Innovative exploration of the relationship of Lacanian psychoanalysis to political and democratic theory.

While traditional feminist readings on antagonism have pivoted around the sole axis of sex and/or gender, a broader and intersectional approach to antagonism is much needed; this book offers an innovative, feminist, and discursive reading on the Lacanian concept of sexual position as a way to problematize the concepts of political antagonism and political subjects. Can Lacanian psychoanalysis offer new grounds for feminist politics? This discursive mediation of Lacan's work presents a new theoretical framework upon which to articulate proposals for intersectional political theory. The first part of this book develops the theoretical framework, and the second part applies it to the construction of woman’s identity in European politics and economy. It concludes with notes for a feminist political and economic praxis through community currencies and municipalism. The interdisciplinary approach of this book will appeal to scholars interested in the fields of psychoanalysis, feminisms, and political philosophy as well as multidisciplinary scholars interested in discourse theory, sexuality and gender studies, cultural studies, queer theory, and continental philosophy. Students at master's and PhD level will also find this a useful feminist introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis, discourse, and gender.

A Lacanian approach to murder scene investigation. What if Jacques Lacan—the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst—had worked as a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clip starring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bond makes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can be more effectively unraveled with Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate, technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond's exposition on murder expands and develops a resolutely Žižekian approach. Seeking out radical and unexpected readings, Bond unpacks his material utilizing Lacan's neurosis-psychosis-perversion grid. Bond places Lacan at the crime scene and builds his argument through a series of archival crime scene photographs from the 1950s—the period when Lacan was developing his influential theories. It is not the horror of the ravished and mutilated corpses that draws his attention; instead, he interrogates seemingly minor details from the everyday, isolating and rephotographing what at first seems insignificant: a single high heeled shoe on a kitchen table, for example, or carefully folded clothes placed over a chair. From these mundane details he carefully builds a robust and comprehensive manual for Lacanian crime investigation that can stand beside the FBI's standard-issue Crime Classification Manual.

Lacan Today: Psychoanalysis, Science, Religion offers a lucid overview of the French psychoanalyst's work. In five sections--"The Structure of the Subject," "Epistemology," "Four Discourses," "There is No Sexual Rapport," and "God is Real,"--the book maps out Lacan's thought for the lay reader with unmatched clarity. It does this by building from Lacan's graph and formulas, which are often misunderstood. This formalization acts as a pedagogical tool of wonderful economy, offering a broad overview without neglecting the essential details. The chapters are summarized by a general graph that visually demonstrates Lacan's rigor and coherence. The book examines often-neglected aspects of Lacan's work, like problems in the history of science, epistemology, and religion, in order to show Lacan's relevance to today's world. It makes the case for Lacan as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century, whose reach extends beyond the discipline of psychoanalysis. Indeed, Lacan's thought should lead readers into a reexamination of philosophy, literature, art, politics, economy, and desire. In his introduction, Alexandre Leupin writes: "If the unconscious exists, then Lacan is the only twentieth-century thinker who has drawn the consequences of Freud's discovery to their ultimate limits. I propose here what some will take as bombastic hyperbole: Lacan's radical reevaluation of human thinking is comparable to Einstein's." Though Lacan's thought is making tremendous inroads in countries of Latin culture, it has been slowly fading from public awareness in the English-speaking world. Often Lacan has been nothing more than a pawn in the bundling of contradictory doctrines labeled as "French thought"; or he has been reduced to a means of exchange between psychoanalysts or specialists in the humanities. Leupin's contention is that what Lacan said or wrote is of interest to the general public and that his consignment to oblivion is reversible. This book demonstrates that Lacan's thinking has vast implications, not only for college professors or practicing psychoanalysts, but also for scientists, epistemologists, and every man and woman.

Maintains that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the proper continuation of the line of thought from Spinoza to Marx.

At the heart of this experiment in intellectual synthesis is an effort to clarify differences of method and understanding within a common political trajectory. Through a series of exchanges on the value of the Hegelian and Lacanian legacies, the dilemmas of multiculturalism, and the political challenges of a global economy, Butler, Laclau, and ÄiPek lend fresh significance to the key philosophical categories of the last century while setting a new standard for debate on the Left. --Book Jacket.

Lacan without the jargon! Jacques Lacan was one of the most important psychoanalysts ever to have lived. Building upon the work of Sigmund Freud, he sought to refine Freudian insights with the use of linguistics, arguing that “the structure of unconscious is like a language”. Controversial throughout his lifetime both for adopting mathematical concepts in his psychoanalytic framework and for advocating therapy sessions of varying length, he is widely misunderstood and often unfairly dismissed as impenetrable. In this clear, wide-ranging primer, Lionel Bailly demonstrates how Lacan’s ideas are still vitally relevant to contemporary issues of mental health treatment. Defending Lacan from his numerous detractors, past and present, Bailly guides the reader through Lacan’s canon, from “l'objet petit a” to “The Mirror Stage” and beyond. Including coverage of developments in Lacanian psychoanalysis since his death, this is the perfect introduction to the great modern theorist.

Jacques Lacan continues to be subject to the most extravagant interpretations. Angelic to some, he is demonic to others. To recall Lacan’s career, now that the heroic age of psychoanalysis is over, is to remember an intellectual and literary adventure that occupies a founding place in our modernity. Lacan went against the current of many of the hopes aroused by 1968, but embraced their paradoxes, and his language games and wordplay resonate today as so many injunctions to replace rampant individualism with a heightened social consciousness. Widely recognized as the leading authority on Lacan, Élisabeth Roudinesco revisits his life and work: what it was – and what it remains.

Cutting-edge philosophers, psychoanalysts, literary theorists, and scholars use Freud and Lacan to shed light on laughter, humor, and the comic. Bringing together clinic, theory, and scholarship this compilation of essays offers an original mix with powerful interpretive implications.

Jacques Lacan is widely recognized as a key figure in the history of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th Century. In Anxiety, now available for the first time in English, he explores the nature of anxiety, suggesting that it is not nostalgia for the object that causes anxiety but rather its imminence. In what was to be the last of his year-long seminars at Saint-Anne hospital, Lacan's 1962-63 lessons form the keystone to this classic phase of his teaching. Here we meet for the first time the notorious a in its oral, anal, scopic and vociferated guises, alongside Lacan’s exploration of the question of the 'analyst's desire'. Arriving at these concepts from a multitude of angles, Lacan leads his audience with great care through a range of recurring themes such as anxiety between jouissance and desire, counter-transference and interpretation, and the fantasy and its frame. This important volume, which forms Book X of The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, will be of great interest to students and practitioners of psychoanalysis and to students and scholars throughout the humanities and social sciences, from literature and critical theory to sociology, psychology and gender studies.