Talk:Jacques Lacan/Archive 1

message: I think the newly added passages by Buffyg are extremely informative and an excellent guide to popular criticisms levelled against "postmodernism" or "French theory" in general. However, it seems a bit longish and out of place in an article where the "Life" section hasn't even been properly written up yet - perhaps it could be moved to Postmodernism or a similarly generaly article with a link to the explanations here? A similar format might be applied to other articles which need the same context. -- Simonides 01:54, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Please note that I have made some changes to the Fashionable Nonsense entry consistent with those made here. I am by no means persuaded that the postmodernism entry (which is in any case as much a cause of unhappiness to me as it stands as the entry on deconstruction -- I do hope to rewrite both substantially). I would almost say that it would be better to split this out into "gossip" and "... but seriously, here's why that's only gossip" sections. I have elsewhere expressed my reservations about what I regard as the substantial lack of scholarship of those who insist upon including seemingly bruising criticisms with both a violent disregard for the context of these remarks and utter disinterest in analyzing (or for that matter, reading) their content as a whole (I wonder how many of these quotes are not simply URLs found by Google -- a tool of often limited validity for scholarly research -- but then quick extracts with subsequent find operations against the matching URLs -- one begins to suspect a genre of pseudo-criticism by simplistic spidering, with which targets of "opposition research" are no doubt all too familiar). People do need to understand why so many of these quotes offered as criticism are highly qualified in their validity, but this is, as you've said, often at the expense of attention to other matters (like the actual content of Lacan's work). Perhaps more to the point, these rebuttals are extremely specific (hence "longish") and need a great deal more research before they can be offered in greater generality (lest one indulge in what one has just declared objectionable). As I am also one of my editors, I will attempt to impose greater concision on what I've already written. Buffyg 02:56, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Corrección: El artículo Lacan en la versión inglesa de Wikipedia  tiene algunos errores, el primero. casi ab initio es considerar a Lacan como un estructuralista, ciertamente que lo fue...pero desde los '50 del s XX hasta mediados de los '60 del pasado siglo, luego fue el mismo Lacan quien encabezó al postestructuralism ,influyendo ( pese a  ellos a Foucault, Deleuze -no al usuario colega wikipedista obviamente...ó ¿quizás sí?-, Derrida o Guattari,etc.).
--José.El Argent.
My Spanish isn't particularly good (as in non-existant), but I'll try to answer what I understand of the question. The question is whether Lacan is properly referred to a structuralist or poststructuralist, and that question is badly formed. Lacan constituted the quintessentially structuralist "Gang of Four" with Foucault, Barthes, and Lévi-Strauss. All but Lévi-Strauss are also counted as poststructuralists. Some of the remarks I made in rewriting the poststructuralism article need to be tempered: the distinguishing feature of poststructuralism is the inheritance of various thinkers to structuralism. The "post" doesn't indicate that structuralism is over but that it no longer commands anything like an orthodox following. I'd cite the example of Derrida: Derrida makes a robust effort to say what it is that commends structuralism even as he details inherent limitations in structuralist which are in an internal sense necessary but not strictly so from a wider philosophical perspective. Derrida's response to structuralism identifies this necessity even as he transforms the understanding resulting from, not ultimately discarding structuralism (this being rather equivalent to kicking a ladder out from under oneself) but incorporating it in its historicity into his work. In this sense structuralism remains indispensable to poststructuralism. The attempts to transform structuralism may not at all resemble one another, which is why poststructuralists are bound together by little other than structuralism. Buffyg 12:12, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: The lack of substantial treatment of his work is why the article has a cleanup tag (at least, that's why I put one there). This should probably be clarified by a todo list or more specific cleanup tag. Buffyg 14:08, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Context for criticism 

