Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

30314 I am borrowing this term from Derrida. “Hauntology,” comprised of haunting and ontology, islinked to the paradoxical nature of the specter, to the past and the present at the same time. AsDerrida argues in his Specters of Marx: “To haunt does not mean to be present, and it is necessary tointroduce haunting into the very construction of a concept. Of every concept, beginning with theconcepts of being and time. That is what we would be calling here a hauntology. Ontology opposes itonly in a movement of exorcism. Ontology is a conjuration (161).15 The sovereignty of the subject is no longer located in the confined realm of the cogito; it is locatedin the microphysics of power. Instead of the classical Cartesian cogito, we have a new cogitoIcontrol, therefore I exist. The crisis of subjectivity and the implosion of the Cartesian cogito areemphasized by Althusser whose works come as an “epistemological break” with traditional Westernphilosophy. His re-reading of Marx and Ideology promote a new model of subjectivity. Althusserdraws upon Lacan’s theory to understand the dynamics of ideology. He argues that for Marx,Ideology is “thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status ofthe dream among writers before Freud. For those writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e.null, result of the ‘day’s residues’” (108). Althusser, unlike Marx, builds his understanding ofIdeology on Lacan’s understanding of reality and the world individuals construct around them aftertheir stepping into the Symbolic Order. The Symbolic Order is the realm of language, inter-subjectivelinguistic communications, and the knowledge of ideological standards. To be recognized as aspeaking subject, one has to submit to the Law-of-the Father.