Lacan in Public
Lacan in Public
Lacan in Public
Lundberg, Christian
Access provided by University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor (29 Jul 2014 22:29 GMT)
Introduction
Lacans Uncanny Rhetoric
This book is as much an argument for a conception of rhetor ic as it is a reading of Jacques Lacans interpretation of it. While I will argue that there are
elements of Lacans work that one cannot fully grasp without understanding
his reliance on the rhetorical traditions, in the pages that follow I would also
like to highlight the ways that Lacans corpus engages in a significant reconfiguration of the traditions of rhetoric. The goal of Lacans intervention
into the rhetorical traditions is ambitious: he would like to take to task a vision of discourse situated within an increasingly complex but nevertheless
fundamentally Aristotelian conception of rhetor ic as the exchange of meanings between interlocutors in a given situation. This conception not only
holds rhetorical action to be intelligible exclusively in the light of a given
context but is ultimately reducible to the interplay of meaning, context, and
propriety. As an alternative, Lacan calls rhetor ic both to return to a focus on
the formal properties of discourse and to theorize the constitutive function
of the limit of rhetoric. I will not argue here that rhetor ic should abandon
its Aristotelian roots: instead, I would like to locate the Aristotelian tradition
of rhetorical interpretation within a broader conception of rhetor ic, arguing for attention to trope and investment as a means of locating and refigur
ing rhetorics character.
In retheorizing rhetor ic, Lacan engages pivotal figures (Aristotle, Cicero,
and Quintilian) and topoi (the oratorical tradition, the power of trope, stasis
theory, and questions of contingency and context) in the rhetorical traditions. But Lacans commitment to rhetor ic extends beyond mere citation: in
declaring that the psychoanalyst is a rhetor, Lacan refuses to separate the
practices and fortunes of the two traditions.1 This is why it is so surprising
that rhetorical studies has not paid more attention to Lacans work. Part of
rhetorical studies reticence to embrace Lacan likely stems from the substantial investment required to read his work: it is famously difficult, often bordering on the impenetrable. But it seems to me that there is more at play in
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Introduction / xiii
but that disavows an intrinsic connection between rhetor ic and communication. Moving through treatments of Lacans theories of meaning and the unconscious, this chapter is organized around a reading of Lacans Schema L,
which reveals the way that a commitment to rhetor ic as the intersubjective
exchange of meanings occludes the symbolic charge in language. Chapter 3
concludes with a treatment of Lacans call to understand rhetor ic as a science,
exploring the implications of his declaration that oratory was not simply an
art but a science organized around an account of the formal properties of language.
Chapter 4 extends Lacans call for a science of rhetor ic by defining an
economy of trope as the central object of a science of oratory. I begin by posing Lacans conception of trope against the predominant characterizations of
the formal properties of language in rhetorical studies, followed by an interpretation of the functions of metaphor and metonymy in Lacans work from
the dual perspectives of the formal properties of trope and the economy of
affective investment that underwrites them. Finally, taking up the relationship between tuch and automaton, I argue for Lacans conception of a rhe
torical economy of discourse as opposed to a structuralist account of form,
concluding with a provocation regarding rhetorical reading practices.
Chapter 5 introduces the character of Lacans Real as the limit of rheto
ric, focusing on the means by which rhetorical action negotiates this limit. I
suggest Lacans conception of enjoyment as a specific affective modality that
lends durability to processes of signification. Specifically, I engage debates
surrounding the materiality of rhetoric thesis to argue for enjoyment as a
material practice in the context of immediation between the orders of discourse and that which is external to it. Chapter 5 concludes with a provocation on the materiality of rhetor ic by posing the question of the relationship
between theory and practice against the backdrop of failed unicity and specifically in the context of the impossibility of signification as reference.
If rhetor ic is characterized by the work of trope and enjoyment as a mode
of affective investment, it also requires an account of publics as privileged
sites for the economic interchange between trope and enjoyment. In chapter
6, I take up the character of the publ ic in Lacans work, arguing that the pub
lic is the primary site at which Lacan conceives of the production of subjects
and their discourses. Specifically, I argue that theorists of the public might
profitably parse the processes through which publics are made into three distinct analytical categories on the basis of Lacans work, distinguishing between the ontological, addressive, and identitarian functions of the public
as a site of tropological and affective exchange. I conclude the chapter with
a provocation on rhetorical praxis as a mode of consensus or identification,
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posing the dual problems of violence and stasis to consensually orient conception of publ ic making.
In chapter 7 I take up two specific sites of tropological exchange. Reading two very different discoursesthe imaginary economy of conservative
American Christian evangelical publics and the demands of antiglobalization protestorsI hope to demonstrate the productivity of a conception of
rhetor ic that fully attends to its formal and affective charges in public life.
Though these discursive fields undoubtedly admit other readings and might
be fruitfully engaged employing other critical protocols, they lay out one
possible trajectory for a scientific practice of rhetorical criticism that attends
to the messy intersections of trope and persuasion in the economy of publ ic
discourses. In place of a provocation in chapter 7, I conclude the book with
a brief postscript on recovering the prophetic, ornamental, and protreptic
strands in the rhetorical traditions.
Lacan in Public