1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
1 Theorising Agency in International Relations In Hobbes's Wake ...
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The imag<strong>in</strong>ary is also the site where these primitive projections have been repressed onto an<br />
unconscious level. This <strong>in</strong>vokes the more applied dimension of Lacan’s work, where the symbolic<br />
constitutes, third, the realm of the analytical cure. The cure itself largely consists <strong>in</strong> mak<strong>in</strong>g those<br />
imag<strong>in</strong>ary projections lodged <strong>in</strong> the unconscious (especially those revolv<strong>in</strong>g around processes of<br />
identification, see Epste<strong>in</strong> 2010 for an extensive development), which can play the analysand’s despite<br />
herself and at great expense of suffer<strong>in</strong>g, pass <strong>in</strong>to the symbolic order. There they can be worked on<br />
with analyst, fully circumscribed, and ultimately put at a remove. The cure illustrates the extent to which<br />
language is performative for Lacan. It is doubly performative, as both the primary material of and the<br />
medium for the cure. Language both reveals the source of the ailments on the one hand (when the<br />
analysand talks), and it constitutes the means of the therapeutic <strong>in</strong>tervention on the other (the analysts’<br />
<strong>in</strong>tervention). The aim of the cure is the symbolization of the imag<strong>in</strong>ary material expressed <strong>in</strong> the<br />
analysand’s speech. The <strong>in</strong>tervention of the analyst consists <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>terrupt<strong>in</strong>g these imag<strong>in</strong>ary projections<br />
<strong>in</strong> which the speaker rema<strong>in</strong>s trapped. The Lacanian analysis thus rests on a particular type of speech<br />
act. 15<br />
To summarise, the symbolic plays out along three key axes <strong>in</strong> Lacan’s thought. It is the realm of<br />
the cure, whose basic operative pr<strong>in</strong>ciple is symbolization. The second and third axes outl<strong>in</strong>e the two<br />
directions <strong>in</strong> which my argument proper will unfold <strong>in</strong> the third and fourth parts of this paper, where I<br />
will show that the Leviathan constitutes the master signifier that enables all signification. These are that,<br />
at the collective level, second, the symbolic designates the social order itself. At the level of <strong>in</strong>dividual<br />
experience this corresponds, third, to the Other for the self. Develop<strong>in</strong>g my argument first requires<br />
however, add<strong>in</strong>g another piece to this toolkit, the Lacian notion of ‘primacy of the signifier’ (la primauté<br />
15 The expression used by Ala<strong>in</strong> Juranville (1984), awkward <strong>in</strong> English yet effective, is ‘a speech that takes<br />
action’ (une parole qui prend acte).<br />
22