Alain Badiou is one of the leading philosophers in the world today. His ground-breaking philosophy is based on a creative reading of set theory, offering a new understanding of what it means to be human by promoting an 'intelligence of change'. Badiou's philosophical system makes our capacity for revolution and novelty central to who we are, and develops an ethical position that aims to make us less anxious about this very capacity. This book presents a comprehensive and engaging account of (...) Badiou's philosophy, including an in-depth discussion of _The Theory of the Subject_, _Being and Event_ and _Logics of Worlds_. In a clear and careful analysis, Ed Pluth considers exactly how Badiou's theoretical 'anti-humanism' is linked up to what is, for all intents and purposes, a practical humanism. Central to this is an account of Badiou’s theory of the subject, and his attempt to develop an 'ethic of truths'. The role of set theory, Marxism, and Lacanian psychoanalysis in Badiou's philosophy is also given close attention. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, as well as to all those keen to develop a critical understanding of one of the most controversial and important thinkers of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Situates Lacan’s theory of the subject within contemporary philosophical debates over freedom and agency.

This book promotes a Lacanian approach to silence, arguing that Lacanian psychoanalysis is distinctive for putting a high value on both silence and language. Unlike other disciplines and discourses the authors do not treat silence as a mystical-impossible beyond, at the cost of demoting the value of language and thought. Rather than treating silence with awe and wonder, this book puts silence to work, and it does so in order to deal with the inevitable alienation that comes with becoming speaking-beings. (...) This illuminating book will be of great interest to scholars of Lacan and the psychosocial, as well as more broadly to philosophers and linguists alike. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a rapid growth in neuroscientific research, and an expansion beyond basic research to incorporate elements of the arts, humanities and social sciences. It has been suggested that the neurosciences will bring about major transformations in the understanding of ourselves, our culture and our society. In academia one finds debates within psychology, philosophy and literature about the implications of developments within the neurosciences, and the emerging fields of educational neuroscience, neuro-economics, and neuro-aesthetics also bear witness to a (...) 'neurological turn' which is currently taking place. Neuroscience and Critique is a ground-breaking edited collection which reflects on the impact of neuroscience in contemporary social science and the humanities. It is the first book to consider possibilities for a critique of the theories, practices, and implications of contemporary neuroscience. Bringing together leading scholars from several disciplines, the contributors draw upon a range of perspectives, including cognitive neuroscience, critical philosophy, psychoanalysis, and feminism, and also critically examine several key ideas in contemporary neuroscience, including: The idea of "neural personhood" Theories of emotion in affective neuroscience Empathy, intersubjectivity and the notion of "embodied simulation" The concept of an "emo-rational" actor within neuro-economics. The volume will stimulate further debate in the emerging field of interdisciplinary studies in neuroscience, and will appeal to researchers and advanced students in a range of disciplines including critical psychology, philosophy, and critical studies. (shrink)

Žižeks Buch For They Know Not What They Do besteht aus drei Teilen, die sich der Lacan’schen Logik des Signifikanten und der symbolischen Wirkmacht sozialer Strukturen widmen. Neben Analysen zu Hegels Urteilslehre und den semiotischen Quadraten von Algirdas J. Greimas, mit denen Žižek ethische Befehle und die Rolle der Kontingenz untersucht, entwickelt er eine Ethik des Realen, die das Scheitern der Einheit und die Unmöglichkeit der vollständigen Symbolisierung der uns umgebenden Welt(en) der Erfahrung in den Mittelpunkt stellt.

The theory of life that Badiou proposes at the end of Logics of Worlds is considered in this paper as a retooling of the old idea that the human is an exception in the order of things. What distinguishes Badiou’s account of the human from others though is the fact that it posits the human not as an exception from other animals, nor as an exception to ordinary life, but an exception that is other to the individual as such. The (...) way in which Alexandre Kojève framed the human in his reading of Hegel is used to establish the basic philosophical grammar for Badiou’s thinking about the human. What Badiou calls “democratic materialism” – his philosophical nemesis – is also considered from the perspective of that grammar. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the various ways in which silence is used in psychoanalytic practice and theory. It considers arguments from Reik as well as Lacan and others about the importance of using silence in the clinic, and then turns to a discussion of how Lacan gave the experience of silence a crucial role in his theory of subject-formation.

This chapter reconsiders the much-maligned notion of full speech in Lacanian theory and how Lacan’s discussions of machines and cybernetic systems provide new ways of thinking about it. If this early model for the ethic of psychoanalysis is looked at more closely, along with its unexpected connection to the nonhuman, we get a portrait of anti- or posthumanist freedom and agency. The question remains whether freedom and agency in Lacan’s work significantly changes the classical models of freedom (i.e., voluntarist or (...) libertarian) or simply places these models in a different source—no longer in the humanist subject, but in something else. This chapter explores whether Lacan’s position involves the same kind of problem found in Heidegger’s work: a kind of mystical quietism. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the ‘writing’ and portrayal of silence in literature and music. We closely consider Beckett, Melville and Claudel as well as John Cage’s infamous silent composition, 4′33″ as varying ways in which silence is invoked and grappled with.

