J. Lacan과 여성학

J. Lacan and Women's Studies

As late as 1980 New Yorker magazine reports that among American psychoanalytic circle the French structuralist psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, "whose impenetably obscure writings" have been gaining increasingly earnest attention. It was the next year that Lacan died. It would be more accurate to say that Lacan's long obscurity in English-speaking world has been due largely to his anti-reductionist stance rather than his rather idiosyncratic rhetoric style. What is at stake for waging the attrition war between the Continent and the Anglo-American psychoanalyst was the enormous Empire of International Psycoanalytic Association with Anna Freud at its apex. Equally important, or in a sense more so, is, as Freud himself anticipated, which side of the Ocean would win "the decisive battle" for the real carrier of Freudian messages. In other words whether psychoanalysis is a biological science or cultural science is the real issue. And neither side can afford to give in to the other not merely because of vast vested interest for the positive camp, but also the very foundation of their trade itself is challenged with the long celebrated Freudian topographies in the danger of revision. This explains why the great interest in and serious reception of Lacan after his death have been mostly in the fields other than psychoanalysis itself. After 1981 books and articles are pouring in about Lacan. His most appealing contribution, though its full appreciation is yet to be seen, stems probably from his insistence upon the fact that man is no longer master of even his own body, let alone center of the universe. More insulting is that this has come about by man's own workings and that there is no escape. This trap is of course 'language.' Aside from this groomy picture, Lacan fortunately promises great many hopes for feminism, by going 'back to Freud' many feminist scholars find incalculably valuable insights in his writings. If once arch male-chauvinist Freud can help enhance woman's claims and rights, it is in no small part thanks to the great reformist Jacques Lacan.