Luke Thurston - Reinventing the Symptom

We are extremely pleased to have Luke Thurstons Re-inventing the Symptom in the Contemporary Theory series from Other Press. This superb collection brings the appropriate sophistication to Lacans Le Sinthome seminar, performing the balancing act of rendering Lacans obscure text visible and accessible while showing admirable sensitivity to the ultimate untranslatability of Lacans Joycean writing. A distinguished Joycean himself, Luke Thurston is in a prime position to edit a collection at such a formidable Lacanian/Joycean intersection.

We expect that this study will be regarded as necessary to maintaining a grip on what is happening in psychoanalytic theory today. Amateur Lacanians mainly acquainted with the early Lacan of the Imaginary, as well as those who have surpassed this first phase by engaging the Lacan of the Symbolic and the Real, have a great deal to gain from Thurstons collection, with its focus on the myriad implications of the sinthome as a tying together of the three rings (Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real) of the Borromean knot. Re-inventing the Symptom is not just another book in a field of study but one that expands that field.

Thurstons collection, moreover, aspires to clarify the aim of psychoanalysis, and thus to enhance the effectiveness of clincial work. Clinicians will profit as much from reading these meditations on Lacans Joycean concept of the sinthome as will theoristsor literary and art critics, for that matter. This study helps to erode the already crumbling barrier between clinical and literary interpretations of Lacans work. The untranslatable, disruptive excess that the concept of the sinthome italicizes clearly needs to be taken into account in both theory and practice.

The essays in this collection keep approaching the idea of the sinthome asymptotically from a variety of angles; the fertility of these readings of Lacans twenty-third seminar would have impressed Lacan himself. They are written by experts freed rather than constrained by their expertise, by writers determined to allow Lacans late work to exfoliate. It will go far in filling out the meanings of a term popping up all over the place; now the concept of le sinthome that was beginning to be employed promiscuously will have its weight restored.

While the Contemporary Theory series is by no means solely dedicated to Lacanian studies, Re-inventing the Symptom epitomizes what this series wants: smart, new theoretical work with important practical consequences, work that pushes the limits of theory as it now stands and exposes the necessary imbrication of theory with the world in which we live, day by day. This series does mean to offer a dwelling place for rich psychoanalytic work, as it welcomes all theory being done currently in, for example, feminist, queer, and other political contexts, film studies, or aestheticseven theoretically inclined novels are invited. We want to cast an intricately woven but wide net.

Frances L. Restuccia

Series Editor