The Lacanian Delusion


Book Description

The ODÉON Series, General Editors: Josue V. Harari, Vincent Descombes, and Greg Sims A multidisciplinary series, ODÉON will serve as a transfer point--much as the station ODEON in the Paris metro--for the many provocative lines of thought that enliven contemporary cultural criticism. ODÉON will publish original works and translations that enhance the intellectual exchange between Europe and the English-speaking world in the areas of literature, philosophy, and historical and political reflection. In this critical exposition, Roustang addresses the question of the Lacanian legend and how it has functioned over the last twenty years. Exploring how it came to be disseminated, Roustang first situates Lacan's influence in the context of the social explosion of the 1960s. What attracted people to Lacan? Roustang argues that beyond a fascination with his extraordinary personage, his linguistic inventiveness, and his vast culture, it was Lacan's all-encompassing discourse that held his audiences spellbound. Lacan offered a highly original mix of philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, ethnology, theology, and more, assembled and reorganized under the aegis of a psychoanalysis that convinced disciples they had a firm hold on the reins of knowledge. Roustang analyzes this knowledge, focusing on the nature of the "Lacanian delusion," the nature of Lacanian discourse, the nature of Lacanian truth, and the reasons for Lacan's success.




After Lacan


Book Description

After Lacan combines abundant case material with graceful yet sophisticated theoretical exposition in order to explore the clinical practice of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Focusing on the groundbreaking clinical treatment of psychosis that Gifric (Groupe Interdisciplinaire Freudien de Recherches et d'Interventions Cliniques et Culturelles) has pioneered in Quebec, the authors discuss how Lacanians theorize psychosis and how Gifric has come to treat it analytically. Chapters are devoted to the general concepts and key terms that constitute the touchstones of the early phase of analytic treatment, elaborating their interrelations and their clinical relevance. The second phase of analytic treatment is also discussed, introducing a new set of terms to understand transference and the ethical act of analysis in the subject's assumption of the Other's lack. The concluding chapters broaden discussion to include the key psychic structures that describe the organization of subjectivity and thereby dictate the terms of analysis: not just psychosis, but also perversion and obsessional and hysterical neurosis.




The Roots of Power


Book Description

Sheets-Johnstone critically examines the work of contemporary theorists, including Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida, in an effort to recover the lived body and its impact on gendered existence and power relations. Deeply critical of feminist writers who minimize biological experience, she argues that theorists must thoroughly consider the evolutionary body in order to understand its cultural reworkings.. -- Choice review.




The Lacanian Review 7


Book Description

The Lacanian Review (TLR) is a semiannual English-language journal of psychoanalysis, with bilingual (French - English) presentations of texts by Jacques Lacan and Jacques-Alain Miller. TLR publishes writing from prominent international figures of the Lacanian Orientation, featuring new theoretical developments in psychoanalysis, testimonies of the pass, dialogues with other discourses, and articles on contemporary culture, politics, art and science. Each issue explores a theme intersecting the symptoms of our era and emerging work in the New Lacanian School (NLS) and the World Association of Psychoanalysis (WAP).In our Post-Truth era, reality is under attack. The contemporary moment is disoriented by fake news, chatbots, conspiracy theories and a digital flood of leaks, lies and revelations. On hold with automated phone answering services, one pleads to just talk to a real person. But we are also complicit, enjoying online avatars, virtual reality, augmented reality and cryptocurrency fueled binges.Over a century ago, psychoanalysis learned from psychotic subjects that chasing after reality is folly. Reality is just another delusion in the service of the fantasy. To find an orientation amidst the proliferating loss of belief in reality experienced today, psychoanalysis must shift the question to find an exit from the reality trap. In its 7th issue, The Lacanian Review interrogates what is real in psychoanalysis. TLR7 introduces a landmark translation by Philip Dravers of the late Lacan's momentus and polyphonic address, "The Third," followed by texts exploring the Borromean clinic. Marie-Helene Brousse curates a dossier that approaches the subject of the real through dialogue with quantum physics and new work by Philippe de Georges and Clotilde Leguil. Interviews with Matteo Barsuglia, astrophysicist at the National Center for Scientific Research in France and Catherine Pépin, researcher at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPhT) of the Atomic Energy Center at Saclay (France), advance a critical conversation between two discourses that delineates what we call reality and real.Three new translations of Jacques-Alain Miller, published for the first time in English, examine truth, fiction and science in relation to the real as the impossible, but also the contingent. These lessons question whether we are in a Post-Truth era or the era of the Lying-Truth.Attesting to the singular experience of the real in psychoanalysis, TLR 7 presents three testimonies of the pass of current Analysts of the School. Clinical cases, the politics of the real, biotechnology, and Lady Gaga with Hamlet are all assembled in this issue of The Lacanian Review, a journal which might not be of a semblant. Get Real!TLR is published by the New Lacanian School (amp-nls.org) and distributed by the Lacanian Compass Bookshop (lacaniancompass.com) and Eurl Huysmans (ecf-echoppe.com).




An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis


Book Description

Jacques Lacan's thinking revolutionised the theory and practice of psychoanalysis and had a major impact in fields as diverse as film studies, literary criticism, feminist theory and philosophy. Yet his writings are notorious for their complexity and idiosyncratic style. Emphasising the clinical basis of Lacan's work, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis is an ideal companion to his ideas for readers in every discipline where his influence is felt. The Dictionary features: * over 200 entries, explaining Lacan's own terminology and his use of common psychoanalytic expressions * details of the historical and institutional context of Lacan's work * reference to the origins of major concepts in the work of Freud, Saussure, Hegel and other key thinkers * a chronology of Lacan's life and works.




Lacan and the Matter of Origins


Book Description

This work traces the development of Lacan's thinking on the role of the mother in psychical formation. It shows that the mother occupies a key position in the Lacanian project, widely held to emphasize the paternal dimension of human subjectivity.




Lacan


Book Description

Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital aspect of his thinking. In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential.




The Psychiatric Writings from Alienation and Freedom


Book Description

Frantz Fanon's psychiatric career was crucial to his thinking as an anti-colonialist writer and activist. Much of his iconic work was shaped by his experiences working in hospitals in France, Algeria and Tunisia. The writing collected here was written from 1951 to 1960 in tandem with his political work and reveals much about how Fanon's thought developed, showing that, for him, psychiatry was part of a much wider socio-political struggle. His political, revolutionary and literary lives should not then be separated from the psychiatric practice and writings that shaped his thinking about oppression, alienation and the search for freedom.




Lacan's Medievalism


Book Description

One of the foundational premises of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical project was that the history of philosophy concealed the history of desire, and one of the goals of his work was to show how desire is central to philosophical thinking. In Lacan’s Medievalism, Erin Felicia Labbie demonstrates how Lacan’s theory of desire is bound to his reading of medieval texts. She not only alters the relationship between psychoanalysis and medieval studies, but also illuminates the ways that premodern and postmodern epochs and ideologies share a concern with the subject, the unconscious, and language, thus challenging notions of strict epistemological cuts. Lacan’s psychoanalytic work contributes to the medieval debate about universals by revealing how the unconscious relates to the category of the real. By analyzing the systematic adherence to dialectics and the idealization of the hard sciences, Lacan’s Medievalism asserts that we must take into account the play of language and desire within the unconscious and literature in order to understand the way that we know things in the world and the manner in which order is determined. Erin Felicia Labbie is assistant professor of English at Bowling Green State University.




Encounter Between Eastern Orthodoxy and Radical Orthodoxy


Book Description

This book presents the first debate between the contemporary movement Radical Orthodoxy and Eastern Orthodox theologians. Leading international scholars offer new insights and reflections on a wide range of contemporary issues from a specifically theological and philosophical perspective. The ancient notion of divine Wisdom (Sophia) serves as a common point of reference in this encounter. Both Radical and Eastern Orthodoxy agree that the transfiguration of the world through the Word is at the very centre of the Christian faith. The book explores how this process of transformation can be envisaged with regard to epistemological, ontological, aesthetical, ecclesiological and political questions. Contributors to this volume include Rowan Williams, John Milbank, Antoine Arjakovsky, Michael Northcott, Nicholas Loudovikos, Andrew Louth and Catherine Pickstock.