Gender and Name: Towards Thinking of the Possible in the Work of Judith Butler and Sylvain Lazarus Cover Image

Rod i ime: ka mišljenju mogućeg u delu Džudit Batler i Silvena Lazarisa
Gender and Name: Towards Thinking of the Possible in the Work of Judith Butler and Sylvain Lazarus

Author(s): Slobodan Golubović
Subject(s): Philosophy, Gender Studies, Semiology, Philosophy of Language
Published by: Centar za ženske studije & Centar za studije roda i politike, Fakultet političkih nauka, Beograd
Keywords: name; gender; the name of the father; polysemy; intellectuality; prescription; Judith Butler; Sylvain Lazarus

Summary/Abstract: Judith Butler analyzes the concepts of name and naming in clear opposition to psychoanalytic theory, as well as structuralist anthropology, in which, starting from the experience of the lesbian position in Willa Cather’s prose, she recognizes and exposes patrilineal model of thinking and naming. This line of thought will be shown critique of Sigmund Freud’s critical studies regarding the status of the body and erogenity, the dialectic of having and being a phallus in the early phase of Jacques Lacan’s work, and examining the question of the imaginary or symbolic status of the phallus in Lacan’s work. However, starting from Miller’s (Jacques-Alain Miller) reading of Lacan’s seminar L’envers de la psychanalyse, in the section “Father’s Names,” we will reconstruct a radical break in the theory of the late Lacan, both in relation to Freud, but also regarding his own position from the early phases and point to the understanding of names as a place of convergence of the late psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Judith Butler. This will be followed by a discussion of the same problem (names) in the work of the French anthropologist Sylvain Lazarus in an attempt to show how the discussion of this problem can be understood homologously with Butler’s reading of Willa Cather’s prose. In the following part, we will try to show how late Lacan’s theory and Lazarus’s Anthropology of the name can provide a fruitful framework for a theoretical dialogue with Judith Butler and a re-examination of traditional conceptions of language and naming.

  • Issue Year: 2021
  • Issue No: 25
  • Page Range: 87-105
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: Serbian
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