Lacan at the Scene

by Henry Bond, Slavoj Zizek (Foreword by)

Overview

A Lacanian approach to murder scene investigation.

What if Jacques Lacan—the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst—had worked as a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clip starring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bond makes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can be more effectively unraveled with Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate, technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond's exposition on murder expands and develops a resolutely Žižekian approach. Seeking out radical and unexpected readings, Bond unpacks his material utilizing Lacan's neurosis-psychosis-perversion grid.

Bond places Lacan at the crime scene and builds his argument through a series of archival crime scene photographs from the 1950s—the period when Lacan was developing his influential theories. It is not the horror of the ravished and mutilated corpses that draws his attention; instead, he interrogates seemingly minor details from the everyday, isolating and rephotographing what at first seems insignificant: a single high heeled shoe on a kitchen table, for example, or carefully folded clothes placed over a chair. From these mundane details he carefully builds a robust and comprehensive manual for Lacanian crime investigation that can stand beside the FBI's standard-issue Crime Classification Manual.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262518086
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	09/14/2012
Series:	Short Circuits
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 8.70(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Henry Bond is a writer and photographer living in London.

Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher and cultural critic, is Senior Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, The Parallax View, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (with John Milbank), and Žižek's Jokes (Did you hear the one about Hegel and negation?), these five published by the MIT Press.

What People are Saying About This

Endorsement

As a student of Lacan, Henry Bond shows it is only a step from The Purloined Letter to Murders on the Rue Morgue. Bond leads us to terrain we might prefer not to visit, but those scandalized by his images might recall that ordinary mass culture feeds on them.

—Victor Burgin, European Graduate School for Media and Communication

From the Publisher

As a student of Lacan, Henry Bond shows it is only a step from The Purloined Letter to Murders on the Rue Morgue. Bond leads us to terrain we might prefer not to visit, but those scandalized by his images might recall that ordinary mass culture feeds on them.

—Victor Burgin, European Graduate School for Media and Communication

Victor Burgin

As a student of Lacan, Henry Bond shows it is only a step from The Purloined Letter to Murders on the Rue Morgue. Bond leads us to terrain we might prefer not to visit, but those scandalized by his images might recall that ordinary mass culture feeds on them.

Editorial Reviews

Lacan at the Scene is a brilliant, ground-breaking work that will appeal to cultural practitioners and theorists, and to everybody interested in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and visual studies.—Viola Brisolin, European Legacy—

From the Publisher

Lacan at the Scene is a brilliant, ground-breaking work that will appeal to cultural practitioners and theorists, and to everybody interested in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and visual studies.

—Viola Brisolin, European Legacy

Reviews

Lacan at the Scene is a brilliant, ground-breaking work that will appeal to cultural practitioners and theorists, and to everybody interested in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and visual studies.

European Legacy - Viola Brisolin