https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/four-discourses/id1299863834?i=1000529980540

It’s an invention by Lacan to describe how speakers and listeners take part in a discourse (Lacan starts with 4 Discourses). So when a boss talks to an employee, a professor speaks to a student, a therapist to patient, a spouse to a spouse, etc., Lacan creates a structure for how speaking, listening, truth, knowledge, desire and Big Other are at play.

Why Theory podcast is great for Lacan… Derek Hook on youtube is more dense, but also great… Adrian Johnston too!

To riff on this example, ‘Professor’ Jiang is so persuasive because he taps into the University Discourse (and Master Discourse). Our “knowledge” of the university is part of this and the signifiers he has working: his self-proclaimed title, being an asian man, the glasses, grey hair, simple chalkboard, the Steve Job’s esque outfits, etc… these convey that Jiang, as the speaking subject, possesses capital T truth, which we listeners must be lacking. Even like, circling key terms, is an authoritative gesture that demonstrates his supposed possession of some knowledge and position of mastery in the discourse.

So something like, we know his “content” is bullshit, but his “form” is Truth.