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20% off and free global shipping on all Routledge titles for LacanOnline.com readers. Use this link and code S031 at the checkout.

The Palgrave Lacan Series continues to produce exciting new work in Lacanian psychoanalysis, with two new titles released over the summer and another due to be released shortly:

  • David Marriott’s Lacan Noir explores Lacan’s influence on Black Studies and the challenge it presents to Lacan and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Marriott proposes a Lacanian reassessment of the notion of race – distinguishing it from culture, language, religion, and identity – and argues for a re-established theoretical relation between capitalism, anti-blackness, and colonialism. This is done through a reassessment of the links between Lacanian analysis and the mastery, knowledge, and embodiment as a three principal domains of black inquiry.
  • Bret Fimiani’s Psychosis and Extreme States: An Ethic for Treatment advances a theory of transference-in-psychosis, offering a new way to think about the experience of psychosis and the way it is treated clinically. Fimiani argues that “the aim of the psychoanalytic experience is the creation of a new ethic for the analysand.” Drawing upon Lacan’s work and those of his successors – such as Deleuze & Guattari and Apollon – the book synthesises clinical and ‘peer model’ principles in an attempt to navigate through the transferential impasses encountered in practice.
  • Dries Dulsster’s The Reign of Speech: On Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis will be released in November. It offers a detailed examination of psychotherapy and supervision in the Lacanian orientation, combining interview data with analysts and ex-analysands alongside readings of Lacan’s texts from the Ecrits and his Seminar. The second part of the book provides the first systematic discussion of Lacanian supervision. It is available to pre-order now from Palgrave.

Psychoanalysis and Revolution by Iain Parker and David Pavón-Cuéllar will be released in September and is available to pre-order now. It is the first book from the new publisher 1968 Press, founded by Daniel Bristow, Alfie Bown, Izzy Dann, and Jaice Sara Titus. Psychoanalysis and Revolution presents a manifesto arguing for how psychoanalysis can connect social transformation with personal liberation.

Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory, a collection edited by Sheldon George and Derek Hook, was published by Routledge in July. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory to conceptualise race, racial identity, and racism, the book features contributions that cover white nationalism, the current debate over confederate monuments, Afropessimism and postcolonialism, and an analysis of racism in apartheid and American slavery. Reading racism through Lacan is a central concern throughout, with several chapters exploring race and the clinic, and theorising the racialised Lacanian subject. Order it from the publishers using the discount code and link above to get 20% off.

The latest from the always-excellent Darian Leader was released by Polity over the summer and LacanOnline.com readers can get it at a 20% discount when ordering from the publishers here and entering the code JOU21 at the checkout. Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction returns to some of the sources of the concept in Freud and their elaborations in Lacan. The book seeks to stimulate a debate around the relations of pleasure to pain, autoerotism, the links of satisfaction to arousal, the effects of repression, and the place of the body in psychoanalytic theory. Leader aims to provide context for Lacan’s work and encourage dialogue with other analytic traditions.

Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis: Surviving the Environmental Apocalypse in Cinema by Robert Geal combines Lacanian psychoanalysis with ecolinguistics in analysing cinema’s depiction of environmental disaster. Looking at the tropes that are rife in such films – survivor escape, restoration of the nuclear family, the dilemmas of individual versus social responsibilities, for instance – Geal highlights the dangers they reveal in how we think about the environment and ecological catastrophe.

Schizostructuralism: Divisions in Structure, Surface, Temporality, Class by Daniel Bristow was released earlier in the summer courtesy of Routledge. Exploring the antagonisms and divisions within and between psychoanalytic, structuralist, and Marxist theory, Bristow presents a dialectical materialist overview of 20th century thinkers who worked within, or drew from, psychoanalysis. The book explores divisions in structure, surface, and temporality through a predominantly Lacanian reading of the psychoanalytic unconscious, topology, and time. As well as Freud and Lacan, thinkers such as Reich, Laing, and Deleuze and Guattari are reconsidered in an analysis of class antagonism. Divisions in materiality and distribution are discussed in relation to the three Lacanian orders.

Ghost Words and Invisible Giants by Lheisa Dustin uses Lacanian theory in an original study of modern literature. Works by the poet HD and Djuna Barnes are critiqued as part of an investigation into the language of suffering which also incorporates Buddhist philosophy and feminist scholarship. It is available now courtesy of Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

For French speakers, Michel David published an account of an analysis with Lacan, one of the last Lacan undertook. Tombeau de Jacques Lacan is the story of the adventure of this analysis, begun in 1975, and encompasses Lacan’s death and its consequences for the psychoanalytic movement after Lacan. The book opens with the line: ““What was unique when you were in analysis with Jacques Lacan is that you were certain to be listened to in a singular way and as you would never have been heard elsewhere.” Michel David is a psychoanalyst and writer who has authored numerous books and essays on psychoanalysis as well as on the works of Serge Gainsbourg, Marguerite Duras, and Michel Houellebecq.

