Book description
This striking Lacanian contribution to discourse analysis is also a
critique of contemporary psychological abstraction, as well as a
reassessment of the radical opposition between psychology and
psychoanalysis. This original introduction to Lacans work bridges the
gap between discourse-analytical debates in social psychology and the
social-theoretical extensions of discourse theory. David Pavon Cuellar
provides a precise definition and a detailed explanation of key Lacanian
concepts, and illustrates how they may be put to work on a concrete
discourse, in this case a fragment of an interview obtained by the
author from the Mexican underground Popular Revolutionary Forces
(EPR).Throughout the book, Lacanian concepts are compared to their
counterparts in psychology. Such a comparison reveals insuperable
incompatibilities between the two series of concepts. The author shows
that Lacan's psychoanalytical terminology can neither be translated nor
assimilated to the terms of current psychology. Among the notions in
actual or potential competition with Lacanian concepts, the book deals
with those proposed by semiology, Marxism, phenomenology,
constructionism, deconstruction, and hermeneutics. Taking a stand on
those theoretical positions, each chapter includes detailed discussion
of the contribution of classical approaches to language; including
Barthes, Bakhtin, Althusser, Politzer, Wittgenstein, Berger and
Luckmann, Derrida, and Ricoeur. There is sustained reference in the body
of the text to the arguments of Lacan and Lacanians, of Miller, Milner,
Soler, and Zizek. At the same time, in the extensive notes accompanying
the text, there is a systematic reappraisal and reinterpretation of
debates and pieces of research work in social psychology, especially in
a discursive and critical domain that has incorporated elements of
psychoanalytic theory.
