Five years ago I conducted a five hour long workshop on post structuralism and Derrida for the Sinhala Paravada crowd. Deepthi and Rohan Perera among others were present. Deepthi then paid homage to me in Mathota with “Ape jivithaye uthkrustama guruvaraya vana Nalin Swaris” until things got sour………………..
A young man of SSA called Samantha taped my talk made a draft transcript and posted it to Holland for my correction. He and Deepthi were to edit and publish in Sinhala Pravadaya. . One section was. The second was still in typed manuscript form.
Deepthi positions himself as the sane one by differentiating himself from the others as the ‘hysterical’.Whereas Freud insisted that every psychonalyst must undergo analysis first before beginning his/her practice and that this should repeated periodically. He subjected himself to analysis. Deepthi speaks of Derrida and Lacan in the same breath, not having grasped Derrida’s sharp criticism of Lacan in polemical exchanges such as Positions and Facteur d la verite but specially in his essay on Differance in MARGES la Philosophie. He clarifies that Difference “exceeds the order of truth without dissimulating itself as a something, a mysterious in the occult of non – or in a hole with indeterminable borders (for example) in hole with indeterminable borders ( example in a topology of castration) “ou dans un trou don les bordures determinable (par example en une topologie de la castration) Lacan bases his entire theory of hysteria on a the notion of the ‘lack’as an ontic lack. All humans experience a lack of being (manqué a etre) which they desire to be filled by an other (‘objet petit o) and an Other Objet Grand O) this time capitalized, which can never be fulfilled. Thus man is doomed to be unfulfilled during his mortal life. (The Budddha destroyed Desire in the life and in this body ( Rohitha Sutra) . He handed down the prescription for it. Following Nietszche, I have called the Eightfold Path a Therapeutic Ethic.
Derrida’s critique is that Lacan, the Jesuit educated Roman Catholic has slipped into a negative theology (context of onto-theology!). Lacan writes “Le desir de l’homme est le desire de l’ Autre. Desire of man is desire for the Other (capitalized). The Wholly Other in Christian theology being God. Lacan says humans experience a fundamental lack of being – manque a etre. Having concluded that the vagina is the place of castration – Derrida says Lacan transfer this lack into a transcendendal principle. To quote Derrida “Lacan’s toplogy of castration – ‘a hole with determinable borders’ repeats the metaphysical gesture – albeit a negative one – of making absence, the lack, the hole, a transcendental principle that can be pinned down as such, and can thereby govern a theoretical discourse”. Moreover Lacan introduced the concept Name of the Father for the symbolic order – Language. French Catholics cross themselves dans le Nom du Pere. “In the Name of the Father, son and Holy Ghost”. So this too is a Christian theology derived concept. And logoceentric in Derridian terms because ‘God the Father’ produced his Son, the Word or Logos out of this mouth!. “In the beginning was the Word (Logos). And the word was God. All things were made by the Word” opening lines of St. Johns Gospel. …….. The idea that there is an infinite desire which cannot be fulfilled on earth but only through union with God au fond des choses thoroughly – theological. ……. Moreover the central place that Lacan assigns to hysteria and the vagina as the topos of castration was severely critcised by French feminists notably Luce Iragaray. Lacan who was himself expelled and founded his own Institute then expelled Iragary from his! See how difficult it is for some men to accept criticism. They become hysterical in the common clinical sense and not in the Deepthian (non) sense. The Dutch have a phallogocentric expression for such men “in de pik getrapt” – kicked on their pricks.
from the archives of Dr. Nlain Swaris’ correspondence……………………………….
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එක්ස් ෆයිල්ස් 