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• Friday, May 16, 2008 09:14 AM

  Rowan, WT @ Lacan & c

  Myths aside -- I don't think that one can get at the reality by tracing back the myth, at least not directly -- aren't answers to what changed and what didn't change in the transition from pre-literate consciousness to our own the key to a lot of what we're discussing here?

  WT, Lacan would say that the myth, or the structure of the myth, is exactly where you should go to get at the reality. Of course, were he alive, he would say it in a fairly cryptic way, in French, and would add at the end an insult wrapped around a pun that nobody would get.

  In the interest of furthering this discussion … assuming there’s interest … I’d ask, what connections are you assuming/concluding between kinship and literacy and/or pre-literacy? Could you clarify?

  I tried to read Levi-Strauss, but it just didn't work for me. Whenever anyone says anything is "structured like a language" my bullshit detector goes off. (even Lacan).

  Rowan, the cure for that is more Lacan. :>

  Seriously, Lacan is not a thinker you get much out of without a great deal of commitment, but if you’re willing to dig in and see what he’s about … really dig in … then there are tremendous rewards. Levi Strauss had a good bit of influence on Lacan so reading even the pre-digested (pun intended) version of LS’s key works is helpful, but since you aren’t aiming to become a Lacan scholar I’d say the more pleasurable route would be through more Barthes then to Julia Kristeva’s early books (Tales of Love would be a good choice, Strangers to Ourselves would be most relevant to your other interests, also Powers of Horror, probably most relevant to bridging the gap between Barthes and Lacan). Kristeva was a part of the Tel Quel group, a student of Jacobsen and then Barthes, and then finally did her analyst training with Lacan.

  Lacan never took off in the US, partially because he demands too much attention (and we hate that shit … just dumb it down for me, wouldja? Got a PowerPoint for that?), partially because he was identified falsely with fellow travelers that weren;t very appealing, and partly because the available translations were poor. The latter has been resolved by new English trans by Bruce Fink, who has also produced some very good reading guides to go along.

  Slavoj Zizek has also written a lot of clever and entertaining stuff about Lacan. Plus, he seems to put out a new book about every 20 minutes, so you have a lot of choices. My recommendation would be 'Looking Awry', especially if you're a Hitchcock fan.

  mean, right now, I have a woman in the right hand column wearing very little except a grin and a pair of brightly coloured panties, on the left I have "learn biblical hebrew", and underneath I have something about "moments of guilt."

  Barthes would have had a field day with that, wouldn’t he?

  —quickstrategy Read quickstrategy's other letters
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