The value of criticism: Lacan and poststructuralism

• Grant number: 24/11148-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: February 28, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Vladimir Pinheiro Safatle
• Grantee: Vinícius Borba Dutra
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The project aims to analyze the main criticisms of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan by post-structuralist philosophers: the critique of the negativity of desire (Gilles Deleuze), phallocentrism (Jacques Derrida), the denial of the sensible (Jean-François Lyotard), the elimination of the semiotic (Julia Kristeva), and the relationship between law and desire (Michel Foucault). In addition to presenting the philosophical perspective from which each author starts, we would like to support a thesis regarding what these criticisms have in common. Our initial hypothesis is that the target of all of them attempts to attack Hegel's legacy in Lacanian psychoanalysis, more specifically the "imperialist" power of the synthesis produced at the end of the dialectic of desire. This project is a continuation of a research program that interrogates the criticisms that Lacan received, as we did in the master's thesis on André Green's objection that the Lacanian horizon had excluded affect from his structuralist program.