Scan barcode
canoe's review against another edition
3.0
Parts of this book are absolutely excellent. Despite this, I continually found examples taken from novels and films to be more contrived than actually demonstrating the underlying concepts.
It is definitely worth the read, and is easy to get into and to understand. I couldn't help feeling that the part about God being unconscious rather than dead purposefully brushed over Nietzsche's statement that although God is dead, "his shadow still looms."
I found myself oscillating between agreeing and disagreeing with the major concepts of this book. Fittingly, if asked if I agreed with the book as a whole I would have to say "yesno".
It is definitely worth the read, and is easy to get into and to understand. I couldn't help feeling that the part about God being unconscious rather than dead purposefully brushed over Nietzsche's statement that although God is dead, "his shadow still looms."
I found myself oscillating between agreeing and disagreeing with the major concepts of this book. Fittingly, if asked if I agreed with the book as a whole I would have to say "yesno".
franchenstein's review
4.0
After struggling with Lacan's terse language, reading Zizek is such a delight. I haven't read any of his more technical writings, but at least here he writes the same way he speaks. It's grumpy, funny, going on weird and fantastic tangents.
I can't say that I have a good grasp of Lacan just from reading this introduction. His thought is still complex enough that even a good writer explaining it quite well still delivers a complicated picture. Nevertheless, it gave a good introduction that might help my next steps in reading Lacan, delivering what the title promised.
I can't say that I have a good grasp of Lacan just from reading this introduction. His thought is still complex enough that even a good writer explaining it quite well still delivers a complicated picture. Nevertheless, it gave a good introduction that might help my next steps in reading Lacan, delivering what the title promised.
javorstein's review
1.0
Frankly a pretty terrible book. Not only does it hardly serve as an introduction to any of Lacan's ideas (which its title at least suggests it will try to do), it picks from among the most obscure passages of Lacan and uses the most obscure and bizarre examples to enact Žižek's attempt at cultural critique. This 'cultural critique' almost never includes any kind of substantive line of argumentation (reading the book feels like jumping from one example to another with no transition and no overlying argument), and most critiques Žižek makes come more in the form of "people think that [thing] works this way, but what if it was actually the opposite?" The "what if" is almost never substantiated: most of the time he just posits hypotheticals and relies on the reader to say "Yeah, that sounds reasonable" instead of making grounded claims. It ends up just sounding like bad pop-Hegelian cultural critique that vaguely uses concepts from Lacan to justify his weak "but what if it was actually the opposite?" theorizing. Chapters 4 and 5 are, I'd say, the only ones worth reading at all. This book read like a Mark Fisher blog but with less coherent points. Anyone who's looking for a guide on 'how to read Lacan' should look literally anywhere else than here (I recommend Bruce Fink).
raoul_g's review against another edition
3.0
"For Lacan, language is a gift as dangerous to humanity as the horse was to the Trojans: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us."
So, this book by Slavoj Žižek is supposed to be an introduction to some of Jacques Lacan's ideas. Each chapter starts with an original fragment by Lacan and then Žižek goes on to explore and explain the concept from the fragment in his usual style, making heavy use of jokes and movie references.
I don't know if it's the lacking context, or my lack of understanding regarding psychoanalysis, or a combination thereof, but the original fragments from Lacan's writings were almost always too cryptic for me. Sometimes Žižek's commentary helped me make at least some sense of it, but this was not always the case. Even Žižek's explanations were at times too abstract or complicated for me to understand. Him exemplifying some of the ideas with the use of famous scenes from classic movies was helpful and entertaining though.
Another thing I noticed is that almost in each of the chapters I found things that I have heard Žižek saying at one point or another in his talks (of which I have watched some but not that many). Some of the other reviewers pointed out that what he does in this book is present his own ideas more than those of Lacan. At times this critique seems justified, especially when the connection between the idea he is presenting and the original Lacan fragments isn't obvious. On the other hand the Lacanian influence on Žižek's thinking can't be denied. How faithful his reading of Lacan is, is something that must be judged by others who are more capable of doing this than me.
In the book there is a range of topics that are dealt with more or less thoroughly: ideology, the superego, the ideal ego, fantasy, the big Other, desire, jouissance, the object petit a, the Real, the Symbolic and so on.
I now got a better idea of what these concepts mean, although I probably still couldn't explain them to someone else. Even though it was a difficult read, it still was quite fun due to Žižek's unique style.
So, this book by Slavoj Žižek is supposed to be an introduction to some of Jacques Lacan's ideas. Each chapter starts with an original fragment by Lacan and then Žižek goes on to explore and explain the concept from the fragment in his usual style, making heavy use of jokes and movie references.
I don't know if it's the lacking context, or my lack of understanding regarding psychoanalysis, or a combination thereof, but the original fragments from Lacan's writings were almost always too cryptic for me. Sometimes Žižek's commentary helped me make at least some sense of it, but this was not always the case. Even Žižek's explanations were at times too abstract or complicated for me to understand. Him exemplifying some of the ideas with the use of famous scenes from classic movies was helpful and entertaining though.
Another thing I noticed is that almost in each of the chapters I found things that I have heard Žižek saying at one point or another in his talks (of which I have watched some but not that many). Some of the other reviewers pointed out that what he does in this book is present his own ideas more than those of Lacan. At times this critique seems justified, especially when the connection between the idea he is presenting and the original Lacan fragments isn't obvious. On the other hand the Lacanian influence on Žižek's thinking can't be denied. How faithful his reading of Lacan is, is something that must be judged by others who are more capable of doing this than me.
In the book there is a range of topics that are dealt with more or less thoroughly: ideology, the superego, the ideal ego, fantasy, the big Other, desire, jouissance, the object petit a, the Real, the Symbolic and so on.
I now got a better idea of what these concepts mean, although I probably still couldn't explain them to someone else. Even though it was a difficult read, it still was quite fun due to Žižek's unique style.
fargestift's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
3.5
The last two chapters are a bit too skewed in favour of Zizek's readings of cultural objects rather than exposition on Lacanian concepts, but overall an enjoyable read that opened new ways of seeing the world. Most importantly, it made me interested in delving even deeper into Lacan's philosophy.
colin_cox's review
3.0
I can think of few contemporary Lacanian theorists better equipped to write an introduction to Lacan than Slavoj Žižek. He thinks and writes about Lacan with effortless command, and he does so with such regularity that it is practically impossible to catalog each and every occurrence. Unfortunately, he is Slavoj Žižek, a writer who couples compelling, idiosyncratic proses with meandering flights of developmental fancy. That is to say, Žižek is an important and engaging theorist to read, but he is far from a clear and coherent one, especially for the uninitiated. This is why How to Read Lacan is more often than not a frustrating introduction, which is what it purports to be. Chapters 3 and 4, on Lacan's understanding of fantasy and the Real, are quite good, though. With that said, I would encourage someone who wants an introduction to Lacan to begin with Fink instead. Žižek applies, elucidates, and expands Lacanian psychoanalysis in many of his most important works, but he is poorly equipped to write an introduction to Lacan.