Overview

"Published in 1973, ""L'Etourdit"" was one of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan's most important works. The book posed questions that traversed the entire body of Lacan's psychoanalytical explorations, including his famous idea that ""there is no such thing as a sexual relationship,"" which seeks to undermine our certainties about intimacy and reality. In There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship, Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin take possession of Lacan's short text, thinking ""with"" Lacan about his propositions and what kinds of questions they raise in relation to knowledge. Cassin considers the relationship of the real to language through a Sophist lens, while the Platonist Badiou unpacks philosophical claims about truth. Each of their contributions echoes back to one another, offering new ways of thinking about Lacan, his seminal ideas, and his role in advancing philosophical thought."

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Jacques Lacan's 1973 essay 'L' tourdit' is a pivotal, yet opaque and still under-appreciated, piece of his corpus. In Badiou and Cassin's concise tour de force, two significant thinkers in their own rights tackle this crucial-but-enigmatic Lacanian text. Through their combined efforts, Badiou and Cassin render 'L' tourdit' crystal-clear, situating the later Lacan's teachings in relation to the history of philosophy and logic starting in ancient Greece. In the process, two of France's most important living minds provocatively address and weave together a range of topics: the distinction between the philosophical and the anti-philosophical; the relations between, on the one hand, language, logic, and ontology and, on the other hand, sex, love, and subjectivity; as well as truth, formalism, and the (in)famous Lacanian register of the Real. This three-way encounter between Lacan, Badiou, and Cassin, stimulating and surprising to equal degrees, will be enthralling for anyone interested in what philosophy and psychoanalysis have to say to each other. -- Adrian Johnston, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.

Lacan's 'L'Etourdit' is a pivotal yet still underappreciated piece of his corpus. In Badiou and Cassin's concise tour de force, two of France's most important living minds tackle this enigmatic text. Through their combined efforts, Badiou and Cassin render 'L'Etourdit' crystal clear, situating Lacan's later teachings in relation to the history of philosophy and logic starting in ancient Greece. This three-way encounter between Lacan, Badiou, and Cassin, stimulating and surprising to equal degrees, will be enthralling for anyone interested in what philosophy and psychoanalysis have to say to each other. -- Adrian Johnston, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque This is a fascinating and complex little book. Specialists will no doubt spend hours and hours debating the significance of these two lectures for the understanding not only of Lacan but also of the respective projects of his two readers, Badiou and Cassin. -- Bruno Bosteels, Cornell University

Author Information

Alain Badiou (PhD, Philosophy, Ecole Normale Superieure) holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School; he also teaches at the Ecole Normale Superieure and the College International de Philosophie in Paris. He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works, including his masterwork, Being and Event (Continuum, 2007), and several Columbia titles, includng Plato's Republic (2013) and Jacques Lacan Past and Present (2016).

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