Reconstituting the subject of political discourse

from Lacan to Castoriadis

Caroline Williams

pp. 103-120

in: Iain MacKenzie, Shane O'Neill (eds), Reconstituting social criticism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

This essay proposes to enter the space occupied by a number of intersecting levels of thought and analysis: philosophy, psychoanalysis and aspects of Marxist political theory. It will do so in order to consider the possible shape or form that the subject of political discourse may take. Conceptions of subjectivity are always the product of a constellation of concepts and critical questions which, in turn, furnish a philosophical and political perspective. It is perhaps the reframing of these questions which ceaselessly reconstitutes social and political criticism. The critical thought of Cornelious Castoriadis has certainly reconstituted the question of the subject, not by announcing a wholesale rejection or transcendence of past conceptualizations, but rather by reconstituting the framework within which the question concerning the constitution of the subject may be posed.

Cited authors

Lacan Jacques

Marx Karl

Castoriadis Cornelius