Topology and Psychoanalysis: Rhe-torically Restructuring the Subject

Abstract

Although a topological account of the psychoanalytic subject had been of interest to Jacques Lacan since the early 1950s, it was not until the late 1970s that Lacan fully embraced knot theory. Following the genealogy of this topological turn, this chapter suggests that Lacan’s development of topology is simultaneously a pivot toward a psychoanalytic praxis of rhetoric. Lacanian knot theory enables rhetorician and analyst alike to articulate the various situations and discourses the subject is caught up within without diminishing their multiplicity. Thus, clinical and pedagogical topology opens up novel means of rhetorical invention. If in his turn toward topology Lacan suggests new ways of writing the subject, then this chapter shows how the intersection of topology and psychoanalysis creates a (rhe)torical praxis that remains open to the Other in its discordant diversity.

Every knot says a lot

—James Joyce