[-empyre-] Matrixial and phallic space - Panopticon (forward from Richard White)

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

this message bounced as it probably was not in plain text. here 
forwarded from Richard ... thanks \
cm

From: Richard White <djbeata@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Apr 26, 2005  1:27:21 PM US/Pacific
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Matrixial and phallic space - Panopticon


I've been browsing this thread with some interest and wanted to make an 
intervention regarding this issue of matrixial space. If matrixial 
space is a "supplementary symbolic space" to the phallic, how is the 
way information is produced, circulated and consumed (i.e. "media") 
in matrixial space different than phallic space? For example, drawing 
on Foucault's notion of the Panopticon, the Dutch art and design 
theorist M Terpstra theorises a "mediatised space" ("a combination of 
physical space and all information media") which suggests there is 
no way of escaping the phallic space of the Panopticon, even in what we 
regard as private or personal space. (See 
http://www.9nerds.com/marten/articles/panopticon.html ;) How is 
information (and hence subjectivity) articulated in matrixial space? I 
think some engagement with Lacanian theory is in order here, speci 
fically in reference to the idea that language precedes and determines 
subjectivity. There is a wealth of feminist criticism on Lacan that 
would be fruitful here - perhaps Lacan has been mentioned in another 
thread in relation to matrixial space and I have missed it?
 
Richard\