Lacan and the Nonhuman

This book initiates the discussion between psychoanalysis and recent humanist and social scientific interest in a fundamental contemporary topic - the nonhuman. The authors question where we situate the subject (as distinct from the human) in current critical investigations of a nonanthropoentric universe. In doing so they unravel a less-than-human theory of the subject; explore implications of Lacanian teachings in relation to the environment, freedom, and biopolitics; and investigate the subjective enjoyments of and anxieties over nonhumans in literature, film, and digital media. This innovative volume fills a valuable gap in the literature, extending investigations into an important and topical strand of the social sciences for both analytic and pedagogical purposes.

Autorentext

Gautam Basu Thakur is Associate Professor of English at Boise State University, USA where he teaches courses in critical theory, postcoloniality and globalization, and British Empire studies. His first book, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar, was published in 2015.

Jonathan Michael Dickstein is an independent scholar. He teaches literature and media studies and researches connections between psychoanalysis, mathematics, and narrative theory.

Inhalt

PART I: DEFINITIONS AND CONTEXTS.- Chapter 1: Bestiarum Vocabulum Lacaniensis: A Concise Outline of Psychoanalytic Zoology by Dany Nobus (Brunel University London).- Chapter 2: Man is not Entirely in Man by Kiarina Kordela (Macalester University).- Chapter 3: Freud, Lacan, and the Human Nonhumanity of Coitus Interruptus by Jamieson Webster (Eugene Lang College and New York University).- Chapter 4: 'L'extermination de tout symbolisme des cieux': Reading the Lacanian Letter as Inhuman 'Apparatus' and its Implications for Ecological Thinking by Kevin Andrew Spicer (University of St. Francis).- Chapter 5: Affective Posthumanism by Marie-Louise Angerer (University of Potsdam).- Chapter 6: The Undead: Lacan and Vico, the Critical Link by Donald Kunze (Penn State University).- Chapter 7: The Sovereign Signifier: Agamben and the Nonhuman by Paul Eisenstein (Otterbein University).- Chapter 8: Lacan and the Mechanism of Full Speech by Ed Pluth (California State University, Chino).- PART 2: APPLICATIONS.- Chapter 9: Like an Animal: A Simile Instead of a Subject by Todd McGowan (University of Vermont).- Chapter 10: A horseno worse? Phobia and the failure of human metaphors in psychoanalysis by Celeste Pietrusza and Jess Dunn (Duquesne University).- Chapter 11: Beckett's 'Marionette Theater': Psychoanalysis, Ontological Violence and The Language of Desubjectification in Malloy and Malone Dies by Amanda Duncan (Pacific University).- Chapter 12: Do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids? by Calum Neill (Edinburgh Napier University).- Chapter 13: ASMR Mania, Trigger Politics, and the Anxiety of Digital Repletion by Hugh Manon (Clark University).- Chapter 14: For the Love of Nonhumanity: Transference and the Anxiety of Algorithmic Critique by Jonathan Michael Dickstein (Independent Scholar).