A unified academic catalogue for books, journal articles, book chapters, proceedings papers, conference abstracts and semiotic research materials.
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Passions of Our Time
Julia Kristeva
Culture Columbia University Press 9780231171441 Available
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Notes: edited with foreword by Lawrence D. Kritzman. Printed version in two notebooks
Annotation: Julia Kristeva is a true polymath, an intellectual of astonishingly wide range whose erudition and insight have been brought to bear on psychoanalysis, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique. Passions of Our Time showcases recent essays of Kristeva’s that demonstrate the scope of her capacious intellect, her gifts as a stylist, and the profound contribution of her thought to the challenges of the present. The collection begins with а vivid recollection of celebrating, as a child in Bulgaria, Alphabet Day, the holiday honoring the Cyrillic letters, which proceeds outward into a contemplation of the writer as translator. Kristeva considers literature with Barthes, freedom through Rousseau, Teresa of Avila and mystical experience, Simone de Beauvoir’s dream life, and Antigone and the psychic life of women. A group of essays drawing on her psychoanalytic work delve into Freud, Lacan, maternal eroticism, and the continued importance of psychoanalysis today. In a series of striking investigations, she thinks through disability and normativity, monotheism and secularization, the need to believe and the desire to know. Calling for the courage to renew and reinvent humanism, she outlines the principles of a stance founded on the importance of respecting human life. Finally, Kristeva discusses French culture and diversity, rethinking universalism and interrogating the potential for Islam and psychoanalysis to meet, and pays homage to Beauvoir by rephrasing her dictum into the provocative “One is born woman, but I become one.”
Identifier: 9780231171441
Status: Available
The Parallax View
Slavoj Žižek
Philosophy MIT press 9780262240512 Available
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Annotation: The Parallax View is Slavoj Žižek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Žižek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position. Žižek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From this consideration of parallax, Žižek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism. Modes of parallax can be seen in different domains of today's theory, from the wave-particle duality in quantum physics to the parallax of the unconscious in Freudian psychoanalysis between interpretations of the formation of the unconscious and theories of drives. In The Parallax View, Žižek, with his usual astonishing erudition, focuses on three main modes of parallax: the ontological difference, the ultimate parallax that conditions our very access to reality; the scientific parallax, the irreducible gap between the phenomenal experience of reality and its scientific explanation, which reaches its apogee in today's brain sciences (according to which "nobody is home" in the skull, just stacks of brain meat—a condition Žižek calls "the unbearable lightness of being no one"); and the political parallax, the social antagonism that allows for no common ground. Between his discussions of these three modes, Žižek offers interludes that deal with more specific topics—including an ethical act in a novel by Henry James and anti-anti-Semitism. The Parallax View not only expands Žižek's Lacanian-Hegelian approach to new domains (notably cognitive brain sciences) but also provides the systematic exposition of the conceptual framework that underlies his entire work. Philosophical and theological analysis, detailed readings of literature, cinema, and music coexist with lively anecdotes and obscene jokes.
