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Lacan and the Limits of Language
by Charles ShepherdsonThis book weaves together three themes at the intersection of Jacques Lacan and the philosophical tradition. The first is the question of time and memory. How do these problems call for a revision of Lacan’s purported “ahistoricism,” and how does the temporality of the subject in Lacan intersect with the questions of temporality initiated by Heidegger and then developed by contemporary French philosophy? The second question concerns the status of the body in Lacanian theory, especially in connection with emotion and affect, which Lacanian theory is commonly thought to ignore, but which the concept of jouissance was developed to address. Finally, it aims to explore, beyond the strict limits of Lacanian theory, possible points of intersection between psychoanalysis and other domains, including questions of race, biology, and evolutionary theory. By stressing the question of affect, the book shows how Lacan’s position cannot be reduced to the structuralist models he nevertheless draws upon, and thus how the problem of the body may be understood as a formation that marks the limits of language. Exploring the anthropological category of “race” within a broadly evolutionary perspective, it shows how Lacan’s elaboration of the “imaginary” and the “symbolic” might allow us to explain human physiological diversity without reducing it to a cultural or linguistic construction or allowing “race” to remain as a traditional biological category. Here again the questions of history and temporality are paramount, and open the possibility for a genuine dialogue between psychoanalysis and biology. Finally, the book engages literary texts. Antigone, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Hamlet, and even Wordsworth become the muses who oblige psychoanalysis and philosophy to listen once again to the provocations of poetry, which always disrupts our familiar notions of time and memory, of history and bodily or affective experience, and of subjectivity itself.
Lacan and the Nonhuman
by Gautam Basu Thakur Jonathan Michael DicksteinThis book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest in a fundamental contemporary topic - the nonhuman. The authors question where we situate the subject (as distinct from the human) in current critical investigations of a nonanthropoentric universe. In doing so they unravel a less-than-human theory of the subject; explore implications of Lacanian teachings in relation to the environment, freedom, and biopolitics; and investigate the subjective enjoyments of and anxieties over nonhumans in literature, film, and digital media. This innovative volume fills a valuable gap in the literature, extending investigations into an important and topical strand of the social sciences for both analytic and pedagogical purposes.
Lacan and the Political (Thinking the Political)
by Yannis StavrakakisThe work of Jacques Lacan is second only to Freud in its impact on psychoanalysis. Yannis Stavrakakis clearly examines Lacan's challenging views on time, history, language, alterity, desire and sexuality from a political standpoint. It is the first book to provide an overview of the social and political implications of Lacan's work as a whole for students coming to Lacan for the first time.The first part of Lacan and the Political offers a straightforward and systematic assessment of the importance of Lacan's categories and theoretical constructions for concrete political analysis. The second half of the book applies Lacanian theory to specific examples of widely discussed political issues, such as Green ideology, the question of democracy and the hegemony of advertising in contemporary culture.
Lacan and the Posthuman (The\palgrave Lacan Ser.)
by Judith Roof Svitlana MatviyenkoWhen Posthumanism displaces the traditional human subject, what does psychoanalysis add to contemporary conversations about subject/object relations, systems, perspectives, and values? This book discusses whether Posthumanism itself is a cultural indication of a shift in thinking that is moving from language to matter, from a politics focused on social relations to one organized according to a broader sense of object in environments. Together the authors question what is at stake in this shift and what psychoanalysis can say about it. Promoting psychoanalysis’ focus on the cybernetic relationships among subjects, language, social organizations, desire, drive, and other human motivations, this book demonstrates the continued relevance of Lacan’s work not only to continued understandings of the human subject, but to the broader cultural impasses we now face. Why Posthumanism? Why now? In what ways is Posthumanist thought linked to the emergence of digital technologies? Exploring Posthumanism from the insights of Lacan’s psychoanalysis, chapters expose and elucidate not only the conditions within which Posthumanist thought arises, but also reveal symptoms of its flaws: the blindness to anthropomorphization, projection, and unrecognized shifts in scale and perspective, as well as its mode of transcendental thought that enables many Posthumanist declarations. This book explains how Lacanian notions of the subject inform current discussions about human complicity with, and resistance to, algorithmic governing regimes, which themselves more wholly produce a “post”- humanism than any philosophical displacement of human centrality could.
