Recuperating the Real: New Materialism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Neo-Lacanian Ontical Cartography

Philosophy & Rhetoric May 2018

Recuperating the Real: New Materialism, Object-Oriented Ontology, and Neo-Lacanian Ontical Cartography

Caleb Cates Georgia State University ; M. Lane Bruner University of Nevada, Las Vegas ; Joseph T. Moss

Abstract

ABSTRACT To address challenges to the primacy of the subject in speculative realism, we put Levi R. Bryant's object-oriented ontology in conversation with Jacques Lacan's register theory. In so doing, we recuperate an autonomous materiality for itself, providing a reading of the debate between Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau over the Lacanian Real and simultaneously providing a rich map of the being of subjectivity and modes of the rhetorical. We systematize Žižek's claim that each element of the register resonates with the others to produce an ontical cartography: a map of the different intersections of the materially autonomous Real with the Symbolic and Imaginary elements of the Lacanian subject. By delimiting the characteristics of these intersections, we can better understand the different valences in which rhetoric operates without foreclosing the agency of objects and the objectivity of subjects.

Journal: Philosophy & Rhetoric
Published: 2018-05-31
DOI: 10.5325/philrhet.51.2.0151
Open Access: Closed
Topics: multimodality

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

Chaput et al. (2019)

Rhetorical Hegemony: Transactional Ontologies and the Reinvention of Material I…

Philosophy & Rhetoric

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Philosophy & Rhetoric

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