First published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

When I decided to explore the question of Witz, or wit, with you this year, I undertook a small enquiry. It will come as no surprise at all that I began by questioning a poet. This is a poet who introduces the dimension of an especially playful wit that runs through his work, as much in his prose as in more poetic forms, and which he brings into play even when he happens to be talking about mathematics, for he is (...) also a mathematician. I am referring to Raymond Queneau. While we were exchanging our first remarks on the matter he told me a joke. It’s a joke about exams, about the university entrance exams, if you like. We have a candidate and we have an examiner. – “Tell me”, says the examiner, “about the battle of Marengo.” The candidate pauses for a moment, with a dreamy air. “The battle of Marengo...? Bodies everywhere! It’s terrible... Wounded everywhere! It’s horrible...” “But”, says the examiner, “Can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?” The candidate thinks for a moment, then replies, “A horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.” The examiner, surprised, seeks to test him a little further and says, “In that case, can you tell me about the battle of Fontenoy?” “Oh!” says the candidate, “a horse rears up on its hind legs and whinnies.” The examiner, strategically, asked the candidate to talk about the battle of Trafalgar. The candidate replies, “Dead everywhere! A blood bath.... Wounded everywhere! Hundreds of them....” “But my good man, can’t you tell me anything more precise about this battle?” “A horse...” “Excuse me, I would have you note that the battle of Trafalgar is a naval battle.” “Whoah! Whoah!” says the candidate. “Back up, Neddy!” The value of this joke is, to my mind, that it enables us to decompose, I believe, what is at stake in a witticism. (Extract from Chapter VI). (shrink)

El objetivo del presente artículo es múltiple. Primero, pondera una serie de razones por las cuales la mística aún es relevante para el análisis de la condición humana del hombre actual. Segundo, propone a la promesa y a la ausencia como dispositivos de la mística. Tercero, expone, desde la lectura que hacen Alois Haas y Amador Vega de algunos sermones alemanes del Maestro Eckhart y de El peregrino querúbico de Angelus Silesius, los planteamientos fundamentales de la mística de estos (...) autores, a saber: el vaciamiento del alma, el coengendramiento, el abismo de Dios y la unión mística. Al mismo tiempo esboza cómo el pensamiento de Eckhart y Silesius, además de ser estudiado, produce ecos en algunas de las formulaciones filosóficas más importantes del siglo XX. The aim of this article is multiple. First, it weighs a series of reasons for which mysticism is still relevant for the analysis of man’s current human condition. Second, it proposes promise and absence as the devices of mysticism. Third, it exhibits, according to the reading of Alois Haas and Amador Vega of some of Meister Eckhart’s German sermons and Angelus Silesius’ The Cherubic Wanderer, the fundamental expositions of these authors’ mysticism, namely: voidance of the soul, co-conceivement, God’s abyss and mystical union. At the same time it outlines how the thought of Eckhart and Silesius, besides being studied, produces echoes in some of the most important philosophical formulations of the 20th century. (shrink)

"Brilliant and innovative, Jacques Lacan's work lies at the epicenter of modern thought about otherness, subjectivity, sexual difference, the drives, the law, and enjoyment. This new translation of his complete works offers welcome, readable access to Lacan's seminal thinking on diverse subjects touched upon over the course of his inimitable intellectual career." This English edition is translated by Bruce Fink, in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg.

Susini, who is Professor of German at the Sorbonne, seems to have devoted his life to the study of German mysticism. After his monumental work on Baader he now offers a new edition of the famous spiritual poems of Angelus Silesius along with a French translation. While the Introduction to the first volume is quite short and devoid of any attempt at offering a new authoritative interpretation of the Silesian Mystic's work and thought, the second volume consists entirely of (...) notes displaying the author's vast and admirable erudition. These notes place Angelus Silesius in the general context of the history of Western mysticism, especially in regard to philosophical and speculative matters. They also allow us to retrace a certain influence he had on philosophers as different as Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Baader. As far as the French text of the poems is concerned, even though the great beauty of the original is not matched, the translation is correct and poetical.—M. J. V. (shrink)

Jacques Lacan was a notoriously difficult and idiosyncratic thinker. But is there any value in his hermetically difficult style? By highlighting certain crucial elements of his practice, I show how Lacan enlists the notion of difficulty to press home that he did not want his readers to understand directly. Instead, as Foucault and Althusser explain so well, Lacan wished for his readers and auditors to discover themselves as subjects of desire through reading him. Indeed, in miming the language of the (...) unconscious, Lacan believed he could throw into sharp relief the notion of the unconscious itself and, paradoxically, better express himself. This temporary detour through misunderstanding indicates the programmatic value of difficulty itself. By commenting on the comedic aspect of Lacan's difficult literary dandyism, I also seek to playfully remind the reader that Lacan was a master of comedy and irony and that it is only by adopting a comparative literary approach to his work that we can appreciate how his theory of misunderstanding is at the heart of his conceptualization of madness and psychosis, allowing us to see how, for Lacan, the subject is ontologically sick. (shrink)

This article examines the death of God theme in the work of Jacques Lacan and indicates some convergences with Christian theology. It distinguishes the ‘atheism’ of Lacan from the atheism of Freud. And it demonstrates that if Lacan does not believe in the God equated with Being, the God of the philosophers, the later Lacan’s argument for what he calls the ‘eksistence’ of God beyond language, the God of the mystics, makes for a highly nuanced atheism.

