Recanting My Last Post

I've largely scrapped the text of my last post, drastically reducing some parts of it and writing out new examples that will hopefully serve my purposes somewhat better. Once I have that a little less drafty, I'll post it. 

A few quick thoughts though about the preceding version, which I will leave posted for shits & giggles.

1st, in that text I attempted to do something that Lacan does not do in Seminar XVII - integrate desire with discourse. I was reasonably happy with how I did this, and there may be some call to revisit this question at another time, but lest anyone think that I am sticking super-close to Lacan here, let me disabuse you of that wrt desire.

2nd, I also make use of a less that definitionally clear idea about affects which likely would not satisfy Lacan or informed readers of his work. This is not simply because affect is posed as unconscious in what I have written (and it seems in some readings that both Freud and Lacan disputed the idea that affects could be unconscious, though there is some ambiguity in that as well). But also simply that i deal with 'affect' in general and purport to discuss its workings in the discourses. Lacan never really talks about affects per se, only anxiety, because it is the only one that "doesn't lie." & he certainly doesn't talk even of anxiety in connection with the discourses.

The revision I have made to this opening hews closer to Lacan and eshews discussion of affect and desire. 

That said, I remain convinced that the body - as the site of jouissance - is crucial in lacanian thought. & that an informed and flexible theorization of affects (emotions, feelings) is something that would enrich lacanian thought. (Sadly, I have not been swayed by Green's attempt to do this in a loosely lacanian framework). Where exactly this will come from I do not know, though some of Massumi's thinking about affects strike me as compelling and perhaps there is a way to bring this into productive dialogue with lacanian thought - but there are also obstacles there as Massumi is soaked in Deleuze and Deleuze and Lacan seem to be at odds on certain crucial points.