PÊCHEUX’S MELANCHOLY:

OR ON THE VIRTUES OF APOSTASY

Abstract

This paper proposes a historical and critical appreciation of one of the last Pêcheux’s writings, The Discourse – Structure or Event?, intended as the basis of a conference in July 1983. Since this writing proposes a severe revision on theoretical, methodological, and political questions discussed by Pêcheux throughout his intellectual career, there is great interest in such an assessment, especially considering our main argument: that the historical changes in French society and politics since 1968 are in the core of Pêcheux’s 1983 revision. The main question approached in this paper is the critical displacement of the structuralist inflection, distancing it from the rigidity of the “subject’s subjetction” on the ennunciation process, and getting more open to the “interpretation process” as an event.