This paper will argue that the work of Slavoj Žižek can be fruitfully understood as a response to mystical theology as it has been received in two strands of 20th century French thought—psychoanalysis and phenomenology—and that Žižek's work in turn offers intriguing possibilities for the re-figuring of mystical theology by feminist philosophy of religion. Twentieth century French psychoanalysis is dominated by the work of Jacques Lacan and by his students Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray. All three of these (...) figures engage in significant ways with mystical theology—particularly with the works and figures of female mystics—as a crucial resource for theorising gender and subjectivity. A second strand of the 20th century French reception of mystical theology is the phenomenological tradition, specifically the work of Jacques Derrida. This paper will argue that, drawing on and challenging both of these elements of recent French engagement with mystical theology, Žižek's work offers a materialist ontology which seeks to locate transcendence within immanence and materiality, offering to feminist philosophy of religion the resources for re-thinking the relationship of the mystical to the material. (shrink)

A linguagem apofática é um gênero discursivo estreitamente relacionado à Teologia Negativa, cuja formulação mais acabada se encontra na obra do Pseudo-Dionísio (séc. V), místico que funda uma tradição negativa que se perpetuará durante toda a Idade Média e Moderna. Na contemporaneidade diversos autores (DERRIDA, 1995 e 1997; FRANKE, 2007; PONDÉ, 2003; VEGA, 2004 e 2009 e outros) têm destacado a retomada desse gênero discursivo nas artes, na literatura e nas ciências humanas de forma geral. A linguagem apofática é, portanto, (...) um discurso que visa à própria transcendência e se orienta para a denúncia de um vazio intrínseco à linguagem e ao mundo que dela se origina, de tal modo que o Deus que aí comparece desliza sob nossa linguagem sem se deixar prender em nossas teias discursivas. No presente texto a impossibilidade do nome de Deus torna-se metáfora para se refletir, a partir do exemplo da mística de Angelus Silesius, sobre as possibilidades de um pensamento negativo cujos fundamentos sejam o esvaziamento da linguagem, que se vê despojada de sua capacidade de dizer o mundo, e o aprendizado do não-saber. Palavras-chaves: Linguagem apofática; Linguagem; Angelus Silesius; não-saber.Apophatic language is a genre closely related to negative theology, whose the most accomplished formulation is found in the Pseudo-Dionysius work (fifth century), who founded a mystical tradition that perpetuated throughout the Middle and Modern Ages. Several authors in contemporary such as Derrida (1995 and 1997), (Franke, 2007), (Pounde, 2003), (Vega, 2004 and 2009), and others, have highlighted the resumption of that genre in the Arts, Literature and the Humanities in general. Apophatic is, thus, a discourse that seeks transcendence, and it orients itself to denounce the emptiness intrinsic to language as well as to world, so that the God that there appears slips under our language without being caught in our discursive webs. In this text the impossibility of God's name becomes a metaphor to reflect, from the example of the mystique of Silesius Angelus, on the possibility of a negative thought whose foundations are the emptiness of the language, which finds itself stripped of its ability to tell the world, and from the learning of the not-knowing. Keywords: Apophatic language; Failure of language; Angelus Silesius; not-to knowing. (shrink)

This book explores the phases of Jacques Lacan's career and examines the past, present, and future of psychoanalysis.

The "ruin" of the transcendental tradition -- Freud and the transcendental relation -- Derrida: Differance and the "plural logic of the aporia" -- The im-possibility of the psyche -- The death drive and the im-possibility of psychoanalysis -- Institutional psychoanalysis and the paradoxes of archivization -- The Lacanian real -- Sexual difference -- Feminine sexuality -- The transcendental relation in Lancanian psychoanalysis -- The death drive and ethical action -- The "talking cure": language and psychoanalysis.

Offers an analysis of Jacques Lacan's thought for the English-speaking world. Using empirical data as well as Lacan's texts, this title demonstrates how Lacan's teachings constitute a new epistemology that goes far beyond conventional thinking in psychoanalysis, psychology, philosophy, and linguistics.

