Unraveling Lacan: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy

Alright this week we’re back and joined by Michael Downs to talk with longtime friend of the show Todd McGowan about his brand new book The Cambridge Introduction to Jacques Lacan.

This is a book a lot of us have wanted for a long time!

McGowan's book on Lacan demonstrates yet again how right Lacan was when he insisted that people who are not clinical analysts can also be full members of his school. It's not that we philosophers should learn from clinicians - clinicians can learn from us what they are doing. Finally, someone dared to state openly the obvious truth: like all anti-philosophers from Kant onwards, Lacan is also and foremost a philosopher!

- Slavoj Žižek

Is Lacan a philosopher? Is Lacan a dialectical thinker?

In PART ONE of the interview with Todd we’re talking Lacan’s turn to the nonrelation and the Borromean knot and how it marks a break from his dialectical thought, and why you should skip the Écrits entirely and read the seminars instead.

We trace Lacan’s philosophical project through Kant and Hegel, explore Lacan's theory of the subject, Žižek’s quantum history, the Copenhagen interpretation, and Sean Carroll as a Deleuzean physicist.

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PART TWO of the interview will be out next!

See you in Paris,
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