Dialectics of Love in Sartre and Lacan (The Palgrave Lacan Series)

What is love for Sartre and Lacan? In __Dialectics of Love in Sartre and Lacan__, Sinan Richards examines Sartre’s and Lacan’s writings on love to draw out a distinctly Lacanian conception of love and subjectivity. Richards begins by demonstrating how Sartre’s in __itself for itself__ is a convincing shorthand for Lacan’s central object of study, before presenting and explaining the various aspects of Lacan’s psychophilosophical project to show how, for Lacan, the subject is marked by various pathologies. He argues that, for Lacan, as for Sartre and Schelling before him, the subject is ontologically sick, and, by its very structure, the Oedipus complex produces subjects that are prey to a mental collapse at any moment. As a result, for Lacan, the subject has no choice but to identify with their potential madness, a constitutive aspect of their subjectivity. He concludes by making a compelling case that love in the Lacanian schema is the subject’s mad wish to reunite in itself with for itself, which is an always impossible yet necessary aspect of subjectivity. The book presents fresh insights on Lacan and Sartre that will appeal to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, comparative literature and critical theory. Preface—Love: A Pleasing Malady Acknowledgements Contents Abbreviations List of Figures 1: Introduction—The Necessity of Impossibility Sartre’s Challenge Lacanian Fables References 2: Ontologically Sick—Sartre’s Challenge ‘He Was My Teacher’ Preambling Love and Desire in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness Being for Others and In Itself For Itself Impossible Love Impossible Desire Why Love? Thinking the Fall: Ontologically Sick Sartre’s Atheistic Pause, or the Illusion of the Impossibility of Love References 3: The Decorator Crab—Lacanian Misunderstandings Lacan, the Master Supposed to Know The Problem with Language The Birth of the Big Other and the Oedipus Complex Psychosis, Foreclosure, and Sexual Difference The Quilting Point The Absence of the Sexual Relationship The Paradoxes of the Not-All, or God’s Deception The Decorator Crab References 4: A Momentary Folly—The Wish to Be Loved The Quilting of Meaning The Graph of Desire The Big Other and the Ego-Ideal The Second Mirror Stage Desire Is a Trap S(Ⱥ) Contextualising the Fantasy with Scudéry’s Clelia Map of Desire The Temporary Detour (A Momentary Folly) The Mother’s Trap Beyond The Dangerous Sea Loser Wins (I Know Very Well) But Nevertheless! The Subject of Jouissance das Ding Instead of Being Underneath Desire: Jouissance and Anxiety Kant with Sade The Desolation of the Subject References 5: Sent Home—Lacan’s Final Heresy The R.S.I [l’hérésie] L’(a)mur/L’Amour Surplus Enjoyment on the Cusp of (a)mur Phallic Jouissance/Jouissance of the Other Object a, Love, and the One The Sinthome, or how to Be Sent Home References 6: Conclusion—Hold Me Tight [Serre-moi fort] References Bibliography Index