Surplus: Spinoza, Lacan (Suny Series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)
Opposing both popular "neo-Spinozisms" (Deleuze, Negri, Hardt,  Israel) and their Lacanian critiques (Zizek and Badiou), Surplus maintains  that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the proper continuation of the  Spinozian-Marxian line of thought. Author A. Kiarina Kordela argues that  both sides ignore the inherent contradictions in Spinoza's work, and that  Lacan's reading of Spinoza--as well as of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx,  Freud, and Wittgenstein--offers a much subtler balance of knowing when to  take the philosopher at face value and when to read him against himself.  Moving between abstract theory and tangible political, ethical, and  literary examples, Kordela traces the emergence of "enjoyment" and "the  gaze" out of Spinoza's theories of God, truth, and causality, Kant's  critique of pure reason, and Marx's pathbreaking application of set theory  to economy. Kordela's thought unfolds an epistemology and an ontology  proper to secular capitalist modernity that call for a revision of the  Spinoza-Marx-Lacan line as the sole alternative to the (anti-)Platonist  tradition."Kordela masterfully shows how Spinoza's thought jibes with the insights of  psychoanalysis, especially concerning the original cause and the final  cause. This book has actually forced me to reevaluate my own thinking about  Spinoza and to realize that I have wrongly been associating Spinoza with  the misguided neo-Spinozist reading of him." -- Todd McGowan, author ofThe Real Gaze: Film Theory after Lacan"From the very beginning, this book is of such intellectual power that it  is capable of severe criticism of some of the most potent thinkers in the  field--Zizek and Badiou, for example--while at the same time showing what  is productive in them. Kordela has learned from them; they too have much to  learn from her." -- Thomas Pepper, author ofSingularities: Extremes of  Theory in the Twentieth Century--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.