The Concept of Extimacy in the Work of Jacques Lacan (feat. Nadia Bou Ali & Surti Singh)

I am joined by Lacanian philosophers Nadia Bou Ali and Surti Singh to discuss the concept of "Extimacy" in the work of Jacques Lacan. In 1960, Lacan coined the neologism extimité (extimacy) to denote a structure of subjectivity in which the most intimate, internal core is already external, thus complicating the traditional philosophical dualisms and binaries that have informed traditional notions of subjectivity. We discuss what this idea helps us to think in terms of philosophy, culture and politics. This conversation is based on a new collection of essays co-edited by Nadia and Surti entitled Extimacy, a book that is the first sustained interrogation of the concept. 

Nadia Bou Ali is an associate professor and director of the Critical Humanities Program for the Liberal Arts at the American University of Beirut. She is the coeditor of Lacan contra Foucault: Subjectivity, Sex, and Politics and the author of Hall of Mirrors: Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic. Bou Ali is a candidate analyst at the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in the Bay Area.

Surti Singh is an associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University.