ABSTRACT
The ambiguity that presides over the use, in postmodern psychoanalysis, of what is commonly referred to as French philosophy, is bound to interpellate us. Easy to see how Foucault, combined with Kuhn’s historicism, might have added grist to the mill of relativism. But how can we account for the fact that Derrida and Lyotard’s consistent references to Freud have systematically been overlooked? These two authors never refrain from factoring in Freud’s energetics in their theorisations. Their use of the economic viewpoint – the very viewpoint which intersubjective relativism dismisses in favour of feelings – along with their reference to the materiality of vocables and their close critique of the totalising function of signification signal how much energetics informs that untameable thing that dwells in speech while evading it. Yet, as this chapter reveals, it all seems as if, in its reference to French philosophy, the new psychoanalysis had somewhat erased the most radical dimension.
