This paper deconstructs the symbolic architecture of control and liberation through an interdisciplinary lens, weaving together Islamic esotericism, art history, and psychoanalysis. Beginning with the magic squares of Ahmad al-Būnī—understood as pre-modern algorithms for binding angels—it traces their influence to Albrecht Dürer’s engraving Melencolia I. The analysis centers on two

This essay explores the architectural and philosophical concept of “orthogonality” through the lens of melancholia. It posits that the fundamental, perpendicular structure of pillars serves not only as a physical support but also as a diagrammatic representation of the human condition—a structure simultaneously embodying strength and the profound weight of

A house shelters you from the world; a home reveals who you are within it. Let us start with etymology. There is a lot that we can learn from the etymology of “house” and “home”, showing how these terms evolved to differentiate as well as represent both physical and emotional

This working paper explores Lacan’s Seminar XIII, Session 7, through the figure of Zoleikha, the wife of Potiphar in Islamic accounts. Drawing on Lacanian concepts of demand, desire, and topological structures like the torus, it examines her obsessive love for Joseph as a paradoxical shift from metonymy to metaphor. Insights

This is one of the first texts written for the project ‘The Point Is…,’ a visual philosophical endeavor that I hope to collaborate on with Claudio Sagribi in 2025, or whenever The Point reveals some of its hidden features to us.

The story of the wife of Potiphar reflects how desire spirals within the Big Other (the symbolic order). The Big Other, often represented as “A,” structures the subject’s world: She named everything after his name, Joseph. The Big Other determines what is possible and what is forbidden, operating within the

This essay explores how a simple grammatical slip—like a misspelled “skeepdog”—can act as a “faulty instruction” that reveals the hidden structure of desire and language, as theorized by Jacques Lacan. Using the mathematical metaphor of the neglected “phi prime” (φ’), the shadow twin of the golden ratio, the author argues

The Loophole at the Origin: On x = 1/y, Nested Tori, and the Blindness of Continuity Iraj E. Ghoochani Abstract: This essay explores the topological, psychoanalytic, and poetic implications of the reciprocal function x=1/y. Drawing from Lacanian topology, projective geometry, and metaphorical logic, we investigate how singularity at the origin

Before diving in, the reader is encouraged to watch Veritasium’s video “The Riddle That Seems Impossible Even If You Know the Answer” (link), which clearly introduces the 100 prisoners riddle. This logical puzzle will serve as the structural foundation for the Lacanian exploration that follows.

  تعمید و کجسم بحثی در «اتنوتوپولوژی» ایرج اسماعیلپور قوچانی برای آنامورفوز Anamorphism معادلی نیافتم عجالتاْ یک واژه مندرآوردی از نامید: سم» «کج میتوان آن را ترکیب کج و تجسم. تجسمی کج از چیزی. Ethnotopology (The Intersection of Culture and Topology) and Anamorphic Shifts: Copernican Inversions Through Invisible Inversion Circles