Abstract
I highly recommend Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Signification of the Phallus’ to ‘Metaphor of the Subject’—the third of three volumes studying each text entry of the Écrits, edited by Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook, and Calum Neill—to readers already familiar to some degree with Lacan’s work. Each of the chapters, written by invited authors, examines one of the last eleven entries in the Écrits. Each author presents contextual material situating the entry within Lacan’s work, followed by commentary formatted as a high-power microscope: a paragraph-by-paragraph, even line-by-line examination of the text. The series is not, in my opinion, a good choice for readers seeking an introduction to the Écrits, much less an imaginary “right answer” to the question of what the Lacanian model “is” and what each entry in the Écrits is “about.”
A back-cover blurb by Slavoj Žižek states, “Let’s face it: Lacan’s Écrits, one of the classic texts of modern thought, are unreadable—they remain so if we just pick the thick volume up and start to read it.” The editors take these difficulties as the main topic of their introduction, stating in their second sentence that the Écrits are “baroque, intimidating, [and] ever elusive. . . . Rather than the Rosetta Stone that enables the unlocking of other obscure writings, Lacan’s Écrits is far more akin to a literary Babel. . . . [It] is not a book; it is a type of infinite text; it does not end, it cannot be finished; it continues to escape the ‘imaginarization’ of our attempts at assimilation” (pp. xvii, xx). The editors thereby express every reader’s and writer’s response when attempting to read or write about Lacan, and their introductory warning has been given before in earlier studies of the Écrits. For example, this volume contains commentary by Fabio Vighi on “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious,” one of the most important essays in the Écrits. Van Haute (2002) wrote an entire book on this entry, and stated in his foreword that “readers are left with the disagreeable feeling that the texts of Lacan will remain impenetrable for them no matter how many introductions they might read . . . [and that] it is undoubtedly necessary to write introductions and commentaries that pay more attention to the concrete texts and how they can be made intelligible” (p. xii). This is what the editors and their contributors have endeavored to do in their series.
But why begin my review by making these points? It is to underscore that the editors and contributors have put boundaries around their goals. They do not aim to make Lacan’s work graspable in a satisfying way, which is often the aim of classical psychoanalytic commentaries. For example, you can get a good sense of Klein’s work by reading Segal (1964) or Isaacs (1948), which is why these two sources are often used to introduce Kleinian thought to new students. Experienced analysts find (eventually, at least) that Klein is relatively graspable, while continuing to find new insights and intuitions on every reading. Studying Lacan’s work over an analytic career seems akin to appreciating that James Joyce’s work eludes one’s grasp over a lifetime of reading; working at reading Lacan and Joyce evokes both delight and difficulty, as one navigates texts deliberately rife with gaps, uncertainties, obscurities, opacities, puns, nonsense, vitriol, and poetry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Lacan (1975–1976) dealt with Joyce in the seminars. This book gave me a sense of each author’s version of Lacan, augmented by my absorption of the author’s writing voice. We find similar circumstances examining the work of Bion, that other infamously difficult foundational contributor. O’Shaughnessey (2005) wrote an article titled “Whose Bion?” accompanied by de Bianchedi’s “Whose Bion? Who is Bion?” (2005). The Bion community remains irreconcilably divided on his O concept, which itself defies clear definition and inspires unending attempts at interpretion; getting the “right answer” to the question of what O “is” depends on whom you ask.
This is why I think Žižek’s blurb goes a bit too far when he suggests that “when, after getting stuck at a particularly dense page of Écrits, we turn to the corresponding pages in the commentary and then return to the page of Écrits which pushed us to madness, the same lines appear in all the clarity of their line of thought.” That clarity may be related more to Lacan’s lines having been reflected in the authors’ own lines of thought, and whatever clarity we might experience glimmers evanescently before fading completely upon reading Lacan’s next line. These issues are significant and have everything to do with why the editors and authors limited their goal to presenting their own, extremely detailed views on the Écrits in order to contribute to an historical flow of signifying contributions on Lacan’s work.
