Research Catalog

Title

Lacan and the subject of law : toward a psychoanalytic critical legal theory / David S. Caudill.

Author

Caudill, David Stanley.

Publication

Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Humanities Press, 1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xvi, 206 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

• Here is both an accessible introduction to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and a demonstration of Jacques Lacan's relevance for critical legal theory. Caudill argues that Lacan's emphasis on language and identity establishes the contours of a radical sociolegal psychoanalysis and that his account of the human subject bridges the antinomies of traditional and critical theory; mainstream and left analyses of culture, and modern and postmodern paradigms, and that Lacan's orientation is decidedly social. He then sets out to explore the promise of Lacanian theory as a critical supplement to the theory of law and, in this pursuit, he introduces several Lacanian concepts that are significant for any attempt to employ Lacan's methodology in contemporary legal theory and practice, particularly in legal education and in contract law.
• Application of Lacan's theory to some concrete legal problems follows in the second part of the book with a series of studies including child abuse hysteria, land use debates, the critique of legal ideology; and religion in law and politics.

Subject

• Lacan, Jacques, 1901-1981
• Critical legal studies
• Sociological jurisprudence
• Law > Methodology
• Psychoanalytic interpretation
• Psychoanalytic Interpretation

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 154-203) and index.

Contents

pt. I. Coming to Terms With Lacan. 1. Trafficking in Lacan: The Next Intervention of Psychoanalysis in Law? 2. Networking with the Big O[ther]. 3. Legal Language: Meanings in the Gaps, Gaps in the Meanings. 4. Schlag's "Problem of the Subject": Law's Need for an Analyst -- pt. II. Legal Analysis in Lacanian Terms. 5. Social Hysteria, Social Psychoanalysis, and Modern Witch-Hunts. 6. "Name-of-the-Father," the Logic of Psychosis, and Real Estate. 7. Two Ideological Monsters: The Subject of the Bar and the Object of Desire in Bleak House. 8. Lacanian Ethics and the Debate over Religion in Politics. 9. Concluding Remarks.

ISBN

• 039104009X (cloth : alk. paper)
• 0391040103 (paper : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^^96024792^

OCLC

• 34886483
• SCSB-9979252

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library