Matheme
| French: mathème |
Background
The matheme is a concept introduced in the work of Jacques Lacan.
The term "matheme" is a neologism coined by Jacques Lacan in the early 1970s.
Formed by derivation from "mathematics" and by analogy with phoneme and Lévi-Strauss's mytheme,[1] the term is an equivalent to "mathematical sign". It is not used in conventional mathematics, but is part of Lacan's algebra.
They are formulae designed as symbolic representations of his ideas and analyses.
They were intended to introduce some degree of scientific rigour in philosophical and psychological writing, replacing the often hard to understand verbal descriptions with formulae resembling those used in the hard sciences, and as an easy way to hold, remember and rehearse some of the core ideas of both Freud and Lacan.
For example: $ <> a is the matheme for fantasy for Lacan.
"Matheme", for Lacan, was not simply the imitation of science by philosophy, but the ideal of a perfect means for the integral transmission of knowledge.
Natural language, with its constant "metonymic slide", fails here, where mathematics succeeds.
Though sometimes disparaged as a case of "physics envy" or accused of introducing false rigor into a discpline that is more literary theory than hard science, there is also something of a sense of humor in Lacan's mathemes.
See Also
References
- ↑ Mytheme is a term coined by Claude Lévi-Strauss to denote the basic constituents of mythological systems.
