David Pettigrew (1)

disseminate (v.)
c. 1600, from Latin disseminatus, past participle of disseminare "to spread abroad, disseminate," from dis- "in every direction" (see dis-) seminare "to plant, propagate," from semen (genitive seminis) "seed"

Yes, I know the title refers to Jacques Derrida's [b:Dissemination|860486|Dissemination|Jacques Derrida|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1347960513s/860486.jpg|2981429] - and the connection is reinforced in the introduction by the book's editors, who address Derrida's comments about Lacan (in [b:Resistances of Psychoanalysis|385693|Resistances of Psychoanalysis|Jacques Derrida|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1407812563s/385693.jpg|394041]) that "the lack does not disseminate" (p.1).

Nonetheless, when considering the title Disseminating Lacan, which could be read ambiguously as Lacan's ideas being disseminated and Lacan actively disseminating his, ahem, ideas all over us, it is hard for me not to think of this passage from [b:The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis|75489|The Seminar of Jacques Lacan The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (Seminar of Jacques Lacan)|Jacques Lacan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348734507s/75489.jpg|73025]: "[F]or the moment, I am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well! I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking. That’s what it means. Indeed, it raises the question of whether in fact I am not fucking at this moment." Lacan is talking here about how pleasure fulfills itself in one way or another, regardless of its goal: as such, he might well be "disseminating" his ideas all over his audience, he says, as a sublimated way of gaining erotic satisfaction.

Putting aside critical theory sex jokes - my favorite, incidentally, is Žižek's example of the picture of Lenin in Warsaw in [b:The Sublime Object of Ideology|18912|The Sublime Object of Ideology|Slavoj Žižek|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1167146940s/18912.jpg|758270] - Disseminating Lacan is generally a fine collection of essays. As I have noted in other recent reviews, there is a qualitative shift in the reading of Lacan that begins in the mid-1990s, a new and sharper mode of criticism that stands in contrast to some of the weak readings from the heyday of high theory.

The book itself is divided into a number of topics relating to the field of Lacan studies. The first, "Lacan and Philosophy," kicks off with a lecture by Juan-David Nasio on the topic of the subject and the unconscious, which seems to be mainly of historical interest, since it was first delivered at Lacan's invitation during the 1979 seminar. The second entry is an attempt by Babette Babich to reconcile the thought of Lacan and Nietzsche, a worthy essay even though, by the end, I was not altogether convinced. James Phillips similarly provides a fine reading of the interaction between Lacan and Merleau-Ponty.

Part II deals with the relationship between Lacan and science, and is probably the best section of the book. Joël Dor provides an excellent explanation of how we should read Lacan's appropriation of mathematical and scientific concepts. Stephen Michelman has an excellent chapter on Lacan's debt to sociology, which is particularly visible in the way he reads structural linguistics through anthropology and sociology. Judith Feher Gurewich explores a similar angle, looking at how Lacan bridges the realm of the individual and the social in the way he formulates his concepts.

Part III looks at Lacan's relationship to aesthetics and literature. William Richardson illuminates Lacan's commentary on Paul Claudel, which forms a key part of Seminar VIII. David Pettigrew then rather limply connects Lacan's work to the traditions of poetry and tragic drama. The section is redeemed, however, by Thomas Brockelman's brilliant essay on Lacan, modernism, and representation. Brockelman looks at how Lacan inherits a certain anti-representational attitude from his association with the Surrealists, which is what aligns him with modernism. However, Brockelman then goes on to show how both Lacan and Piet Mondrian subvert the traditional gaze to explore a whole new domain of non-representation. This chapter is definitely the highlight of the collection.

The remaining two sections are remarkably much weaker than those they precede. Part IV looks at questions of gender and sexuality (little of interest or originality here) and Part V focuses on therapeutic practice (for this literary critic: yawn). The only chapter here of any interest is Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen's meditation on the contradiction of the Oedipus complex. I like Borch-Jacobsen, he is a genuinely critical thinker about Lacan, but in this piece he is so bent on proving the inadequacies of the imaginary and the symbolic that he somehow fails to recognize that Lacan himself came to a similar realization in the latter stages of his thought - indeed, this evolution and its subsequent movement toward the real is precisely the Lacanian direction that Žižek has continually pushed.

Disseminating Lacan is worth reading for its best bits - the chapter by Brockelman, obviously, and the various commentators on Lacan and science - but like most such collections it has a number of duds that seem only there to round out the numbers.… (more)