Jean-Claude Milner

Jean-Claude Milner (born in 1941, Paris) is a linguist, philosopher and a French essayist. In particular, he is a specialist in the field of both linguistics (which he studied with Roland Barthes) and psychoanalysis (through the teaching and friendship of Jacques Lacan). Milner performed part of his studies in the United States at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and that led to his French translation of Noam Chomsky's "Aspects of Syntactic Theory" in 1971.[1] This translation of Chomsky's work established the terminology in the French school of generative grammar and contributed strongly to the reception of this theory in France.[2] He is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot

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Life and work

Born in Paris where he still lives, Milner is the son of an immigrant Jewish father from Lithuania and an Alsatian mother of Protestant tradition.

After studies in second year preparatory class for humanities during high school, Milner studied at both École Normale Supérieure and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not only was his education shaped by the thought and teaching of Louis Althusser, it was influenced by his friendship with Jacques-Alain Miller, the future son-in-law of Jacques Lacan. Both Miller and Milner attended Lacan's seminars held at the ENS and their friendship would be instrumental in the founding and direction of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse several years later.[3]

Affiliated with the Maoist movement of proletarian Left from 1968 to 1971, Milner would find his own political evolution [4] through his association with Benny Lévy (not to be confused with Bernard-Henri Lévy). Finally of note, is the importance for Milner of his training and education under the tutelage of Roland Barthes combined with a close reading of Roman Jakobson.[3]

After his initial association with Chomsky's linguistic theories, Milner's work took a different turn. His "Introduction to a Science of Language" (1989) melds a general linguistics theory that rests on a radical separation between sense and syntax (theory of syntactic positions) together with an epistemology combining contributions of Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos and was thus able to tackle a key epistemological problem of the scientific status of Lacan's theories.[5] In this way, Milner followed upon the subsequent developments of Chomskyian theory though he did not adhere to the hypothesis of a biological justification for it defended by Chomsky.

Milner's later work, such as the English publication of For the Love of Language, has been called a "path-breaking reflection on the consequences of Lacan's theory for the study of language".[6] Into the 21st century Milner is known, particularly in France, for his essays concerning anti-Semitism in European history and culture. For the past several years, he has held a seminar devoted to this theme at the Institut d’études levinassiennes in Paris.[3]

As of 2010, Milner is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Université de Paris VII.[3]

Selected publications

English
French

External links

References

  1. ^ Aspects de la theorie syntaxique: trad de l'anglais par jean-claude milner, Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1971
  2. ^ Jean-Claude Milner from Wikipedia France
  3. ^ a b c d "Jean-Claude Milner's Homepage at Concept and Form: The Cahiers pour l'Analyse and Contemporary French Thought". Web.mdx.ac.uk. 2010-03-31. http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/cahiers/names/milner.html. Retrieved 2011-06-18. 
  4. ^ some like Alain Badiou might call it a de-evolution
  5. ^ "The Doctrine of Science", translated by Oliver Feltham. Umbr(a): A Journal of the Unconscious, Science, and Truth. (2000), pp.33-63
  6. ^ "Introduction". Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Volume 2/Philosophy, edited by Slavoj Zizek. New York: Routledge, 2002; p. 8