Just food for thought:
Chomsky on Lacan: "amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan" (he also admits that his early works are worth analyzing). In another post I can longer find the link to, Chomsky concedes he does not actually understand many of Lacan's writings.
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernism.html
For a rather harsh criticism of the book you are outlining:
http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol5-2001/n17oneill
"In the absence of any detectable method, a dizzying array of wildly entertaining and often quite maddening rhetorical strategies are deployed in order to beguile, browbeat, dumbfound, dazzle, confuse, mislead, overwhelm, and generally subdue the reader into acceptance. Example after example is supplied, but the principle that makes them examples is not itself given. Appeals are implicitly made to Lacan's authority but the source of that authority is never mentioned. The truth of Lacan's theories is urged by showing how other people's theories support that truth but without explaining why these theories have the same object. One concept is defined in terms of another, which is then defined in the same way, ad infinitum. What's being explained is mixed in with what's doing the explaining in a circular fashion so striking that it may well count as both a novelty and a technical innovation in the practice of interpretation. Concepts are 'applied' without any boundaries on either the concepts or the scope of their application. Arguments and interpretations are hastily summarized rather than being patiently outlined. Finally, sheer rhetorical force substitutes for argument."
http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v29/v29n3.harpham1.html
"The effect is that of a stream of nonconsecutive units arranged in arbitrary sequences that solicit a sporadic and discontinuous attention. Zizek does not seem to believe that books should be about something; he reproduces his central themes compulsively regardless of the ostensible subject."
It's good to know that I'm not an idiot, or maybe it's just comforting that Old Man Chompers doesn't get it either.
ReplyDeleteHowever, onward with the serial posts!
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