Date: Tue, 16 Aug 1994 15:59:59 -0500 (EST)
From: wesley david cecil <wcecil-AT-indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: ? for Wes on Lacan




On Tue, 16 Aug 1994 marxism-AT-world.std.com wrote:

> 
>      Wes, you assert that for Lacan "the phallic code is a 
>      material-historico reality" and therefore compatible with historical 
>      materialism.  I'd like to agree, but what evidence is there in Lacan 
>      that the phallic code *is* historical in the sense that historical 
>      materialism (vs mere historicism) entails -- i.e. that it undergoes 
>      historical transformation or change according to processes we can 
>      describe.  Even if one were to find references in Lacan to historical 
>      specificity and change regarding the phallic code -- I know of a few, 
>      but very few -- this doesn't amount to an account of how the phallic 
>      code *changes over time*, does it?
>      
>      Gene Holland
>      
>      (P.S. the places historical change *is* accounted for in the wake of 
>      Lacan, it seems to me, are the works of Jean-Joseph Goux and Deleuze & 
>      Guattari.)
> 
> 
Well, this is, as you clearly realize, a rather tricky issue.  I think 
one locus of confusin comes from the idea that Lacan posits language as a 
trans-historical reality, and therfore not subject to considerations of 
historical materialism.  I argue that his claim is that the subject of
history, capable of experiencing the laws of historical materialism, is 
a by-product of language.  In this case, historical materialism becomes
inconceivable to us outside of our linguistically constructed 
subjectivity.  Now, historical materialism might bring about a massive
shift in subjectivity, but we would experience
this shift as some kind of subject, and would see some code(Lacan says it 
will always be the phallic code, but I don't see much reason believe this) 
as formative, and as subjects this code would seem universal and 
necessarily transhistorical.  I agree that this seems to constitute a lot 
of the work of D and G and Goux, and am interested tohear what your 
response is(this is one of the subjects of my upcoming PhD. Exams, so I 
also have a lot of references, but we might want to do that direct rather
than through the newsgroup).
Wes  


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