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Reading Lacan
The influence of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has extended into nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences―from literature and film studies to anthropology and social work. yet Lacan's major text, Ecrits , continues to perplex and even baffle its readers. In Reading Lacan , Jane Gallop offers a novel approach to Lacan's work based on his own theories of language. Lacan locates truth in the letter rather than in the spirit-in the ways statements are expressed rather than in their intended meaning. Gallop here grapples with six of Lacan's essays from Ecrits : "The Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter,' " "The Mirror Stage," "The Freudian Thing,'' "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious,'' "The Signification of the Phallus," and "The Subversion of the Subject." While other commentators have chosen not to confront Lacan's notoriously problematic style in their discussions of his ideas, Gallop addresses herself directly to the problem and the practice of reading Lacan. She takes her direction from Lacan's view of subjectivity and offers a deeply personal, feminist reading of Ecrits . Concentrating on the relation of desire and interpretation, she opens up the rich implications of Lacan's thought, for psychoanalytic theory, for the act of reading, and for knowledge itself. Forceful and revealing, yet utterly candid about its own areas of uncertainty, Gallop's book will be indispensable to readers of Lacan and to scholars and students who have felt his impact.
200 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1985
6 people are currently reading
163 people want to read
About the author
Jane Gallop
22 books21 followersJane Gallop is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee, where she has taught since 1990. Before that, she was Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Humanities at Rice University, where she founded the Women's Studies program. At the beginning of her career, she taught in the French Department at Miami University in Ohio (she earned a PhD in French Literature in 1976). She is the author of nine books, and nearly a hundred articles. She has written on a wide range of topics: psychoanalysis, especially the work of Jacques Lacan; French feminism; psychoanalysis and feminism; the Marquis de Sade; feminist literary criticism; pedagogy; sexual harassment; photography; queer theory; close reading. While the topics vary, her writing can be understood as the consistent application of a close reading method to theoretical texts. She has been teaching this close reading of theory to her students for the past 40 years.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 9, 2019
Good heavens, I'll need to collect my thoughts. Gallop is a loon
May 3, 2018
Jane Gallop's debut Feminism and Psychoanalysis turned out to be an unexpected pleasure, a book that triumphs because it takes seriously the task not only of criticism, but of self-criticism. Gallop, in short, writes with a searching sense of honesty and self-scrutiny that is both winning and critically incisive.
Gallop's earlier book did focus on Lacan, but it was mainly in order to place his ideas about female sexuality and the phallus from Seminar XX in dialogue with feminist thinkers. Reading Lacan, by contrast, consists of Gallop's interpretations of selections from Écrits, with a specific focus on those that were available in English translation at the time (the full text of Écrits was not translated until 2006).
Gallop sprinkles her text with little notes, some theoretical, some personal - this "experimental" move is indicative of the 1980s context in which she is writing. Some are insightful, some come across as a little pretentious.
The Prefatory Material opens with a meditation on the meaning and purpose of "women's studies." She then makes the argument that Lacan's notion of universal castration and his subversion of the "subject who is supposed to know" constitute a challenge to authority that aligns with the feminist project. I am not so sure that this is necessarily true, but I am inclined to agree with this premise. Finally, she looks at how the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis in Lacan's work allows us to be both analyst and analysand at the same time. Self-reflexive Gallop is in the house.
Chapter 1 deals with a number of meditations on how to read Écrits. The first is a contemplation of Écrits itself is a "lure," drawing readers in because of its similarity to literature, but eluding us nonetheless because, in the end, it escapes that label. The second is a look at the way Lacan simultaneously utilizes and subverts the notion of "mastery." The third is a comparison of Lacan's text to Roland Barthes's opposition between readerly and writerly texts, arguing that Lacan belongs to the latter. The fourth examines the difficulties of translation and the ambiguities of Lacan's French. Overall, the thesis of the chapter seems to be that students of literature might *think* they recognize a familiar series of textual strategies in Écrits, but the reality is that they are encountering something radically new and subversive.
Chapter 2 (focus: "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'") is a brilliant analysis of the back-and-forth interplay between Lacan and American culture. The negative side of this equation comes from Lacan's hatred of American ego-psychology, while its positive side is provided by his admiration of Poe. A further layer to this discussion is the fact that Poe, who was an admirer of French culture, was first lionized by French readers: in other words, did they mirror each other? Gallop closes with an amazing consideration of the fact that both Dupin and Lacan may be decoys to draw our attention away from where the "real" analysis is happening.
Chapter 3 (focus: "The Mirror Stage...") is another remarkable chapter, in which Gallop uses the unusual publication history of Lacan's paper to point to the uncertainty of the origin. Indeed, she undoubtedly embarrassed Jean-Michel Palmier, who makes a gesture toward Lacan's early text - which, as it turns out, exists only as a footnote. Which "mirror stage" comes first: the missing original or its re-written double? Gallop also skewers Catherine Clément's claim that the mirror stage "is the germ containing everything" - a violation of Lacan's caution to his audience not to project onto his work the false notion that things are "already there" when they are in reality a product of new insights. The rest of the chapter sees Gallop exploring in depth this temporal paradox: if the mirror stage is the moment that brings into being the very notion of order, then how can we possibly think about what came "before" order, since doing so can only be achieved through the window that was opened up by the mirror stage.
