Date: Mon, 5 Jan 1998 00:14:13 -0800 (PST)
From: James Ralph Westfall <jwest-AT-ea.oac.uci.edu>
Subject: PLC: O.T. : N.T :: Freud : Lacan (Was Cultural studies)



On Mon, 5 Jan 1998, Patsloane wrote:

> The reading strategy [N.T. of O.T.]almost exactly matches Freud's--don't
give much weight to
> what the text actually says, because that isn't it's "real" meaning.   If you
> want to give a Freudian reading of a text, you need to rely on the writings of
> Freud, which become a sort of supra-text that guides you in finding the "real"
> meaning of the text being read.
> 
> If you want to give a Christian reading of the OT, you need to rely on the NT,
> which becomes a sort of supra-text that guides you in finding the "real"
> meaning of the OT.

We arrive here at interesting questions if we think of the example of
Lacan as, in a similar way, a "supra-text" of Freud. Lacan as the one who
claimed to come along--quite messianically--to weed out all of the
distortions, and restore the "psychoanalytic cause" to its proper
orientation. Reflecting on both cases, the New Testament to the Old, and
Lacan to Freud, we find the similarity that a "legitimate tradition"--on
the one hand, the long-standing history of rabbinical exegesis, and on the
other, the International Psychoanalytic Association founded by Freud to
preserve his word--was derailed by an electrifying and philosophically
astute new read. One fortuitously syncretized a Jewish monotheistic
religion of the text with the Greek Logos in order to thrust onto the
word-scene the thunderous creation of a Platonism for the masses, while
the other gave the eternal battle of fathers and sons the philosophic
credentials of Hegel/Kojeve/Heidegger, with an extra dose of alienation
for modern man.

In both cases it is incumbent upon the usurper to justify the superiority
of the new explanation vis-a-vis the path of interpretation that was (at
least partially) derailed. Moreover, each new read has to be able to
situate and justify the initial breach.  Notably, both new reads claim
that the old tradition was itself attempting to come to grips with the
new: Lacan claimed that Freud was stumbling toward a linguistic turn
before the fact, while the New Testament re-interpreters of the OT claim a
position of full revelation in contrast to the partial revelation of
their claimed Old Testament precursors--a difference in respective
positions that putatively authorizes the typological re-inscription. 

It is interesting how similar the two cases really are. As for me, I vote
for the Rabbis on the one hand, and Lacan on the other. Christianity seems
to me a case of textual parasitism, whereas Lacan's camp seems to have at
least partially snatched the text of Freud out of the grasp of the
parasitical ego-psychologists who were emptying everything--the
unconscious, castration, the drive--of all meaning. 





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