list of users who have mentioned Jacques Lacan on Atlas

[© Tweed the Younger]

Young Tweed
belgiansocialist
Gully Foyle
migrendel
Earth
peeperkorn
The Mikado
Nathan

[Insula Dei]

Does Peeperkorn still post? He seemed like a fun fellow in a rightwing sort of way.

Anyway, given the thread's topic, my very own 'the Emperor's Clothes' anecdote. Back in the 1960s one of my professors was doing a postdoc or something like that in Paris on a grant. Since he had written extensively on Lacan in his PhD he figured it might be a good idea to attend Lacans fabled seminars. The first time he went he came in about half an hour before the start, which was around 12. He then was told there was no place left and that he would do wisely by being there at around 9:30 the next week. He did so and was able to find a place in the already packed auditorium after searching around a bit. Ten minutes after 12 Lacan comes in, hands over his coat to his young, female assistent, and starts rattling off his lecture. My professor, who as I've said was deeply Lacanian hismelf and who also claims to be fluent in French, left afterwards without having understood more than 10-15% of what had been said. That was the last time he tried to attend one of Lacan's seminars. (He did however manage to get into a very small seminar with the at that time relatively unknown Derrida. Such, such were the joys.)

[shua]

I've heard some interesting things about Lacan but have never read him.  What should I start with?

There, add me to the list.

[Grumps]

Not Al?

[opebo]

Not Al?

He's really not pretentious in that way.

[Grumps]

Not Al?

He's really not pretentious in that way.

Well I thought he might have at least had something negative to say

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Context is key:

An FF with a few waffles.

Lacanian Neo-Leninist (Maoist? Stalinist?) Nutter who is seemingly unable to ever structure more than three sentences into a coherent paragraph about anything at all. In short if you like Byzantine self-contradictory political theory explained through even more Byzantine self-contradictory French Psychoanalysis, then Zizek is for you.

I really can't recommend his articles enough. Many of them are very coherent.

On the West Bank

Various

To be honest I was mostly basing my opinions on that work he did on Lenin and a book entitled something like You call that Totaltarianism, oh and some of the film commentary he did. When he's not using Lacan as a crutch for his arguments or trying to fit into the fashionable beardy-lefty cliche he can be interesting.

In a thread entitled (if you can't guess it already, you probably fail the thread) "Opinion of Slavoj Zizek".