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Presents the most wide-ranging and in-depth exploration of the influence of modernist art and literature on Jacques Lacan, emphasizing the valences of Lacanian psychoanalysis for interpretations of modernism. A notorious presence in French intellectual circles throughout the 20th century, Lacan was himself personal friends with modernists such as Andre Breton and Salvador Dali, and in 1923 was present at the legendary reading of Ulysses at the Shakespeare and Company bookshop by James Joyce, to whom Lacan would devote a year of his seminar in 1975-76. Lacan himself contributed to several Surrealist publications, including the famous magazine Minotaure , the inaugural edition of which featured special mention of Lacan''s early work on psychosis. However, despite this affinity with early 20th-century modernism, Lacan''s name is still more routinely associated with the category of so-called "postmodernism," thus rendering the question of style and periodization somewhat out of focus. Understanding Lacan, Understanding Modernism asks and responds to a series of questions, including: Is Lacan a modernist or a postmodernist, and what is the difference? How significant was the influence of modernist literature and art on the development of Lacan''s ideas? The final section identifies key Lacaninan concepts and terms, offering context and a discussion of their usage and relevance in current thought.
About the author
Thomas Waller is a Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has published widely in journals such as Textual Practice, Rethinking Marxism, Modern Fiction Studies, and Qui Parle. He is the author of Genres of Transition: Literature and Economy in Portuguese-Speaking Southern Africa (2024) and an Associate Editor at CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.Sinan Richards is a Lecturer in French at University College Cork, Ireland. He is the author of Dialectics of Love in Sartre and Lacan (2023), co-editor, alongside Christina Howells, of Michel Serres: ecology, parasitism and the (post)human, a Special Issue of the Modern & Contemporary France Journal 2024, and Fanon and Lacan: Decolonial Psychoanalysis, alongside Derek Hook (forthcoming). Richards serves as a member of the French Studies editorial board and is a correspondent, associate, and referee at the European Journal of Psychoanalysis. He is currently finalizing a book on Fanon and Lacan (forthcoming, 2026).Laci Mattison is Assistant Professor of 20th Century British Literature at Florida Gulf Coast University, USA.Paul Ardoin is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at San Antonio, USA.S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University, USA. He is the author or editor of 29 books and, with Paul Ardoin and Laci Mattison, he is series editor of the Bloomsbury series, Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism. The serie editors were also volume editors for the initial books in that series: Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and the follow-up, Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism (Bloomsbury, 2014). Gontarski’s recent books are: Beckett’s “Happy Day”: A Manuscript Study (2017) and Revisioning Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Decadent Turn (Bloomsbury, 2018).