Lacan Noir: Lacan and Afro-pessimism (The Palgrave Lacan Series)
by David S MarriottThis book explores how Jacques Lacan has influenced Black Studies from the 1950s to the present day, and in turn how a Black Studies framework challenges the topographies of Lacanianism in its understanding of race. David Marriott examines how a contemporary Black Studies perspective might respond to the psychoanalysis of race by taking advantage of the recent revitalization of Lacanianism in its speculative, metaphysical form. While the philosophical side of the debate makes a plea for a new universalism, this book proposes a Lacanian reassessment of the notion of race, a notion distinct from culture, language, religion, and identity. It argues that it is possible to re-establish the theoretical relation between capitalism, anti-blackness, and colonialism, by reassessing the links between Lacanian psychoanalysis and three main domains of black inquiry: mastery, knowledge, and embodiment. The book offers a strikingly original rereading of the place of Lacan in both Fanon Studies and Afro-pessimism. It will appeal to students and scholars of Black Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory and Philosophy.
Lacan the Charlatan (The Palgrave Lacan Series)
by Peter D. MathewsThis book sets out to determine the validity of an accusation made against Jacques Lacan by Noam Chomsky in an interview in 1989. He stated that Lacan was a “charlatan” – not that his ideas were flawed or wrong, but that his entire discourse was fraudulent, an accusation that has since been repeated by many other critics. Examining the arguments of key anti-Lacanian critics, Mathews weighs and contextualizes the legitimacy of Lacan’s engagements with structural linguistics, mathematical formalization, science, ethics, Hegelian dialectics, and psychoanalysis. The guiding thread is Lacan’s own recurrent interrogation of authority, which inhabits an ambiguous zone between mastery and charlatanry. This book offers a novel contribution to the field for students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, critical and literary theory.
Lacan with the Philosophers
by Ruth RonenClosely examining Jacques Lacan's unique mode of engagement with philosophy, Lacan with the Philosophers sheds new light on the interdisciplinary relations between philosophy and psychoanalysis. While highlighting the philosophies fundamental to the study of Lacan’s psychanalysis, Ruth Ronen reveals how Lacan resisted the straightforward use of these works. Lacan’s use of philosophy actually has a startling effect in not only providing exceptional entries into the philosophical texts (of Aristotle, Descartes, Kant and Hegel), but also in exposing the affinity between philosophy and psychoanalysis around shared concepts (including truth, the unconscious, and desire), and at the same time affirming the irreducible difference between the analyst and the philosopher. Inspired by Lacan’s resistance to philosophy, Ruth Ronen addresses Lacan’s use of philosophy to create a fertile moment of exchange. Straddling the fields of philosophy and psychoanalysis with equal emphasis, Lacan with the Philosophers develops a unique interdisciplinary analysis and offers a new perspective on the body of Lacan’s writings.
Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity
by Calum NeillHowever we conceive of ethics, whether by appeal to an exterior or traditional notion of right and wrong, or by appeal to some form of individual virtue or responsibility, it implies some form of agency. Where there is an ethical act, there must be someone acting ethically. Working from this simple premise, this book argues that the manner in which we conceive that 'someone' is the condition of possibility for our conception of ethics and, consequently, our ethical potential. Against the commonplace conception of the modern individual as self-identical, self-aware and self-governing, theauthor presents a detailed introduction to the Lacanian subject, a conception of the self as anything but self-identical, self-aware and self-governing. The book goes on to show how such a rethinking of the subject necessitates a rethinking of our relation to law, tradition and morality, as well as a rethinking of our understanding of guilt, responsibility and desire. In short, it necessitates a rethinking of ethics. "
Lacanian Perspectives on Blade Runner 2049 (The Palgrave Lacan Series)
by Calum NeillThis book provides a collection of Lacanian responses to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 from leading theorists in the field. Like Ridley Scott’s original Blade Runner film, its sequel is now poised to provoke philosophical and psychoanalytic arguments, and to provide illustrations and inspiration for questions of being and the self, for belief and knowledge, the human and the post-human, amongst others. This volume forms the vanguard of responses from a Lacanian perspective, satisfying the hunger to extend the theoretical considerations of the first film in the various new directions the second film invites. Here, the contributors revisit the implications of the human-replicant relationship but move beyond this to consider issues of ideology, politics, and spectatorship. This exciting collection will appeal to an educated film going public, in addition to students and scholars of Lacanian psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theory, cultural studies, film theory, philosophy and applied psychoanalysis.
