Writing the Structures of the Subject: Lacan and Topology (The Palgrave Lacan Series)

This book examines and explores Jacques Lacan's controversial topologisation of psychoanalysis, and seeks to persuade the reader that this enterprise was necessary and important. In providing both an introduction to a fundamental component of Lacan's theories, as well as readings of texts that have been largely ignored, it provides a thorough critical interpretation of his work. Will Greenshields argues that Lacan achieved his most pedagogically clear and successful presentations of his most essential and notoriously complex concepts -- such as structure, the subject and the real -- through the deployment of topology. The book will help readers to better understand Lacan, and also those concepts that have become prevalent in various intellectual discourses such as contemporary continental philosophy, politics and the study of ideology, and literary or cultural criticism Front Matter....Pages i-xii Dissolution and Déblayage ....Pages 1-36 The Topology of the Psychoanalytic Subject....Pages 37-102 Topology and the Re-turn to Freud....Pages 103-202 The Borromean Knot....Pages 203-263 Conclusion: A New Imaginary....Pages 265-271 Back Matter....Pages 273-290 Will Greenshields. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 273-280) And Index.