Abstract

This chapter draws a contrast between revolutionary and transformative politics, pointing out that while Lacanian theory has often been associated with the former, it also opens the possibility of the latter. However, to access this more transformative side, one must move from the ethics of the act towards a more complex understanding of Lacan's theories of signification and meaning production. Using Lacan's reading of James Joyce as a starting point, the chapter explains how the jouissance of the real is not always necessarily antithetical to signification, but rather something that gets expressed in forms of signification that are acutely alive and creative. That is, the chapter supplants the notion of enjoyment as an eclipse of meaning by the notion of enjoyment-in-meaning, ultimately establishing a link between subjective singularity and this enjoyment-in-meaning.

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