Reason and desire in legal education: A psychoanalytic-semiotic critique

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 3-24

  Arrigo, Bruce A ^a  

^a Institute of Psychology Law and Public Policy   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 54649083468     PISSN: 09528059     EISSN: 15728722     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF01101261     Document Type: Article

References (111)

1. See, e.g., O.W. Holmes, The Path of the Law Harvard Law Review 10 (1897), 457-478;
2. R. Pound, Mechanical Jurisprudence Columbia Law Review 8 (1908), 605-623;
3. J. Frank, Law and the Modern Mind (New York: Doubleday, 1930/1963);
4. K. Llewellyn, Some Realism About RealismHarvard Law Review 44 (1931), 1222-1264;
5. K. Llewellyn and A. Hoebel, A Realistic Jurisprudence - The Next Step Columbia Law Review 30 (1930), 431-465;
6. W. Rumble, American Legal Realism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968).
7. See, e.g., A. Altman, Critical Legal Studies: A Liberal Critique (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), 7-21;
8. D. Kairys, ed., The Politics of Law (New York: Pantheon, 1982);
9. "Critical Legal Studies Symposium Stanford Law Review 36 1/2 (1984), 1-674;
10. G. Peller, The Metaphysics of American Law California Law Review 73/4 (1985), 1151-1290;
11. M. Tushnet, Critical Legal Studies: An Introduction to Its Origins and Its Underpinnings Journal of Legal Education 36 (1986), 131-163;
12. R. Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986);
13. P. Goodrich, The Role of Linguistics in Legal Analysis Modern Law Review 47 (1984), 523-534;
14. A. Hunt, The Theory of Critical Legal Studies Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 6 (1986), 1-45;
15. A. Hunt, The Role and Place of Theory in Legal Education: Reflections on Foundationalism Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 8 (1988), 146-164.
16. See, e.g., C. Smart, The Women of Legal Discourse Social and Legal Studies: An International Journal 1 (1992), 29-44;
17. C. Smart, Feminism and the Power of the Law (London and New York: Routledge, 1989);
18. C. MacKinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1989);
19. C. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (London: Harvard University Press, 1987);
20. K. Bartlett, and R. Kennedy, eds., Feminist Legal Theory (Oxford: Westview Press, 1991);
21. B. Arrigo. Deconstructing Jurisprudence: An Experiential Feminist Critique Journal of Human Justice 4/1 (1992), 13-30;
22. H. Stacy, Legal Discourse and the Feminist Political Economy Australian Feminist Law Journal 6 (1996), 115-134.
23. See, e.g., R. Kevelson, The Law As a System of Signs (New York: Plenum, 1988);
24. B.S. Jackson, Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence (Merseyside, U.K.: Deborah Charles Publications, 1988);
25. B. Jackson, Semiotics and Legal Theory (Liverpool, U.K.: Deborah Charles Publications, 1997, repr. of 1985 RKP ed.);
26. P. Goodrich, Languages of Law: From Logics of Memory to Nomadic Masks (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1990);
27. P. Goodrich, Legal Discourse (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987).
28. R.W. Benson, Semiotics, Modernism and the law Semiotica 73 1/2 (1989), 157-175;
29. B. Arrigo, Madness, Language and the Law (Albany, NY: Harrow and Heston, 1993), 51-55.
30. But see Bernard S. Jackson, Making Sense in Law: Linguistic, Psychohgical and Semiotic Perspectives (Liverpool, UK: Deborah Charles, 1995);
31. P. Goodrich, Oedipus Lex: Psychoanalysis, History, Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995);
32. D. Carlson and P. Goodrich, eds., Psychoanalysis and Jurisprudence: Essays in Law and the Postmodern Mind (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1997).
33. There are a few isolated studies applying a more postmodern critique to the dynamics of legal instruction. See, e.g., C. Douzinas, S. McVeigh and R. Warrington, Postlegality: After Education in the Law Law and Critique 1/1 (1990), 16-33.