From the journals, the latest issue of The Lacanian Review is now available. ‘The Art of Singularities’ features translations of commentaries by Lacan ‘On Pleasure and the Fundamental Rule’, and Jacques-Alain Miller’s ‘Signature of the Symptoms’. Papers on the pass and the formation of the analyst are among other works making up this weighty edition, which explores what can be said about the singular in art, writing, and mathematics. “Without the effort to circumscribe what is singular for the speaking being, life ends up as a grey composite of everyone’s favourite colour”, as Voruz writes. It can be ordered from ECF shop as part of a subscription.

The Danish peer-reviewed journal Lamella published its fifth issue on Freud, Lacan, and theoretical psychoanalysis over the summer. Under the title ‘It Thinks’ it features articles (in English) on Lacan with Blanchot, Hegel, and Heidegger respectively, among other topics. Scroll down the page via the link above and click the link to the PDF versions in English.

Elsewhere online, highly recommended and now available on YouTube thanks to the newly-launched Lacan Web Télévision is a presentation Jacques-Alain Miller gave to a Russian group in July via Zoom. (English subtitles are available by clicking the cog or the subtitle button on the bottom right of the video). The talk is on interpretation but Miller’s remarks are more wide-ranging and can serve as an exceptionally lucid introduction to the Lacanian clinical orientation generally. Miller’s remarks on the L-Schema in particular – a model used several times in Lacan’s Ecrits and early Seminars – are a particularly good example of this. Other videos on Lacan Web Television – the latest initiative by the ECF – can be found on their YouTube channel here. English subtitles are available on almost all of them.

Prof Sheldon George’s recent talk on ‘Racialization and the Sexuated Subject’ for Lacan in Scotland is now available on YouTube and via the link above. In this online seminar Prof George explores race from the perspective of Lacan’s theory of sexuation. Chaired by Dr Calum Neill it is followed by audience discussion. Timestamps are available via the link above.

Among events, the Lacan Circle of Australia has several upcoming events that will be of interest:

  • Bodies Captured by Discourse: Véronique Voruz in Conversation. “Your know-how is with your symptom; it is not in the dimension of language.” Voruz is a member of the LS-NLS, the NLS and the WAP, and she will be in conversation with Eugénie Austin about her 2020 paper “Bodies Captured by Discourse.” This event is free, entirely on Zoom, and open to all: https://lacancircle.com.au/veronique-voruz/
  • Lacan Circle Cartels are forming Anyone interested in Lacanian psychoanalysis may participate in cartel work. There are no fees, and no prerequisites other than desire. Register your interest here: https://lacancircle.com.au/cartels/

The Freud Museum London has released the second season of its excellent ‘Freud in Focus’ podcast, presented by Tom DeRose and Jamie Ruers. Freud’s fascinating paper ‘The Uncanny’ and its discussion of aesthetics is the topic of these 4 episodes, with the first 2 now available, the others being released every other Wednesday. The first season of ‘Freud in Focus’ can be found here.

The Freud Museum London is also planning two events of interest to Lacanians before the end of the year. Dr Leon Brenner will discuss the theme of his 2020 ‘The Autistic Subject – On the Threshold of Language’ in conversation with Dr Henrik Lynggaard on 24th November. This will be followed by Miguel de Beistegui in conversation with Dany Nobus on 8th December about his ‘Lacan: A Genealogy’, an event rescheduled from earlier in the year.

The NWRPA’s autumn programme includes 3 events that will be of interest to Lacanians over the next 3 months, each of which will be hosted on Zoom:

  • On Fri 8th October Philip Hill will present ‘Enjoy Your Suffering!’, an extended two-hour Zoom event offering a clinically-orientated workshop on the place of need, demand and love in and out of the psychoanalytic clinic.
  • On Fri 12th November, Dr Leon S. Brenner will the guest at a special Meet the Author event discussing his recent book ‘The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language’, in which he presents autism as a “singular mode of being” rather than an mental or physical disorder.
  • On Fri 10th December, Dr Mark Fisher will present an overview of new writings on the psychoses, including schizophrenia, paranoia and melancholia.

Véronique Voruz of the London Society of the NLS will host a seminar series entitled ‘Teachings of an Experience’, a series of 5 seminars in conversation with Dossia Avdelidi, Florencia Shanahan, Anne Lysy, and Alexandre Stevens exploring aspects of the pass, the training of analysts, and the transmission of analytic knowledge. The series will run from 18th September till 28th May 2022, with the first session in person and online.

The School of the Freudian Letter UK will host a webinar on 25th September in which Petros Patounas, psychoanalyst of the School, will present a seminar titled ‘How do we practice Freudian Analysis with Transgender Individuals?’ Patounas will respond from his experience with transgender people to vital questions concerning the analytic act. The session will be delivered on Zoom. More details via the link above.

The recently-announced NLS Congress 2022 will be on ‘Fixation & Repetition’ and the presentation of the argument given by Alexandre Stevens at the end of the 2021 Congress is now available on YouTube, with subtitles in English and French (click the cog wheel in the bottom right of the video and select the language). Thanks to Philip Dravers of the London Society for the translation and subtitles. Text of the argument in English is also available here.

Looking further ahead, Lacanian Compass in the US has announced its 14th Clinical Study Days for February 4-6th 2022 on the question ‘What Real at Stake?’ Special guests will be Alexandre Stevens and Florencia Shanahan. The Argument for the topic is also available at the link above.

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