US Blues—Bury the Hatchet

By | November 22nd, 2018|LRO 106|

Asked about her commitment to running for and again leading the United States House of Representatives as Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi replied "It's an urgency I can't resist.”[1] This use of the relatively uncommon (at least, in the United States) word urgency of course evokes the upcoming Congress of the New Lacanian School [...]

The Cambridge Analytica Scandal as Symptom?

By | September 29th, 2018|LRO 93|

States began treating civil populations like data sets in the late 1990s.[1] In 2002, the National Security Agency (NSA), established its Information Awareness Office (IAO), whose motto is Scientia est potentia – knowledge is power. Since knowledge was now being produced in “ones and zeroes”, the agency understood it had to reorient its gaze.[2] A [...]

Refugee Lives Matter

By | September 7th, 2018|LRO 87|

As psychoanalysts we can hardly claim to have answers to all the ills, political or otherwise, of modern civilisation. But as practitioners of speech and language we can at least strive to pay attention to what is at stake in some of the discourses currently taking shape around us. The recent resurgence of far-right political [...]

To Trump Death

By | April 1st, 2016|LRO 27|

And for 8 years now a strange being has been leading the country: an elegant man, in tailored suits, who seems to apologize for his country on a regular basis, but who never seems to change much of anything. A man who was exhausted after having finally arrived at the White House. One who, as [...]

Donald Trump’s Lunatic Fringe

By | December 4th, 2015|LRO 11|

Media discussions concerned its style, ‘a sunken apricot soufflé’, its preparation, whether Trump uses spray or gel, and even its ‘tactile feel and texture’.2 Scurrilous reports suggested that the toupee was made of ‘the hair of the critically-endangered Brown Spider Monkey of Columbia’ and the pubic plume of the water buffalo.3 Earlier in the year, [...]