Talk:Jacques Lacan

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I wonder if this article wouldn't benefit from at least a mention of Lacan's definition of the four discourses? It seems conspicuous in its absence. Any objections to its addition?-S.N. Hillbrand 01:57, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Not from me. There seems to be much more discussion of the politics of the psychoanalytic establishment and critics of Lacan than of his work in this article. I submit that it needs a serious expansion. Deleuze 13:42, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Hm, Buffyg's last edit seems to have moved most of that. Works for me. The article could still use more about Lacan's thought, but this is a good move. Deleuze

I don't think it is a good idea to remove the entire Criticism section and replace it by a single link to another article. The NPOV principle applies to each article separately, so it is violated if the views of the critics are not represented at all in the main article (see also POV fork, Wikinfo).

For this reason, "Criticism of ..." sub-articles are generally frowned upon. To be fair, a few exist (example: Prem Rawat & Criticism of Prem Rawat), but these are cases where the whole article has grown too huge, and the corresponding section is not replaced by a single link, but by a shorter summary together with the link. I suggest reverting to the previous version unless somebody is going to write a decent summary.

There seems to be much more discussion of the politics of the psychoanalytic establishment and critics of Lacan than of his work in this article - that's true, but it is like complaining "Wikipedia has an article on X but nothing on Y although Y is is more important" - where the solution is not to delete the X article but to create an article about Y.

Consider that the article is still lacking the most basic biographical data (we aren't told where he studied and teached, for example). One wouldn't want to use this as a justification to shorten the other sections.

regards, High on a tree 04:30, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

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For an article on Lacan, there's an awful lot here about one opinion of Chomsky's. Surely the debate over Lacan's intellectual legitimacy should be described at a higher level of abstraction, rather than taking the form of a lengthy response to just one critical statement. Mporter 02:07, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Someone should mention the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary; and the graph of desire (maybe include a picture of it?). Maybe also some mention of the Foreclosure of the Father, the Maternal Phallus, Presence and Absence, etc. To be honest, I've never read Lacan, only second hand accounts of his work, and I never really understood those accounts either. But his work sure sounds cool :) -- Simon J Kissane

I deleted the reference to Fashionable Nonsense. Without other mentions of controversy surrounding Lacan's work, it seemed to violate NPOV. And even in a discussion of controversy surrounding Lacan's work, frankly, Sokol doesn't have that much respect.

-- Snowspinner

I very much doubt these two arguments. If you feel that mentioning the Sokal/Bricmont book as the only criticism would do injustice to other critics, then surely the NPOV way would be to mention them too, not to remove criticism altogether. And one can hardly think of something more POV than dismissing a critic as "not having that much" respect - maybe not among Lacan's followers, but obviously he had a lot of respect among many people on one side of this debate.

I can imagine that maybe you fear people from the 'Sokal camp' coming over here to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Critical_Theory and adding 'but many believe this is bogus' to every sentence. I wouldn't appreciate that either, but I don't think it is likely. Give the Sokal camp just this one line and I'm pretty sure edit wars and neutrality warnings can be avoided.

(this discussion also applies to Julia Kristeva and Bruno Latour; as mentioned on Wikipedia:RC_patrol)

regards, High on a tree 04:29, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My issue is largely one of relevence. I have trouble imagining anyone looking for information on Lacan, Kristeva, or Latour being interested in the fact that Sokal comments on them. It's not that Sokal's book doesn't deserve attention - it should be mentioned in postmodernism, and I'm glad that it has as lengthy an entry as it does. It's just that I think that with a topic that comes under as much blanket fire as critical theory, it's important to police the line regarding attention to blanket objections against the whole field. My feeling is that those objections belong on the topmost level of a field - in the most general interest topics. Snowspinner 05:58, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have trouble imagining anyone looking for information on Lacan, Kristeva, or Latour being interested in the fact that Sokal comments on them. Doesn't that just indicate a lack of imagination on your part? That is precisely why I came to the Lacan entry. It's disgraceful the way you critical theory folks attempt to obliterate every trace of criticism of your folk-heroes. Your "feeling" in this case is clearly wrong. 217.43.44.169 18:52, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

With the new additions, the above objection Without other mentions of controversy surrounding Lacan's work, it seemed to violate NPOV by Snowspinner (which I didn't agree with, since it runs contrary to the wiki principle, but which I could understand in a certain way) has become obsolete . Also, I have re-read the chapter on Lacan in Impostures Intellectuelles (Fashionable Nonsense). It doesn't seem to fit the description of blanket objections against the whole field, since it deals very specifically with Lacan's use of terms like Moebius strip, imaginary numbers or Russel's paradox. I have restored the deleted sentence. regards, High on a tree 18:14, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Snowspinner's comments aside, the Sokal reference, as with some other references, don't even belong in the article. There is criticism of Lacan's work; there is vituperation of Lacan; the former belongs in the article and needs to be expounded on; the latter is being retained to satisfy the constant gossip-mongering that surrounds most well-known intellectuals, but ought to be reduced further, especially when it comes from people (Sokal etc) who don't fully understand what they are talking about and whose good intentions are misplaced, to say the least. -- Simonides 22:47, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

people who don't fully understand what they are talking about and whose good intentions are misplaced, to say the least - funny that this sounds almost like Sokal and Bricmont talking about Lacan. With the difference that they are a bit more polite and back up their claim by rather detailed analysis of his texts. It is not for wikipedia to take sides in this debate and decide that one of the warring parties consists of stupid fools (as, unfortunately, most people seem to do in this case, one way or the other). I respect your opinion, but there are others too, and it clearly violates the npov principle to demand that the critics should not even be mentioned.

Furthermore: The sentence, which you already watered down, adding counter-criticism and removing the wikilink, is little more than a see also. As I said above, this is a minimalistic version and I can imagine that Sokal fans would like to quote whole paragraphs from the book.

It is beyond me how you can classify Sokal's and Bricmont's book as "gossip" and group them among Lacan's "personal critics". I can't find a single sentence where they attack Lacan as a person or examine his private life.

By the way I am not the same person as 217.43.44.169. I can understand that you are annoyed by his/her rather agressive tone above (you critical theory folks... your folk-heroes). I wholly second the comment made by Rbellin on his/her talk page:

In reference to recent edits on pages including Talk:Jacques Derrida, Talk:Jacques Lacan, and the associated articles: Please refrain from personal hostility and tone down your confrontational, hostile rhetoric on Talk pages and in edit summaries. ...'

however, I also agree with the rest of the comment:

There is a general agreement here to Cite sources rather than using vague attributions like "some say" or "critics believe" in such cases: the critical paragraph you recently added to the Jacques Lacan article was excellent in this regard, so I'd invite more such work, and less hostility. Rbellin 19:48, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It is also quite pov to call Derrida a serious critic and implying that the that critics that 217.43.44.169 added are not serious (I am not very familiar with their criticism, but obviously at least Roudinesco and Chomsky have their credits).

As for substituting missing text by an external link, I think that this is not a good idea (pushing it to the extreme, one could create new articles consisting of an external link only), but I'm not going to argue further on that one.

regards, High on a tree 05:45, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've started some remarks on Lacan and the political organization of the psychoanalytic community. I'm not particularly satisfied to talk about Vincennes without discussion of the EFP, but it is a start. I've said elsewhere that I don't assign too much credibility to Dosse. I need to pick up the Roudinesco books, but I did feel it necessary to begin by remarking that Roudinesco's criticism of Lacan ought not be taken as dismissive, even if it has been appropriated for such dismissals. There's a lot of reading I'd have to do before remarking on the mathemes or take on so this or that critique of them. I'm concerned that no one has shown much caution about remarking on these, not even alluding to them so much as Sokal. Buffyg 02:39, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It's a bit hard to decide to whom these criticisms are specifically addressed. I'm not always sure when you are speaking to Simonides and when you are speaking to me. Where possible, could you clarify by moving your responses to follow immediately those to which you wish to reply? Buffyg 13:00, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Are you referring to me and my 05:45, 22 Oct 2004 posting? It had been written almost entirely before I saw your comments (or edits). So "you" referred to Simonides. (As you are probably aware, there were severe server problems at that time and an outage a few minutes later, which is why my last article edit was not simultaneous with my last post on this page.) I thought this was clear by the indentation, but it was a bit confusing apparently - my apologies. I moved my response before yours as you suggested. regards, High on a tree 14:05, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Your points are well taken, and as you may have noticed, I didn't actually remove all criticism but merely removed the mention of Sokal because, IMO, his type of criticism is in a slightly different category - neither dealing with the work proper nor with the person - but I think if one has to choose, he would fall into the latter as he is not particularly interested in any of the psychoanalytic arguments - Lacan is just one of a few fall guys for his extrapolations. As for Roudinesco, the newly added comments are welcome because she is not merely interested in bringing down Lacan's image; but I put her under the personal category because of the nature of the only criticism mentioned; re: the link, as I wrote, anyone is welcome to add text, I just can't spend much time online at a stretch and the last time I did I used it up adding other sections. -- Simonides 10:32, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Roudinesco says further:

