LACAN AND MEANING
SEXUATION, DISCOURSE THEORY, AND TOPOLOGY IN THE AGE OF HERMENEUTICS
CHAPTER 1
PETITIONS TO MEANING
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Germany, the second wave of critical theory ostensibly stands closer to the new approach. This is not due to any abandonment of the subject-object schema, however. For Habermas and Apel equally decry the erratic nature of Gadamerian-styled research, and opt instead to erect a methodological framework for the human sciences in the spirit of Dilthey. Much like Betti and Hirsch, they re-instrumentalize hermeneutics by placing Diltheyan objectifications at the center of their project. These are the objects of an objectively valid knowledge and form the basis of a sound methodology for all four men. Yet there is an important difference to note between Betti-Hirsch and Habermas-Apel. Roughly speaking, the historicity of understanding informs the materialism of the latter. This places critical theory within closer striking distance of hermeneutical phenomenology. Against this background, the former appear as an inconsequential threat, their work amounting to little more than Romantic hermeneutics made palatable for 20
More specifically, Betti and Hirsch follow Dilthey in assuming that the author’s intended meaning can unproblematically objectify [vergegenständlichen] into his text. They bemoan the general move away from these objectifications and seek to demonstrate how they readily lend themselves to the statements of natural science. In contrast, Habermas argues that objectifications only effectively express authorial intent under non-repressive conditions. Since all societies have historically been repressive, all objectifications distort authorial intent. The interpretive process thus begins with a corrupt text. To restore it to its full meaning, a hermeneutics composed solely of philological procedures is inadequate. This could only reclaim conscious intent. But a hermeneutics modeled on (Freudian) psychoanalysis could trace textual corruptions back to the self-deceptions of an author dwelling in repressive social conditions. This would reveal the unconscious meaning of the corruptions to the interpreter, simultaneously canceling the efficacy of those historical forces behind his own self-deceptions. In other words, full understanding occurs when the interpreter reflects the corrupt text and himself simultaneously as moments of an encompassing objective structure. What results are the true objects of interpretation, those which objectivate [objektivieren] through the process of realigning objectifications with authorial intent. But in no way are objectivations meanings of Dasein. For they are seized conceptually by a subject capable of objectively comprehending itself in its own self-formative process. With Habermas, the hermeneutical circle of understanding becomes a means for liberating subjects.
To be sure, critical theory expressly directs these means towards the liberation of humanity. Since distortions are casually linked to existing social conditions, hermeneutical technique should be used at the intersubjective level whenever a disturbance of consensus manifests itself. This ideally moves all subjects towards a mutual understanding free of external coercion. Hermeneutics is thus a tool to achieve universal ends, and not a universal end in
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