34. See A. Thomson, Critical Legal Education in Britain Journal of Law and Society 7/3 (1987), 37-56.
35. See, e.g., J. Lacan, The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, Book II, The Ego in Freud's Theory and the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);
36. J. Lacan, Feminine Sexuality (New York: Norton, 1985);
37. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (New York: Norton, 1981);
38. J. Lacan, Encore (Paris, France: Edition du Seuil, 1975).
39. D. Milovanovic, Postmodern Law and Disorder: Psychoanalytic Semiotics, Chaos and Juridic Exegeses (Liverpool: Deborah Charles Publications, 1992);
40. D. Milovanovic, 'Rebellious Lawyering': Lacan, Chaos, and the Development of Alternative Juridico-Semiotic FormsLegal Studies Forum 20/3 (1996), 295-321.
41. D. Caudill, Lacan and the Subject of Law: Toward a Psychoanalytic Critical Legal Theory (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997);
42. D. Cornell, Transformations Recollective Imagination and Sexual Difference (New York: Routledge, 1993);
43. P. Goodrich, ed., Law and the Unconscious: A Legendre Reader (London: MacMillan, 1997).
44. For criminological texts with decidedly sociolegal implications see A. Young, Imagining Crime: Textual Outlaws and Criminal Conversations (London: Sage, 1996);
45. B. Arrigo, The Contours of Psychiatric Justice: A Postmodern Critique of Mental Illness, Criminal Insanity and the Law (New York/London: Garland, 1996);
46. D. Milovanovic, Postmodern Criminology (New York/London: Garland, 1997).
47. D. Milovanovic, Juridico-Linguistic Communicative Markets: Toward a Semiotic Analysis Contemporary Crises 10 (1986), 288-296;
48. D. Milovanovic, Rethinking Subjectivity in Law and Ideology: A Semiotic Perspective The Journal of Human Justice 4/1 (1992), 31-53; Arrigo, supra n.5, at 135-140
49. Elsewhere, I have discussed the manner in which speech production is unconsciously conceived and given expressive form, according to Lacan's more algebraic formulae. B. Arrigo, Insanity Defense Reform and the Sign of Abolition: Re-visiting Montana's Experience International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 10/29 (1997), 191-211
50. see D. Milovanovic, Rethinking Subjectivitysupra n. 11, 39.
51. J. Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection, trld. A Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977), 302;
52. M. Bowie, Lacan (Cambridge, MASS: Harvard University Press, 1991), 12-33.
53. Lacan, supra n.13, at 287; Bowie, supra n. 13, at 137-138
54. Supra n.3
55. K. Bartlett, Feminist Legal Methods Feminist Legal Theory, ed. K. Bartlett and R. Kennedy (Oxford: Westview Press, 1991), 330-350.
56. Arrigo, supra n. 3, at 13-15; B. Arrigo, [De]constructing Classroom Instruction: Theoretical and Methodological Contributions of the Postmodern Sciences for Crimino-legal EducationSocial Pathology 1/2 (1995), 115-148.
57. R. Dworkin, How Law Is Like a Literature A Matter of Principle, ed. R. Dworkin (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Arrigo, supra n.5, at 72-74
58. Clearly, truth claims in legal education are but one aspect of classroom discourse. See generally, P. Freire, The Politics of Education (Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1985);
59. P. Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Continuum, 1973)
60. See K. Weiler, Freire and a Feminist Pedagogy of Difference Harvard Educational Review 61/4 (1991), 449-474.
61. See, e.g., M. Bracher, Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change: A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993);
62. M. Bracher, Lacan's Theory in the Four Discourses Prose Studies 11 (1988), 32-49;
63. J.S. Lee, Jacques Lacan (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990);
64. D. Milovanovic, Lacan's Four Discourses: Chaos and Cultural Criticism in Law Studies in Psychoanalytic Theory 2/1 (1993), 3-23;
65. E. Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986).
66. As Lacan notes, each discourse is governed by four related terms or factors (S1 = master signifiers, S2 = knowledge, a, le plus de jouir = the lack or pas toute in discourse, and $ = the divided, de-centered subject), along with four corresponding positions (agent [upper left] = sender of the encoded sign message; other [upper right] = receiver of the encoded sign message, product [lower right] = the combinatory effect or knowledge created through self/language articulations and ; and truth [lower left] = sensory data or phenomenal images supporting the message sent by the agent). See, J. Lacan, L'envers de la Psychanalyse (Paris, France: Editions du Seuil, 1991).
