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Historicism and Lacanian Theory Historicism and Lacanian theory Dylan Evans In 1977 Luce Irigaray published a passionately on the social relations that characterized a specific written article in the journal Critique, entitled 'The moment in history, thus becoming 'the defenders of Poverty of Psychoanalysis'. The text is a richly an existing order, the agents or servants of repression woven tapestry of diverse references and poetic and censorship ensuring that this order subsists as resonances, and merits a close reading. However, though it were the only possible order'. 3 rather than using Irigaray's essay as an exercise in In her references to Marx, .and specifically in her textual analysis, I will use it here as a springboard for attack on the ahistoricism of Lacanian psychoanalysis, discussing certain aspects of the relationship between Irigaray must herself be inscribed in a historical historicism and psychoanalytic theory. * tradition within psychoanalytic theory. This tradition This relationship is evoked by the very title of goes back to the 1920s, when dialectical materialism Irigaray's text. This title, which Irigaray declared first locked horns with psychoanalysis. Before this would be incomprehensible to most of the analysts at time, psychoanalysts seem to have given no con­ whom the article was directed, I alludes to the title of sideration to the question of the historical relativity a book by Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy of their models of psychic structure. In most of (1847). Marx's work is an attack on the economic Freud's writings, for example, it is as if the'" dimension doctrines of Proudhon, whom he accuses of ignoring of history had been suspended, so that it is easy to the historical relativity of economic categories. Marx see the model of the ego, the id and the superego as argues that Proudhon is guilty of one of the charac­ an eternal Platonic form, a shining jewel invulnerable teristic fallacies of bourgeois ideology: in de­ to the vagaries of time. In so far as history is dis­ historicizing the ideas of his society, Proudhon cussed, it is always in terms of a myth of origins presents capitalism, not as a transient mode of which anchors the unchangeability of the psyche in a production, but as a universal feature of the human primal crime of biblical proportions. condition. Refuting Proudhon with typical aplomb, In the first decades of this century, then, Freudian Marx states that 'these ideas, these categories, are as theory seemed positively to invite a critique of the little eternal as the relations they express. They are kind Marx levelled at Proudhon. The Communist historical and transitory products.'2 Party was not long in accepting this invitation and by In alluding to this work by Marx, lrigaray makes 1930 it had declared Pavlovian psychology to be the it clear that her article will proceed along the same only one compatible with dialectical materialism, lines. Indeed, the parallel is perfect. Just as Marx while psychoanalysis was accused of being a criticizes Proudhon for his failure to realize that his bourgeois ideology. economic concepts were products of a specific It was not long before analysts themselves began historical epoch, so Irigaray accuses Lacan and his to respond to this accusation. In his pathbreaking followers of ignoring the historical relativity of their essay of 1932, Erich Fromm conceded that most own theoretical constructs. According to Irigaray, analysts had 'almost completely overlooked the fact Lacanian analysts foreclose all questions relating to that the family itself ... is the product of a specific the history in which psychoanalytic theory is social and ... class structure' and that in doing so inscribed, as if this theory were 'whole, absolute and 'they had turned bourgeois capitalist society into an without any historical foundations'. In this way, like absolute'. However, Fromm argued that the blame for Proudhon, Lacanians had conferred universal validity this ideological distortion 'did not rest with psycho- R a die a I Phi I 0 sop h y 79 (S e p t I 0 c t 1 9 9 6) 35 analysis as such' but with the bourgeois psycho­ The crux of her argument, however, turns on what analysts who 'did not utilize this method in a correct she calls Lacan' s concept of 'the psychical fantasy of way when they transferred it from the individual to woman'. Brennan links this concept to what she social groups and social phenomena'. When the describes as 'Lacan's theory of the ego's era' and classical psychoanalytic method is applied 'in a concludes that Lacan provides us with a way of logical way' to social phenomena, said Fromm, understanding modernity and its discontents, which psychoanalysis and historical materialism are seen to she terms a 'social psychosis'. This, she argues, is dovetail harmoniously. Historical materialism could sufficient to rebut claims that Lacan is an ahistorical