Another take on science....

[Kenneth MacKendrick]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neil McLaughlin" <nmclaugh@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>

> If intellectuals are going to spend the time getting inside the complex
> language of Lacan (and some comple discourses are certainly worth
> mastering), it makes sense to ask what is the pay-off.

Well, there isn't really a pay-off until one has read something, regardless
of what the reviews... so it isn't the kind of question that can be
answered.

For the most part, I find the Lacanian understand of desire / imaginary
quite compelling. But one might opt for Cornelius Castoriadis instead...

> I have never read any account of Lacan in relation to the social
> psychology of capitalism, or wars or whatever that made a compelling case
> of the approach. I still have not heard that. And that was what I was
> asking. No matter...
> Different approaches....

Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative and The Sublime Object of Ideology
Renata Salecl, (Per)Versions of Love and Hate
Jeanne Schroeder, The Vestal and the Fasces
Teresa Brennan, Exhausting Modernity

These cover property, gender, ideology, attachment... all elements that
should be considered in any analysis of capitalism. What about Fred Jameson
on the logic of late capitalism? Certainly many Jameson's concepts are
derived from his earlier work on Lacan's concept of the imaginary.

ken