Notes
141 Notes INTRODUCTION 1. Elsewhere, we describe this phenomenon as the “dialectics of struggle.” This phenomenon challenges all of us to be cognizant of how closure to meaning can produce harm in unintended, unanticipated effects. In part, the application chapters (4–8) draw attention to where and how this can occur. 2. We realize that an appeal to language alone cannot overcome the materialistic forces of oppression and alienation that people confront. The limits of such an undertaking produce idealism and sentimentalism, absent an understanding of material conditions. We argue, however, that material conditions take on meaning through language and it is this language itself that is the source of considerable controversy . Indeed, as we demonstrate in the subsequent application chapters exploring pressing crime, law, and justice topics, exposing the layered dimensions of marginalization is possible through an integrative and affirmative postmodern investigation. Thus, in brief, this book is designed to shed insight into the relationship between human agents and structural arrangements as they both shape and are shaped by language (Henry and Milovanovic 1996, 185–243). CHAPTER 1: ESTABLISHING THE FIRST WAVE 1. We note that the ordering of the social theorists, except for Jacques Lacan, is alphabetical. We explain our rationale for beginning with Lacan in note 2. Depending on one’s scholarly orientation toward and intellectual proclivity for postmodern social theory, several ordering permutations could be suggested. Thus, for simplicity purposes, we adopted an alphabetical approach. Moreover, additional first-wave ﱠ French postmodernists contributing to our enterprise are certainly discernible (e.g., Benveniste, Jakobson), and, as such, we delineated several of their respective insights in the introduction to this book. 2. Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan was born in Paris, France in 1901. His early instruction was from the Jesuits at Stanislas College. After completing his baccalaureate , he studied medicine and subsequently received training in psychiatry. Lacan delivered a series of seminars in Paris in the 1950s until 1980, advancing his own version of psychoanalysis. Many of the prominent social theorists of Lacan’s era (including most of the first-wave luminaries described in this text) were known to have attended his lectures, to have been trained in the Lacanian tradition, and/or to have incorporated several of his formulations into their own conceptualizations. Given Lacan’s seminal contributions to the development of French postmodernist thought, our exploration of first-wave thinkers begins with reference to his considerable insights. 3. As the application chapters explain, Lacan’s insight here can be extended to other disenfranchised people who, because they must engage in semiotic production in the dominant Symbolic Order, also remain pas-toute, not-all, incomplete (for a feminist interpretation on this point see the sections on Cixous, Irigaray and Kristeva). 4. Roland Barthes was born in Cherbough, Manche in 1915. He eventually moved to Paris, France and attended the Sorbonne where he received degrees in classical letters (1939), grammar, and philology (1943). The early work of Barthes (e.g., 1973a, 1967, 1968a) was heavily influenced by existentialism. Thus, themes of autonomy, choice, and freedom—all of which were anathema to the structuralist and poststructuralist enterprises—prevailed (Berman 1988, 145). It was not until the publication of On Racine (1964), Elements of Semiology (1968b), and S/Z (1974) that Barthes substantially reevaluated the form and structure of literary texts and the process of textual sense-making. He claimed that both author and the discourse of multiple readers fostered a “conflict” in interpretation. This insight was to form the basis for much of Barthes’ subsequent literary criticism: an appraisal of classic books and novels that was to align him with much of the poststructural and semiotic thinking of his time (e.g., see, Barthes 1967, 1968a,, 1973a). 5. Gilles Deleuze was trained as a philosopher and Felix Guattari was trained as a psychoanalyst in the Lacanian School. They began their joint projects in 1969, eventually publishing their first major collaboration: Anti-Oedipus (1983; originally, 1970). This was followed by Kafka:Toward Minor Literature (1986; originally 1975), A Thousand Plateaus (1987; originally 1980) and What is Philosophy (1994). Deleuze also single authored a number of prestigious books. In this section, we focus on their collaborations . 6. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner (1991, 75) observe in their assessment of Deleuze and Guattari, “not only do [the theorists] not adopt the discourse of the postmodern . . . , [Guattari] even attacks it as a new wave of cynicism and conservatism . . .” Without question, however, the full force of Deleuze and Guattari’s epistemology was a sustained rejection...
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