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Lacan and the Concept of the 'Real'
Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the work of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Philosophers and political theorists have engaged Lacan's concept of the 'Real' in particular, with Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou deriving profound philosophical and political consequences from what is the most difficult of Lacan's ideas. This is the first book in English to explore in detail the genesis and consequences of Lacan's concept of the 'Real', providing readers with an invaluable key to one of the most influential ideas of modern times, combining as it does a seemingly paradoxical attention to the contingency and impossibility of human existence.
225 pages, Hardcover
First published August 7, 2012
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August 12, 2018
Of the three Lacanian registers, the "Real" is the most elusive and difficult to define. Nonetheless, with today's trend toward revisiting the later Lacan, the focus has increasingly shifted toward the centrality of this concept - see, for instance, Alenka Zupančič's Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan.
Todd Eyers takes issue with the aforementioned chronology: for him, the Real does not become foregrounded in the later Lacan, but is always already there, even in texts like that on the mirror stage in which the focus is firmly on the Imaginary. Eyers then shows how it is connected, in turn, to the Symbolic. The first two chapters of the book largely do the work of making this argument, and I think it's pretty convincing - although, if it were my argument, I would have done much more to emphasize the centrality of the death drive to this process.
Eyers also reads against the Hegelians and the deconstructionists: Lacan, he argues convincingly, is not a dialectician, nor does he trade in reciprocity. He makes a lot of good points, before going on to look at how, in this turn away from idealism, Lacan can be viewed as a kind of "materialist."
This book is thoughtful and well-written, but I do have to take issue with some things. The first is the common tendency among Lacanians to lapse into a kind of "Lacanese" that simply takes psychoanalytic ideas and processes for granted. I really dislike this kind of shorthand thinking - it is lazy, uncritical, and ideological.
The second is the fact that Eyers does not address any thinkers who are deeply critical of the concepts he is addressing. I am thinking here in particular of François Roustang's The Lacanian Delusion, which has a very detailed critique of the "Real," and yet who is not even mentioned once in Eyers's book. I really bemoan this unwillingness among Lacanians to address authors who openly challenge Lacan's ideas, it is a major critical weakness.
Todd Eyers takes issue with the aforementioned chronology: for him, the Real does not become foregrounded in the later Lacan, but is always already there, even in texts like that on the mirror stage in which the focus is firmly on the Imaginary. Eyers then shows how it is connected, in turn, to the Symbolic. The first two chapters of the book largely do the work of making this argument, and I think it's pretty convincing - although, if it were my argument, I would have done much more to emphasize the centrality of the death drive to this process.
Eyers also reads against the Hegelians and the deconstructionists: Lacan, he argues convincingly, is not a dialectician, nor does he trade in reciprocity. He makes a lot of good points, before going on to look at how, in this turn away from idealism, Lacan can be viewed as a kind of "materialist."
This book is thoughtful and well-written, but I do have to take issue with some things. The first is the common tendency among Lacanians to lapse into a kind of "Lacanese" that simply takes psychoanalytic ideas and processes for granted. I really dislike this kind of shorthand thinking - it is lazy, uncritical, and ideological.
The second is the fact that Eyers does not address any thinkers who are deeply critical of the concepts he is addressing. I am thinking here in particular of François Roustang's The Lacanian Delusion, which has a very detailed critique of the "Real," and yet who is not even mentioned once in Eyers's book. I really bemoan this unwillingness among Lacanians to address authors who openly challenge Lacan's ideas, it is a major critical weakness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review