67. Supra n.9
68. Supra n.10
69. Briefly stated, in the discourse of the master, the one who speaks imposes a sign-message upon the other. Thus, the listener/receiver is interpellated by the message. In this process, the listener/receiver re-constitutes and relegitimizes the very knowledge that represses.
70. Following this essay's emphasis on legal education and mindful of the logic of the four discourses, one might expect that the discourse of the university would be contrasted with the discourse of the hysteric. However, the discourse of the university is merely a more concealed form of the master discourse. Indeed, "the discourse of the university can easily change into the discourse of the master, and may be, in the end, only a form of it. Hence, the discourse of the university may provide one mechanism by which legitimacy is maintained in a society while domination continues in more hidden form." See D. Milovanovic, Lacan, Chaos, and Practical Discourse in LawFlux, Complexity, Illusion, ed. R. Kevelson (New York: P. Lang, 1993), 322.
71. Briefly stated, in the discourse of the hysteric, the subject who speaks is divided, de-centered, repressed, and alienated. The despairing subject attempts to communicate his/her loss and suffering to the other who receives this sign-message. The other, attentive to the encoded discourse of the alienated subject, endeavors to respond but simply offers conventional master signifiers which incompletely fill the subject's psychic lack or longing for recognition and understanding.
72. Jackson, supra n.4, at 109-121
73. S. Eisenstein, The Film Sense (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), 18.
74. This interpretation is consistent with Legendre's conviction that the law is an unconscious jurist capable of capturing other subjects. As Goodrich explains, following Lacan, Legendre's position is not only that the unconscious is structured like a language, but it functions like a lawyer. See P. Goodrich, The Unconscious is a Jurist': Psychoanalysis and Law in the Work of Pierre Legendre Legal Studies Forum 20/3 (1996), 195-228
75. Constitutive theory in law acknowledges the mutable process by which both structural forces and human agency are intertwined and imbued with ideological content giving rise to certain contingent articulations of which they are a part. See S. Henry and D. Milovanovic, Constitutive Criminology: Beyond Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1996), 67-123.
76. The meaning for the word "hysteric" departs from more psychologically-relevant interpretations including persons who are schizophrenic, catatonic, psychopathic, etc. Although these definitions are acceptable, the word hysteric includes both conventional and non-conventional interpretations thus denoting a continuum of significations. Accordingly, a more non-traditional frame of reference is adopted here, referring instead to persons who are rebellious, defiant, oppositional. See supra n.25, at 325-6. In this context, the neophyte law student -and even the "subversive" professor - can be shown to embody that desire constitutive of the discourse of the hysteric.
77. Lacan, supra n.17, at 154, 160, 303-320; A. Lemaire, Jacques Lacan, trtd. D. Macey (New York: Roudedge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 40, 101-12
78. C. Laclau and E. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (New York: Verso, 1985).
79. A recent Australian case aptly demonstrates the power of legal discourse to capture, in a Lacanian sense, the voice, identity, and being of juridic subjects in ways highlighting the tension between the discourse of the master and hysteric. The incident, known as the Hindmarsh Island Affair, considered the implications for the development of a bridge and marina in South Australia for a number of Aboriginal women of the Ngarrindjeri tribe, indigenous to Hindmarsh Island. The Ngarrindjeri claimed that the Island was the site of "secret women's business", that the sacredness of this site could not be explained to men, and that the proposed construction would destroy the fertility of the Aboriginal women residing there. White male lawyers required that the Hindmarsh spiritual beliefs be "formally proved through legal evidentiary procedures." In this instance, the race-based and gendered desire of an indigenous population were subject to the recodifications (transformations) of an Australian tribunal, rendering the Ngarrindjeri women as pas toute. See H. Stacy, Lacan's Split Subjects: Raced and Gendered Transformations Legal Studies Forum 20/3 (1996), 277-293
80. This is a reference to the psycho-political effects of circumscribed discourse (and subjectivity) which re-enact and, thus, re-legitimize only certain institutional expressions of culture (e.g., specialized sign-meanings in the law). G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
81. M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Pantheon, 1977);
82. M. Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1972).
83. J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trld. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984).
