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Product Details
Series: How to Read
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (January 17, 2007)
This is not a book on how to read Lacan. But this short volume provides a good introduction to Zizek's writings. If you want to read Lacan, you will have to figure out for yourself how to do it. My personal advise would be to put aside the Ecrits, and to begin with the Seminars, which retain some of the oral quality that was the hallmark of the French psychoanalyst's teachings. If you want to read Zizek, there is no single point of entry into the work of the Slovenian philosopher. The Zizek library is wide and extensive, and it caters to every taste.
There is some value in picking this book as an introduction to Zizek's work, however. First, it is shorter than the hefty volumes the Slovenian polygraph philosopher has been publishing at an amazing pace in the recent years. There is no free ramblings and wild rides going on for pages after pages, no internal back-and-forth or short circuits that substitute for an absent plotline. Everything is more compact, concise, and well-arranged. As Zizek warns in a footnote, there is a good deal of repetition between this book and other essays already published. It is, if you wish, Zizek's Best of, a medley or compilation of the most significant excerpts of his previous works. Zizek revisits the same stories, examples, and quotes, but even the most seasoned Zizek reader is not tired by this repetition. Since part of the enjoyment in reading Zizek derives from the addictive repetition of the same themes and quotes, readers familiar with Zizek's work will appreciate the recycling of previously used and reused material.
Second, this book is bereft of some of Zizek's most shocking provocations, and he abstains from his usual flirtation with political radicalism and fringe ideas. In How to Read Lacan, Zizek leaves his politics at the door.Read more ›
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Essentially Zizek provides a lot of examples and pithy observations about Lacan's central concepts without actually giving any sort of a real definition of what these concepts are. Reading the book is like eating frosting without having any cake underneath. I know Zizek is supposed to be brilliant and I know that Caviar is supposed to be tasty but it still makes me want to puke.
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54 of 64 people found the following review helpful
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."
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This book is one in a series of, How to Read . . . "great thinkers and writers" produced by the New School of Social Research. The intention of the series is to bring the reader "face-to-face with the writing itself in the company of an expert guide." While I don't question the expertise of the author/guide, in this instance, I do believe the title, "How to Read Lacan" is a bit misleading. In my opinion, a more appropriate title might be: "A Condensed Reading of Zizek: Lacan Unplugged."
Just as a comedian develops their material, over many years, by delivering it to varied audiences, gauging reaction and then polishing its timing, tone and content, in a similar way, Zizek exposes a potentially new readership to his previously written material. For those who have read Zizek before, especially "The Parallax View", there is nothing really new to be found in this book. For those who have not read Zizek, it's a relatively easy introduction to his writing style and certain aspects of his philosophy.
Lacanian ideas around the Imaginary, the Symbolic Order and the Real, the big Other, l'objet petit a, and jouissance lie at the core of human unconsciousness and consciousness alike. The "Lacan Unplugged" reference is meant as tongue-in-cheek to the fact that Lacan's foundational contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophical thinking are often difficult to uncover in the thickly blanketed context of Zizekian thought and writing style.
From 1953-1964, Lacan delivered seminars to help inform Écrits (his writings) and claimed that these were not to be understood rationally, but would rather produce an effect in the reader similar to the sense of enlightenment. It's been said that Lacan is nearly impossible to understand on your own without an expert guide. Is Zizek such a guide? Whether yes or whether no, either way, Zizek makes for a thought provoking and interesting read.
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