Subjektets alkemi: en diffraktiv analys av subjektet och meningens konstitution genom performativitet och fetischism

Abstract

This essay investigates the performative and fetishized constitution of meaning, and the performative and fetishized subject. It is a diffractive analysis, inspired by Karen Barad, by a series of philosophical and psychoanalytical texts. The aim is to mix theory about fetishism with theory about performativity, to investigate the becoming of meaning and the function of faith in this becoming, as well as to use this speech about meaning, faith, fetishism, and performativity in a theorizing about subjectivity. Meaning is performatively constituted, and shimmers in a transcendent way, a shimmering that consists of fetishistic belief, which is equivalent to knowledge. To know the transcendent truth of meaning is a condition for the existence of meaning at all. The transcendental subject is our self-image, which, like other meanings, is constituted performatively and believed in fetishisticly. By believing in the transcendental subject, possible alternative meanings as well as non-meanings are displaced, which calms the individual and reassures existing regimes of signs. Self-images as well as other meanings are created by labour. They are epistemological products, but are misconceived as ontological primates. This is the fetishistic displacement that is the genesis of meaning.