How to Read Lacan (Paperback)

by Slavoj Zizek (Author), Simon Critchley (Series Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The How to Read series provides a context and an explanation that will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. These books use excerpts from the major texts to explain essential topics, such as Jacques Lacan's core ideas about enjoyment, which re-created our concept of psychoanalysis.

About the Author
Slavoj Zizek, a philosopher and psychoanalyst, is co-director of the International Center of Humanities at Birkbeck College. He lives in London. Series editor Simon Critchley teaches philosophy at various universities, including The New School in New York City. His books include Continental Philosophy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton; 1 edition (January 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393329550
• ISBN-13: 978-0393329551
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #172,150 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars meat lake, January 29, 2007

By	Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

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.

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Unconscious Un-idea, February 6, 2007

By	R. J. Stroik (Stevens Point, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Big Other is watching you., July 14, 2008

By	Leo King (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.