Lacan and Levi-Strauss or The Return to Freud (1951-1957)

Download or read book Lacan and Levi-Strauss or The Return to Freud (1951-1957) written by Markos Zafiropoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lacan and Levi-Strauss are often mentioned together in reviews of French structuralist thought, but what really links their distinct projects? In this important study, the author shows how Lacan's famous 'return to Freud' was only made possible through Lacan's reading of Levi-Strauss. Via a careful and illuminating comparison of the work of the psychoanalyst and that of the anthropologist, Zafiropoulos shows how Lacan's theories of the symbolic function, of the power of language, of the role of the father and even of the unconscious itself owe a major debt to Levi-Strauss. Lacan and Levi-Strauss is much more than an academic study of the relations between these two thinkers: it is also a superb introduction to the work of Lacan, setting out with detail and lucidity the major concepts of his work in the 1950s.