A Lacanian Theory of Curriculum in Higher Education: The Unfinished Symptom
by Fernando M. MurilloThis volume presents a distinctively Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to the theorizing, understanding, and critique of curriculum in higher education. In this work, the author presents the main theories of curriculum in the current discourse, develops a notion of critique, and applies it to existing global guidelines for curriculum reform. Relying on the architectonic of the subject as developed across the work of Jacques Lacan—expressed in the registers of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real—the author provides a new approach to understanding curriculum in terms of the psychic dynamics that explain its workings.
Lacan’s Cruelty: Perversion beyond Philosophy, Culture and Clinic (The Palgrave Lacan Series)
by Meera LeeThis collection, written by leading Lacanian psychoanalytic theorists and practitioners, is a unique exploration of the novel aspects of perversion from the perspective of cruelty—a psychoanalytic study that has never been sufficiently undertaken in an English-speaking world. Instead of reducing the notion of perversion to cultural representations, a historical discourse or a clinical diagnosis, the authors in this collection draw on Freud, Kant, Hegel, Marquis de Sade, Derrida, Deleuze and Žižek to untie the knot of “psychic cruelty” intrinsic to perversion and therefore “de-sexualize” perverted acts. They do so by theorizing perversion in psychoanalytic concepts of the Oedipus complex, the-Name-of-the-Father and jouissance, and furthermore in the perspective of the clinics of neurosis and psychosis, in dialogue with a clinical praxis, philosophy and literature.
Laches and Charmides
by Rosamond Kent Sprague PlatoRosamond Kent Sprague's translations of the Laches and Charmides are highly regarded, and relied on, for their lucidity and philosophical acuity. This edition includes notes by Sprague and an updated bibliography.
Lack of Character
by John M. DorisThis book is a provocative contribution to contemporary ethical theory challenging foundational conceptions of character that date back to Aristotle. John Doris draws on behavioral science, especially social psychology, to argue that we misattribute the causes of behavior to personality traits and other fixed aspects of character rather than to the situational context. More often than not it is the situation not the nature of the personality that really counts. The author elaborates the philosophical consequences of this research for a whole array of ethical theories and shows that, once rid of the misleading conception of motivation, moral psychology can support more robust ethical theories and more humane ethical practices.
Lack & Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism
by David R. LoyLoy draws from giants of psychotherapy and existentialism, from Nietzsche to Kierkegaard to Sartre, to explore the fundamental issues of life, death, and what motivates us.Whatever the differences in their methods and goals, psychotherapy, existentialism, and Buddhism are all concerned with the same fundamental issues of life and death—and death-in-life. In Lack and Transcendence (originally published by Humanities Press in 1996), David R. Loy brings all three traditions together, casting new light on each. Written in clear, jargon-free style that does not assume prior familiarity, this book will appeal to a wide variety of readers including psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, scholars of religion, Continental philosophers, and readers seeking clarity on the Great Matter itself. Loy draws from giants of psychotherapy, particularly Freud, Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, and Otto Rank; great existentialist thinkers, particularly Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre; and the teachings Buddhism, particularly as interpreted by Nagarjuna, Huineng and Dogen. This is the definitive edition of Loy’s seminal classic.
Laclau: A Critical Reader
by Simon Critchley Oliver MarchartLaclau: A Critical Reader is the first full-length critical appraisal of Laclau's work and includes contributions from several leading philosophers and theorists. The first section examines Laclau's theory that the contest between universalism and particularism provides much of the philosophical background to political and social struggle, taking up the important place accorded to, amongst others, Hegel and Lacan in Laclau's work. The second section of the book considers what Laclau's 'radical democracy' might look like and reflects on its ethical implications, particularly in relation to Laclau's post-Marxism and thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas. The final section investigates the place of hegemony in Laclau's work, the idea for which he is perhaps best-known.This stimulating collection also includes replies to his critics by Laclau and the important exchange between Laclau and Judith Butler on equality, making it an excellent companion to Laclau's work and essential reading for students of political and social theory.
Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary
by Anna Marie SmithLaclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the criticism of political theory from postmodern anti-foundationalist political theory.
Lad Culture in Higher Education: Sexism, Sexual Harassment and Violence (Routledge Critical Studies in Gender and Sexuality in Education)
by Carolyn Jackson Vanita SundaramResponding to increasing concerns about the harmful effects of so-called ‘lad culture’ in British universities, and related ‘bro’ and ‘frat’ cultures in US colleges, this book is the first to explore and analyse the perspectives of university staff on these cultures, which students suggest foster the normalisation of sexism, homophobia, racism, sexual harassment and violence. Drawing on in-depth interviews with a broad range of staff and faculty across different types of universities in England, the book explores the following key questions: What is lad culture? How and where is it manifest in higher education and what are the effects on students and staff? How can ‘laddish’ behaviour be explained? How can we theorise lad culture to enable us to better understand and challenge it? How do dynamics in the United Kingdom compare to so-called ‘bro’ and ‘frat’ cultures in US colleges? By examining the ways in which lad culture is understood and explained, the authors illustrate that current understandings of lad culture obscure the broader processes through which problematic attitudes, practices, and educational climates are fostered. This analysis enables a theorisation of lad culture that makes visible the gendered norms and intersecting structural inequalities that underpin it. This timely and accessible volume will be of great interest to anyone looking to understand and tackle sexism, sexual harassment and violence in and beyond university contexts. It will be of particular significance to researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students, academics, and policy makers in the fields of gender and sexuality in education, higher education, and sociology of education.
The Lagoon
by Armand Marie LeroiA brilliant study of Aristotle as biologist The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg. He founded a science. It can even be said that he founded science itself. In The Lagoon, acclaimed biologist Armand Marie Leroi recovers Aristotle's science. He revisits Aristotle's writings and the places where he worked. He goes to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos to see the creatures that Aristotle saw, where he saw them. He explores Aristotle's observations, his deep ideas, his inspired guesses--and the things he got wildly wrong. He shows how Aristotle's science is deeply intertwined with his philosophical system and reveals that he was not only the first biologist, but also one of the greatest. The Lagoon is both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science. And it shows how a philosopher who lived almost two millennia ago still has so much to teach us today.From the Hardcover edition.
The Lagoon
by Armand Marie LeroiA brilliant study of Aristotle as biologist The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg. He founded a science. It can even be said that he founded science itself. In The Lagoon, acclaimed biologist Armand Marie Leroi recovers Aristotle's science. He revisits Aristotle's writings and the places where he worked. He goes to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos to see the creatures that Aristotle saw, where he saw them. He explores Aristotle's observations, his deep ideas, his inspired guesses--and the things he got wildly wrong. He shows how Aristotle's science is deeply intertwined with his philosophical system and reveals that he was not only the first biologist, but also one of the greatest. The Lagoon is both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science. And it shows how a philosopher who lived almost two millennia ago still has so much to teach us today.From the Hardcover edition.
The Lagoon
by Armand Marie LeroiA brilliant study of Aristotle as biologist The philosophical classics of Aristotle loom large over the history of Western thought, but the subject he most loved was biology. He wrote vast volumes about animals. He described them, classified them, told us where and how they live and how they develop in the womb or in the egg. He founded a science. It can even be said that he founded science itself. In The Lagoon, acclaimed biologist Armand Marie Leroi recovers Aristotle's science. He revisits Aristotle's writings and the places where he worked. He goes to the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos to see the creatures that Aristotle saw, where he saw them. He explores Aristotle's observations, his deep ideas, his inspired guesses--and the things he got wildly wrong. He shows how Aristotle's science is deeply intertwined with his philosophical system and reveals that he was not only the first biologist, but also one of the greatest. The Lagoon is both a travelogue and a study of the origins of science. And it shows how a philosopher who lived almost two millennia ago still has so much to teach us today.
