New Book: Derrida Vis-à-vis Lacan

Oct 26, 2008 by Farhang Erfani

It’s my pleasure to post about my friend Andrea Hurst’s book,Derrida Vis-à-vis Lacan: Interweaving Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy)

From the publisher’s site:

Derrida and Lacan have long been viewed as proponents of two opposing schools of thought. This book argues, however, that the logical structure underpinning Lacanian psychoanalytic theory is a complex, paradoxical relationality that corresponds to Derrida’s “plural logic of the aporia.”

Andrea Hurst begins by linking this logic to a strand of thinking (in which Freud plays a part) that unsettles philosophy’s transcendental tradition. She then shows that Derrida is just as serious and careful a reader of Freud’s texts as Lacan. Interweaving the two thinkers, she argues that the Lacanian Real is another name for Derrida’s différance and shows how Derrida’s writings on Heidegger and Nietzsche embody an attitude toward sexual difference and feminine sexuality that matches Lacanian insights.

Attempting to heal a long-standing divide between Derrideans and Lacanians, she brings out a deep theoretical accord between thinkers who both recognize the power of psychoanalysis to address contemporary political and ethical issues.

Recommended by Joan Copjec:

“Hurst brokers the relationship between Derrida and Lacan with great delicacy. Through patient, sympathetic, and often eye-opening readings of both, she maintains the separateness of these titans of French thought even as she draws them convincingly close together.”