Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Treeing Lacan, or the Meaning of Metaphor
- 3 A Being of Significance
- 4 From Logic to Ethics: Transference and the Letter
- 5 Desire and Culture: Transference and the Other
- 6 The Subject and the Symbolic Order: Historicity, Mathematics, Poetry
- 7 Conclusion: Lacan and Contemporary Criticism
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Treeing Lacan, or the Meaning of Metaphor
- 3 A Being of Significance
- 4 From Logic to Ethics: Transference and the Letter
- 5 Desire and Culture: Transference and the Other
- 6 The Subject and the Symbolic Order: Historicity, Mathematics, Poetry
- 7 Conclusion: Lacan and Contemporary Criticism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Le psychanalyste est un rhéteur, pour continuer d'équivoquer je dirai qu'il rhétifie, ce qui implique qu'il rectifie. L'analyste est un rhéteur, c'est-à-dire que rectus, mot latin, équivoque avec la rhétification. On essaie de dire la vérité mais ce n'est pas facile parce qu'il y a de grands obstacles à ce qu'on la dise – ne serait-ce qu'on se trompe dans le choix de mots. La vérité a affaire avec le réel et le réel est doublé si on peut dire par le symbolique.’
Lacan, ‘Une pratique de bavardage’Most psychoanalysts explain poetry by means of psychoanalysis; for many years, Lacan explained psychoanalysis by means of poetry. ‘The symptom is a metaphor.’ ‘Desire is a metonymy.’ ‘The primary processes of condensation and displacement are equivalent to the rhetorical tropes of metaphor and metonymy.’ ‘The subject is a poetic creation.’ ‘Love is a metaphor.’ ‘Transferential repetition is a poetic process.’ ‘Psychoanalytic interpretation is metaphoric.’ ‘The only thing you need to find in psychoanalysis is the trope of tropes called destiny.’ ‘Destiny is a figure, a figure of fate, as well as a rhetorical figure.’ If it is obvious that such statements must appear totally alien to the positivist or idealist perspectives of standard analysts, it is equally clear that they will seem rather opaque to the student of literature, whether educated in traditional rhetoric or in structuralist or poststructuralist poetics. In fact, the theory of poetry which subtends these assertions is not to be found in any textbook, nor can it be attributed to any single well-known figure or school of thought.
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- Information
- Rhetoric and Culture in Lacan , pp. 1 - 11Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996