Alfie Bown, The Playstation Dreamworld (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017). 140pp., £40.00 hb., £9.99 pb., 978 1 50951 802 9 hb., 978 1 50951 803 6 pb. We are fast approaching a point where one third of the global population will play video games on a regular basis. As such, video gaming ought to become a […]
Andrew Collier, who died on 3 July after more than a decade living with cancer, was a member of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective during the 1990s and a longstanding contributor to the journal. Born in Edmonton, North London, towards the end of World War II, he attended Bedford College, University of London (later to […]
Arendt’s love affair with Heidegger and its aftermath, and Adorno’s love of the high life, than we learn about their philosophies and the ways in which these might emerge out of experience of and reflection on Nazi domination. (Sherratt has written elsewhere on Adorno’s philosophy, in a study titled Adorno’s Positive Dialectic, 2002.) The opponents […]
An introduction to Françoise Collin’s ‘Name of the father’ Penelope deutscher In 1973 the philosopher Françoise Collin (1928–2012) founded, with Jacqueline Aubenas, the first Frenchlanguage feminist journal, Les Cahiers du Grif. Collin was also a writer of fiction and récits (Rose qui peut, Le jour fabuleux, 331 W 20, Le Rendez-vous), a poet (Le jardin […]
Obituary Forming new knots Jean Laplanche, 1924–2012 Jean Laplanche, one of Europe’s most eminent and original psychoanalytic thinkers, died on 6 May, at the age of 87. ^ His death brings to an end a remarkable intellectual career dedicated to the meticulous analysis and rigorous critical expansion of the Freudian discovery. Laplanche was born on […]
Interview noam chomsky Freedom and power Peter hallward I’d like to start by asking you about some of your basic philosophical principles, starting with your understanding of human freedom and creativity. In the modern European tradition I’m most familiar with, freedom is a dominant philosophical theme from Descartes through Rousseau to Kant. With Kant we […]
David Macey died from complications of lung cancer on 7 October. He embodied the paradox of being a fine public intellectual while remaining an intensely private person. He was one of the best intellectual historians of his generation and added appreciably to scholarly knowledge, yet did his most significant work as a freelance writer outside […]
Psychoanalysis as anti·hermeneutics Jean Laplanche For Serge Leclaire 1. With Freud The title of this paper may seem to the majority of readers to bear a paradoxical, even provocative, character. How can psychoanalysis – if only on the basis of its foundational work, The Interpretation of Dreams – not be directly connected to the hermeneutic […]
Fatal Attraction Jean Laplanche on sexuality, subjectivity and singularity in the work of Sigmund Freud Philippe Van Haute Freud considered sexuality to be the shibboleth of psychoanalysis. With a surprising stubbornness, he repeats over and over again: ‘and yet the libido is sexual’. 1 But when we ask for his arguments for this rather audacious […]
The tremor of reflection Slavoj Ziiek’s Lacanian dialectics Peter Dews In memory of Hinrich Fink-Eitel (1946-1995) At first glance, the work of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek seems to offer an irresistible range of attractions for theorists wishing to engage with contemporary culture, without accepting the flimsy postmodernist doxa which is often the only available […]
Hiding Out or Moving On? Feminism in Psychoanalysis ‘Why are we all here?’, Juliet Mitchell asks her audience, rhetorically. She is opening a conference in London held in May to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism. ‘Why are we all here, and not there – as feminists, that […]
Fleshy Memory Kelly Oliver Freud conceived of the ego as energetically self-contained, though formed in relations with the maternal and paternal figures of the Oedipal situation. In his Hegelian reading of Freud, Lacan emphasises the relationships that give rise to (and undermine) a sense of ego identity with his famous account of the infant’s self-recognition […]
Marxism and Psychoanalysis An Exchange Joe/ Kovef and fan Craib foel Kovel has become increasingly well known to a British public over recent years, firstly with the publication in 1977 of A Complete Guide to Therapy (Harvester) and then with the publication by Free Association Books in 1988 of four titles: The Radical Spirit; White […]
Socialism, Feminism and Men Peter Middleton Feminism has been both welcomed and resisted by socialist men in the past twenty years. As a critique of exploitation and inequality, feminism has been easily recognisable to socialism. Women can be added on to its emancipatory project as another oppressed class to be liberated. In practice this has […]
The Eupsychian Impulse Psychoanalysis and Left politics since ’68 Barry Richards My purpose here is to offer some reflections on the part flayed by psychoanalysis in Left politics in Britain since 1968. I will attempt a broad and critical characterisation of the major uses to which psychoanalytic theory has been put in political discourse during […]
The Personal and Political 20 Years On fan Craib Thinking about 1968, the most interesting thing for me is 1967. 1967 comes back more easily; it is the signpost from which, sometimes with difficulty, I can move forward to what I remember of 1968. The reason is quite simple: in 1967, I was in love, […]
Fragments of an Analysis: Lacan in Context David Macey At risk of caricature, the received Anglo-Saxon image of Lacan might be formalized as Freud + Saussure = Lacan (2). The received formula owes much to one of the first texts to introduce Lacan’s work to an English-speaking audience, namely the translation of Althusser’s ‘Freud and […]
CORRESPONDENCE ‘The Sceptical Feminist’ Dear Radical Philosophy, r r I should like to comment on Janet Radcliffe Richards’ reply to my review of her book, The Sceptical Feminist, which appeared in RP30. Richards says that I have seriously misrepresented her position, and that most of the quotations I use to support my view of her […]
CORRESPONDENCE For Lacan Dear Radical Philosophy, l I John Bird’s article on Lacan (RP 30) was so vehement that some response is necessary. But replying to Bird raises a problem. Bird has pitted himself against Lacan, and this makes any reply seem to speak for Lacan – a role it is impossible to fulfill. The […]
Jacques Lacan – the French Freud? John Bird French intellectual life appears to exercise a fascination, some might say a dreadful influence, on the .English intellectual avant-garde. In the 1960s it was the tortuous debate between Sartre and LeviStrauss; in the 1970s, the ‘true’, dehumanised Marxism of Althusser; and as we enter the 1980s, we […]