enrich psychoanalysis by bringing to light the eco­ thinker.7 nomic conditions which influenced psychic structures, Brennan's reading of Lacan is not only highly idio­ and psychoanalysis could enrich historical material­ syncratic; it also gets a number of things wrong. It ism by providing 'a more comprehensive knowledge was not Lacan, as Brennan seems to suggest, who of ... the nature of man himself'.4 first proposed that men tend to split women into two Fromm's great interlocutor, Herbert Marcuse, was types, mother and whore, who are idealized and another writer to confront the problem of the historical denigrated accordingly, but Freud.8 She also ignores relativity of psychoanalytic categories. Like Fromm, the most important texts in which Lacan discusses Marcuse regarded psychic structure as a relatively questions of history, as I hope to demonstrate. Finally, mutable entity, changing in accordance with the the phrases on which Brennan places so much impor­ structure of society, but differed from Fromm in his tance, and which she attributes to Lacan - 'the ego's analysis of these changes. In his 1963 essay 'The era' and the 'psychical fantasy of woman' - are in Obsolescence of the Freudian Concept of Man' he ar­ fact nowhere to be found in any of Lacan's works. gued that the structure of the human psyche had been In the rest of this paper, I will attempt to defend so affected by industrialization that Freud's models of Lacan against the accusations of ahistoricism levelled psychic structure were no longer applicable. Primary against him by Irigaray and others. In line with among the changes wrought by industrialization was Theresa Brennan I will argue that Lacan does in fact the 'decline in the role of the father', which led to a engage in a profound and complex way with prob­ 'shrinkage of the ego', by which Marcuse meant a loss lems of history. However, whereas Brennan attempts of private autonomy and rationality.5 to develop a historical metanarrative on the basis ·of The questions raised in Irigaray's paper are thus Lacan's works, I am more concerned to show how hardly new to psychoanalysis. What is original about Lacan stresses the historical relativity of psycho­ her paper is the specific targeting of Lacanian psycho­ analytical concepts. I will focus particularly on analysis as the object of the critique. Whereas Fromm Lacan's discussion of the historical emergence of the and Marcuse address themselves to Freud, Irigaray Oedipus complex and of the modern ego, before addresses herself to Lacan, explicitly denouncing presenting Lacan's concept of the 'lure of the already­ what she dubs 'the Lacanian code'. there' as a way of exploring the problems which beset Irigaray is certainly not alone in representing attempts by psychoanalysis to theorize its historical Lacan as an ahistorical thinker. As both David Macey bases. I will conclude with an attempt to situate and Theresa Brennan point out, commentators have Irigaray's paper in its own historical context. tended to assimilate Lacan into the structuralist move­ ment, thus neglecting the thoroughly historical dimen­ The relativity of the sion of his thought. Both Macey and Brennan have Oedipus complex attempted to remedy this misrepresentation, although In his first work to address the Oedipus complex in in different ways: Macey by setting Lacan in the any detail, an article on the family published in 1938, context of his own historical and theoretical back­ Lacan insists that the complex must not be under­ ground, Brennan by elaborating what she calls stood outside its sociological relativity, which he 'Lacan's theory of the ego's era'.6 takes to be the context of the 'paternalist family'. Brennan construes Lacan as providing the basis of Only a decade after the famous dispute between a new general theory of history to fill the void left by Malinowski and Jones over the cultural relativity of the death of Marxism. She elaborates a notion of what the Oedipus complex, Lacan clearly aligns himself she calls 'Lacan's spatial dialectic' to explain a with Malinowski in arguing that the complex is variety of phenomena ranging from urbanization and relative to a particular (patriarchal) social structure. the ecological crisis through to imperialism and war. Referring to Malinowski's research on the family 36 structure of the Trobriand Islanders, which is based that 'comes to him from all sides' .12 Similar notions on a matrilineal system of inheritance, Lacan concurs are put forward by Lacan in his 1938 article on the that it is impossible to speak of an Oedipus complex family, where he mentions in passing that the 'psy­ here. Instead, he posits a different kind of psychic chology of modern man' arose simultaneously with structure, in which the embodiment of the authority bourgeois society out of the economic revolution of figure and the protective function in separate people the fifteenth century.
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