In 1993 I published a book on Lacan that shocked both my Lacanian friends and the anti-Lacanians. The former reproached me with the crime of lese majesty; the latter, who were even worse, declared that they were furious that I had taken from them the object of their scorn by relating the excesses committed by Lacan, notably when he reduced the time of his sessions to a duration approaching zero. But I did it without ever belittling the man. As an epigraph, I quoted a sentence from Marc Bloch: "All of you who are for Robespierre and who are against him, we beg your mercy: have pity and tell us, simply, who was this Robespierre." (Of What Tomorrow..., p. 185)

I think there is a tendency toward tendentious criticism, in which contributors claim to have taken great thinkers down a notch even if the criticism provided isn't equal to its target as given. This isn't impiety so much as laziness. How does a particular criticism relate to the whole of a body of work? Is the criticism trenchant, trifling, transformative? If you're not going to take this on, leave it at the level of allusion and encourage people to decide for themselves. If you can gloss it reasonably, do, but including the harshest claim with a minimum of context or explication doesn't amount to NPOV. Unresolved contradictions have a sense to them which needs to be understood. This is how I understand the remarks about treating beliefs as objective in the wikipedia guidelines.

In the context of Lacan and Sokal: Is it not possible that Sokal's remark is also valid reflexively in a way that isn't reflexively acknowledged? If so, one must account for it. If Sokal and Bricmont are aware of this, one should mark off the specificity of that insight so that it might be properly appreciated. All we're getting right is some fairly unclear terms of disagreement that don't help people who want to understand the issues. My very preliminary sense is that there is a differend between the latter Miller/Lacan school of mathematical/scientific psychoanalysis and Sokal's view on misappropriation of "science", whereby the product even of a scientific psychoanalysis remains fundamentally different from scientific knowledge and therefore does not admit of the same validation criteria. Simonides is, I suspect, onto something when he says that Sokal isn't interested in "any of the psychoanalytic arguments". I think as well of Derrida's dialogue with Roudinesco, in which he notes his convinction that the Freudian metapsychology was a necessity to obtain for psychoanalysis a freedom from philosophies of consciousness and argues that a thinking of this framework must exceed even their current strategic necessities (Of What Tomorrow..., pp. 172-175), a possibility which he seems to me to regard as linked to psychoanalytic organization and thereby the ability of psychoanalysis to give itself its proper law so that it might have a larger impact on so many other discourses of law and sovereignty which have managed to remain isolated from it. There is a large chunk in here that I can't commit to researching in the short term. I'll gladly elaborate on this if it's not sufficiently clear (as a preliminary venture, that is).

I don't think anyone has said that Derrida or Major (who sadly hasn't yet had a book-length work translated into English as far as I can tell) are serious critics of Lacan whereas Roudinesco or Chomsky are not. What I do note is that Roudinesco's criticisms of Lacan are characterized in an utterly one-sided way that obscures their insights (i.e. is POV in a fashion I resort to calling mediocre journalism: he said, she said). I don't know anything about Chomsky's remark. I will gladly contribute further on Turkle, Dosse, Derrida, and Roudinesco when I've done the research, but I think the observation is that the deployment of these criticisms doesn't lend itself to serious consideration when it evacuates content.

As for my remarks on Roudinesco, this does lead me to believe that the contributions posted from the 217.43.44.169 address are not well researched or considered. I must emphasize that the contribution we're currently discussing has been acknowledged to be the strongest contribution yet from that source. Remarks further indicate a belief that people contributing to "critical theory" author articles are uncritical in approaching their subjects. Whether this does happen or not, the level of generalization is unreasonable and the edits thus far have been reactionary rather than corrective (commending a particular interview as concise doesn't even approach a violation of NPOV as I understand it, yet I find this description removed as "gushing"). I think the contribution to the Lacan article is violent not only in its treatment of Lacan (who is the seeming target) but even more so in its representation of Roudinesco. I've not yet been able to get a reasonable discussion with the contributor on such points, although I have received a stream of petty insults. Buffyg 13:00, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Context for criticism

