A misleading term. What is the problem at the basis of the disputes and confusions? And, what is at stake? Clearly it is meant to mark a break with structuralism. It is worth starting with the origina [..]

Kuhn (1962) in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions addressed the problem of how scientists went about their daily work as scientists: what frames their investigations, what rules guide their pract [..]

One can think of over-determination as a specific case of complex or mul¬tiple determination, that is, as situations and occurrences where there is no one simple cause in the form of A causes B. Inste [..]

The term other immediately brings up a two term relation: the same and the other, the I and ‘You’, identity and otherness. At the most immediate level, there is the recognition that each person exists [..]

I use imaginary by reference to Lacan’s use of the term. In Lacan it is always one of three inter-related terms, the other two being the Symbolic and the Real. The capitals indicate the difference fro [..]

The term hegemon refers to a leader, a dominant power or state. The concept has mainly been developed by Gramsci (1971). The problem which the concept in Gramsci addresses is this: domination can be s [..]

It is difficult to avoid the term in any discussion of the state of the world. But interpretation and attitudes vary so much that one can only disengage some broad trends and characteristics from the [..]

The everyday use of the term points to ancestry or lines of descent in tracing the blood line of a particular person. In this case we know the process of generation and only need retrace the parental [..]

The term designates the conceptual structure that frames knowledge in particular periods and places. Though admittedly a vague concept, its main fruitfulness for analysis is to point to the intrinsic [..]

Desire is one of a complicated cluster of terms in psychoanalytic theory which is fraught with problems. Desire – in Lacan, Kristeva, Deleuze and Guattari, as distinct from the term ‘wish’ or Wunsch i [..]