Is Jacques Lacan worth trying to understand? I feel like my "breakthroughs" while reading him are not what he means to convey at all.
No one understands Lacan. He's not a real thing.
http://www.richardwebster.net/thecultoflacan.html
He plagiarised his only idea. The only thing you'll get out of Lacan is forcing yourself to scour your eyeballs with his worthless Ecrits, edited by his faggot High Priest who won't let anyone know the spooky secrets of how he anoints the original source texts in the Sanctum Sanctorum, until finally it clicks, consciously or unconsciously, that there is just a short list of factoids you're supposed to know about Lacan if you want to be a "Lacanian."
>read Diacritics
>occasionally someone will mention Lacan
>it's always some non sequitur island in the text like "Lacan's central idea is that man is a mirror of himself." just so the author can show he is influenced by Lacan or something
>has no bearing on the rest of the article
>actual hardcore "real" Lacanian shit is relegated to journals on par with FRINGE ONCOLOGY JOURNAL ISSUE CXIV: "DO OJIBWE FART CHAMBERS CURE SECOND STAGE LYMPHOMA? - ANNUAL HOLISTIC ONCOLOGY SYMPOSIUM ISSUE"
>>7475872
That's pretty much how it goes, that's the general feeling you'll get from such writers, but especially from Lacan. Just try to picture what he is describing on a theatrical scene in the unconscious and try to make the best of it.
It helps if you go along with him even if you might disagree on some points, even fundamental points. The unconscious as a theater that I mentioned is such a point, even though it has itself been contested (by Deleuze & Guattari for example).
Even if you end up disagreeing with him, you'll no doubt pick up plenty of interesting things along the way, even if just because Lacan used a ton of philosophical concepts (from Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and so on). A useful indication of how it should go is given by how Lacan opposes the "the emperor has no clothes" scene to the joke "that woman is naked underneath her clothes!". This means, basically, that our desire is defined by things that do not exist as such: Man and Woman might have empirical examples, but mere representations do not say anything about our own positioning as man or woman, regardless of our actual biological gender.
>>7475872
Lacan is much more easily graspable if you can appreciate the heavy significance of language - or, in a more general sense, semiotic systems -which pervades his work.
The mirror stage for example isn't an event which literally occurs in the infant, but is rather an understanding of the development of attaching significance and meaning to the representations of ourselves and the world around us, before these significances are solidified in understanding when we gain the capacity for language.
It also explains his appropriations from fields external to psychoanalysis, such as his infamous mathemes - we shouldn't read him as literally transposing mathematical structures into unfalsifiable practises, but as using the suggestive potential of the structures themselves to inform our understanding of the subject.
no. he's a professional postmodernist, which means the only people who talk more with less signal are politicians.
>>7475872
>Is Jacques Lacan worth trying to understand?
Sure. Understanding Lacan could help you better understand the work of other French philosophers of his time onward, like Deleuze and Guattari. Furthermore, if you have an interest in the Zizek, I could see no harm in understanding him.
>>7475872
You need to understand Lacan in order to Zizekpost effectively
http://www.amazon.ca/Looking-Awry-Introduction-Jacques-through/dp/026274015X
>>7476377
OP has clearly been introduced to Lacan properly if he feels comfortable enough to read him directly.
>>7476361
The language of Zizek posting has been reduced to sniffling and so on unfortunately
>>7476383
and yet he doesnt understand him
You read and understand Lacan to understand Neon Genesis Evangelion...everyone knows this....
What does /lit/ think of the Post Modern Condition
>>7476753
like, you know, whatever
>>7476621
Psh... I understood NGE on my first watch... Anno's despair reflected my own, a shared crusade against an injust world... Pain isn't something an ivory tower intellectual would understand...
