Sexual Identity, Identification and Difference: A Psychoanalytic Contribution to Discourse Theory  

Oleh:

Glynos, Jason

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Philosophy & Social Criticism vol. 26 no. 6 (Nov. 2000), page 85–108.
Topik: discourse theory ; identification ; identity ; Lacan ; poststructuralism ; psychoanalysis ; sexual difference ; social postmodernism
Fulltext: 85PSC266.pdf (97.12KB)

Isi artikel

This essay focuses on an issue arising from within an anti-essentialist perspective on sexual identity: how is it possible to explain the political impetus inhering in a category such as ‘woman’ without having recourse to a set of positive properties that would somehow fix her identity in advance? I examine how a particular theoretical outlook, social postmodernism, attempts to address this issue, and argue that, ultimately, social postmodernism generates its own impasse which I call social foundationalism – an impasse which is structurally similar to biological foundationalism. I invoke discourse-theoretic concepts to introduce the psychoanalytic categories of master signifier and symbolic identification. This is done in order to suggest how Lacanian psychoanalysis permits us to theorize sexual difference in a way that avoids both biological foundationalism and social foundationalism.

Opini Anda

Klik untuk menuliskan opini Anda tentang koleksi ini!

Kembali