Dominic,
Most of the student understanding and citation of Lacan is based not on
Lacan's work itself, but on Slavoj Zizek's pop-culture meditations on
it. Zizek is probably the most prominent public intellectual of the
radical left in the US; there's even a new documentary about him that
was just placed in public release:
http://www.zizekthemovie.com/
Lacan's own "The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis" and even
"Ecrits" is not the sort of work to set radicals' hearts afire; it's
dense, constantly wrapping back on itself and questioning itself, with
very little explicit content about politics. Zizek appropriates Lacan
for a Marxist perspective, which Lacan didn't necessarily share. Not as
I see it, anyway; he has more in common with Georges Bataille's
"Erotism" than with Mao's Little Red Book.
Best,
George
Dominic Fox wrote:
> Brutality is one way of producing a truth. Probably quite apposite
> when the enemies of that truth are so given to simpering.
>
> I have been surprised in recent months by the apparently widespread
> canonization of Lacan among the blogging intellectuals of the hard
> (well, *ish* - I mean the SWP and its various subsidiaries) left. Is
> it a student thing?
>
> Dominic
>
>
>
--
George Hunka
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http://www.ghunka.com
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