-----Original Message-----
From: Helen Beetham [mailto:H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk]
Sent: Tuesday, May 09, 2000 7:03 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: RE: Re(2): psychoanalysis and...CHAT
"In Lacanian and post-Lacanian (esp French) psycho-analysis the same is
true of language: rather than liberating the self to use the mediating tools
of culture, it limits the possibility of
expression, and self-realisation, to what is socially recognised and
sanctioned (in language qua system)."
Helen your above statement caught my attention. Would not both 'liberating'
and 'limiting' be incorporated within a mediating role of language? It seems
some of the Lacanian/Foucaultian synthesis has moved past the idea that
language only limits the "real" so to speak, and points to how it is
material.
Something Butler said about contraint was interesting to me. Rather than
theorizing something (language)contraining or limiting the 'real' or the
'individual', the contraint is what makes action possible. If my memory
serves me a similar theorizing of contraint or affordances has been
mentioned via Gibson. I guess my feeling is there is some common ground, in
particular, a more critical examination of mediation if its language or
artifacts. Mediation does not always take a liberating form, often it can
limit how we see the world. If the "'word'is the microcosm of human
consciousness" I would assume it can be both liberating and limiting.
Nate
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