- Four discourses
The French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. These could be expressed as the permutations of a four-term configuration showing the relative positions ofthe subject , themaster signifier ,knowledge andobjet petit a .Lacan's theory of the four discourses was initially developed in response to the events of
May 1968 in France . He defined four discourses, which he called Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, and showed how these relate dynamically to one another.
*Discourse of the Master - Struggle for mastery / domination / penetration. Based on Hegel'sMaster-slave dialectic
*Discourse of the University - Provision and worship of "objective" knowledge - usually in the unacknowledged service of some external master discourse.
*Discourse of the Hysteric - Symptoms embodying and revealing resistance to the prevailing master discourse.
*Discourse of the Analyst - Deliberate subversion of the prevailing master discourse.Slavoj Žižek uses the theory to explain various cultural artefacts, includingDon Giovanni andParsifal . [Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology (Duke University Press, 1993). Read chapter 5 - and see especially note 24 on page 274. There are similar examples in some of his numerous other books.]References
*The original presentation of Lacan's theory is in his Seminar XVII (English Translation - New York: Norton, 2007)
*For an introduction see: Robert Samuels, Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan’s Reconstruction of Freud (New York: Routledge, 1993).
*For a clearer explanation see Mark Bracher. "On the psychological and social functions of language: Lacan's Theory of the Four Discourses" in Mark Bracher (ed) Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure and Society. (New York University Press, 1994) pp 107-128
*There is a brief explanation in Dylan Evans. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. (Routledge 1996).
External links
*
Slavoj Žižek , [http://www.lacan.com/zizfour.htm Jacques Lacan's Four Discourses]
*P. Boxer & V. Kenny, [http://www.oikos.org/discourses.htm|‘The Economy of Discourses: A Third Order Cybernetics?] , Human Systems Management, 9 (4), 1990, pp 205-224.
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