The transcript of Alain Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, this book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. It is the first volume of Badiou’s seminars to be published in English. Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital aspect of his thinking. In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential. Reviews: In today’s theoretical humanities, Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou are by far two of the most important and frequently referenced figures. Along with Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is rightly seen as profoundly shaping contemporary philosophy/theory along lines flowing directly out of Lacan’s teachings. Through a historical narrative running from ancient Greece through the postmodern Western world, Badiou defines philosophy partly through his characterizations of antiphilosophy. Hence, these seminars, including the one on Lacan, are crucial for an adequate appreciation of Badiou’s vision of philosophy tout court. -Adrian Johnston, author of A New German Idealism Table of Contents: Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou Author’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou Introduction to the Seminar on Lacan (Kenneth Reinhard) About the 1994-95 Seminar on Lacan Abbreviations of Lacan’s works cited in the text Session 1 Session 2 Session 3 Session 4 Session 5 Session 6 Session 7 Session 8 Session 9 Acknowledgments Bibliography About the Author: 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). About the Translators: Kenneth Reinhard is professor of comparative literature and English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Susan Spitzer is a frequent translator of Badiou’s works.
|