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

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2018

Publication Title

Philosophy and Rhetoric

Volume

51

Issue

2

First page number:

151

Last page number:

175

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.

Keywords

Rhetorical theory; Object-oriented ontology; Onticology; New materialism; Lacanian register

Disciplines

Other Rhetoric and Composition

Language

English

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