You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Unlike several academic fields, including women's studies, literary criticism, and philosophical psychology, law and criminology have moved rather slowly to incorporate the rich psychoanalytic insights of Jacques Lacan into their respective pedagogical frames of reference. Two notable figures, however, (David Caudill in law and Dragan Milovanovic in criminology) have gone to great lengths to move the full and reluctant weight of the legal and criminological communities forward. Although certainly not the only Lacanian epigones in their particular academic disciplines (see e.g., Goodrich, Languages of Law, and Arrigo, The Contours of Psychiatric justice), Caudill and Milovanovic represent the next generation of scholars who have considerably advanced the noteworthy project of better understanding the unconscious forces at work in the operation of law and crime.
In their most recent efforts, Caudill and Milovanovic offer collections of previously published essays brought together in single volume form. I generally find this strategy quite appealing, particularly for the degree of accessibility which it gives the reader. Further, this approach makes it possible to examine the development of an author's thinking on a series of issues or on a single matter of import. Finally, the technique is worthwhile when theory is linked with practice such that identifiable controversies (e.g., the law of property, or the prison inmate as jailhouse lawyer) are given new light where fresh interpretations usher forth and novel meaning abounds. Both Caudill and Milovanovic substantially succeed on these fronts and they are to be commended. The respective methods by which they accomplish these goals, however, are decidedly different.
Caudill claims that his text is designed as a supplement to the study of law (xi), particularly the study of legal processes and institutions (152-153). Milovanovic, as well, sees his project as one of contributing to legal and criminological