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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > Postmodernism > Structuralism, deconstruction, post-structuralism
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Wrestling with the Angel - Experiments in Symbolic Life (Paperback)
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Wrestling with the Angel - Experiments in Symbolic Life (Paperback)
Series: Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
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Wrestling with the Angel is a meditation on contemporary political,
legal, and social theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. It
argues for the enabling function of formal and symbolic constraints
in sustaining desire as a source of creativity, innovation, and
social change. The book begins by calling for a richer
understanding of the psychoanalytic concept of the symbolic and the
resources it might offer for an examination of the social link and
the political sphere. The symbolic is a crucial dimension of social
coexistence but cannot be reduced to the social norms, rules, and
practices with which it is so often collapsed. As a dimension of
human life that is introduced by language-and thus inescapably
"other" with respect to the laws of nature-the symbolic is an
undeniable fact of human existence. Yet the same cannot be said of
the forms and practices that represent and sustain it. In
designating these laws, structures, and practices as "fictions,"
Jacques Lacan makes clear that the symbolic is a dimension of
social life that has to be created and maintained and that can also
be displaced, eradicated, or rendered dysfunctional. The symbolic
fictions that structure and support the social tie are therefore
historicizable, emerging at specific times and in particular
contexts and losing their efficacy when circumstances change. They
are also fragile and ephemeral, needing to be renewed and
reinvented if they are not to become outmoded or ridiculous.
Therefore the aim of this study is not to call for a return to
traditional symbolic laws but to reflect on the relationship
between the symbolic in its most elementary or structural form and
the function of constraints and limits. McNulty analyzes examples
of "experimental" (as opposed to "normative") articulations of the
symbolic and their creative use of formal limits and constraints
not as mere prohibitions or rules but as "enabling constraints"
that favor the exercise of freedom. The first part examines
practices that conceive of subjective freedom as enabled by the
struggle with constraints or limits, from the transference that
structures the "minimal social link" of psychoanalysis to
constrained relationships between two or more people in the context
of political and social movements. Examples discussed range from
the spiritual practices and social legacies of Moses, Jesus, and
Teresa of Avila to the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt and
Jacques Ranciere. The second part is devoted to legal and political
debates surrounding the function of the written law. It isolates
the law's function as a symbolic limit or constraint as distinct
from its content and representational character. The analysis draws
on Mosaic law traditions, the political theology of Paul, and
twentieth-century treatments of written law in the work of Carl
Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Legendre, and Alain
Badiou. In conclusion, the study considers the relationship between
will and constraint in Kant's aesthetic philosophy and in the
experimental literary works of the collective Oulipo.
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