This paper considers the status of both the natural real and thinking in transcendental or structural materialisms, and questions whether the relationship between thinking and being in such philosophies can really be considered dialectical or not. Looking at the recent work of Slavoj Žižek, but with an eye to work being done by thinkers such as Brassier, Johnston, and Meillassoux as well, I consider what is said about quantum physics in some of Žižek’s recent books, and argue that it is (...) difficult to see how any version of the natural real – quantum or not – can have a status in a dialectical philosophy that does not end up at least implicitly giving ordinary human experience and thought a de-realized or ontologically degraded status, in a manner that is in fact very un-dialectical. The sciences basically require a reductionist perspective, such that it is hard to argue that there is any vigorous relationship between thinking and being in them. There is much about human experience and thinking that does need to be de-realized, of course. Hegelian philosophy and Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis have always done an excellent job of that. (shrink)

In this chapter, we contrast a Lacanian approach to silence and language with another historically significant approach to the topics, studied and presented in detail by William Franke in a series of books, which we call apophatic discourse. We determine that the silence portrayed in this discourse is an imaginarized, impossible object, and we discuss how it manifests in some clinical cases Lacan discussed (Dora and the Papin sisters) as well as in his formulas for sexuation.

In the final chapter we look at Lacan’s provisional uptake of Pascal and elaborate on this as a way of understanding silence as crucial in psychoanalysis and in everyday life. We contend that the impossibility of silence is a quest worth embarking on as it raises a number of questions about subjectivity and its relation to truth.

Der aus der Konsumkultur bekannte Ausruf „Enjoy!“ steht Žižek zufolge für einen paradoxen Befehl des Über-Ichs. Denn während das Über-Ich nach Freud Schuldgefühle erzeugt, befiehlt es bei Lacan das Genießen. Lacan vollzieht hier einen Bruch mit der Freud’schen Orthodoxie, indem er das Über-Ich als den Imperativ der jouissance beschreibt. Žižek schließt sich dieser Sichtweise an und argumentiert, dass das Genießen selbst als etwas Befohlenes und nicht Spontanes erlebt wird. Grenzüberschreitende Praktiken gelten daher nicht notwendig als subversiv, sondern als erwartete Handlungen (...) aus der Perspektive des Über-Ichs. Žižeks Überlegungen zu einer Durchquerung der Fantasie und zum psychoanalytischen Akt sind als Auswege aus dieser libidinösen Falle gedacht, um das verhängnisvolle Genießen zu überwinden. (shrink)

Recent discussions of the notion of the act in Lacan and Žižek have made the act out to be something like a stand in for the old idea of freedom. And so, the debate tends to be about whether acts are spontaneous or not, whether they result from decisions coming from a conscious subject or not, and what relation acts have to the circumstances that precede them. But much of this debate may be a red herring. I will be taking (...) the view here that, despite important similarities, the major difference between Badiou and Žižek on this point can be traced back to their differing views on the subject. By thinking the subject as a void, or as negative, Žižek’s subject looks more like a decisionist, even Sartrean subject. Badiou’s subject seems more fully post-phenomenological, and this difference has an important effect on how the act is conceived in his work.How Badiou’s subject fits within a psychoanalytic perspective is something I will explore in my second part. Badiou’s theory seems to have taken a psychoanalytic and Lacanian perspective very much to heart when thinking about the act. I will explain how this is so by using two models for an act coming from two different artistic practices: the surrealist practice of automatic writing, which I will compare to psychoanalytic free association, and the practice that Marcel Duchamp dubbed “over-censorship,” which I will compare to “working-through”. Each gives us a different model for the production of truth, and, in line with Badiou’s call to become the “pitiless censors of ourselves,” I argue that Duchamp’s technique has quite a bit to teach us about the structure of an act. It also helps to shed light on some aspects of Žižek’s view. (shrink)

In Žižeks Werken wird der Begriff „Akt“ als „authentischer ethischer Akt“ bezeichnet und hat seinen Ursprung in Lacans Seminaren. Ein Akt ist ein Moment der Wahl, der das Subjekt transformiert und das symbolische Gefüge, in dem es seine Identität entfaltet, grundlegend verändert. Lacan beschreibt den Akt als Sprechakt, der das Individuum im Moment seiner Neuerschaffung sinnbildlich ‚vernichtet‘. Žižek überträgt dieses Konzept auf Politik und Ethik. Ein Akt opponiert nicht einem äußeren Hindernis, sondern den Handlungsoptionen des Subjekts. Žižek betont in diesem (...) Zusammenhang die Bedeutung der „Durchquerung des fundamentalen Phantasmas“. Ein Akt verbindet Zufälligkeit und Notwendigkeit und wird retrospektiv als notwendige Lösung einer subjektiven, ethischen oder politischen Sackgasse erkannt. (shrink)

I explore Lacan’s theory of the subject by responding to two well-known criticisms of it, found in Borch-Jacobsen’s Lacan and Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy’s The Title of the Letter. I argue that the relation of the subject to language is an important part of Lacan’s theory, but his conception of the subject cannot be reduced to language, as the critiques allege. The real must be included in the picture too. I then discuss the situation of Lacan’s subject between language and the (...) real, and conclude with a contrast of Lacan’s subversion of the subject to a Derridean paleonymic approach. (shrink)

In this commentary on Adrian Johnston's paper, “Drive Between Brain and Subject: An Immanent Critique of Lacanian Neuropsychoanalysis,” I consider whether his attempt to develop a materialist ground for psychoanalysis can avoid versions of reductionism and verificationism that would threaten any autonomy psychoanalysis might have as a science.