ABSTRACT
In order to elucidate the connection between singularity and foundations for thought, the author uses the writings of Jacques Lacan and post-Lacanian thinkers such as Yannis Stavrakakis, Juliet Flower MacCannell and Todd McGowan. Psychoanalysis can bring a somewhat different perspective to the concept of singularity already developed by thinkers such as Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Derrida. By looking at the changes in Lacanian psychoanalysis over the course of the twentieth century, one can gain insight into the increasing role of singularity, in this sense of the singular sinthome, in culture and thought, and this in turn will help us understand the relationship between Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Michael Cunningham's The Hours. Lacan's editor and heir, Jacques-Alain Miller, has repeatedly emphasized the connection between singularity and the concept of the sinthome that dominates the last period of Lacan's teaching. Lacan presents the sinthomeas a particular kind of symptom that cannot be interpreted or 'dialectised' through language.
