Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan

Kelsey Wood (University of Arkansas at Little Rock)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Domains

Psychoanalysis

Dates

First circulation or publication 2006

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Commentary / criticism

Resources

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One of Žižek’s most sustained engagements with the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan is

How to Read Lacan

(2006). This book (abbreviated

Lacan

below) elaborates the philosophical implications of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. In

Lacan —

as in most of his own works — Žižek focuses primarily on Lacan’s later theory and re-inscribes key Lacanian concepts in order to analyze our current social and libidinal predicament from his own (unorthodox) Marxist perspective. These Lacanian concepts include (among others) the unconscious, the big Other, symbolic performatives, desire, anxiety, the Real, the forced choice, the fundamental fantasy, the lamella, superego, and

jouissance

The thematic unity of the work is the law of desire as pointing toward an ethics of the Real. Žižek

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2395 words

Citation: Wood, Kelsey. "How to Read Lacan". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 February 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23494, accessed 21 November 2024.]