The French Connection in Criminology: Rediscovering Crime, Law, and Social Change

CHAPTER 1. Establishing the First Wave: The Linguistic Turn in Social Theory

1 CHAPTER 1 Establishing the First Wave: The Linguistic Turn in Social Theory INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we succinctly describe the contributions of several prominent first wave thinkers whose work has contributed substantially to our understanding of postmodern thought.1 These authors include Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and JeanFran çois Lyotard. We note that while each of these luminaries has passed away, they individually and collectively helped to establish the first wave’s agenda endorsing social and political change. In chapter 2, the insights of those first wave thinkers, who have sustained the postmodern project, are likewise delineated. Chapter 1 also summarizes where and how the inroads of the identified social theorists have been utilized by various second wave authors, especially those commenting on different facets of law, crime, and social justice. This related and secondary task is important to the text’s overall purpose. As the subsequent application chapters make evident, embracing a postmodern attitude need not produce a nihilistic, fatalistic, or pessimistic worldview. Indeed, the linguistic turn in social theory can also lead to affirmative, transformative , and emancipatory praxis. Thus, the aim of the following exposition on postmodernism, the first wave architects of this heterodox perspective, and ‫ﱠ‬ the crime and justice scholars who have since then appropriated many of their insights, is to suggest that “doing” affirmative and integrative analysis of the sort proposed here dramatically moves us beyond our conventional understanding of criminological and legal research, to a place in which transpraxis and social justice can thrive. FIRST WAVE CONTRIBUTIONS Jacques Lacan Jacques Lacan (1900–1981) arguably is the key figure in the development of French-inspired postmodern analysis.2 Lacan’s (1977) main contribution was that the subject is intimately connected to discourse. This subject, or “speaking” (parlêtre) being, is a de-centered rather then centered subject offered by Enlightenment epistemology. Lacanian thought undermined the concept of the “individual,” captured in the notion of the juridic subject in law or the “rational man” assumption contained in rational choice theory in criminology. Rather, the speaking being was depicted in a more static form in Schema L, and in a more dynamic, topological form in the Graphs of Desire, Schema R, Schema I, the Cross-Cap, and the Borromean Knots (Lacan 1977, 1988). His topological constructions also included the Mobius Band and the Klein bottle. What he showed was that there were two planes to subjectivity: the subject of speech, and the speaking subject (Lacan 1981). The former included the deeper unconscious workings where desire was embodied in signifiers that came to “speak the subject”; the latter was the subject taking a position in various discourses, identifying with an “I” as a stand in for her/his subjectivity , and engaging in communication with the other. He was to show that three intersecting spheres existed in the production of subjectivity: the Symbolic (the sphere of the unconscious, nuanced discourse and the “law-ofthe -father”), the Imaginary (the sphere of imaginary constructions including conceptions of self and others), and the Real Order (lived experience beyond accurate symbolization). Since the Symbolic Order is phallocentric, all is tainted with the privileging of the male voice. According to Lacan (1985), women remain left out, pas-toute, not-all. However, they have access to an alternative jouissance, which remains inexpressible in a male-dominated order (Lacan 1985). Hence, the basis for the call for an écriture féminine (i.e, women’s writing) to overcome pas-toute.3 Lacan’s attention to discourse and subjectivity includes a dynamic understanding of speech production and its psychic mobilization (Lacan 1991). Interested in both the inter- and intra-subjective plane of human exis2 The French Connection in Criminology tence and development, Lacan graphically depicted what he termed the “four discourses.”These included the discourse of the master, university, hysteric, and analyst. Each of these organizing schemas, as distinct mechanisms for understanding speech production and its psychic configuration, explained how desire did or did not find expression (and legitimacy) in discourse, and what sort of knowledge was privileged (or dismissed) when one of these specific discourses was in use. Briefly, each of the four discourses includes four main terms and four corresponding locations. These terms are S1 or the master signifer; S2 or knowledge; $ or the desiring subject; and a or the objet petit (a) understood by Lacan to be le plus de jouir or that excess in...