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In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text "L'Etourdit" published in 1973, thinking "with" Lacan about his propositions and what kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought.
List of contents
Abbreviations of Lacan's Works Cited in the Text
Introduction to Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin,
There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan, by Kenneth Reinhard
Authors' Introduction
Ab-sense, or Lacan from A to D, by Barbara Cassin
Formulas of "L'Étourdit", by Alain Badiou
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.
Summary
Badiou and Cassin engage with Lacan’s L’Etourdit, exploring how love sheds light on the nature of reality and what counts as truth.
Report
"Jacques Lacan's 1973 essay 'L'Étourdit' is a pivotal, yet opaque and still under-appreciated, piece of his corpus. In Badiou and Cassin's concise tour de force, two significant thinkers in their own rights tackle this crucial-but-enigmatic Lacanian text. Through their combined efforts, Badiou and Cassin render 'L'Étourdit' crystal-clear, situating the later Lacan's teachings in relation to the history of philosophy and logic starting in ancient Greece. In the process, two of France's most important living minds provocatively address and weave together a range of topics: the distinction between the philosophical and the anti-philosophical; the relations between, on the one hand, language, logic, and ontology and, on the other hand, sex, love, and subjectivity; as well as truth, formalism, and the (in)famous Lacanian register of the Real. This three-way encounter between Lacan, Badiou, and Cassin, stimulating and surprising to equal degrees, will be enthralling for anyone interested in what philosophy and psychoanalysis have to say to each other." Adrian Johnston, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.