Chapter 4 (focus: "The Freudian Thing") is a difficult but wonderful chapter that focuses on the "correct" location of the unconscious. Using Freud's hometown of Vienna as the shifting center of her discussion - think of the castle in Kafka's novel - Gallop runs the reader through a dizzying series of wordplays and conceptual slips that show how, whenever we think we have grasped the unconscious, it eludes us. Vienna is never quite where we think it is.
Chapter 5 (focus: "The Agency of the Letter...") reflects more deeply on the question of Lacan's style. Gallop then heads into the Lacanian territory that I like least, with an extended discussion of metaphor and metonymy, followed by an attempt to read his mathemes/formulae as something between a poem and a rebus.
Chapter 6 (focus: "The Signification of the Phallus") returns to territory covered in Feminism and Psychoanalysis, with an extended discussion of the difference between the "phallus" and the "penis." Since it goes over old ground, I found this chapter to be by far the least rewarding in the book.
Chapter 7 (focus: "The Subversion of the Subject...") examines the difficult nuances of Lacan's claim that "God is unconscious," as opposed to "God is dead." Comparing this notion to Barthes's concept of the dead author, Gallop notes the subtleties and advantages of the Lacanian formula for both literature and atheism.
With the exception of Chapter 6, I found Reading Lacan to be an even stronger work than Gallop's first book. Her insights into Lacan are often dazzling, especially for the way she is able to take complex ideas and turn them over and over so that the reader can see all their various nuances. While it's not quite a perfect book, its audacity, insight, and intellectual fearlessness nonetheless merit its five star rating.
Gallop's earlier book did focus on Lacan, but it was mainly in order to place his ideas about female sexuality and the phallus from Seminar XX in dialogue with feminist thinkers. Reading Lacan, by contrast, consists of Gallop's interpretations of selections from Écrits, with a specific focus on those that were available in English translation at the time (the full text of Écrits was not translated until 2006).
Gallop sprinkles her text with little notes, some theoretical, some personal - this "experimental" move is indicative of the 1980s context in which she is writing. Some are insightful, some come across as a little pretentious.
The Prefatory Material opens with a meditation on the meaning and purpose of "women's studies." She then makes the argument that Lacan's notion of universal castration and his subversion of the "subject who is supposed to know" constitute a challenge to authority that aligns with the feminist project. I am not so sure that this is necessarily true, but I am inclined to agree with this premise. Finally, she looks at how the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis in Lacan's work allows us to be both analyst and analysand at the same time. Self-reflexive Gallop is in the house.
Chapter 1 deals with a number of meditations on how to read Écrits. The first is a contemplation of Écrits itself is a "lure," drawing readers in because of its similarity to literature, but eluding us nonetheless because, in the end, it escapes that label. The second is a look at the way Lacan simultaneously utilizes and subverts the notion of "mastery." The third is a comparison of Lacan's text to Roland Barthes's opposition between readerly and writerly texts, arguing that Lacan belongs to the latter. The fourth examines the difficulties of translation and the ambiguities of Lacan's French. Overall, the thesis of the chapter seems to be that students of literature might *think* they recognize a familiar series of textual strategies in Écrits, but the reality is that they are encountering something radically new and subversive.
Chapter 2 (focus: "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'") is a brilliant analysis of the back-and-forth interplay between Lacan and American culture. The negative side of this equation comes from Lacan's hatred of American ego-psychology, while its positive side is provided by his admiration of Poe. A further layer to this discussion is the fact that Poe, who was an admirer of French culture, was first lionized by French readers: in other words, did they mirror each other? Gallop closes with an amazing consideration of the fact that both Dupin and Lacan may be decoys to draw our attention away from where the "real" analysis is happening.
Chapter 3 (focus: "The Mirror Stage...") is another remarkable chapter, in which Gallop uses the unusual publication history of Lacan's paper to point to the uncertainty of the origin. Indeed, she undoubtedly embarrassed Jean-Michel Palmier, who makes a gesture toward Lacan's early text - which, as it turns out, exists only as a footnote. Which "mirror stage" comes first: the missing original or its re-written double? Gallop also skewers Catherine Clément's claim that the mirror stage "is the germ containing everything" - a violation of Lacan's caution to his audience not to project onto his work the false notion that things are "already there" when they are in reality a product of new insights. The rest of the chapter sees Gallop exploring in depth this temporal paradox: if the mirror stage is the moment that brings into being the very notion of order, then how can we possibly think about what came "before" order, since doing so can only be achieved through the window that was opened up by the mirror stage.
