Graphocentrism in psychoanalysis

Svitlana Matviyenko

pp. 113-127

in: Svitlana Matviyenko, Judith Roof (eds), Lacan and the posthuman, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

Psychoanalysis is not Humanism, Jacques Lacan reminds us: as the pursuit of writing in speech, psychoanalysis is defined by graphocentrism . Psychoanalytic writing is performed by the agency of the letter, "the material medium that concrete discourse borrows from language." It implies that the not-so-human nature of the speaking subject is taken by psychoanalysis rather seriously: not only posthumanism of the speaking being is fully acknowledged, it is conceived as a deeply human vulnerability. Not only was this vulnerability overlooked, it was strategically repressed by the humanist myth as a defence against the real.

Cited authors

Lacan Jacques