Short description
This text presents the theory of subjectivity found in the work of Jacques Lacan. Against the tide of post-structuralist thinkers who announce the "death of the subject", the book explores what it means to come into being as a subject where impersonal forces once reigned.
Long description
This text presents the theory of subjectivity found in the work of Jacques Lacan. Against the tide of post-structuralist thinkers who announce the "death of the subject", the book explores what it means to come into being as a subject where impersonal forces once reigned, subjectify the alien roll of the dice at the beginning of our universe, and make our own the knotted web of our parent's desires that led them to bring us into the world. Guiding readers through the labyrinth of Lacanian theory - unpacking such central notions as the Other, object "a", the unconscious as structured like and language, alienation and separation, the paternal metaphor, jouissance and sexual difference - the author demonstrates in-depth knowledge of Lacan's theoretical and clinical work. Fink leads the reader step by step into Lacan's conceptual system to explain how one comes to be a subject, the analytic techniques employed to foster subjectification (punctuation, the "short session" and oracular speech) and the conditions responsible for the failure to become a subject - leading to psychosis.
Review
The Lacanian Subject not only provides an excellent introduction into the fundamental coordinates of Jacques Lacan's conceptual network; it also proposes original solutions to (or at least clarifications of) some of the crucial dilemmas left open by Lacan's work. -- Slavoj Zizek Journal for Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society
Table of contents
- Preface Language and Otherness A Slip of the Other's Tongue The Unconscious Foreign Bodies The Nature of Unconscious Thought, or How the Other Half "Thinks" Heads or Tails Randomness and Memory The Unconscious Assembles Knowledge without a Subject The Creative Function of the Word
- The Symbolic and the Real Trauma Interpretation Hits the Cause Incompleteness of the Symbolic Order
- The (W)hole in the Other Kinks in the Symbolic Order Structure versus Cause Pt
- The Lacanian Subject The Lacanian Subject The Lacanian Subject Is Not the "Individual" or Conscious Subject of Anglo
- American Philosophy The Lacanian Subject Is Not the Subject of the Statement The Lacanian Subject Appears Nowhere in What Is Said The Fleetingness of the Subject The Freudian Subject The Cartesian Subject and Its Inverse Lacan's Split Subject Beyond the Split Subject The Subject and the Other's Desire Alienation and Separation The Vel of Alienation Desire and Lack in Separation The Introduction of a Third Term Object a
- The Other's Desire A Further Separation
- The Traversing of Fantasy Subjectifying the Cause
- A Temporal Conundrum Alienation, Separation, and the Traversing of Fantasy in the Analytic Setting Metaphor and the Precipitation of Subjectivity The Signified Two Faces of the Psychoanalytic Subject The Subject as Signified The Subject as Breach Pt
- The Lacanian Object
- Love, Desire, Jouissance Object (a)
- Cause of Desire "Object Relations" Imaginary Objects, Imaginary Relations The Other as Object, Symbolic Relations Real Objects, Encounters with the Real Lost Objects The Freudian Thing Surplus Value, Surplus Jouissance There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship Castration The Phallus and the Phallic Function "There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship" Distinguishing between the Sexes The Formulas of Sexuation A Dissymmetry of Partners Woman[crossed off] Does Not Exist Masculine/Feminine
- Signifier/Signifierness Other to Herself, Other Jouissance The Truth of Psychoanalysis Existence and Ex
- sistence A New Metaphor for Sexual Difference Pt
- The Status of Psychoanalytic Discourse The Four Discourses The Master's Discourse The University Discourse The Hysteric's Discourse The Analyst's Discourse The Social Situation of Psychoanalysis There's No Such Thing as a Metalanguage Psychoanalysis and Science Science as Discourse Suturing the Subject Science, the Hysteric's Discourse, and Psychoanalytic Theory The Three Registers and Differently "Polarized" Discourses Formalization and the Transmissibility of Psychoanalysis The Status of Psychoanalysis The Ethics of Lacanian Psychoanalysis Afterword Appendix
- The Language of the Unconscious Appendix
- Stalking the Cause Glossary of Lacanian Symbols Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index