Taking a stand: using psychoanalysis to explore the positioning of subjects in discourse

This paper is concerned with thinking through the cultural construction of personal identities whilst avoiding the classical social–individual division. Our starting point is the notion that there is no such thing as ‘the individual’, standing outside the social; however, there is an arena of personal subjectivity, even though this does not exist other than as already inscribed in the sociocultural domain. Our argument is that there are psychoanalytic concepts which can be helpful in exploring this ‘inscription’ and thus in explaining the trajectory of individual subjects; that is, their specific positioning in discourse. The argument is illustrated by data from a qualitative study of young masculinities, exploring the ways in which some individual boys take up positions in various degrees of opposition to the dominant ideology of ‘hegemonic’ masculinity

La teoría lacaniana de la homosexualidad y de la familia en desorden

Este artículo se propone analizar dos problemas centrales de la obra de Jacques Lacan. Por una parte, el de la transcripción y fijación de lo que se conoce como El Seminario, proceso en el que se produce un sentido que en ocasiones se muestra problemático. Tal es el caso del seminario número cinco titulado Las formaciones del inconsciente, donde Lacan sostiene aparentemente la tesis de que la homosexualidad es una perversión. Un análisis en profundidad del manuscrito correspondiente a la estenotipia demuestra que la transcripción da lugar a un error interpretativo. Por otro lado, se lleva a cabo una lectura de la teoría lacaniana de los tres tiempos del Edipo, en el que señalamos las contradicciones presentes en el texto de Lacan, contradicciones que dan pie a una reinterpretación de su teoría que permite analizar de otro modo la visión lacaniana de la homosexualidad, así como todo lo que rodea a las diferentes formas de lo que Roudinesco llamó "la familia en desorden".This essay aims to analyze two major problems in Jacques Lacan's work. On the one hand, the problem of the transcription and establishment of the well known Seminar, a process through which, at times, certain problematic conclusions have been derived. Such is the case of Seminar five, Formations of the Unconscious, where Lacan apparently argues that homosexuality is a perversion. But if we take into account the manuscript of the stenotype version, it is revealed that the transcription incurs in some interpretive errors. On the other hand, the essay explores the Lacanian theory of the three Oedipal stages and points out to some contradictions in the text, contradictions that allow for a reinterpretation of Lacan's theory in such a way that allows for a different analysis of the Lacanian vision of homosexuality, as well as of the issues related to what Roudinesco called "the family in disorder"

Neither ātman Nor anattā: Tapering Our Conception of Selfhood

I provide critical discussion of conception of and talk of psychic integration which I take to be both excessive and deficient; these viciously extreme positions are championed by the Apostle Paul and St. Augustine (and both their religious and their secular cultural descendants in the West), and by Jacques Lacan and María Lugones (and their contemporaries), respectively. I suggest that we must negotiate a Buddhist-inspired understanding located between these extremes in endorsing any acceptable conception of the self, generally speaking—a conception which, contra the strong antirealist about selves, allows for the continued use of selfhood in everyday discourse, but which, contra the strong realist about selves, does not fall into an unhealthy idealization of anything approximating perfect psychic wholeness

Schizophrenia, social practices and cultural values: A conceptual introduction

Schizophrenia is usually described as a fragmentation of subjective experience and the impossibility to engage in meaningful cultural and intersubjective practices. Although the term schizophrenia is less than 100 years old, madness is generally believed to have accompanied mankind through its historical and cultural ontogeny. What does it mean to be “mad”? The failure to adopt social practices or to internalize cultural values of common sense? Despite the vast amount of literature and research, it seems that the study of schizophrenia and of the psychoses is suffering from a generic disintegration. In this introduction, we offer an historical overview of the variety of theories and approaches to schizophrenia. We also provide an overview of how the authors in this volume attempt an integrative account where training, practice, theory and research are considered as parts of a larger whole. This is a varied and pluralistic volume, and it is up to the readers to make use of different chapters according to their own needs

Lesbianism : a post-structural/post-modernist critique of selected theories relevant to clinical practice

