication of Anti-Oedipus in 1972, when Lacan placed more and more emphasis on the psychic register of the Real. This took place about the time of S XX (Encore) in 1973, although Slavoj Žižek (1999a, 29–31) sometimes maintains that the break between the 'standard" and "late" Lacan occurs as early as S VII, the Ethics seminar of 1959–60. Rather than concentrating on the discursive functions as developed in S XVII (Envers), also the year he rejected Freud's fixation on Oedipus, Lacan begins to further explore the unchained floating signifier outside the Symbolic Order that is charged with jouissance, which he eventually names le sinthome. This is a point at which the fundamental life of an individual's singularity is constituted. However, it is neither a symptom in the traditional sense as constituting the truth of desire coded within the symbolic order, nor is it a fantasy that fills the gap in the symbolic, generating belief and making it tolerable to live with uncertainty.
Publication details
Published in:
Jagodzinski Jan (2008) Television and youth culture: televised paranoia. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Pages: 29-46
Full citation:
Jagodzinski Jan (2008) From self-reflexion to self-reflexion: acknowledging the inhuman, In: Television and youth culture, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 29–46.