Mladen Dolar (University of Ljubljana): The Punning of Reason
The title, the punning of reason, is obviously calqued on the notorious Hegelian cunning of reason, immediately bringing together the universality of reason and the contingency of punning, making them coincide. The paper will propose a brief history of the fate of homonymy in relation to universal concepts, starting with Aristotle’s ban on homonymy on the first page of his Logic, then examining the discussion of punning during the heyday of the enlightenment (e.g. with Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Defence of Punning”), to continue with Hegel’s most telling word plays and their strategic function in dialectical thought, and to finish this brief survey with Lacan and the examination of the linguistic incest.