‘Extimacy’ (Extimité): From Structural Theory of Language to Affective Theory of ‘Ex-Centric’ Subject*

Abstract

The following exposure of the RSI topological complexities, orienting all the possible (inter)subjectivity, plays on the following two pairs of polarities: external/internal and linguistic/affective (it may be added: structure and topology). Lacan introduces the third possibility of human experience: “extimacy”, linking what is both excluded and intimate. The concept is the lacking link leading from structuralist approaches to language to thoroughly affective subjectivity of any speaking being. Spinosa’s geometrical, highly dynamic system and his “differential calculus of affects” may account for the part that the vicissitudes of drive play in human existence as rooted in the deeply “extimate” sources.