The contributions in this volume, most of them excellent and several of them outstanding, render the authors’ views in distinct voices and dialects. Readers will find their fit with those whose voices resonate with their own. Geerardyn and Pringels wrote their discussion of “In Memory of Ernest Jones: On His Theory of Symbolism” in a self-aware, at times allusive and precious style, examining Lacan’s examination of selected concepts of Jones, Silberer, and Jung, as well as his venting at Jones for having treated him quite badly at the 1936 IPA conference in Marienbad. By contrast, Verhaeghe wrote his entry on “Position of the Unconscious” more directly to the reader, demonstrating his usual breadth, precision, and, yes, clarity while never stumbling to the level of a primer (Verhaeghe remains perhaps my favorite writer on Lacan). He suggests that this entry “does not summarize Lacan’s 1960 interventions. On the contrary, ‘Position de l’inconscient’ is the start of the Lacanian Lacan, going beyond his return to Freud” (p. 224). He presents detailed context for Lacan’s paper, one of the more extensive “Context” sections in the book. He bolsters the commentary by bringing in Lacan’s Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, which takes up the same issues. Verhaeghe also offers a conclusion melding his textual review with information from that seminar, all of which makes this entry an outstanding stimulus for the reader’s thought—providing the reader arrives having already grappled with central Lacanian concepts. Vighi conducts his examination of “The Subversion of the Subject” at a level of Lacanian discourse meant for seasoned readers. Despite its dense and difficult nature, Vighi’s work is comprehensive and enlightening, as befits this milestone text. Lacan’s paper, which Vighi states is “usually regarded among the most impenetrable of all [of Lacan’s] Écrits” (p. 168), presents in detail Lacan’s models of how language acquisition creates and shapes the developing subject. It also brings Lacan’s later interest in the drive and unrepresented elements of the Real into the discussion, pointing the way toward his later work, which famously includes Lacan’s three evolving graphs of desire, the third of which condenses and links his first-phase linguistic work with later elements of drive and jouissance. For those who have not studied Lacan, I cannot stress enough that the apparent simplicity of my comments will in no way prepare you for the tangled density of what you will find here. Vighi’s contribution is among the most challenging in the collection, but the “The Subversion of the Subject” makes this inevitable and necessary. I had to read Vighi’s effort very slowly (I had to read most of the book very slowly), backtracking constantly in order to progress, but Vighi made the effort worthwhile.
Entries on sexuality and femininity receive excellent commentary from the authors. Todd McGowan reviews “The Signification of the Phallus,” one of Lacan’s more important yet relatively approachable works, if one can call it that. McGowan sticks to the text and highlights its crucial elements, making his contribution approach Žižek’s hoped-for function of illuminating Lacan’s text. Eve Watson’s examination of “Some Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality” also offers helpful, detailed ways of appreciating Lacan’s brief article on sexual difference and female sexuality beyond Freud’s model. Jean-Michel Rabaté’s commentary on “The Youth of Gide, or the Letter and Desire” succeeds well in sharpening the focus of Lacan’s essay on signification, desire, and jouissance. One of the more intriguing and challenging entries is by Dany Nobus, whose commentary on Lacan’s “Kant with Sade” begins by noting that this “is generally regarded as one of the most difficult essays in the collection” (p. 110)—yet another! In fact, Nobus (2017) has written a book on “Kant with Sade,” from which his contribution is adapted. His commentary may be lengthier than Lacan’s original text, and truly meets the format criterion of a paragraph-by-paragraph, even line-by-line reading of the Écrits. The essay covers the significant Lacanian ground of jouissance and desire through linking elements of Kant’s and Sade’s work, although Nobus points out that others had earlier studied Kant and Sade together.
Reading Lacan’s Écrits: From ‘Signification of the Phallus’ to ‘Metaphor of the Subject’ invites readers into several dialogues: with Lacan’s work itself, with the authors and their takes on Lacan’s work, and ultimately with themselves after having in effect joined a seminar discussing Lacan’s work. For serious students of Lacan, it is an excellent invitation to accept.
