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Repetition Repeated: Reconstructing A Lacanian Subjectivity Through Kierkegaardian Repetition, Thomas R. Ryan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When Descartes declared “Cogito ergo sum,” he triggered a fundamental shift in the trajectory and scope of the philosophical discourse. Hegel called this the beginning of modern philosophy, but the Cartesian cogito elevated human reason, ushered the Enlightenment, and led to scientific and political revolutions. But as Slavoj Zizek has pointed out, almost from the moment Descartes posited the mind-body problem, there was an anxiety about what it meant to be “one who thinks.”1 This anxiety presents itself as a continuous questioning of the ontology of the subject, and ultimately, whether there is a subject at all. By the time …