The statements by Derrida and Lacan show contrasting points of view on poststructuralist nature of human thought and literature. Lacan’s statement, “I think where I am not therefore, I am where I do not think” is an obvious take on the famous Freudian expression of “I think therefore I am” but this shows it in the opposite light and makes me think that Lacan is poststructuralist because, through this statement I think that he is trying to deconstruct a known center and trying to take an idea like the signifier and the signified and trying to put them into one category exactly where he thinks that poststructured center is in literary thought.
In connection to Lacan, Derrida’s statement of "And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself" shows would also argue that the decentered center of deconstructionism still exists but that we have not really tried to find it because, in a poststructuralist ideal we are no longer concerned with the structure and the center of the structure rather, we are more concerned with empirical ideals and the epistemological thought of those ideals. In Derrida’s point of view and from what I could understand from the movie he is more interested in poststructuralist epistemology and the ideas that it contains. This is not to say that he doesn’t care about structure but that he is less concerned with the ideas of Freud and his ideas. To put it briefly poststructuralists are interested in the text and not in what is behind or beyond it.
Lacanian and poststructuralist critics are also careful to distinguish between a metaphor and metonym. This is an important aspect because; one relies on empirical thought while the other is purely epistemological in nature. The differences between a metaphor and metonym are subtle but important because they to some extent allow us to distinguish between what we know and how we know it and what we think we know and why we think that way.
These are just some of my thoughts on the differences between Lacan and Derrida and why I think that they thought in the manner which they did.
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4 comments:
I love the idea that
"And there where there is improvisation I am not able to see myself" because it implies that when we are improvising we are somehow transcending whatever thing that we like to call our "self". Derrida puts a lot of emphasis on the idea of improvisation, claiming that it is very important and the hardest thing one can do. The idea that improvising, acting beyond yourself, is considered to be the highest quality one can have (according to Derrida) implies that to acknowledge that there isn't a self, or centre, to who we are. I think this is cool.
To attribute the Cartesian cogito - the most famous idea in Western philosophy - to Freud is a terrible mistake to make.
Agreed with Tim.
is an obvious take on the famous Freudian expression of “I think therefore I am” I also agree with those who have reeled off against such a crease mistake. "Cogito ergo sum" is the foundation of modern philosophy, it is almost like attributing relativity to Pascal.
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