The problem is not that Loughner lost his soul in the folds of the symbolic, but rather that, as someone with an underlying psychotic structure, he never foreclosed on the real and entered into the symbolic realm.

I also agree that a tracing of connections between the shooter’s production of language and circulating political discourses would be both responsible and illuminating, and I don’t doubt that such linguistic detective work will be plentiful in coming days. As for my own (possibly mindless) reproduction of academic incantations, I plead guilty: there is comfort in trotting out well-worn phrases, but I should take care not to mistake these allusions as solid answers. To hazard another poststructuralist observation, Loughner has quickly become a sliding signifier, his “meaning” up for grabs by theoreticians and logicians as surely as by politicians and pundits.

Second, JLL’s particular claims (“I’ve invented a new currency,” “federalist laws violate the constitution,” etc.) can be traced to various linguistic phrases or viruses circulating in contemporary far-right political discourse, especially by the so-called “tea party”; Ron Paul’s rants about our needing to return our dollars to the gold standard, etc. They are hardly as “remote” and isolated as you or the mainstream media commentary have so far implied. I think it would be far more useful to trace some of these connections in specific ways rather than to repeat our own kind of academic viruses about Lacan and the Symbolic Order…. What’s with his ignorant use of the word “federalist,” for example? I guess a gesture towards a repressive central government?

I do agree with you that language ate him up. Unfortunately it also moved him to move from symbolic acts to ones involving automatic weapons; he took his language games in the end as commands.

Best,
-j