Ecrits: A Selection [Paperback]

Jacques Lacan (Author), Alan Sheridan (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393300471 | ISBN-13: 978-0393300475 | Publication Date: October 1982

Genius and charismatic leader of a psychoanalytic movement that in the 1950s and 1960s provided a focal point for the French intelligentsia, Jacques Lacan attracted a cult following. Ecrits is his most important work, bringing together twenty-seven articles and lectures originally published between 1936 and 1966. Following its first publication in 1966, the book gained Lacan international attention and exercised a powerful influence on contemporary intellectual life. To this day, Lacan's radical, brilliant and complex ideas continue to be highly influential in everything from film theory to art history and literary criticism. Ecrits is the essential source for anyone who seeks to understand this seminal thinker and his influence on contemporary thought and culture.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Lacan's work marks a crucial moment in the history of psychoanalysis, a moment which will perhaps prove as significant as Freud's original discovery of the unconscious.' - Colin MacCabe 'Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Georges Bataille had often urged Lacan to publish the text of his seminars: the influence of his teaching can be observed in works by Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault... in Roland Barthes's studies on semiology and Louis Althusser's "reading" of Marx. But it can be felt still more basically [in] the current revival of interest in psychoanalysis... the desire for a return to origins which is a common factor in so many avenues of modern thought.' - The Times Literary Supplement --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 338 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (October 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393300471
• ISBN-13: 978-0393300475
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,467,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint of heart, March 16, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Haverford, PA., USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecrits: A Selection (Paperback)

There are books about Jacques Lacan, and there are books that record his lectures in an informal way, but this is the only one that I know of that presents his words, as he meant them. Lacan is the guy who took Freud and De Saussure and integrated the two, and his insights are brilliant and very difficult to follow. This book is an odd combination of Lacan's histrionic attacks on his opponents, of tedious punnings and lengthy and awkward sentences, and wonderful insights. I keep picking it up and plugging away at it, in the belief that his interpretors and translators don't do him justice, and in the belief that he's the smartest guy around, in the humanities. He argues persuasively for example that the ego, which we think in the Anglo-American tradition is the major organ of our personhood, is little more than a clever creation of, and creator of words -- without integrity or grounding. De Saussure, the creator of Structuralism, left behind only one (albeit lucid) book, and I urge any "advanced hobbyists" of the intellect to tackle that prior to tackling Lacan, who read De Saussure closely and if nothing else develops our insight into what it means that language has its own patterns of distortion, its own "agenda" if you will, and that we struggle as persons to distinguish ourselves as persons from ourselves as creations of the system of meaning and language.

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's time to stop reprinting this old translation, September 21, 2003

By 

F.F. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ecrits: A Selection (Paperback)

Sheridan made a brave attempt some 25 years ago to render Lacan's difficult prose into English, but Sheridan's command of French left a great deal to be desired, and his knowledge of Lacan's numerous seminars (that form the backdrop of most of his writings) was non-existent; after all, almost none of them were available even in French at that time. This old translation should no longer be reprinted: it is virtually incomprehensible at times and is often quite inaccurate. Readers seeking to study the Ecrits should consult the 2002 translation by myself; the paperback version will be out very shortly, will be competitive in price with this old translation, and is vastly superior in readability and accurary.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new Saussurean paradigm, October 1, 2000

By 

Jacques Guy (Pinewood, VIC Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ecrits: A Selection (Paperback)

As another reviewer remarked, there are doubts as to how faithful translations of Lacan's "Ecrits" are, and I am therefore referring here to the original, published by "Editions du Seuil". These two volumes are a treasure trove of gems, perhaps first and foremost Lacan's treatment of the square root of -1, pp.183-5, volume 2 of the paperback edition, 1970. A tour-de-force indeed: he manages to link the square root of -1 to a phallus, even though, in French, you cannot pun on "root" the way you can in English. Lacan has a marvellous knack for stringing together words which, taken individually, mean something, and yet, once gone through Lacan's logorrhoea, end up devoid of any imaginable, and unimaginable, meaning whatsoever. Thus Lacan replaces the Saussurean sign (signifier and signified) with the Lacanian sign, entirely bereft of any possible signification. His Ecrits, however, suffer from one shortcoming: his venomous threatening innuendoes, usually in footnotes, which remain all too significant. A bitter viper, with the intelligence of a decerebrated viper, that is not even successful at being completely incoherent. Still, 5 stars for trying.