Bibliography: leaves 41-46.This paper aims to provide a critical framework from which to review the major trends in psychiatry and psychoanalysis pertaining to lesbianism and relevant to clinical practice. The post-structuralist/post-modernist framework employed considers lesbianism as a category constructed in a particular socio-historical context and involving particular power relations. The role of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in this process of categorisation and the production and reproduction of lesbianism as pathology relative to a heterosexual norm will also be examined. On the other hand, challenges to the lesbianism as pathology thesis, drawing on more radical psychoanalytic concepts, influencing and also influenced by post-structuralist/post-modernist theories will be discussed. Various suggestions flowing from a post-structuralist/post-modernist analysis and which may be useful in a clinical context will also be presented

The "other" Africans : re-examining representations of sexuality in the work of Nicholas Hlobo and Zanele Muholi

Nicholas Hlobo, a sculptor and performance artist, and Zanele Muholi, a photographer and activist, explore different ways of representing sexuality, particularly homosexuality. It is extremely difficult to discuss African sexuality in light of the stain of colonial attitudes that have exoticised and ascribed hypersexuality to African bodies. Moreover, sexuality is often not discussed in the construction of so-called African traditions and this has contributed to rendering African-ness as an exclusive identity. Tensions within and between categories of African-ness are compounded by constituted regulations. For example, Hlobo investigates the obligation of circumcision which seems to contrast the lifestyle and contexts in which he works and resides, and Muholi represents the existence of homosexual and transgender relations, even within conservative categories. The visual imagery of these two artists investigates the boundaries set by different social constructs. These set boundaries have also affected crimes against bisexual, transgender and homosexual individuals, which are reaching an alarming rate. Hlobo questions the validity of structures that marginalise homosexual individuals through drawing attention to the ambivalence of certain statutes. Muholi seeks to publicise the injustices imposed upon homosexual individuals in order to demonstrate the weight of that crisis. Although the South African legal system condones liberated expressions of sexual identity, due to social prejudices homosexual individuals are still treated as if they are not entitled to basic human rights. As a result, hate-crimes are not reported, and when they are they are not taken seriously. Hlobo and Muholi not only bring these issues to light, but also point out the dilemma inscribed in the social and political history of (South) Africa with regards to collective and individual identities. This thesis seeks to provide an analysis of the visual language used by Hlobo and Muholi to subvert the notion that homosexuality is “un-African” and to complicate concepts of gender, sexuality and identity

Feeling Her Way: Audre Lorde and the Power of Touch

This article analyzes the connections between Lorde's representations of blindness in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and its connection to lesbian sexuality

The Book Truly Stops Here: A Lacanian Reinterpretation of Reinaldo Arenas’ Freedom

In his essay, “Reinaldo Arenas, Re-writer Revenant, and the Repatriation of Cuban Homoerotic Desire,” Benigno Sánchez-Eppler puts forth what he terms a “signifying possibility,” an informative yet nondefinitive explanation of what the exiled queer Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas meant in his suicide note. Arenas’ suicide note, which served as the conclusion to his autobiography, Before Night Falls: A Memoir, written in 1990 and published posthumously in 1992, has an inconclusive meaning stemming from the novelist’s brief declaration of his own freedom at the end. After encouraging the Cuban people to remain vigilant in their fight for freedom and against the rule of Fidel Castro, Arenas succinctly yet confidently declares that he himself is already free without suggesting the source of his freedom. Citing various works of the novelist, Sánchez-Eppler argues that this individual freedom originates from the exiled novelist’s literary act of self-repatriation, using suicide as an inspired form of return to his homeland. This essay argues against Sánchez-Eppler’s signifying possibility. As expressed in his suicide note, Arenas’ notion of freedom, far from being a literary monumentalization of the writer and his Cuban queerness, destined to be creatively repatriated back to his native Cuba through the vehicle of suicide, is more an example of a successful Lacanian “end-of-analysis,” when the individual subject comes to terms with and accepts his or her own irredeemably divided self in the present. My own “signifying possibility” for interpreting Reinaldo Arenas’ freedom relies on Lacanian psychoanalysis, as interpreted by critical race and Lacanian theorist Antonio Viego in his book, Dead Subjects: Toward A Politics of Loss in Latino Studies