message: The article as it exists now, really reads like it should be titled Sherry Turkle's vision of Jacques Lacan :-(.  She's perfectly fine to have as one source, but in truth, among major students/writers on Lacan's thought, she's way down the list.  I think whoever first wrote this article knew Lacan entirely through her book (which has a definite agenda to push; which is fine, just not NPOV). The whole bit about J.A.Miller being "the man behind the curtain" really shouldn't get more than passing mention; it's a clever conceit, but hard to take that seriously (has anyone read Miller's work since Lacan died?! It's interesting, but certainly it's no Lacan). Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 19:02, 2005 September 8 (UTC)
:Pardon me for deleting the double-post, but we heard you the first time. ;-> Turkle is what I had immediately on hand when I did a few edits to the article a while back. My immediate distress was that much of the article went on about what a bad man/scholar Chomsky and others make out Lacan to be (which is something of a groaner in Chomsky's case, given his dismissal of "theory", which I find rather anti-intellectual -- Roudinescou, on the other hand, seemed to me thoroughly misrepresented, while we got an obligatory citation of Sokal and Bricmont by someone who clearly read neither Lacan nor S & B's critics [further groaning]). I was by no means content with the result, which is why there's a cleanup tag (which I acknowledge shamefully neglecting thereafter). Please, please have a go at improvements, including balancing Turkle, who has undoubtedly been given undue influence over the content (the closest thing I have to balancing her out is an effort to make clear via attribution how much of the article comes through her).
::I can't explain quite how I managed to dup my paragraph.  But thanks for promoting conciseness in my comment :-).  I'll try to get around to some cleanup.  Time, time.  And of course, Lacan is notoriously difficult to get right.
::BTW, Buffyg, after I saw your name elsewhere a while back, I followed some links to your personal site, and read the critical letters-to-the-editors about Derrida's obituaries.  Those were positively delightful, I must compliment you. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 02:24, 2005 September 9 (UTC)
:I don't think the remark about Miller's editorial function should be heard as Miller using Lacan's seminars to publish his own views in place of Lacan's; the only point I wanted to make is that, despite the attribution of the works to Lacan, Miller's editing was effectively unsupervised after the first seminar and that the attribution of the seminars to Lacan defies the assumptions of most readers. I've asked the Lacanians I know if they was aware of any more specific treatment of the issue, and they weren't aware of the little I knew. Any recommendations for further reading? Buffyg 21:26, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  De-Turkleification 