Identifier: 9780262240512
Status: Available
Wholeness and its remainders
Daniele Monticelli
- Edition
- 1 edition
General Semiotics Tartu University Press 9789949119349 Available
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Other title information: theoretical procedures of totalization and detotalization in semiotics, philosophy and politics
Annotation: The PhD thesis is a piece of research into the nature of theoretical constructions in various academic disciplines. Drawing on a close analysis of some theoretical works in the field of semiotics, philosophy and politics, it distinguishes between totalizing and detotalizing ways of dealing with the phenomenal multiplicity which always confronts researchers when the construction of a theory is at stake. Theoretical procedures of totalization constitute phenomenal multiplicity into self-enclosed wholes and erase their remains. The thesis considers this kind of procedure from a temporal point of view, focusing on the theories of temporality elaborated by St. Augustine and Edmund Husserl and, from a systemic point of view, focusing on the theory of the (linguistic) system elaborated by Ferdinand de Saussure. Martin Heidegger's critique of the notion of 'presence' and Karl Marx's critique of the notion of 'value' are examined as problematizing the main instruments of temporal and systemic totalization respectively. Still, both Heidegger and Marx lingered within the logic of totality, simply opposing a more authentic wholeness to an inauthentic one. The works of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard are, in contrast, considered in the thesis as representatives of detotalizing procedures which claim the impossibility of self-enclosed wholeness drawing on the inexhaustible remnants of any totalization and a general principle of constitutive openness. Particular attention is paid to those aspects of Yuri Lotman's later thought – such as the notions of explosion, boundary and dialogue – which can be understood as instruments for theoretical procedures of temporal and systemic detotalization of this sort. In the course of the thesis it becomes clear that, for political reasons, the commitment of this research is to detotalization. This commitment is illustrated in the last part of the work. There, the attempts at rethinking emancipative politics elaborated by three contemporary philosophers – Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière – are analyzed as theoretical procedures of political detotalization from both a systemic and a temporal point of view. Wholeness and its remains: theoretical procedures of totalization and detotalization in semiotics, philosophy and politics The dissertation examines the nature of theoretical constructions in various disciplines. Based on a close analysis of some written works in the field of semiotics, philosophy and politics, a distinction is made between totalizing and detotalizing approaches to dealing with the diversity and heterogeneity of phenomena, which always plagues researchers and scientists in the creation of theories. Theoretical procedures of totalization reduce phenomenal diversity to self-contained and residue-free wholes.The dissertation analyses such procedures from both a temporal perspective (St. Augustine's and Edmund Husserl's theories of time) and a systemic perspective (Ferdinand de Saussure's theory of (linguistic) systems). Martin Heidegger's critique of the concept of 'presence/presentness' and Karl Marx's critique of the concept of 'value' undermine the theoretical tools of temporal and systemic totalization, respectively. But neither Heidegger nor Marx go beyond the logic of totality, they simply contrast authentic wholeness with false and inauthentic. The works of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida and Jean Baudrillard, on the other hand, represent procedures of detotalization that highlight the impossibility of self-contained wholeness, relying on the principles of the inexhaustibility of the residues of totalization and deconstructive openness. The dissertation pays special attention to those aspects of Juri Lotman's later thought – the concepts of explosion, limit and dialogue – that may be useful in developing such procedures of temporal and systemic detotalization. The dissertation contributes to detotalization for political reasons, which are revealed in the final section of the work. It analyzes the attempt of contemporary philosophers Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière to rethink emancipatory politics as a procedure of political detotalization from both a systemic and temporal perspective.
Identifier: 9789949119349
Status: Available
Reconsidering psycholinguistics' project
Sucanne Barnard
Linguistics Loyola University Chicago Available
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Other title information: language as praxis in Lacan and Kristeva
Notes: MA thesis
Annotation: -
Status: Available
A Post-Lacanian Reading of Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden
Ben Stoltzfus
In: The American Journal of Semiotics 1987, Volume 5, Issue 3/4
- Pages
- 381-396
The American Journal of Semiotics
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Lacan and Semiosis
Gilbert Chaitin
In: The Semiotic Web 1987
- Pages
- 37-64
The Semiotic Web
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The Subject of Semiotics
Kaja Silverman
General Semiotics Oxford University Press 9780195031782 Available
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Annotation: Through the writings of Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and others, the kindred disciplines of semiotics and structuralism have stirred enormous interest within European and American intellectual circles in recent years. With their focus on the ways in which signs, symbols, and cultural phenomena of all kinds convey meaning, these burgeoning theoretcial fields have had a special impact on the analysis of fil and literature. In this provocative book Kaja Silverman undertakes a new and challenging reading of recent semiotic and structuralist theory, arguing that films, novels, and poems cannot be studied in isolation from their viewers and readers.
Identifier: 9780195031782
Status: Available