Johan Schokker
Researcher Theory / CliC
01.08.04 – 31.07.06
How must we think the raise of global capitalism in Lacanian terms and what are the effects of this ideology on modern subjectivity? The decline of what in Lacanian theory is designated as the Name-of-the-father is undeniable; master-signifiers as ‘family’, ‘religion’, ‘class’ and ‘gender’, which used to give the identity of the subject a firm ground, are adrift. The consequences of this drift are many-sided: one no longer has a job for life, but a career and several employers, sometimes even at the same time. The same goes for relationships: the constitution of families changes easily in time. whereas faith in a religion is not given at birth but is found after a process of discovery, and life itself is experienced as a search for identity and ‘inner growth’, not as a mission to earn Eternal Life in the hereafter. But it is clear that the freedom to mould our lives also has a negative side. Besides the fact that our identities have become difficult to sustain, reality itself is becoming frail. To counter this, a key feature of modern life is the attempt to get rid of the false layers of ‘deceptive’ reality and to aim for ‘the Thing itself’. The urge for adventure and the masochistic celebration of pain are examples of this ‘passion of the Real’. In my project I want to analyze the new manifestations of modern subjectivity and try to discover their logic with Lacanian theory as a dissecting tool.
Johan Schokker (1964) studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam and has been working in different fields of social research, in recent years mainly in the field of educational policy. In collaboration with Tim Schokker he published a book on Lacanian psychoanalysis into Dutch (Extimiteit. Jacques Lacans Terugkeer naar Freud, awarded by the Foundation for ‘Psychiatrie en Filosofie’). He is also a member of the ‘Kring voor psychoanalyse van de New Lacanian School’ (founded in May 2003).