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Reading Lacan's Ecrits: From 'Signification of the Phallus' to 'Metaphor of the Subject'

Editor : Stijn Vanheule, Editor : Derek Hook, Editor : Calum Neill

Reviews and Endorsements

"It all began with an improbable wager: ask 35 scholars to each write something intelligible about every single paragraph in one of the texts included in Jacques Lacan's magnum opus, Ecrits, so as to generate a commentary on the entire 800-page volume. And yet, after years of preparation, the wager has paid off: we have here useful and at times brilliant examples of textual explication! Cryptic formulations are lucidly unpacked, and mysterious references are provided, giving the serious reader myriad keys to fascinating texts" - Bruce Fink, translator of Ecrits: The First Complete Edition in English.

"Let's face it: Lacan's Ecrits, one of the classical texts of modern thought are unreadable - they remain impenetrable if we just pick the thick volume up and start to read it. Vanheule, Hook and Neill provide what we were all waiting for: a detailed commentary which does not aim to replace reading Ecrits but to render it possible. The three volumes do wonder, their effect is no less than magic: when, after getting stuck at a particularly dense page of Ecrits, we turn to the corresponding pages in the commentary and then return to the page of Ecrits which pushed us to madness, the same lines appear in all the clarity of their line of thought. It is thus a safe prediction that Vanheule, Hook and Neill's commentary will become a kind of permanent companion of the English translation of Ecrits, indispensable for everyone who wants to find her or his way in its complex texture." - Slavoj Zizek.

"Lacan's teaching is notoriously hard to access and comprehend. But this is done on purpose: to understanding the psyche, the subject and its interaction with socio-political reality cannot be a piecemeal operation. One needs to take into account the paradoxical and often counterintuitive effects of unconscious mechanisms, and of the extimate operation of the real within and beyond the symbolic and the imaginary. Coupling exegesis with multi-level interpretations, the numerous texts in this volume advance a commentary, both informative and suggestive, that will immensely help readers navigate the archipelago of the Lacanian Ecrits, without reducing in the least their complexity and inspirational value, without sacrificing their ability to surprise, provoke and jolt us out of our complacency." - Yannis Stavrakakis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

"These essays will be an invaluable resource not only for those approaching the Ecrits for the first time but also for seasoned readers. Broad in scope yet following the detail of the text, they help guide us through Lacan's difficult prose, elucidating, contextualising and clarifying, and reminding us time and time again of the precision, power and originality of his rethinking of psychoanalysis" - Darian Leader