Stavrakakis - Lacan and the Political

LACAN AND THE POLITICAL

Jacques Lacan is now acknowledged as the most influential and original psychoanalytic theorist since Freud and his work is increasingly being recognised for its relevance in socio-political analysis and philosophy. Lacan and the Political is the first book combining a presentation of the Lacanian conceptual and theoretical apparatus with a vigorous and systematic evaluation of its importance in contemporary political theory.

Yannis Stavrakakis moves beyond the standard applications of the Lacanian concept of the subject in treating social and political issues, towards an examination of Lacans approach to the objective side of human experience per se. He highlights Lacans innovative understanding of the socio-political field and situates his thought within a theoretical terrain comprising deconstruction, discourse theory, the sociology of risk and recent developments in political theory and history.

Stavrakakis argues against the perception that Lacans ideas are apolitical or even reactionary, by demonstrating that not only is a political reading of Lacan possible, but that it is capable of liberating and invigorating our political imagination. The author contends that a Lacanian perspective can free political thought from the strait-jacket of utopian politics on the one hand and ethical relativism on the other, in order to develop the radical potential of modern democracy.

Yannis Stavrakakis is teaching fellow at the department of Government at the University of Essex and Acting Director of the MA programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis.

THINKING THE POLITICAL

General editors:
Keith Ansell-Pearson

University of Warwick

Simon Critchley

University of Essex

Recent decades have seen the emergence of a distinct and challenging body of work by a number of Continental thinkers that has fundamentally altered the way in which philosophical questions are conceived and discussed. This work poses a major challenge to anyone wishing to define the essentially contestable concept of the political and to think anew the political import and application of philosophy. How does recent thinking on time, history, language, humanity, alterity, desire, sexuality, gender and culture open up the possibility of thinking the political anew? What are the implications of such thinking for our understanding of and relation to the leading ideologies of the modern world, such as liberalism, socialism and Marxism? What are the political responsibilities of philosophy in the face of the new world (dis)order?

This new series is designed to present the work of the major Continental thinkers of our time, and the political debates their work has generated, to a wider audience in philosophy and in political, social and cultural theory. The aim is neither to dissolve the specificity of the philosophical into the political nor evade the challenge that the political poses the philosophical; rather, each volume in the series will try to show it is only in the relation between the two that the new possibilities of thought and politics can be activated.

Volumes already published in the series are:

Foucault & the Political by Jon Simons

Derrida & the Political by Richard Beardsworth

Nietzsche & the Political by Daniel W.Conway

Heidegger & the Political by Miguel de Beistegui

LACAN AND THE POLITICAL

Yannis Stavrakakis

First published 1999

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

1999 Yannis Stavrakakis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this title has been requested

ISBN 0-203-00616-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-22426-4 (Adobe eReader Format)

ISBN 0-415-17187-3 (pbk)

ISBN 0-415-17186-5 (hbk)

CONTENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Page references are to the English translations of the works of Jacques Lacan. In the case of the crits or Lacans published seminars, I used the following abbreviations:

Other published works by Lacan are cited in the text as dates only. References to the unpublished seminars of Jacques Lacan are indicated by the date of the seminar in brackets. In order to avoid any anachronisms, the seminars of Jacques Lacan are included in the Bibliography in the order of their composition. Since all quotations from the crits are indicated by the abbreviation E, and given the fact that many different papers are included in this collection, a decision was taken to include the following table so that readers can orient themselves more easily: