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How to Read Lacan (How to Read)

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Zizek admits in the introduction that he brings both arguments and material from his other published works to this How to Read manual. As a result, readers of Zizek will recognize the echoes of some jokes, lists and paragraphs. The limit of Zizek's sustained argumentation reaches about three pages. Each of the seven chapters will have a title, three or four pages will directly address that chapter's title and then fourteen or so pages will rehearse and mull topics of tangential relation. More of these topics of tangential relation are political, cultural, and philosophical rather than specifically Lacanian. Zizek sees Lacan as a tool for reading and interpreting, whose writings compel more ethical considerations than anything else. Each paragraph of Lacan that Zizek discusses proves its worth for its moment but makes little claim for its systematic application or perennial value. The attention of Lacan seems only slightly more mercurial than Zizek's. I find much of Zizek's discussion thought-provoking, clever, and engaging. I feel there is more Zizek than Lacan here, and I love reading Lacan. The list of materials for further reading is refined and helpful. Overall, this book smiles as it serves its tour of duty.

Language is a pre-existing, social construct. For anyone who wants to truly say something new, there exists a conundrum: how strictly will I adhere to pre-existing forms, at the expense of breaking away from what has already been said?

In other words, how much emphasis do I want to put on making myself comprehensible to others? For Lacan, it seems, the answer was essentially "screw it. I'm going to forge ahead as far as I can, and I'll leave it to other people to figure out what I meant".

Principal among those 'other people' who have taken up the task is Slavoj Zizek. An important thing to note about this book is that Zizek doesn't instruct the reader on how to decipher the writings of Lacan. In fact, they're barely mentioned. Rather, he gives an overview of Lacan's thought, and shows how his ideas can be applied to every day situations. Which is to say, he gives a series of classic (and sometimes recycled) Zizek anecdotes and pop culture analyses.

As another reviewer noted, one definitely gets the sense in reading this book that there's a lot more Slavoj Zizek here than Jacques Lacan. In my opinion, however, that's a good thing.

As an historian of ideas I have sought a methodology beneath and beyond ideational analysis, identifying the presuppositions of our ideas. It was not until reading a review of several books by Slavoj Zizek several months ago that I begin to realize that this task is the life work of Jacques Lacan (1901-81).

Zizek's HOW TO READ LACAN is an insightful introduction to realities that escape our conscious awareness, resting deep beneath geologic layers of symbolic pretensions. With a double doctorate in both philosophy and pyschoanalysis, Zizek is especially qualified to introduce us to Lacan's work, arguably the most renowned psychoanalyst since Sigmund Freud.

Not sharing Zizek's expertise in popular culture, this reviewer is not qualified to give HOW TO READ LACAN five stars. And yet, while enabling us to probe more deeply the microscopic dimensions of our daily lives, Zizek's reading of Lacan also empowers us to understand and stand under the macroscopic dimensions of geopolitics on the fragile planet that is our home.

An instance of this reading is Zizek's interpretation of Donald Rumsfeld's March 2003 rendition of 1) known knowns, 2) known unknowns and 3) unknown unknowns. Zizek continutes that what Rumsfeld "forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the 'unknown knowns,' things we don't know that we know -- which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the 'knowledge that doesn't know itself,' as Lacan use to say, the core of which is fantasy." These 'unknown knowns,' Zizek continues, are "the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves, but which nonetheless determine our acts and feelings."

The book effectively treats readers to more of Zizek himself than the French psycho-analyst. So from the start I'd recommend the Lacan enthusiast/beginner to look somewhere else (and then later come back to this work).

Still, in line with the whole series, the chapters are short, thus providing explanations, anecdotes, stories and jokes in summarized form, too. Also, if you've ever read a Zizek book you'll know how messy and (oftentimes) incoherent his writing can be; this book at least has the topics more or less clearly spelled out (even then one has to carefully comb most paragraphs with a marker), making it easier to not only comprehend what Zizek is saying but to categorise it all as well.

A bonus about reading this book is that it covers almost all the key Lacanian ideas that Zizek invariably repeats and reapplies in his other books; one could even say that, conceptually, every Zizek book diverges no more than 20-30% from any other one because they're mostly about contemporizing, applying and refreshing Lacan anyway. This book explains the symbolic order, the 'lamella', the site of the Real (one and the smae with the screen which filters out the Real - go figure), hyper non-activity (or extreme passivity masquerading as activity), the subject supposed to know/believe/enjoy, libidinal investments, fantasy as escape from the world, etc. - all of these and many more are given a concise treatment which also serves as a sweet taster of what to expect in Zizek's other phone-book sized publications.

Ultimately, one has to wonder: Is Zizek's Lacanianism dependent on his Marxism or the other way around? (My guess is that he would say the question is wrongly phrased and 'blocks' the truth of his intellectual orientation)

Still, there are few (if any) better Zizek-written introductions to his own work - ironic, as this book wasn't really supposed to be about him in the first place(!). This might echo his notion that in order to look carefully at an author one needs to look 'sideways' (or, in this case, via a book about someone else). The end-product is a snapshot of Zizekian views which are themselves based on Lacan's strangest theories. In a word, we're really reading Zizek reading himself reading his mentor.

Accessible book, possibly a good start to read about Lacan (or Zizek himself who is very present, title could also have been 'How to Read Zizek using Lacan').

I find Lacan's own writings about "theory" irritating and impenetrable, as do many others (although there are fans who maintain that the barriers are worth penetrating). I bought this book hoping to learn something, finally, about Lacan's CLINICAL methodology and technique, but Zizek early in the book says he will not consider this aspect of Lacan's work -- maybe because there is none? or Zizek doesn't understand it? All we get is more armchair theorizing and explanations thereof. Disappointing.