Lacan: Anti-Philosophy 3 (The Seminars of Alain Badiou)

Alain Badiou is arguably the most significant philosopher in Europe today. Badiou’s seminars, given annually on major conceptual and historical topics, constitute an enormously important part of his work. They served as laboratories for his thought and public illuminations of his complex ideas yet remain little known. This book, the transcript of Badiou’s year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, is the first volume of his seminars to be published in English, opening up a new and vital aspect of his thinking. In a highly original and compelling account of Lacan’s theory and therapeutic practice, Badiou considers the challenge that Lacan poses to fundamental philosophical topics such as being, the subject, and truth. Badiou argues that Lacan is a singular figure of the “anti-philosopher,” a series of thinkers stretching back to Saint Paul and including Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, with Lacan as the last great anti-philosopher of modernity. The book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou’s own thought. This seminar, more accessible than some of Badiou’s more difficult works, will be profoundly valuable for the many readers across academic disciplines, art and literature, and political activism who find his thought essential. Table of Contents ......Page 6 Editors’ Introduction to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou......Page 8 Author’s General Preface to the English Edition of the Seminar of Alain Badiou......Page 12 Introduction to the Seminar on Lacan (Kenneth Reinhard) ......Page 24 About the 1994-95 Seminar on Lacan ......Page 40 Abbreviations of Lacan’s works cited in the text......Page 44 Session 1......Page 48 Session 2......Page 86 Session 3......Page 114 Session 4 ......Page 138 Session 5 ......Page 166 Session 6 ......Page 184 Session 7 ......Page 210 Session 8 ......Page 228 Session 9 ......Page 248 Acknowledgments ......Page 276 Notes ......Page 278 Bibliography ......Page 292 Index ......Page 296 The transcript of Alain Badiou's year-long seminar on the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, this book offers a forceful reading of an enigmatic yet foundational thinker and sheds light on the crucial role that Lacan plays in Badiou's own thought. It is the first volume of Badiou's seminars to be published in English.