Jacques Lacan, Past and Present

Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).

This set of exchanges adds significantly to our appreciation of both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Badiouian philosophy. An irresistible 'must read.' -- Adrian Johnston, University of New Mexico Badiou and Roudinesco each contribute an important piece to the puzzle that is the figure and thought of Jacques Lacan. Both the general reader and specialists in either Badiou or Lacan's thought will appreciate this book. -- Bruno Bosteels, author of Badiou and Politics Badiou and Roudinesco agree on the essential: the value of Lacan's thought for facing the ills of our age, whether they be the different ways both science and obscurantism are instrumentalized, the irrational cult of quantitative assessment, or the temptation to flee headlong into psychologism. So many tendencies unveiled in this dialogue as so many sides of a single 'misery of the contemporary world.' -- Laurent Etre l'Humanite

• Foreword: "I am counting on the tourbillon": On the Late Lacan by Jason E. Smith Preface 1. One Master, Two Encounters 2. Thinking Disorder Notes Index