Lacan. The Silent Partners

The giant of Ljubljana marshals some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of Jacques Lacan.

It is well known that Jacques Lacan developed his ideas in dialogue with major European thought and art, past and present. Yet what if there is another frame of reference, rarely or never mentioned by Lacan, which influenced his thinking, and is crucial to its proper understanding? Zizek focuses on Lacan's "silent partners," those who provide a key to Lacanian theory, discussing his work in relation to the Pre-Socratics, Diderot, Hegel, Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Wagner, Turgenev, Kafka, Henry James, Artaud and Kiarostami.

As Zizek says, "The ultimate aim of the present volume is to instigate a new wave of Lacanian paranoia: to push readers to engage in the work of their own and start to discern Lacanian motifs everywhere, from politics to trash culture, from obscure ancient philosophers to contemporary Iranian filmmakers."

"The giant of Ljubljana provides the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus." - The Village Voice

"The Elvis of cultural theory." - Chronicle of Higher Education

"Zizek leaves no social or natural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation." - New Yorker

Contributors include Alain Badiou, Bruno Bosteels, Joan Copjec, Mladen Dolar, Fredric Jameson, Silvia Ons, and Alenka Zupancic.