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8 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 67 (1994)
The Postmodernist Turn: Lacan, Psychoanalytic Semiotics, and the Construction of Subjectivity in Law

handle is hein.journals/emint8 and id is 81 raw text is: THE POSTMODERNIST TURN: LACAN, PSYCHOANALYTIC SEMIOTICS, AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY IN LAW* by Dragan Milovanovic** INTRODUCTION The recent emergence of the postmodern approach in law threat- ens to undo conventional legal theorizing. Jacques Lacan's psycho- analytic semiotics is the theoretical framework upon which this critical approach is based. The analyses of several postmodernist feminists are especially insightful concerning the establishment of subjectivity in law and political economy. Postmodernist analysis, which originated in France, has crossed the oceans to the United States, Canada, and Australia. Such anal- ysis is beginning to make itself felt in the area of critical legal anal- ysis in the 1990s. Postmodernist analysis has been embraced predominantly by literature and cinema studies; the implications of such analysis, however, for the study of law on both the national and international levels is significant. Thus, upon consideration of the foregoing preface, the purpose of this Essay is threefold. First, the Essay will discuss briefly the difference between the modernist and postmodernist approach. Second, the Essay will demonstrate the significance of Jacques La- can's work for postmodernist theorizing. Lastly, the Essay will ex- amine how Lacan's psychoanalytic semiotics provides some useful * This Essay is adopted from a paper entitled Postmodern Law and Disorder: Chaos, Psychoanalytic Semiotics, and Directions for a Replacement Discourse, presented by Professor Milovanovic at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, during August, 1992. ** Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Northeastern Illinois University, Chi- cago, Illinois, 60625. B.A., Queen's College (1974); M.A., John Jay College of Criminal Jus- tice (1976); M.A., State University of New York at Albany (1979); Ph.D., State University of New York at Albany, School of Criminal Justice (1987). In 1992 Professor Milovanovic was the co-recipient of an award from the Division on Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology in recognition of research and contributions to the field of critical criminology.

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