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Prompted by the thirtieth anniversary of the French philosopher Jacques Lacans death, this exchange between two prominent intellectuals is rich with surprising insights. Alain Badiou shares the clearest, most detailed account to date of his profound indebtedness to Lacanian psychoanalysis. He explains in depth the tools Lacan gave him to navigate the extremes of his other two philosophical masters, Jean-Paul Sartre and Louis Althusser. Élisabeth Roudinesco supplements Badious experience with her own perspective on the troubled landscape of the French analytic world since Lacans death - critiquing, for example, the link (or lack thereof) between politics and psychoanalysis in Lacans work, among other issues. Their dynamic dialogue draws readers into an intimate, at times contentious, yet ultimately productive debate that reinvigorates the work of a pivotal twentieth-century thinker.
List of contents
Foreword: "I am counting on the tourbillon": On the Late Lacan by Jason E. Smith
Preface
1. One Master, Two Encounters
2. Thinking Disorder
Notes
Index
About the author
Alain Badiou, geb. 1937 ist Philosoph, Mathematiker, Dramaturg und Romancier. Seine politischen Aktivitäten drücken sich in der von ihm mitbegründeten 'Organisation politique' aus. Er lehrt an der Universität Paris VIII-Vincennes und am Collège International de Philosophie.
Elisabeth Roudinesco ist Historikerin, lehrt an der Universität Paris und ist Vizepräsidentin der Societe internationale d histoire de la psychiatrie et de la psychanalyse. Bekannt wurde sie durch ihre "Geschichte der Psychoanalyse in Frankreich" und ihre Biographie über Jacques Lacan.
Summary
France’s premier philosopher and its leading historian of psychoanalysis discuss the nature of Jacques Lacan’s thought and his legacy.
Report
"Badiou and Roudinesco agree on the essential: the value of Lacan's thought for facing the ills of our age, whether they be the different ways both science and obscurantism are instrumentalized, the irrational cult of quantitative assessment, or the temptation to flee headlong into psychologism. So many tendencies unveiled in this dialogue as so many sides of a single "misery of the contemporary world" (Badiou)." - Laurent Etre, l'Humanité
