ABSTRACT
Jacques Lacan’s conception of discourse is one of the most interesting theoretical tools for the analysis of ideology, power relations, and politics we have today, yet to see its full richness and analytical potential one has to overcome some obstacles, prejudices, and misconceptions that sometimes accompany psychoanalysis and Lacan’s thought in more particular. Written down in the form of four mathemes (see Figure 8.1), it might at first seem, at least for an uninitiated reader of Lacanian theory and praxis, either too abstract or simply too complicated. Another reason that obstructs its grasp is that, for some Lacan’s theory of four discourses appears too historical and in itself also historically (out)dated, for others it is either too formalistic, too structuralist, or simply too dedicated to the theses concerning the role of language and communication that has by now become a part of common knowledge. With all the above in mind one might not see why one should bother with it at all. The focus of this contribution is the problem of mastery in Lacan’s four discourses, while more or less leaving aside other important points concerning politics in this theory: for example, their consideration of ‘enjoyment as the political factor’, 1 as the paradoxical cement which simultaneously binds and unbinds every social link. The four discourses https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315857282/d621377c-b8ec-4e70-b040-06e49ed8550a/content/fig8_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
