Reading Lacans crits: From Signification of the Phallus to Metaphor of the Subject

"It all began with an improbable wager: ask 35 scholars to each write something intelligible about every single paragraph in one of the texts included in Jacques Lacan's magnum opus, crits, so as to generate a commentary on the entire 800-page volume. And yet, after years of preparation, the wager has paid off: we have here useful and at times brilliant examples of textual explication! Cryptic formulations are lucidly unpacked, and mysterious references are provided, giving the serious reader myriad keys to fascinating texts"-Bruce Fink, translator of crits: The First Complete Edition in English "Lets face it: Lacans crits, one of the classical texts of modern thought are unreadable - they remain impenetrable if we just pick the thick volume up and start to read it. Neill, Vanheule and Hook provide what we were all waiting for: a detailed commentary which does not aim to replace reading ECRITS but to render it possible. The three volumes do wonder, their effect is no less than magic: when, after getting stuck at a particularly dense page of crits, we turn to the corresponding pages in the commentary and then return to the page of crits which pushed us to madness, the same lines appear in all the clarity of their line of thought. It is thus a safe prediction that Neill, Vanheule and Hooks commentary will become a kind of permanent companion of the English translation of crits, indispensable for everyone who wants to find her or his way in its complex texture."-Slavoj Zizek "Lacans teaching is notoriously hard to access and comprehend. But this is done on purpose: to understanding the psyche, the subject and its interaction with socio-political reality cannot be a piecemeal operation. One needs to take into account the paradoxical and often counterintuitive effects of unconscious mechanisms, and of the extimate operation of the real within and beyond the symbolic and the imaginary. Coupling exegesis with multi-level interpretations, the numerous texts in this volume advance a commentary, both informative and suggestive, that will immensely help readers navigate the archipelago of the Lacanian crits, without reducing in the least their complexity and inspirational value, without sacrificing their ability to surprise, provoke and jolt us out of our complacency."-Yannis Stavrakakis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki "These essays will be an invaluable resource not only for those approaching the crits for the first time but also for seasoned readers. Broad in scope yet following the detail of the text, they help guide us through Lacan's difficult prose, elucidating, contextualising and clarifying, and reminding us time and time again of the precision, power and originality of his rethinking of psychoanalysis".-Darian Leader "It all began with an improbable wager: ask 35 scholars to each write something intelligible about every single paragraph in one of the texts included in Jacques Lacan's magnum opus, crits, so as to generate a commentary on the entire 800-page volume. And yet, after years of preparation, the wager has paid off: we have here useful and at times brilliant examples of textual explication! Cryptic formulations are lucidly unpacked, and mysterious references are provided, giving the serious reader myriad keys to fascinating texts"-Bruce Fink, translator of crits: The First Complete Edition in English "Lets face it: Lacans crits, one of the classical texts of modern thought are unreadable - they remain impenetrable if we just pick the thick volume up and start to read it. Vanheule, Hook and Neill provide what we were all waiting for: a detailed commentary which does not aim to replace reading crits but to render it possible. The three volumes do wonder, their effect is no less than magic: when, after getting stuck at a particularly dense page of crits, we turn to the corresponding pages in the commen

Stijn Vanheule is a psychoanalyst and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium. He is also a privately practicing psychoanalyst and a member of the New Lacanian School for Psychoanalysis. He is the author of The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective and Psychiatric Diagnosis Revisited From DSM to Clinical Case Formulation. Derek Hook is Associate Professor of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and Professor of Psychology at the University of Pretoria. A former lecturer at the London School of Economics and at Birkbeck College, he is a psychoanalytic practitioner, and the author of Six Moments in Lacan. Calum Neill is Associate Professor of Psychoanalysis and Cultural Theory at Edinburgh Napier University. He is the author of Without Ground: Lacanian Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity, Ethics and Psychology: Beyond Codes of Practice and Jacques Lacan: The Basics.

Introduction to Reading Lacan's crits: La trahison de l'criture - Derek Hook, Calum Neill & Stijn Vanheule The Signification of the Phallus Todd McGowan In Memory of Ernest Jones: On His Theory of Symbolism Filip Geerardyn and Alain Pringels On An Ex Post Facto Syllabary Yael Goldman Baldwin Some Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality Eve Watson The Youth of Gide, or the Letter and Desire Jean-Michel Rabat Kant with Sade Dany Nobus The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious Fabio Vighi Position of the Unconscious Paul Verhaeghe On Freuds "Trieb" and the Psychoanalysts Desire Theo Reeves-Evison Science and Truth Ed Pluth Metaphor of the Subject Stephanie Swales