READ – The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan [W.W. Norton – $27.95]

Early drafts of Russell Grigg’s translation circulated surreptitiously for years, and so it is a delight to see Lacan’s most obviously political seminar arrive this holiday season for a generation of film theorists, cultural studies buffs, and others interested in psychoanalysis to absorb. Seminar XVII has served as the subtext for the one-man theoretical explosion that is Slavoj Zizek, and its publication will allow for a reassessment of Zizek’s contribution. Seminar XVII offers up both the clearest account of Lacan’s debts to Marx and Hegel and an uncannily prescient critique of the cannibalization of psychoanalysis by academics. [Amazon]