Foucault and Parapraxis

Abstract

One of the unnoticed signs of a shift in contemporary political discourse is a specific turn in the status of the slip of the tongue, the parapraxis. If, until recently, a political slip functioned as a reproductive break in the discourse, then, today, the effect of a formal, signifying slip of the tongue is neutralized and consensually tolerated in advance, remaining in a certain sense unrecognised – but precisely the suspense of the slip brings about its objectification, which opens up the possibility of a different theory of the slip and the political parapraxis. This is precisely the point where the outer edges of Foucault’s and Freud’s discourses meet.