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Can Lacan help us to rethink connections between psychoanalysis and politics, and between oppression and resistance, in productive ways? Is Lacanian psychoanalysis politically relevant? This thought-provoking book contains a dozen insightful and affirmative responses to these questions. Alain Badiou and Élisabeth Roudinesco (2014, 60-61) argue the Lacanian framework is a robust weapon of subversion against the capitalist system. To that end they attempt to incorporate his psychoanalytic system into discussions of ideology, power, constructivism, feminism, revolution, identity, and subjectivity. They trace theoretic relations between Lacan and other radical theorists such as Marx, Laclau, and Althusser.
Scholars have combined psychoanalytic theories with the social sciences so as to refine a means to re-interpret desire, subject, and identity - and to propose solutions to pressing social concerns. Andreja Zevnik proposes a distinct ontology for comprehending global politics. Yannis Stavrakakis (, , ) and Samo Tomi (, ) utilize notions of phantasy, jouissance, and dialectics to develop a Lacanian theory of left politics. Obviously, Slavoj Žižek (, , , , , 2022) devised a unique political path by renovating and reinterpreting Lacan's concepts, such as ‘objects of excess’ and ‘objets petit a’, and applying them to ideology, film, and politics. It is encouraging to see Lacanian researchers moving from closed counselling sessions to a larger community. Indeed, many articles in the book offer ideas on how to utilise Lacanian psychoanalysis as a tool to support politically under-represented groups.
Ian Parker and Clint Burnham discuss the role of resistance in Lacan, and endorse Mari Ruti's (2018, xvii) contention that the heteropatriarchy must dissolve as a result of the binary logic of the haves and the have-nots (racial discrimination and economic disparity). Christopher Meyer and Debora Kirschbaum Nitkin draw on their clinical expertise to give insights on immigrant comm