repudiation

1. The act of repudiating or the state of being repudiated.
2. The refusal, especially by public authorities, to acknowledge a contract or debt.

Speculation is rife about how the French nation's repudiation of the EU constitution will affect the political fortunes of President Jacques Chirac. Before the vote,

"Mr. Chirac had vowed not to change his government if the referendum failed, saying it was 'neither a plebiscite nor a moment of political change.'"

Either way, the rejection could signal a halt to European expansion and unification.

Link: French Voters Soundly Reject European Union Constitution

Posted May 31, 2005.

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The inability to deny the integrity and authenticity of a document.

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When one party refuses to honor their terms in a loan contract.

Investopedia Says:
This is often seen when a new government is elected and refuses to settle debts acquired by a previous government.

Intentional refusal to pay an obligation, usually the act of a government or a government agency. Repudiation differs from Default or Moratorium.

Definition: denial
Antonyms: acknowledgment, confirmation

The term repudiation is the most literal translation of the terms Verwerfung ("foreclosure") and Verleugnung ("denial-disavowal") that Sigmund Freud used to refer to a psychic act he wanted to distinguish clearly from repression.

In his commentary on the "Wolf Man" he declared that "A repression [Verdrängung] is something different from a repudiation [Verwerfung]," (1918 [1914]). Indeed, repression, while it erases an unpleasurable idea from consciousness, cannot prevent this idea from "working" to produce symbolic derivatives in the form of symptoms. Repudiation, by comparison, consists in invalidating a perception or mental representation, and thus is a way that allows it to remain conscious, but emptied of meaning; it is thus unable to have a role in the subject's fantasy life.

The ultimate form of repudiation exists in what Jacques Lacan called foreclosure, where the representation is incapable of playing any symbolic role whatsoever (foreclosure in the Name-of-the-Father). But it can manifest itself elsewhere in a paradoxical manner by becoming inscribed within the individual topology of the split ego. In that case it will effect the kind of repudiation-disavowal seen in the so-called perverse structures. In any event, to varying degrees, such failure to symbolize an idea makes it impossible for the mental representation to be a part of the subject's mental and fantasy life.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1918b [1914]). From the history of an infantile neurosis. SE, 17: 1-122.

Lacan, Jacques. (1966). Du sujet enfin en question. In his Écrits (pp. 73-92). Paris: Seuil.

—BERNARD PENOT

The rejection or refusal of a duty, relation, right, or privilege.

Repudiation of a contract means a refusal to perform the duty or obligation owed to the other party.

Anticipatory repudiation is an act or declaration before performance is due under a contract that indicates that the party will not perform his or her obligation on the future date specified in the contract.