LACAN NOW – Special Issue of ESC

Guest Editor: Concetta Principe

For this special issue of ESC on Lacanian psychoanalysis, we invite papers that engage with applications of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic method in current fields of scholarship.

Lacan avoided using psychoanalysis to interpret social or cultural phenomena, although he suspected his science would be effective. Social and cultural critics have proven Lacan’s suspicions correct. Althusser’s psychoanalytic exploration of ideology is one of the earliest examples of moving psychoanalysis beyond the clinic and was ground-breaking in defining new ways to engage with social and cultural phenomena in the academy. In the cultural field, Copjec and Žižek, among others, have applied psychoanalysis to interpreting film, literature and visual art. Humanities scholars who fuse Freudian and Lacanian approaches, like Cathy Caruth, have attempted to use psychoanalysis to consider the relationship between the text and social or personal trauma.

More recently, psychoanalysis has been applied to fields of research in historical, social and political fields. For example, American literary scholar, Sheldon George, engages the long history of race discrimination in American culture through the Lacanian lens. Lee Edelman’s application of the Lacanian approach to concerns particular to LGBTQ subjects, is most recently critiquing ‘reproductive futurism’ through the real cut of queer subjectivity. In the fusion of feminism and postcolonial politics, Ranjana Khanna explores trans feminisms through the Lacanian filter. These psychoanalytic approaches to current phenomena co-exist and interact with current work by Lacanian scholars on topics such as affect, anxiety, the feminine position of ethics, and the death drive, among others. This proliferation of applications of Lacanian psychoanalysis is striking, considering this method is rooted in the colonizer’s language (Western Imperialism), with a patriarchal signifier at its center (the NOF), defining a subjectivity that relies on a masculine position (Oedipus) to define conformity (non-psychotic).

For this special issue on current applications of Lacanian psychoanalysis, I invite papers that consider the question: What does Lacan’s theory of the mind contribute to issues raised by scholarship today in areas of queer and transgender studies, feminisms, and trans feminisms, decolonization, postcolonialism, critical race theory, and disability studies?

Papers taking a strictly theoretical or philosophical approach, are welcome; papers testing applications of Lacanian approaches to cultural or social phenomena, are equally welcome.

Papers should not exceed 7500 words, excluding notes and references.

Proposals for papers are due by November 1, 2021; Accepted proposals will be notified by

November 15; Final Papers will be due March 1, 2022.

Please submit Proposals to: cvprincipe@trentu.ca or cvprincipe@rogers.com