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New Publications
Decolonization and Psychoanalysis: The Underside of Signification by Ahmad Fuad Rahmat was published by Routledge in April. Using a decolonial lens to examine how Lacan conceived of the materiality of speech, Rahmat proposes a path to a decolonial psychoanalysis which gives critical consideration to the context and assumptions underlying ideas about the symbolic order as it is developed through Lacan’s work. Rahmat starts by examining how Lacan framed Freud’s Jewishness as a marginalised perspective to draw attention to what is excluded from the symbolic order, before offering a reading of Lacan’s idea of the sinthome in the context of James Joyce’s anti-colonial politics. Rahmat’s book also critiques Žižek’s interpretation of Malcom X, and advocates for a decolonial psychoanalysis centred on the “non-spaces of transmission” rather than on the transplantation of the clinic from the centre to the periphery.
God Is Undead: Psychoanalysis for Unbelievers by Lorenzo Chiesa and Adrian Johnston will be published on 1st May. The pair argue that modern forms of unbelief which reject orthodox religious faith in fact disguise heterodox theisms of Nature, Reason, Knowledge, or the Market. The supposed death of God is rather an undeath therefore, insofar as unbelievers “ironically place new gods of their own atop the graves of the traditional gods of old.” Unbelief, they argue, nonetheless offers a multitude of possibilities for living differently and thinking creatively. Slavoj Žižek pens the book’s afterword.
Upcoming Events
On 3rd May Corpo Freudiano Vancouver (formerly Lacan Salon) will welcome Dr. Vanessa Sinclair to present on Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art, considering the power and value that disruption may have in analytic practice and the creative arts. Registration is open via the link above. Dr. Sinclair will be known to many for her award-winning and long-running Rendering Unconscious podcast, which has featured many discussions of interest to Lacanians over the years.
On 14th-15th May Bruce Fink will be giving a seminar on ‘The Lacanian Object’ at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies in Paris, which is also available to join online via Zoom. The seminars will trace the origins and development of the object a, which Lacan considered to be his most important contribution to psychoanalysis. Following firstly Lacan’s formulations on the imaginary register beginning in the 1930s, Fink will trace the evolution of object a through Seminar VIII in the early 60s where it takes on the form of agalma, to Seminar XVI where it takes on the form of “surplus jouissance, up to Lacan’s work in the 1970s where it becomes virtually equated with jouissance itself.
On 17th and 18th May this year’s NLS Congress will take place in Paris on the theme of ‘Painful Loves.’ In-person tickets are now sold out but Zoom registration is still open. There will be simultaneous English-to-French and French-to-English translation for most of the Congress. The program is due to be announced shortly. Meanwhile the Congress’ blog, linked to above, contains a number of short texts contributing to the theme from different angles.
On 23rd May the new Lacan Tehran Project will host Dr. Patrick Barillot, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Paris and a Member of the IF-EPFCL, for a talk on the sexual non-rapport. The event is free and open to all and will be conducted in English with Persian translation. Register via the email address in this flyer. The Lacan Tehran Project is an independent space for dialogue, education, and research in the field of psychoanalysis, with a particular focus on the Freudian-Lacanian tradition. By inviting leading psychoanalysts, researchers, and professors, the project organizes a series of seminars, lectures, study sessions, and research groups that explore the connection between psychoanalysis, culture, the clinic, language, and contemporary issues. The Project’s sessions are held online in both Persian and English, allowing for the presence of audiences from different cities and countries. Simultaneous Persian translation is planned for most events. The Lacan Tehran Project also invites interested parties to participate in research groups. These groups focus on reading foundational texts of psychoanalysis, including the works of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and contemporary psychoanalysts. For more information, to register for seminars, or to join a research group, get in touch via the contact details in the flyer linked to above.
On 6th and 7th June first US Forums Conference will take place in Lafayette, Colorado on the theme of ‘The Analyst & the Clinician.’ The conference will be the first of its kind as it will be hosted by all three Forums of the United States. Registration is available via email.
On 17th-18th October Corpo Freudiano Vancouver will host its LaConference 2025 on Feminine Desire. Keynote speakers will be Carol Owens, Noëlle McAfee, and Ana Houine. The conference will honour the work of feminist scholars Anne Dufourmantelle and Mari Ruti. A Call for Papers has gone out, inviting submissions on a variety of topics related to psychoanalysis, feminism, écriture feminine, and the work of Dufourmantelle and Ruti. Submissions are due by June 15. Notifications and the program will be distributed mid-July. Full details via the link above.
New Resources
On Freud2Lacan.com more new translations and commentaries on Lacan’s work have been added in the past month. New on the Lacan page (at number 21) is a bilingual translation of the first parts of Lacan’s 1932 doctoral dissertation on paranoia – De la psychose paranoïaque dans ses rapports avec la personnalité – encompassing pages 1-54 of the original, and including a photo of the handwritten dedication Lacan wrote in the copy he sent to Freud. Richard Klein writes the story of this dedication and its chain reaction in his essay at number 20 on the Lacan page. Meanwhile at number 2 on that page is an essay by Jorge Orellana on Lacan’s Premiers écrits (First Writings), a “biased anthology” of the early Lacan’s twenty-two texts the latter penned between 1926-1935.
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