message: Turkle and Ferdinand Dosse both claim that Lacan had a hand in the extremely contentious politics surrounding the pioneering psychoanalysis program at the University of Paris VIII at Vincennes.  This was a program headed by Serge Leclaire, annexed to the philosophy department headed by Michel Foucault, in which Lacan's daughter taught.  At the outset all of the members of the program were also members of the Freudian School of Paris [French acronym EFP, for École Freudienne de Paris].  Lacan was not a member of the program himself, but his son-in-law was.  The department suffered from a number of difficulties: one was that Lacan was not himself in charge.  Leclaire became exasperated with the program's lack of autonomy, intellectual and institutional, both from Lacan and the philosophy faculty and left the University.  The department was to go without a chair for three years.  Second, the program had limited degree status.  A degree from Vincennes was not initially a clinical qualification to practise psychoanalysis, which caused considerable objection among the students.  When Lacan gave a lecture at the University in 1969, in which students interrupted to complain about their lack of qualification through the program and refused to accept his objection that psychoanalytic knowledge was distinct from other forms of knowledge taught by the university and therefore should not be credentialed equally.  In addition to his concern about granting clinical authority Lacan was against granting any academic credit for work in the program.  Students unhappy with the program's seeming lack of interest in clinical experience left the program to undergo analysis or simply stopped attending lectures.  Miller's inclusion in the program was a problem in that his avowed Maoism was in apparent contradiction with his university position given that Maoism set the abolition of the university as a goal.  Such contradictory and conflicted attitudes toward authority and education are often taken as the hallmark of Vincennes generally (ironic jokes about a Gaullist strategy to preoccupy the many factions of the French academic left by giving them a university to administer), but this problem seems unusually acute in the psychoanalysis program.  Third, Lacan's subsequent involvement in the program, which began in 1974, was regarded as heavy-handed and was a further source of frustration for the clinically included.  Lacan was retooling his views of psychoanalysis heavily and was determined to give it a more profoundly scientific character.  He declared the previous efforts of the program a failure, appointed himself to a position in the department, and had Miller elevated to the position of chairman.  In the same period Luce Irigaray proposed to offer a course on material developing in the wake of her first book on psychoanalysis and feminine sexuality and was rejected.  This rejection was perceived as petty antagonism of a critic indicative of a further curtailment of intellectual freedom in a program seemingly shackled to Lacan's agenda.  Later decision to grant clinical standing by degrees from the program were taken as signs of outright hypocrisy serving to assure Miller of unreasonable powers in Lacan's name.
In this period the EFP fell apart, sparked in large part by the rise of the parallel organization Confrontations, which René Major helped found with the support of Jacques Derrida.  Confrontrations harnessed much of the dissent that emerged in the French psychoanalytic community in response to Lacan's insistence on mathematical aspects of his scientific conception of psychoanalysis.  The clinical emphasis of Confrontations drew in those less inclined toward issues they viewed as hermetically theoretical or philosophical.  In some respects Confrontations might be taken to be a necessary element of the psychoanalyic community, but the EFP went so far as to remove Denis Vasse, then serving as its vice president, from office for his participation.  EFP broken down into factions, and a number of factions otherwise sympathetic to Lacan became restive because of what they viewed Miller's increasing hegemony as dictatorial in ambition.  As questions were raised about the democratic nature of the EFP, Lacan became increasingly ill with colon cancer.  A letter dissolving the EFP was circulated, affixed to a Lacanian signature whose authority was contested by allegations of a Miller forgery or dictation imposed upon a gravely ill Lacan.  The matter splattered headlines everywhere.  Louis Althusser showed up to denounce the proceedings of a meeting to found a new organization, the Freudian Cause.  It became increasingly difficult to determine whether Lacan was speaking with his own voice or if Miller were appropriating his authority in a bid to consolidate power.  Turkle has suggested that many who wished to think themselves loyal to Lacan expressed this in imagining that they were only defying the machinations of a scheming son-in-law.
By the 1960s, Lacan was associated—at least in the public mind—with the far left in France. Echoing this sentiment, "Shortly after the tumultuous events of May 1968, Lacan was accused by the authorities of being a subversive, and directly influencing the events that transpired."
This seems like a pertinent inclusion, and I've seen this sort of thing claimed elsewhere, so there is obviously something to it. But, as a reader, I want to know: 
:"public mind"? was he a public figure by then?, and in what sense? what public? (intellectuals?, man in the street?, newspaper readers? was psychological practice in the news or just Lacan? who exactly?)
:which bit of the "far left"? (anarchists?, Maoists?, trade union?, which bit of the left exactly? or was it his "anti-authoritarian" stance?)
:how was he "associated" (did he do something?, say something?, did he belong to some organisation?)
:which "authorities accused him? (the university leardership?, the police?, members of a political party?, the president?)
:did the authorities give some reason as to how or why he directly influenced events? or was he just one of the "usual suspects"?
If we could briefly address these issues it would make for a much more informative articleMarkAnthonyBoyle 01:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Lacan and the French Left

message: I'm having a lot of trouble with this section too - I've left most of the critics in, with the exception of Roudinesco, who seems to be primarily criticizing Lacan as a person rather than his work - but most of them direly need expansion. Snowspinner 05:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is, I think, an excellent idea. Phil Sandifer 22:47, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism section

message: This is not an encyclopaedic article about Chomsky's criticism of Lacan, and it utilizes POV in several instances.  In all frankness, it is more of a response to Chomsky than a summary of his critique.  I do not think this should be included in this article in its current form.
: I agree. I would also submit that the "conclusion" is heavily POV. According to my POV, a misguided POV at that. --s
: I would also like to state my agreement with the original posting, and with s' addition.  Furthermore, it seems that the conclusion is at least partyly unrelated to the encyclopedia topic being dicussed
In agreement with the above statements I have just removed "The case of Chomsky", which I thought was a nice essay, but besides the point for Wikipedia. I have summarized its main points and included in them in the article, which I also structured somewhat. I also added a "see also" section. bastel 19:36, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I would point out that, according to the article linked to, in the very same sentence in which Chomsky referred to Lacan as a 'charlatan' etc. he went on to qualify this by saying 'though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print'.  I don't think you can call this 'dismiss[ing] Lacan and his work in a more or less wholesale fashion'.  Chomsky's position is therefore misrepresented in the article as it stands, although I agree that this article is not the place for a full-scale discussion of Chomsky-on-Lacan.  Lexo 10:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Regarding "The case of Chomsky" 

message: The claim of the text that Freud discovered the unconcious is almost surreal. The idea of the unconcious has been with us for nearly time inmemorial. 
It doesn't claim that - it claims that Freud discovered that the unconscious has a linguistic structure ~~
:Which is really a claim more associated with Lacan and then ascribed to Freud. Phil Sandifer 21:30, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The Unconscious

