Negotiating the Social Bond of Poetics

March 09, 2010 by admin

Negotiating the Social Bond of Poetics:
A Reading and Critical Workshop Series

Rachel Zolf (reading)

Friday March 19, 2010
W2 Perel Building, 4th floor
112 West Hastings
8:00 pm
Admission - 3 to 5$ sliding scale

Rachel Zolf (critical workshop)
Saturday March 20, 2010
W2 Perel Building, 4th floor
112 West Hastings
12:00 pm

***note early start time***
Admission - 10-15$ sliding scale
(no one will be turned away)
to register for the workshop (limited to 18) send an email to : info@kswnet.org

For more information head over to www.kswnet.org.

Negotiating the Social Bond of Poetics: Thematic Abstract

The theme of this series returns to and departs from Jacques Lacan's theory of the Four Discourses in order to discuss the social bond of poetics. Lacan develops this theoretical frame in Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, and Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, and some of the selected fragments from Television. He proposes that there are four fundamental discourses, or structures of discourse, that produce different social bonds for the subject. These discourses consist of the master’s discourse, the hysteric’s discourse, the university discourse, and the analyst’s discourse. While Lacan is concerned with the limitation of the master's discourse and the university discourse, he sees the potential of transformation in the analyst's discourse. Although he asserts that it is necessary to make an hysterization of discourse in the process of analysis—because this is the first step towards questioning the master’s discourse—he asserts that this discourse must then be shifted to the analyst’s discourse for Real change to occur. Seminar XVII, which took place in 1969, follows the student and social revolt of May 68, a historical moment in which Lacan was immersed. He is critical of revolutions that appear to simply question the master and the university, and as a consequence only reproduce a new master, without shifting social bonds, as he cynically suggests that the Parisian students of 68 were in danger of doing. However, we do find moments in Lacan’s seminars in which he suggests that a writer can hold a similar position as an analyst, and thus one would assume, also be able to shift these other discourses to enact some social change. Therefore, I am using this frame to ask questions, develop a dialogue, about poetics and social change. Can poetics operate like the analyst's discourse to create a different social bond through language? Do poets intervene in these other discourses or intersect with them in subversive ways that shift discourse and social bonds? Is Lacan’s concept of the structure of the four discourses useful for us today, particularly as we head into financial cuts in the arts and academia that may limit interventions in hegemonic discourses? Or do we need to rethink what poetics and discourse are and reconsider how we engage with and disseminate them?

- Nancy Gillespie