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pinkmooon 's review for:
How to Read Lacan
by Slavoj Žižek
‘If what we experience as ‘reality’ is structured by fantasy, and if fantasy serves as the screen that protects us from being directly overwhelmed by the raw Real, then reality itself can function as an escape from encountering the Real.’
A beguiling and entertaining introduction to Lacan that, despite myself, I understood. Goodreads as a website has functioned as a sort of big Other for me when it's come to what I read. Though at present my reading is a private pleasure, I have no idea what I would read, or how much, if I had no avenue to situate myself among readers, situate my thoughts among standards of thought. I imagine if you're reading this you're similarly vexed. Lacan may well be one gateway to confronting these ambivalences of the self.
Zizek is generally helpful at coaxing the reader into Lacan's code (calling it 'style' is a bit much) and if you are, as I am, broadly familiar with Zizek's own idiosyncrasies, you should be able to perceive at what points the book becomes less a strict introduction to Lacanian theory than a greatest hits of Zizek's jokes and film studies he uses occasionally to illustrate his points and occasionally for the sheer sake of doing so. It's still not easy reading, but ease of comprehension is not the intention. Oftentimes Lacanian concepts appear as chiasmus, forever jolting the reader into some new anagnorisis. Sometimes it's irritating, but it can be illuminating, and charming too. Would recommend to be read carefully.
A beguiling and entertaining introduction to Lacan that, despite myself, I understood. Goodreads as a website has functioned as a sort of big Other for me when it's come to what I read. Though at present my reading is a private pleasure, I have no idea what I would read, or how much, if I had no avenue to situate myself among readers, situate my thoughts among standards of thought. I imagine if you're reading this you're similarly vexed. Lacan may well be one gateway to confronting these ambivalences of the self.
Zizek is generally helpful at coaxing the reader into Lacan's code (calling it 'style' is a bit much) and if you are, as I am, broadly familiar with Zizek's own idiosyncrasies, you should be able to perceive at what points the book becomes less a strict introduction to Lacanian theory than a greatest hits of Zizek's jokes and film studies he uses occasionally to illustrate his points and occasionally for the sheer sake of doing so. It's still not easy reading, but ease of comprehension is not the intention. Oftentimes Lacanian concepts appear as chiasmus, forever jolting the reader into some new anagnorisis. Sometimes it's irritating, but it can be illuminating, and charming too. Would recommend to be read carefully.