84. Supra n.33, at 286
85. Some additional insights developed from chaology and topology theory are also instructive for the establishment of more liberatory and humanistic grammars. On chaology see E. Porter and J. Gleick, Nature's Chaos (New York: Viking Penguin, 1990);
86. J. Briggs and F.D. Peat, Turbulent Mirror: An Illustration Guide to Chaos Theory and the Science of Wholeness (New York: Harper & Row, 1989).
87. On topology theory see, J. Granon-Lafont, Topologie Lacanienne et Clinique Analytique (Paris: Point Hors Ligne, 1990);
88. J. Weeks, The Shape of Space (New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc., 1985)
89. The Three Orders (Symbolic, Imaginary, and Real) have a marked effect on subjectivity as detailed in Lacan's acclaimed Schema L or Graphs of Desire. See Lacan, supra n.13, at 193-94; Lacan, Seminars, supra n.8, at 243. In short, the "knotting" of these three spheres activates certain psychical processes, a temporary and specular unity, in the sender of a coded message. My interest, however, is with the Fourth Order. This sphere mends and restores the knot, mitigates psychosis and permits one to engage in the act of "naming" (donner-nom). Thus, le sinthome can suture in such a way that fuller, more complete, expressions of desire could find embodiment, yielding replacement master signifiers, mythic knowledge, and the restoration of one's loss of being. See J. Lacan, Feminine Sexuality, supra n.8, 143-147
90. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973); Freire, supra n.19
91. D. Milovanovic, Postmodern Criminology: Mapping the Terrain Justice Quarterly 1314 (1996), 567-610;
92. E. Ragland-Sullivan, Lacan's Seminars on James JoycePsychoanalysis and ..., ed. R. Feldstein and H. Sussman (New York: Routledge, 1990), 67-86.
93. E. Ragland-Sullivan, Essays on the Pleasures of Death (New York: Routledge, 1995), 49-50;
94. P. Skriabine, Clinique et Topologie (unpublished manuscript, December, 1989), 21;
95. Granon-Lafont, Topologie, supra n.38, 141-42
96. D. Caudill, Name-of-the-Father' and the Logic of Psychosis: Lacan's Law and Ours Legal Studies Forum 16/4 (1992), 79-98.
97. D. Milovanovic, The Decentered Subject in Law: Contributions of Topology, Psychoanalytic Semiotics and ChaologyStudies in Psychoanalytic Theory 3/1 (1994), 93-127
98. Freire, Education, supra n.19, 50.
99. Supra n.16, at 339
100. J. Grant, Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core of Feminist Theory (New York: York: Routledge), 1993.
101. Supra n.44, at 118-119
102. J. Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984);
103. J. Kristeva, Desire in Language (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980).
104. E. Goffman, Forms of Talk (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981);
105. Interaction Ritual (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969).
106. This notion is consistent with postmodern sensibilities about the nature of truth and knowledge. See B. Arrigo, The Peripheral Core of Law and Criminology: On Postmodern Social Theory and Conceptual IntegrationJustice Quarterly 12/3 (1995), 447-472.
107. Supra n.40, at 57-67
108. The Politics of Education, supra n.19, 50
109. This process is consistent with what Giroux describes as "a politics and pedagogy developed around new languages of possibility capable of acknowledging the multiple, contradictory, and complex subject positions people occupy within different social, cultural, and economic relations." H. Giroux, Border Crossings (New York: Routledge, 1992), 21.
110. Supra n.54, at 19-36, 131-141, 170-176; R. Lippens, Border-Crossing Criminology Theoretical Criminology 2/1 (1997) 119-151.
111. As Giroux puts it, "There are no unified subjects here, only students whose multilayered and often contradictory voices and experiences intermingle with the weight of particular histories that will not fit easily into the master narrative of... monolithic cultures ... Borderlands should be seen as sites for both critical analysis and as ... potential source[s] of experimentation, creativity, and possibility." Supra n.52, at 34.