Journal 8

French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan, developed four fundamental types of discourses. He created four discourses which he named, Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst and believed they all relate to one another. According to Lacan, a discourse refers to a point where speech and language intersect. The four discourses portray the four possible combinations of a network which social bonds could take. These bonds can be represented by four different positions:the agent, the other, the product, and the truth. One discourse he developed was titled Discourse of the Master. This concept analyzed the struggle for mastery, domination, and penetration dealing with a master and his slaves. In this discourse, the master is expressed as S1, the master signifier. The master confronts the slave which is expressed as S2. The slave is what the discourse is addressed to. In the lower right stands desire. Desire is what the discourse has created. Masters desire obedience, duty, and sexual obedience from their slaves. Finally, the product of the discourse is placed in the lower left. The product is what the discourse attempted to express. In this case, the discourse was meant to express a gathering of money. The slaves work for the master. Whatever products the slaves make are sold on the market. The master gains profit from products sold on the market.