Lacan and the Human Sciences

'This is an interesting collection that casts light on that recalcitrant oxymoron, the 'human sciences.' - "French Studies". 'I always speak the truth; not the whole truth, because there is no way to say it all.

Saying all the truth is literally impossible: words fail.

Yet it's through this very impossibility that truth holds on to the real' - Jacques Lacan, "Television".The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-81) left a legacy of thought that increasingly commands the attention of American scholars and critics.

His provocative essays and wide-ranging seminars and lectures attempted, with remarkable success, to bridge the supposedly unbridgeable gap between the humanities and modern science.

For some time his influence has shadowed the theoretical work being done in philosophy, psychology, anthropology, women's studies, and literature.In "Lacan and the Human Sciences" eight eminent scholars examine how ideas entered these fields, how well they were understood and adapted, and what fruit they have produced. The editor, Alexandre Leupin, whose introduction reveals the underpinnings of Lacan's thought, views the book as a blueprint for overcoming the present impasses of scientific and humanistic discourses and their imaginary contradictions.The essays demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

The relevance of his work to epistemology is considered by Jean-Claude Milner, Francois Regnault, and Ellie Ragland-Sullivan; to anthropology, by Jean-Joseph Goux; to feminist studies, by Jane Gallop; and to literature, by Dennis Porter and Denis Hollier.

The result is a book that points to a new and more pertinent way of dealing, on one hand, with the problems of epistemology and, on the other, with the question of literary theory in the humanities.

Alexandre Leupin is a professor of French and Italian at Louisiana State University.

His other publications include "Le Graal et la litterature", "etude sur la vulgate arthurienne en prose" (1983) and "Barbarolexis: Medieval Literature and Sexuality" (1989).