Chapter 4 (focus: "The Freudian Thing") is a difficult but wonderful chapter that focuses on the "correct" location of the unconscious. Using Freud's hometown of Vienna as the shifting center of her discussion - think of the castle in Kafka's novel - Gallop runs the reader through a dizzying series of wordplays and conceptual slips that show how, whenever we think we have grasped the unconscious, it eludes us. Vienna is never quite where we think it is.
Chapter 5 (focus: "The Agency of the Letter...") reflects more deeply on the question of Lacan's style. Gallop then heads into the Lacanian territory that I like least, with an extended discussion of metaphor and metonymy, followed by an attempt to read his mathemes/formulae as something between a poem and a rebus.
Chapter 6 (focus: "The Signification of the Phallus") returns to territory covered in Feminism and Psychoanalysis, with an extended discussion of the difference between the "phallus" and the "penis." Since it goes over old ground, I found this chapter to be by far the least rewarding in the book.
Chapter 7 (focus: "The Subversion of the Subject...") examines the difficult nuances of Lacan's claim that "God is unconscious," as opposed to "God is dead." Comparing this notion to Barthes's concept of the dead author, Gallop notes the subtleties and advantages of the Lacanian formula for both literature and atheism.
With the exception of Chapter 6, I found Reading Lacan to be an even stronger work than Gallop's first book. Her insights into Lacan are often dazzling, especially for the way she is able to take complex ideas and turn them over and over so that the reader can see all their various nuances. While it's not quite a perfect book, its audacity, insight, and intellectual fearlessness nonetheless merit its five star rating.
June 3, 2020
Wish I knew she was a sex pest before buying. Read a synopsis of her "feminist accused" book and now her words turn my stomach.. can't finish. Academia isn't "inherently erotic", that implies academics who aren't trying to f*ck their students have a dysfunction. FOH
October 1, 2019
Freud is very easy to read while Lacan nearly impossible. When I turned to Ms. Gallop for help, I found that this impossibility is, if not outright intentional, at least widely acknowledged. In fact, one of the best things in this book is that the author refuses to adopt the position of one presumed to know. Early on she says "My various mentions of insufficient command of the material are a very central part of my project." and how that releases her from "constantly cover[ing] one's inevitable inadequacy in order to have the right to speak" the alternative being the fake certainty too many texts suffer from today. She further argues that her stance is thus both feminist and Lacanian.
Ms. Gallop's own writing can be hard to understand too but she has succeeded in freeing me up from having to understand it as well as I feared I would have to before writing this review. That itself is an accomplishment of the kind one might think could only be achieved via psychotherapy.
Indeed everyone writing about Lacan turns out to be difficult to read (though some more than others) and Ms. Gallop reads other writers as well and explains the issues, or at least tries. Luckily I have enough familiarity with Freud and Lacan to try along with her. If you do not, this book should not be where you begin.
Often Ms Gallop approaches Lacan's writing as if its difficulty is the secondary elaboration of a dream disguising latent content. She associates to the parts as Freud instructs us to do with dreams. Though she has interesting associations it is easy to get lost in the details when one would prefer a more global understanding.
One can argue that such a clear understanding is impossible, not only for Lacan's work but for anything at all if you take a Lacanian perspective. The symbolic cannot "capture" the real. However this reader needs more of an overview, even a necessarily unsatisfying one.
Ms. Gallop's own writing can be hard to understand too but she has succeeded in freeing me up from having to understand it as well as I feared I would have to before writing this review. That itself is an accomplishment of the kind one might think could only be achieved via psychotherapy.
Indeed everyone writing about Lacan turns out to be difficult to read (though some more than others) and Ms. Gallop reads other writers as well and explains the issues, or at least tries. Luckily I have enough familiarity with Freud and Lacan to try along with her. If you do not, this book should not be where you begin.
Often Ms Gallop approaches Lacan's writing as if its difficulty is the secondary elaboration of a dream disguising latent content. She associates to the parts as Freud instructs us to do with dreams. Though she has interesting associations it is easy to get lost in the details when one would prefer a more global understanding.
One can argue that such a clear understanding is impossible, not only for Lacan's work but for anything at all if you take a Lacanian perspective. The symbolic cannot "capture" the real. However this reader needs more of an overview, even a necessarily unsatisfying one.
November 25, 2020
skip chapter 6 and spend lots of time with chapter 7!
Read
December 30, 2021It was to me an introduction to lacanian concepts, the female lens was a bonus.
June 24, 2023
Dr. Gallop is one very witty person.
April 14, 2010
less a guide than a companion, a very good friend for the reader who encounters (in addition to the uncomfortable frustrations, jubilant discoveries and queasy combinations of the two one is bound to find in lacan) a big big loneliness when dipping into the ecrits.
February 24, 2014
Thorough close reading of selected, significant moments from the Écrits and Séminaires. I am wondering where "The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence" came from in this entry. There was no subtitle to the hardcover 1985 edition I just read.
September 11, 2008
great feminist perspective on lacan, an interesting reading of his work, admits that he's impossible to pin down...
May 5, 2009
Prefatory Material
Reading Lacan's Ecrits
Where to Begin?
Reading Lacan's Ecrits
Where to Begin?
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews