Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English [Paperback]

Jacques Lacan (Author), Bruce Fink (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2007

“Fink’s precise new translation makes this pivotal period in Lacan’s thought more accessible to English speakers.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. French psychoanalyst Lacan (1901–1981) is perhaps best known for claiming that the unconscious is like a language that needs to be interpreted, rather than a storage space for repressed feelings. His writings, which borrow from such diverse fields as linguistics, philosophy, mathematics and religion, have had a profound impact on literary and cultural criticism as well as psychoanalysis. While the English-speaking world has enjoyed James Strachey's Standard Edition of Freud's complete works since 1967, there is no comparable standard English translation for Lacan's oeuvre. There have been at least six different translations of his writings into English, and some of the early translations are notoriously unreliable. Fink, a practicing psychoanalyst and professor at Duquesne University, has produced the first complete English translation of Écrits. This opus, first published by Éditions du Seuil in 1966, includes Lacan's most influential texts and is one of the most widely read works of 20th-century critical thought. The collection spans 30 years of Lacan's career and contains 35 texts, from "Beyond the 'Reality Principle'" (1936) and "The Mirror Stage" (1937) to "Science and Truth" (1966). Most of the texts date from the 1950s and 1960s—a crucial turning point in Lacan's development: it was then that he shifted his focus from the operations of language and the imaginary and symbolic orders to the concepts of the real, fantasy and the objet petit a. Fink's precise new translation makes this pivotal period in Lacan's thought more accessible to English speakers. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Lacan's style is - notoriously - as complicated as his ideas. But Fink's translation helps to make 'the mirror stage', 'transference' and 'psychical causality' understandable, if not readily approachable. It is worth the effort: both yours and that put in by the translator and publisher." Margaret Reynolds, The Times"

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Product Details

• Paperback: 896 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (January 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393329259
• ISBN-13: 978-0393329254
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #27,367 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) was one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. His many published works include Ecrits and The Seminars.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent translation, March 2, 2007

By 

Steward Willons (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (Paperback)

This is a treat - the first complete English translation of Lacan's Ecrits with a wonderful translation by Bruce Fink. After reading a couple pieces, I compared with Sheridan's previous partial translation and found a number of differences. Overall, Fink tends to be more readable and, I suspect, accurate.

Since you're probably already aware of Lacan's thought and importance, I won't go into that here and will restrict my comments to this particular edition. Fink provides endnotes on the translation of certain difficult words and explains how he dealt with them, sometimes with specific examples for particularly tricky sections. It's clear that he understands Lacan's text inside and out. Additionally, his endnotes prove very helpful in understanding some of the German and Latin in Lacan's writing. Because I'm not an expert in psychoanalysis, I found Fink's explanations of certain terms and ideas very helpful.

Lacan provides an index of major concerts, but this was a bit different than what I was expecting. Rather than explicitly stating "The Symbolic Order means . . . ", he gives a general area where the read is encouraged to discover its essence. This is, all things considered, probably a better way to handle the situation for, as we know, Lacan's concepts do not fit into neat little summaries or paraphrases.

Overall, Norton did a great job putting this together. Provided you have the time to sit down and really spend some time with these essays, I definitely recommend this. Even if you don't always agree with Lacan's thought, Ecrits provides some excellent mental stimulation

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mission impossible?, October 17, 2008

By 

Jeff Abell (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (Paperback)

When you take an erudite French psychoanalyst, who is presenting his take on Freud's German by pressing it through the sieve of French semiotics, one can only hope for so much when that text is then further strained by being pressed into English. A number of these "writings" were originally lectures, meant to be experienced in Lacan's own idiosyncratic delivery (you can enjoy him on YouTube, if you're curious). All this is a way of saying reading Lacan in English is far from a simple or direct thing. Bruce Fink has probably achieved as close to a "clear" translation as the original will allow. One needs to acknowledge that there are concepts that are perfectly clear in French that are a muddle in English, so when you have someone as full of himself as Lacan, that gets pretty intense sometimes. Then Lacan will suddenly engage an unexpected metaphor, or display a moment of real wit, and you forgive his pretentiousness. An influential thinker, and for those of us who haven't mastered French, we can be grateful that Monsieur Fink chose to accept this mission.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lacan is heavy stuff, July 18, 2009

By 

M. Brown - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English (Paperback)

Jacques Lacan is one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. However, his work has largely been unavailable to the English-speaking world, until this version of his work came out. Bruce Fink does a fantastic job with the translations and the background information, but that does not make Lacan any less dense.

If you're looking for an introduction to Lacan, check out Slavoj Zizek's works. They're much more readable and easy to understand. For those of stouter constitution though, pick up Fink's translation of Lacan's Ecrits and fasten your seatbelt.