There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan

by Alain Badiou, Barbara Cassin, Kenneth Reinhard (Translator), Susan Spitzer (Translator), Kenneth Reinhard (Introduction)

Overview

Published in 1973, "L'Etourdit" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that "there is no such thing as a sexual relationship," which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality.

In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231544429
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/28/2017
Series:	Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	678 KB

About the Author

Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).

Table 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

Editorial Reviews

This book, the first English translation of the French original, will be of immense interest to upper-level students of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the French intellectual tradition.

Choice

Superbly edited and indexed, with first-rate introductions and footnotes.

The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

Lacan's 'L'Etourdit' is a pivotal yet still underappreciated piece of his corpus. In Badiou and Cassin's concise tour de force, two of France's most important living minds tackle this enigmatic text. Through their combined efforts, Badiou and Cassin render 'L'Etourdit' crystal clear, situating Lacan's later teachings in relation to the history of philosophy and logic starting in ancient Greece. 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

This is a fascinating and complex little book. Specialists will no doubt spend hours and hours debating the significance of these two lectures for the understanding not only of Lacan but also of the respective projects of his two readers, Badiou and Cassin.

Bruno Bosteels