[D66] What’s in a Name?

[A.O.]

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Janša would, were he not Janša call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.”
Romeo and Juliet, II, 2, 43–49


*Mladen Dolar
What’s in a Name?*

A name always bears a symbolic mandate. As soon as false pretenders 
appear, questions arise as to the symbolic mandate’s power, its validity 
and justification. Names refer to genealogies, yet thereby always 
involve a certain distribution of power. To arrogate a name is to 
arrogate power. There is a claim to power in every name, in assuming the 
social role that goes with it, in transmitting symbolic legacy, in 
social impact, in genealogical inscription. The story of false 
pretenders entails the moment of bemusement – one’s feeling that, 
really, one is always a false pretender, as there’s no way one could 
inhabit a name legitimately, naturally, feeling fully justified bearing 
the name one bears. No sufficient grounds can ever substantiate it; no 
name is ever covered by the Leibnizian principle of sufficient reason. 
The feeling of being an impostor, false pretender to a name, isn’t 
personal sentiment or idiosyncrasy; it’s a structural feeling 
accompanying names – their shadow and effect.

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Language: English
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*eBOOK (ePUB)* 
<http://www.aksioma.org/pdf/Mladen-Dolar_Whats-in-a-Name.epub> and 
*(PDF)* <http://www.aksioma.org/pdf/Mladen-Dolar_Whats-in-a-Name.pdf> 
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Mladen Dolar is Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the
Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. His principal
areas of research are psychoanalysis, modern French philosophy,
German idealism and art theory. He has lectured extensively at
universities in the US and across Europe, he is the author of over
a hundred papers in scholarly journals and volume collections.
Apart from ten books in Slovene, his book publications include
most notably A Voice and Nothing More (MIT 2006, translated
into six languages) and Opera’s Second Death (with Slavoj Žižek,
Routledge 2001, also translated into several languages). He is the
co-founder of what has become known as ‘the Ljubljana School’.

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