Lacan and Narration: The Psychoanalytic Difference in Narrative Theory

by Robert Con Davis (Editor)

Nine distinguished scholars assess the influence of Jacques Lacan on literary theory. From various perspectives, they pursue the implications for narrative theory of Lacanian reading and attempt to position Lacan's thinking in the context of current discussions of narration and narratology.

220 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1983

Reviews

[Peter Mathews · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually a reprint of a 1983 issue of the journal MLN on the topic of Lacan and Narration. Everything about it feels cheap, to the point where they even preserved the journal's page numbering rather than repaginating the text for the book format. My goodness.

For the most part, there is not a great deal of interest to today's scholar in this collection. The essays in here belong to the dry and formulaic tradition of 1980s literary criticism.

There are two exceptions to that rule, however. Juliet Flower MacCannell's chapter on Stendhal continues to have some resonance - it is interesting, too, that she states her ambition to write a postmodern reading of Stendhal that never eventuated. The work that she wrote instead was The Regime of the Brother: After the Patriarchy, which includes a substantially reworked chapter on Stendhal.

The other exception is Shoshana Felman's chapter, which reappears almost exactly as it is here in her book Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture. Felman has a habit of recycling her work in this way, but at least the piece is worth reading.

These two pieces sparkle in an otherwise drab collection of essays.

[Mills College Library]

809.923 L129 1984