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Lacan: The Silent Partners (Wo Es War Series)

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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.