Laïcité et humanisme (Philosophica)
by Charles Le BlancLaïcité et humanisme : un titre et deux mots de grande actualité tant au Québec qu’ailleurs dans le monde. Cet ouvrage, avec des contributions d’acteurs clés qui alimentent le débat sur le sens et la définition de la laïcité dans le Québec du xxie siècle, arrive à point nommé. Les textes de Thomas De Koninck, Jacques Dufresne, Georges Leroux, Guillaume Rousseau, Mathieu Bock-Côté, Normand Baillargeon, Mohamed Lotfi et Charles Le Blanc ne défendent pas une thèse particulière à propos de la laïcité. Ils forment plutôt un ensemble de réflexions polyphoniques qui se présentent comme une contribution philosophique, juridique, politique et sociologique à la question de la neutralité religieuse de l’État. À la fin du recueil figure un texte de Voltaire sur la tolérance, qui vient à la fois inscrire les questions abordées dans une perspective historique et illustrer le caractère continu d’un débat dont cet ouvrage se veut l’un des nombreux échos.
Lakatos: An Introduction
by Brendan LarvorLakatos: An Introduction provides a thorough overview of both Lakatos's thought and his place in twentieth century philosophy. It is an essential and insightful read for students and anyone interested in the philosophy of science.
Lamarckism and the Emergence of 'Scientific' Social Sciences in Nineteenth-Century Britain and France (History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences #36)
by Snait B. GissisThe book presents an original synthesizing framework on the relations between ‘the biological’ and ‘the social’. Within these relations, the late nineteenth-century emergence of social sciences aspiring to be constituted as autonomous, as 'scientific' disciplines, is described, analyzed and explained. Through this framework, the author points to conceptual and constructive commonalities conjoining significant founding figures – Lamarck, Spencer, Hughlings Jackson, Ribot, Durkheim, Freud – who were not grouped nor analyzed in this manner before. Thus, the book offers a rather unique synthesis of the interactions of the social, the mental, and the evolutionary biological – Spencerian Lamarckism and/or Neo-Lamarckism – crystallizing into novel fields. It adds substantially to the understanding of the complexities of evolutionary debates during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It will attract the attention of a wide spectrum of specialists, academics, and postgraduates in European history of the nineteenth century, history and philosophy of science, and history of biology and of the social sciences, including psychology.
The Land of Flickering Lights: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics
by Michael BennetThe Land of Flickering Lights is a unique contribution to American political writing at this or any other time. Senator Michael Bennet lifts a veil on the inner workings of Congress to reveal, in his words, "through a series of actual stories--about the people, the politics, the motives, the money, the hypocrisy, the stakes, the outcome--the pathological culture of the capital and the consequences for us all." <P><P> Bennet unfolds the dramatic backstory behind five episodes crucial to the well-being of all Americans. Each of them exemplifies the hyper-partisan politics that have upended our democracy: <P><P> The highly politicized confirmation battles over judicial nominations at all levels--epitomized by ugly and unprincipled fights over seats on the Supreme Court; The passage of the Trump tax law, which massively increased our national debt and widened economic inequality across the country; The shredding of the Iran nuclear deal, which undermined our national security, caused friends and foes alike to doubt America's word, and made a mockery of the longstanding bipartisan tradition in foreign policy; The pervasive corruption unleashed by "dark money" in policies and how big donors have been able to stymie urgent action on climate change and many other issues; The sabotage by a congressional minority of the "Gang of Eight's" bi-partisan deal to reform America's immigration policies, a deal that would have comprehensively addressed the immigration issues that bedevil us to this day. With frankness and refreshing candor, and in elegant prose, Bennet pulls the machinations behind these episodes into full public view, shedding vital new light on our political dysfunction today. Arguing that each of us has a duty to act as a founder, he will inspire Americans of all political persuasions to demand that the "winners" of our political battles be all the American people, nor one party or the other.
Lands of Likeness: For a Poetics of Contemplation
by Kevin HartAn original and profound exploration of contemplation from philosopher, theologian, and poet Kevin Hart. In Lands of Likeness, Kevin Hart develops a new hermeneutics of contemplation through a meditation on Christian thought and secular philosophy. Drawing on Kant, Schopenhauer, Coleridge, and Husserl, Hart first charts the emergence of contemplation in and beyond the Romantic era. Next, Hart shows this hermeneutic at work in poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and others. Delivered in its original form as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, Lands of Likeness is a revelatory meditation on contemplation for the modern world.