I think the newly added passages by Buffyg are extremely informative and an excellent guide to popular criticisms levelled against "postmodernism" or "French theory" in general. However, it seems a bit longish and out of place in an article where the "Life" section hasn't even been properly written up yet - perhaps it could be moved to Postmodernism or a similarly generaly article with a link to the explanations here? A similar format might be applied to other articles which need the same context. -- Simonides 01:54, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please note that I have made some changes to the Fashionable Nonsense entry consistent with those made here. I am by no means persuaded that the postmodernism entry (which is in any case as much a cause of unhappiness to me as it stands as the entry on deconstruction -- I do hope to rewrite both substantially). I would almost say that it would be better to split this out into "gossip" and "... but seriously, here's why that's only gossip" sections. I have elsewhere expressed my reservations about what I regard as the substantial lack of scholarship of those who insist upon including seemingly bruising criticisms with both a violent disregard for the context of these remarks and utter disinterest in analyzing (or for that matter, reading) their content as a whole (I wonder how many of these quotes are not simply URLs found by Google -- a tool of often limited validity for scholarly research -- but then quick extracts with subsequent find operations against the matching URLs -- one begins to suspect a genre of pseudo-criticism by simplistic spidering, with which targets of "opposition research" are no doubt all too familiar). People do need to understand why so many of these quotes offered as criticism are highly qualified in their validity, but this is, as you've said, often at the expense of attention to other matters (like the actual content of Lacan's work). Perhaps more to the point, these rebuttals are extremely specific (hence "longish") and need a great deal more research before they can be offered in greater generality (lest one indulge in what one has just declared objectionable). As I am also one of my editors, I will attempt to impose greater concision on what I've already written. Buffyg 02:56, 27 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Corrección: El artículo Lacan en la versión inglesa de Wikipedia tiene algunos errores, el primero. casi ab initio es considerar a Lacan como un estructuralista, ciertamente que lo fue...pero desde los '50 del s XX hasta mediados de los '60 del pasado siglo, luego fue el mismo Lacan quien encabezó al postestructuralism ,influyendo ( pese a ellos a Foucault, Deleuze -no al usuario colega wikipedista obviamente...ó ¿quizás sí?-, Derrida o Guattari,etc.).

--José.El Argent.

My Spanish isn't particularly good (as in non-existant), but I'll try to answer what I understand of the question. The question is whether Lacan is properly referred to a structuralist or poststructuralist, and that question is badly formed. Lacan constituted the quintessentially structuralist "Gang of Four" with Foucault, Barthes, and Lévi-Strauss. All but Lévi-Strauss are also counted as poststructuralists. Some of the remarks I made in rewriting the poststructuralism article need to be tempered: the distinguishing feature of poststructuralism is the inheritance of various thinkers to structuralism. The "post" doesn't indicate that structuralism is over but that it no longer commands anything like an orthodox following. I'd cite the example of Derrida: Derrida makes a robust effort to say what it is that commends structuralism even as he details inherent limitations in structuralist which are in an internal sense necessary but not strictly so from a wider philosophical perspective. Derrida's response to structuralism identifies this necessity even as he transforms the understanding resulting from, not ultimately discarding structuralism (this being rather equivalent to kicking a ladder out from under oneself) but incorporating it in its historicity into his work. In this sense structuralism remains indispensable to poststructuralism. The attempts to transform structuralism may not at all resemble one another, which is why poststructuralists are bound together by little other than structuralism. Buffyg 12:12, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

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isshoni: err, sorry, i m in no way a contributor to the wikipedia, i sometimes check it out when i want to have an idea on someone, and some links. i must say i found this article...useless: the Work section has about 20 lines on Lacan s ideas, then a paragraph on his 'publications', and from there it s only about intestine wars which are of little, if any, interest to anyone still new to the man. anyway, this is not so much a reproach as a compliment on wikipedia s average level of contributions; as a consumer here maybe i should only say a 'thanks'- i do. and i ll check the 'criticisms' and 'links' sections. thanks again and...keep up the work!

The lack of substantial treatment of his work is why the article has a cleanup tag (at least, that's why I put one there). This should probably be clarified by a todo list or more specific cleanup tag. Buffyg 14:08, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)