Lacanian Theory, Law and Culture

Abstract

This dissertation continues a strain of thought in Lacanian scholarship which holds that legal thought is still catching up to the implications of the discovery of the unconscious and that the law misses something without taking the unconscious seriously. Pertaining to Lacanian clinical theory, the first task of this dissertation is to express the centrality of law for Lacan and trace subjectivity’s relation to law along with the analyst’s handling of this relation in the clinic, so as to better adapt Lacanian theory for cultural purposes. Secondly, the dissertation will place Lacanian legal theory within the history of legal philosophy and theory, explaining why it is an offshoot of critical legal studies with its own object of focus. Two case studies of legal discourse will put ‘critical unconscious studies’ to work: one chapter will critique the discourse surrounding Quebec’s Bill 21 following the ‘direction’ of the clinic outlined at the beginning of the dissertation and another will critique discourse surrounding sex work, drawing on the later Lacan’s work on sexual difference and the economy of the drive. Finally, cultural portrayals of law and crime will be critiqued using Lacanian literary theory. Lacan’s theories of the subject’s relation to the visual field (using Lacan’s discussions of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” and Velasquez’s Las Meninas, and his theory of identification as a symbolic process) will be used to praise HBO’s The Wire, as a piece of art that strips the viewer’s identifications, forcing them to reconsider their ethical standpoints. Lastly, The Godfather I & II will be critiqued using the later Lacan’s four discourses to emphasize that the narrative of masculine desire revolves around the normalization of gendered violence as the objet petit a. All in all, this dissertation is a demonstration of the merits of Lacanian theory for ascertaining the unconscious as that which discourse and law unknowingly depend on.