Historians of rhetoric refer to two Sophistics, one in the 5th century B.C. and another c. 2nd century A.D. Besides these two, there is a 3rd Sophistic, but it is not necessarily sequential. (The 3rd is “counter” to counting sequentially.) Whereas the representative Sophists of the 1st Sophistic is Protagoras, and the second, Aeschines, the representative sophists of the 3rd are Gorgias (as proto-Third) and Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man.To distinguish between and among (...) Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and then Protagoras, Gorgias, and Lacan, the author determines how far each of these personages can “count.” The model of counting, used semiotically across the topoi of “possible/impossible,” is that of the people of New Guinea: “one thing, two things, many things.” It is determined (generally) that the philosophers, including Aristotle, count to “one”; the Sophists to “two”; and Gorgias, Lacan, and Lyotard, et al. count to “many things,” thereby breaking up a monism or binarism. The ancient philosophers employ a substratum of probability to hold together the contraries of “possible/impossible”; the Sophists employ anti/logic, which keeps the contraries/antitheses separate and therefore without synthesis, but which eventually threatens the integrity of the substratum, or the law of non-contradiction; and Gorgias, Lacan, Lyotard et al. theorize about the “impossibility”/“Resistance” of the Logos (reason, logic, law, argumentation, history) to Theory/Totalization, because of the Gorgian Kairos and the Lacanian Real — both of which enter the Logos and break up the cycle of the antitheses and create “something new, irrational” (Untersteiner).This “breaking up” has a negative/positive influence on Protagoras's “man-measure doctrine,” which in turn has a similar influence on “the problem of the ethical subject.” The subject/agent not only no longer “knows” (by way of Logos) but also no longer “acts” (as independent agent); the subject becomes a function of Logos as determined by Kairos/Real; it moves from a hypotaxis/syntaxis of “one” and “two” to a radical parataxis/paralogy of “some more.”From the “Impossibility”/“tragedy” of knowledge, however, comes the “Possible,” or “Possibilisms,” which allows for the new (though divided) ethical subject to reclaim its position as “individual.” Such a reclamation of the subject, however, has a profound effect on argumentation, and especially the notion of “consensus.” What is wanted, then, in a Third Sophistic “ethical” — as opposed to a “political” — rhetoric is “dissensus” through radical parataxes and paralogies. (shrink)

In Speculum of the Other Woman (1974), Luce Irigaray argues that "any theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the masculine." This paper offers an analysis of Irigaray's critique of subjectivity and examines the psychological mechanism referred to as "the phallic economy of castration." A different way of conceiving the relation between subject and object is explored by imagining a new subject of desire.

In Speculum of the Other Woman, Luce Irigaray argues that “any theory of the subject has always been appropriated by the masculine.” This paper offers an analysis of Irigaray's critique of subjectivity and examines the psychological mechanism referred to as “the phallic economy of castration.” A different way of conceiving the relation between subject and object is explored by imagining a new subject of desire.

This paper examines some French feminist uses of Lacanian psychoanalysis. I focus on two Lacanian influenced accounts of psychological oppression, the first by Luce Irigaray and the second by Julia Kristeva, and I argue that these accounts fail to meet criteria for an adequate political psychology.

This paper examines some French feminist uses of Lacanian psychoanalysis. I focus on two Lacanian influenced accounts of psychological oppression, the first by Luce Irigaray and the second by Julia Kristeva, and I argue that these accounts fail to meet criteria for an adequate political psychology.

Phenomenological psychotherapy, while critiquing psychoanalytic theories, has always sought to draw on and be inspired by these (and other) approaches. To read psychoanalysis through the lens of existential-phenomenology opens, deepens and perhaps even rehabilitates this body of work. In this paper, the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is explored through a phenomenological reading of his early work. Aspects of his developmental theory, as well as certain of his theoretical innovations, are related to psychopathology and treatment and are explored (...) and understood in phenomenological terms. Emphasis is placed on psychotherapeutic experience and understandings. The paper argues that there is much of value in Lacan’s work and that it is more existentially rich than is often acknowledged. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

Zen/Chan, which used to be a Far Eastern philosophy-cum-religion, has evolved into a global cultural phenomenon. Despite the many views expressed by numerous thinkers in the world, the consensus on Chan and Chan enlightenment remains an agnostic Oriental mysticism. By exploring Chan and enlightenment from a combined perspective of history, philosophy, psychology, religion and linguistics, this article proposes a hitherto unexpressed view. Chan enlightenment is a prenatal physico-psychological existence, which grows out of a fetal subject’s perception of the womb. Although (...) this primordial mode of perception is unconscious, it is cosmic in nature because for the fetal subject the womb is the whole world with which it feels to be at one. This unconscious oneness may be termed the ‘cosmic unconscious’. Once born, no one can return to the prenatal mental state, but through personal cultivation and Chan practice one can experience a fleeting moment of the cosmic unconscious. In the final analysis, the essence o.. (shrink)

“Women and the Law in Irigarayan Theory” by Gail Schwab is a reading of French feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray's writings on law together with texts of American feminist jurisprudence. The first part of the article summarizes many of the conflicts surrounding the concept of equality in American feminist legal thought and attempts to move beyond them with the Irigarayan principle of equivalence or equivalent rights. The second part of the article deals more generally with the symbolic changes that will be (...) necessary in order to change the law, and with the cultural evolution that changes in the law can bring about, and more specifically with two areas of Irigarayan legal theory that are central to cultural change and evolution: the concept of female identity or virginity, and the relationship to the mother. In the conclusion, a new utopian vision of what law might be‐the cultural mediation for an evolved intersubjectivity‐is developed through Irigaray's most recent texts. (shrink)

In this article the author explores Jacques Derrida’s reading in The Purveyor of Truth of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. In his essay, Derrida proposes a reading which differs markedly from the interpretation proposed by Lacan in his Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter’. To appreciate Derrida’s reading, which is not hermeneutic-semantic in nature like that of Lacan, it is necessary to look at the relation of Derrida’s essay to his other texts on psychoanalysis, more specifically insofar as the Freudian (...) death drive is concerned. The present article explores this ‘notion’ as elaborated on by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as well as Derrida’s reading of this text. It also investigates the importance of the ‘notion’ of the death drive as well as the significance of Derrida’s reading of The Purloined Letter for constitutional interpretation. (shrink)

In his books on the cinema, Gilles Deleuze describes the sign as an expression of semiotic matter. Importantly, expression is a process whereby semiotic matter is molded into form, but this process is not rightfully guided by any structure transcendent to semiotic matter itself. It is the result of matter’s self-modulation. Using an early essay of Deleuze’s called ‘How do we recognize structuralism?’, I take a closer look at the cinema books and unpack exactly what is involved in the process (...) of expression, and the implications of expression for established ideas of the sign and meaning in semiotics. (shrink)