Lacanian psychoanalysis, especialy as elaborated by Zizek, ofers an account of four discourses, four diferent models of the social bond: discourses of the master, the hysteric, the university, and the analyst.9 Lacan developed these four discourses in part to account for diferences in the ways that discourses function, diferences in the kinds of social links they provide and the kinds of suppositions and requirements that structure them. In brie£ the four discourses are sets of formulae that distinguish between speaking and the place from which something is spoken. For example, my question "What are you doing?" cart be understood in a variety of ways, depending on my addressee as well as on what underlies or supports my asking of the question. If I ask my young daughter, "What are you doing?" I am likely speaking from a parental position. If I ask a political leader, ''What are you doing?" I may be challenging her authority; caling upon her to justify her policies and decisions. If I ask an associate in my laboratory, "What are you doing?" I may be speaking as a felow scientist engaged in the production of knowledge. Lacan formulates the diferences among these questions as diferent discourses, diferent ways that communi.cation establishes a social link. These three situations are examples of the discourse of the master, the discourse of the hysteric, and the discourse of the university.
I can also participate in discourse without saying anything at all: I can �ust sit there, mute and impassive. In this way, I confront the other as a kind of object or catalyst. She will likely project diferent sorts of knowledge, desires, and motives onto me. I can accept this projection and claim this knowledge, positioning myself perversely as the one who knows the real truth behind her words. Or I can remain impassive, challenging her to accept that there really is no secret truth for me to know, challenging her, in other words,- to accept responsibility for herself. This fourth situation, one in which an object is in the position of speaking agent, is the discourse of the pervert as wel as the discourse of the analyst.
The discourse of the master is the first ofLacan's four discourses or four accounts of the social link provided in communication. Its structure is rooted in the absolute authority of the master's word. The master's word is law-even if it seems unfair or crazy. So the master can say; "Do this" or "Do that;' "Pick that cotton;' "Kneel!" or "Go fight that battle !" Any of these injunctions is acceptable within the discourse of the master simply because the master said it. The second discourse, the hysteric's, takes form when the subject challenges the master's word. Read politically; this discourse follows a logic of "protest and resistance;' of demands that can never actually be met, that perpetually shift because they are never reall<sub>y</sub> about what is actually demanded.10 In the third discourse, the discourse of the university, knowledge occupies the position of speaking agent. Consequently, Zizek reads the political bond established by this discourse as the rule of experts.11 Finaly; he argues that the political bond proper to the discourse of the analyst is "radical-revolutionary politics:' Here, the excluded, symptomal point of the situation is the speaking position. The risks of such a political formation appear in the fact that this formula is also that of the perverse discourse. In the perverse discourse, the object that speaks positions itself as an instrument in behalf of the other, an instrument grounded in knowledge of what is best for the subject or other.
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