Lacan: The Silent Partners (Wo Es War Series) [Hardcover]

Slavoj iek (Editor), Alain Badiou (Contributor), Bruno Bosteels (Contributor), Miran Boovi (Contributor), Lorenzo Chiesa (Contributor), Joan Copjec (Contributor), Mladen Dolar (Contributor), Timothy C. Huson (Contributor), Fredric Jameson (Contributor), Adrian Johnston (Contributor), Sigi Jöttkandt (Contributor), Sylvia Ons (Contributor), Robert Pfaller (Contributor), Alenka Zupani (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2006 | ISBN-10: 1844670635 | ISBN-13: 978-1844670635 | Edition: 1

The giant of Ljubljana marshals some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of Jacques Lacan.

Jacques Lacan is the foremost psychoanalytic theorist after Freud. Revolutionising the study of social relations, his work has been a major influence on political theory, philosophy, literature and the arts, but his thought has so far been studied without a serious investigation of its foundations. Just what are the influences on his thinking, so crucial to its proper understanding?

In Lacan: The Silent Partners Slavoj Zizek, the maverick theorist and pre-eminent Lacan scholar, has marshalled some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of Lacan's work. Focussing on Lacan's 'silent partners', those who are the hidden inspiration to Lacanian theory, they discuss his work in relation to the Pre-Socratics, Diderot, Hegel, Nietzsche, Schelling, Hölderlin, Wagner, Turgenev, Kafka, Henry James and Artaud.

This major collection, including three essays by Zizek, marks a new era in the study of this unsettling thinker, breathing new life into his classic work.

Contributors: Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Miran Bozovic, Lorenzo Chiesa, Joan Copjec, Mladen Dolar, Timothy Huson, Fredric Jasmeson, Adrian Johnston, Sigi Jöttkandt, Silvia Ons, Robert Pfaller, Alenka Zupancic and Slavoj Zizek.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The Ultimate aim of this present volume is to instigate a new wave of Lananian paranoia: to push readers to engage in the work of their own and start to discern Lacanian motifs everywhere, from politics to trash culture, from obscure ancient philosophers to Franz Kafka.' Slavoj i ek --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. His books include Living in the End Times, and First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.

Alain Badiou teaches philosophy at the École normale supérieure and the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In addition to several novels, plays and political essays, he has published a number of major philosophical works, including Theory of the Subject, Being and Event, Manifesto for Philosophy, and Gilles Deleuze. His recent books include The Meaning of Sarkozy, Ethics, Metapolitics, Polemics, The Communist Hypothesis, Five Lessons on Wagner, and Wittgenstein's Anti-Philosophy.

Joan Copjec is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture's relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 406 pages
• Publisher: Verso; 1 edition (April 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844670635
• ISBN-13: 978-1844670635
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,185,940 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"The most dangerous philosopher in the West," (says Adam Kirsch of The New Republic) Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce;" "Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle;" "In Defense of Lost Causes;" "Living in the End Times;" and many more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars roots and background of influential philosopher Lacan's thinking, May 2, 2006

By 

Henry Berry "Henry Berry" (Southport, CT) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lacan: The Silent Partners (Wo Es War Series) (Paperback)

The aim of the idiosyncratic philosopher and critic Zizek--Co-Director of the International Centre for Humanities at Birbeck College, U. of London--in bringing together these 16 essays by an international group of thinkers is "not to enable readers to approach Lacan in a new way but, rather, to [begin italics in original] instigate a new wave of Lacanian paranoia [end italics in original]: to push readers to engage in work of their own, and start to discern Lacanian themes everywhere." Jacques Lacan's ideas and perceptions have been a major influence on psychology, epistemology, semiology, and identity in the era of postmodernism. They have become so absorbed into postmodern thinking that they are only rarely attributed to him any longer. These essays do not so much work to give credit to Lacan, for this isn't necessary with those to whom this would mean anything; nor work to expound his ideas and perceptions for those unfamiliar with them. The essays put Lacan in the context of the broad philosophical tradition of Western philosophy, and in so doing relate him to many and varied specific philosophers, Nietzsche, Plato, Descartes, and Heidegger among them. This is what the subtitle "silent partners" denotes. Zizek has four of the essays. Many American readers will recognize the name Frederic Jameson as author of one of the essays. Other authors are from Europe and Asia. Lacan is woven into the fabric of Western philosophy in such as way that his distinctive, seminal ideas and interests are identified so that readers can "discern Lacanian themes everywhere" in the world around them.