message: Much more is needed on these contentious areas - especially on the Real, probably the hardest of the three. I will try to do more soon, but help would be appreciated! Sebastian789 15:14, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real/Imaginary/Symbolic 

message: I'd love to see a well writen list of the most important Lacanian mathemes on this page!  Anybody up for it?
:knot theory?? any information? MotherFunctor 04:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathèmes 

message: I have taken the liberty of moving this entire section further up the page as it is a rather fundamental element to Lacan's thought. Could do with expansion - more to follow. Further, I'm not entirely au fait with Lacan's relation to Foucault and other post-structuralists (except Derrida); a section on the Lacan-Deleuze/Guatarri relationship would also be most fruitful. Sebastian789 15:07, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: At the roots of the ethics is desire: analysis' only promise is austere, it is the entrance-into-the-I (in French a play of words between 'l'entrée en je' and 'l'entrée en jeu'). 'I must come to the place where the id was', where the analysand discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. The end of psychoanalysis entails 'the purification of desire'. This text functions throughout the years as the background of Lacan's work. 
Can't make any sense out of this. Can I suggest that you expand this out? I may then be able to reword it so that it scans better.MarkAnthonyBoyle 11:10, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Return to Freud 

message: The article Topology links to this one, from a section called 'Topology in psychoanalysis'; neither this article nor that one gives any idea what use Lacan made of topology.  Can anyone provide at least a broad summary?  Archelon 16:38, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: knot theory. Anyone know about Lacan's interest in knot theory? MotherFunctor 04:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Topology

message: I didn't find any reference in this article to his family. Did he have children? Was he married? Who were his parents, and what work did they do? The article seems to be more about Lacanian Theory than Lacan himself. Not that that is a criticism, since he is very much known for his work in psychoanalysis than whether his father was a cab driver, but since this is an article about the person, it needs a bit of background information about him. Thanks. --NightMonkey 07:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can someone provide more specific factual information and a full citation? What was his first wife's name? What dates were they married? When were the three children from that marriage born? I think this information is worth concisely noting (with citation), I just don't know what the facts are. LotLE×talk 20:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biographical information? 

message: Can we get a citation for this claim, very near the top? "Lacan's work has had a profound impact on the development of psychoanalysis worldwide (of the 20,000 psychoanalysts in the world today, approximately half are Lacanian)."  That just didn't seem right to me -- never heard him mentioned outside of critical theory, and a friend who's been in practice for twenty years was unfamiliar with the name. What's meant by being a "Lacanian"? The APA website gives him 0 hits. As far as medical practice goes, the AMA website gives two hits for Lacan, one of them merely from "Books received." Possibly POV, may need deletion.
:He's much bigger in Europe and South America than in the US, so depending on where you're from, that may explain some of it.  Also, he's not a psychologist, and the medican profession has mostly cast off Freudianism - I would be quite surprised if he was mentioned by the APA or AMA at all, to be honest.  Still, I agree that there needs to be a source for the specific claim about half the 20,000 global psychoanalysts being Lacanian. Deleuze 04:45, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The World Association of Psychoanalysis claims far fewer members: "The aim of the World Association of Psychoanalysis is to promote the practice and the study of psychoanalysis following the teachings of Jacques Lacan. It was created by Jacques-Alain Miller in February 1992 and today has over a thousand members in Europe, America and Australia."  So the figure in the article is inflated by a factor of 10, unless the WAP is a tiny minority of Lacanians? AllyD 20:42, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Influence?

message: "Yet, in the aspirations of worldwide expansion, historians, sociologists, and analysts have cautioned that the attempt to transmit psychoanalysis through the bloodline of the daughter – whether of Freud's daughter Anna or Lacan's daughter Judith (to whom Miller is married) – opens serious questions as to its validity, for this has historically resulted in institutionalizations of psychoanalysis in a manner that begins to resemble churches (IPA) and not secular analytic associations." What the hell does this mean? Why is it in the lead of the article? It sounds like the work of somebody with an axe to grind, rather than a good faith editor contributing to an explanation of Lacan. -leigh (φθόγγος) 22:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  bloodlines, churches, and other inappropriate topics