Customer Reviews

Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction

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I was hesitant to read this book when I saw the rating the reviewer below me gave to it. However, I've now learned that you can't always trust those who review books on amazon (common sense, I guess). I actually used this book "Jacques Lacan: A feminist intro" for my honors thesis this year at college. It has to be one of the books I relied on the most for my research. Lacan's concepts are always hard to get a handle on, but Grosz's book, along with anything written by Slavoj Zizek, serves as a great introduction to this French thinker's psychoanalytic theories. Also, this book shows (with good evidence too) that even though Lacan has some phallocentric ideas (okay, a lot of them), his work is still valuable to feminists and modern theory in general. I would definitely recommend.

This book I think gives the reader an extremely deceptive, confusing and at times blatantly wrong introduction to Lacan. In her preface she states that Lacanian theory has recently been engaged in "topographical and topological researches." Topology, yes, but topography? If to Elisabeth Grosz topography can be confused with Lacan's topology, then you can be assured that the rest of her understanding of the concepts--the phallus, the gaze, the libido, etc., are equally sloppy, imprecise, and unthought through--not to mention blatantly, ridiculously wrong. Its a con game--an exercise in tone and persuasion. Another example: she claims that the only way to read Lacan is to "suspend your logical thinking and judgments, and just believe or have faith that it make sense in the end." If she does not comprehend that in fact there IS a logic to Lacan's thought, and that actually logic is precisely one good way to start entering into his texts (rather than the philosopher's Oh Gee, it sounds like he's saying this), then you know, this book is a total sham.