From: John Lowther (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Oct 29 2005 - 10:53:11 PDT
On Saturday, October 29, 2005, at 06:15 AM, Jack Sargeant wrote:
> Lacan of course was the swinging dick of phallocentric psychoanalysis
> and is indirectly responsible for some of the worst parts of film
> theory. The best critique of his work remains Derrida's essay in The
> Post Card which certainly deconstructs psychoanalysis as a discourse.
funny thing w D's Lacan bashing -- virtually everything he bashed L for
early one he circles back to later in his career to show how while
everything he said was true he meant it all in a good way.
another funny bit about Derrida's criticisms, he tended to cite work
that Lacan had himself already left behind/updated significantly. thus
you end up with D criticizing the Lacan of the 50s during the 70s when
Lacan had himself already been there and taken it further than Derrida
would.
& the charge that Lacan is the big swinging dick of phallocentrism,
while funny, is also pretty a. simplistic, and b. off base. the
evidence for the prosecution usually rests on the ubiquity of the word
phallus in Lacan's teaching, ignoring the fact that the phallus in his
thought is strictly not to be equated with or confused with the penis.
& while i agree that early uses of Lacan for film crit were a big heavy
handed, more recent work from Zizek to those collected in LACAN AND
CONTEMPORARY FILM work pretty well as i see it -- but note, i'm stating
my opinion and not making big sweeping judgments or engaging in what
Lacan described as the "discourse of the master" (a discourse common
enough on this list it seems)
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.