Jacques Lacan, past present

Essential reading to learn about one of the most influential men of the 20th century and the tentacles of his thought, which still permeate society today, Jacques Lacan, Past Present, by Alain Badiou and Élisabeth Roudinesco, is an intelligent and lively conversation marked by two different visions that complement each other and paint a fascinating portrait of this man who is considered one of the most important men in psychoanalysis.

The first part of this dialogue is devoted to the two authors' encounters with Lacan. First, a social encounter, and then an encounter with his ideas, his political positions, his relationship with philosophy, and the control he exerted over the intellectual world of the 1960s and 1970s.

In the second part of the book, the authors discuss Lacan's work: what it was, what remains of it, and, above all, what it can propose to society for the future, helping everyone to face the anguish generated by the crisis and fight against obscurantist temptations. Whatever points of disagreement between Badiou and Roudinesco, they agree on two fundamental aspects: the importance of Lacanian thought today and the avant-garde qualities of the psychoanalyst, who, at the end of his life, Élisabeth asserts, heralded the emergence of contemporary scourges such as racism, furious individualism, and mass demagoguery.

With Lacan, a thinker of disorder, the authors, looking at the present day, question the crucial question of the relationship between political revolution and subjective revolution.

"We want to believe, here and now, that beyond the deadly anguish under which our society persists in proclaiming itself in crisis, a representation of the future makes new hope possible." — Alain Badiou and Élisabeth Roudinesco