My essay will take as its point of departure the paragraph from Gershom Scholem’s “Reflections on Jewish Theology,” in which he depicts the modern religious experience as the one of the "void of God" or as "pious atheism". I will first argue that the "void of God" cannot be reduced to atheistic non-belief in the presence of God. Then, I will demonstrate the further development of the Scholemian notion of the ‘pious atheism’ in Derrida, especially in his Lurianic treatment of (...) Angelus Silesius, whose modern mysticism emerges in Derrida’s reading as the ‘almost-atheism’. The interesting feature of this development is that, while for Scholem, the ‘void of God’ is a predominantly negative experience, for Derrida, it becomes an affirmative model of modern – not just Jewish, but more generally, Abrahamic – religiosity which, on the one hand, touches upon atheistic non-belief in the divine presence here and now, yet, on the other, still insists on commemorating the ‘withdrawn God’ through his ‘traces.’ What, therefore, for Scholem, constitutes the ultimate cry of despair, best embodied in Kafka’s work – for Derrida, reveals the more positive face of the modern predicament in which God has absented himself in order to make room for the creaturely reality. And while Scholem envisages redemption as the full restoration of the divine presence – Derrida redefines redemption as the ‘pious’ work of deconstruction to be undertaken in the ‘almost-atheistic’ condition of irreversible separation between God and the world. (shrink)

Lacan postulated that the psyche can be understood by means of certain structures, which control our lives and our desires, and which operate differently at different logical moments or stages of formation.Jacques Lacan and the Logic of Structure offers us a reading of the major concepts of Lacan in terms of his later topological theory and aims to show how this was always a concern for Lacan and not only an issue in the last seminars. Ellie Ragland discusses how various (...) stages of formation can be uncovered topologically within language itself, and operate to place certain properties – fantasy, the drive, jouissance, discourse and ethics in language itself. In this way she explores not only how language actually works in tandem with the properties, but also gives a different idea of what knowledge actually is and what implications that may have for reimagining and reworking differential/diagnostic structures. Jacques Lacan and the Logic of Structure is a compelling exponent of the innovative approaches Lacan takes to rethinking what psychoanalysis is and what it can do to enlighten psychoanalysts and treat patients. It will be essential reading to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, training graduate students in the fields of film, literary, gender and cultural studies. (shrink)

_Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis_ paints a completely new picture of the man and his ideas. The book suceeds in showing how ideas can become more accessible, and re-evaluates his significance within the field of psychodynamic psychotherapy. The book is structured thematically around five key issues: diagnosis, the analyst's position during the treatment, the management of transference, the formulation of interpretations, and the organisation of analytic training. For each of these issues, Lacan's entire work both published and (...) unpublished material, has been taken into account and theoretical principles have been illustrated with clinical examples. The book also contains the first complete bibliography of Lacan's works in English. Clear, detailed, and wide ranging, _Jacques Lacan and the Freudian Practice of Psychoanalysis_ will prove essential reading, not only for professionals and students within the fields of psychology and psychiatry, but for all those keen to discover a new Lacan. (shrink)

Studying Lacan's Seminar VII offers a contemporary, critically informed set of analyses of Lacan's ethics seminar and astute reflections about what Lacan's ethics offers to the field of psychoanalytic thought today. The volume interrogates the seminar with fresh voices and situated curiosities and perspectives, making for a compellingly exciting range of explorations of the crucial matters related to an ethics of psychoanalysis. The essays question and tease out the paradoxes Lacan draws attention to in his seminar of 1959-1960, and (...) in addition, offer radical engagements with the seminar in light of theories of racism, inequality, capitalism, education, and subjectivity. The key elements in Lacan's seminar are explained, debated, and reconsidered with Antigone, das Ding, and the inevitable "ne ceder pas sur son desir" duly unpacked, examined, and ruminated upon. Studying Lacan's Seminar VII will be of interest to psychoanalytic scholars and students of Lacanian psychoanalysis, as well as psychoanalytic therapists and analysts. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of politics, philosophy, and studies at the intersections of racism, film, feminism, sociology, gender and queer theory. (shrink)

Foucault a noué ensemble, dans les années 1970, sa généalogie de la société de normalisation et ses généalogies, multiples, de la psychanalyse. Mais reste souvent méconnu le fait que Lacan lui-même a mis en rapport l’émergence de la psychanalyse avec l’extension croissante de la société de normalisation, comme une réaction à celle-ci, un peu avant la parution de La volonté de savoir (1976). La position de Lacan s’avère diamétralement opposée à celle de Foucault en ce qu’il considère la psychanalyse comme (...) une pratique radicalement hors normes, et non comme un agent de normalisation. La question cruciale dont traite cet article est celle de la pertinence des généalogies foucaldiennes d’une part, et celle qui consiste à lui opposer une histoire de la psychanalyse crédible qui rendrait compte de sa spécificité et de son pouvoir de subversion d’autre part. Les outils d’une histoire de la psychanalyse fournis par Lacan présentent à divers titres un intérêt à ce sujet. Lacan élabore cette histoire depuis le champ de la psychanalyse et conformément à l’épistémologie psychanalytique, et au contraire de Foucault, il cherche à maintenir l’exigence de penser la psychanalyse dans sa spécificité relativement aux autres savoirs et pratiques. (shrink)

This essay argues that Zizek’s post-Lacanian critique of contemporary culture stays within the logic of the discourse of the university and often functions to repress psychoanalysis and the unconscious. By looking at how Zizek divides Lacan work into a bad early Symbolic stage and a good late period that promotes the Real, enjoyment, and the death drive, I reveal how this binary and linear reading functions to efface important connections and differences concerning the key concepts of psychoanalysis. In (...) fact, Zizek’s work utilizes the obsessional processes of negation, splitting, fragmenting, and projection in order to absorb analytic practice into a self-consuming Hegelian negative dialectic. Moreover, his use of repetition in his own writings replicates the short-circuit of the death drive that finds enjoyment by returning to the subject in an act of self-negation. In looking closely at how Zizek reads Lacan, I place Zizek’s work within the contemporary backlash against progressive social movements and the social construction of knowledge. Thus, by creating a closed circle between the subject of autonomous repetition and the universal discourse of global nihilism, he represses social Symbolic mediation and reiterates a fundamentalist logic of obscene enjoyment. In fact, we can read his use of humor and popular culture as an effort to bond with his audience by providing enjoyment in exchange for the suspension of criticism and responsibility. In short, I argue that Zizek’s work is structured like a joke. (shrink)

The paper presents a suggestive interpretation of Lacan’s interest in the relationship between Socrates and Alcibiades, insofar as this relationship makes a certain common understanding of love in Plato and psychoanalysis emerge. The author contends that Lacan’s interpretation makes it possible to understand how, in the ancient text, desire is already understood as an unconscious motivation, not only in terms of its inexorable power to determine a person’s aims, but also in its ability to subsist between and beyond the (...) rules of conscious discourse. (shrink)

The question of “time” is a worthy topic of psychoanalytic inquiry, concerning at least three different levels: technical, epistemological, and existential. However, if subjective well-being is the ultimate purpose of the analytic experience, it is immediately clear that the last level also defines the previous ones. In this perspective, we can attribute an innovative role to Lacan’s inquiry on time, in receiving the Freudian psychoanalytical legacy and in participating in the contemporary thought about subjective consciousness of time. Indeed, starting from (...) the paper entitled “Logical time”, Lacan completely abandons a linear notion of time: what concerns psychoanalysis is not the “real” past sequence of events in themselves, but the way these events exist “now” in memory, and the way the patient reports them. This dynamic idea of subjective temporality was immediately received not only by clinical therapy but also by other branches of knowledge. Nevertheless, in his late teaching Lacan directly engages the epistemological level of time analysis, trying to offer constants to the dynamic of time consciousness. Therefore, in the last years of his Seminar, he introduces into his work the mathematical concept of topological space, and begins to delineate a close relationship between time and space from the immanent point of view of discourse theory. If “rhythm” seems to be the ultimate horizon opened by Lacan’s teaching on time toward the end of his career, this perspective could mark the definitive return to Freud and anticipate some of the current most valid research in semiotics and physics. Unfortunately, the death of the French psychoanalyst resulted in this perspective remaining only barely sketched out. (shrink)

This book is in fact a kind of mosaic, composed from both a concluding act and an act of commencement.

A charismatic and controversial figure, Lacan is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century and his work has revolutionized a range of fields. The volume aims to introduce Lacan's vast opus to the field of international politics in a coherent and approachable manner. The volume is split into three distinct sections: Psychoanalysis and Politics: this section will frame the discussion by providing general background of Lacan's engagement with politics and the political Lacan and the Political: each (...) chapter will focus on different key ideas and concepts in Lacan's thought including ethics, justice, discourse, object a, symptom, jouissance Political Encounters: seeks to represent different ways of engaging with Lacanian thought and ways of adopting it to explain and comment on global political phenomena Bringing together internationally recognised scholars in the field, this volume will be an invaluable resource to students and scholars in areas including critical theory, international relations, political theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

In his first book, Christian Lundberg takes on the formidable challenge of rescuing Lacan for rhetorical studies. As he demonstrates in his first chapter, scholars in other disciplines have mostly neglected Lacan’s profound reliance on the rhetorical idiom, while rhetoricians have deployed his theory for critical purposes without fully appreciating the thoroughgoing transformation of rhetoric it effects. Lundberg’s intervention is the first sustained effort to treat Lacan’s expansive, dense, and often opaque oeuvre as a fully formed theory of rhetoric. In (...) fact, the book persuasively advances the provocative claim that Lacan pushes rhetoric in far more promising directions than the academic disciplines of .. (shrink)