Psychoanalysis Is an Antiphilosophy

Many years ago, I proposed the Lacanian opposition between philosophy and antiphilosophy as a key to understanding the movement of contemporary French thinking. Using this key with amazing virtuosity Justin Clemens illuminates, in a completely new manner, the difficult relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis.Alain BadiouJustin Clemens makes new and radical links between psychoanalysis, addiction, torture and slavery. He has a gift for illuminating often overlooked moments and details of psychoanalytic history which he skilfully persuades us are of key significance. Not everyone will agree with his over-riding thesis on psychoanalysis and philosophy, but this book will take up its place in the important and continuing debate on the complex relationship between the two.Jacqueline RoseJustin Clemens is one of the smartest theorists around; his new book is inventive, learned, passionate, and meticulous about the entanglements between literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy, slavery, sexuality, and torture.John FrowDespite some dreadful puns, this is a stimulating, thought-provoking and important book, creating a real dialogue between different themes, traditions and styles in both psychoanalysis and philosophy.Darian LeaderPsychoanalysis was the most important intellectual development of the twentieth century, which left no practice from psychiatry to philosophy to politics untouched. Yet it was also in many ways an untouchable project, caught between science and poetry, medicine and hermeneutics. This unsettled, unsettling status has recently induced the philosopher Alain Badiou to characterise psychoanalysis as an 'antiphilosophy', that is, as a practice that issues the strongest possible challenges to thought. Justin Clemens takes up the challenge of this denomination here, by re-examining a series of crucial psychoanalytic themes: addiction, fanaticism, love, slavery and torture.Drawing from the work of Freud, Lacan, Badiou, Agamben and others, Psychoanalysis is an Antiphilosophy offers a radical reconstruction of the operations and import of key psychoanalytic concepts and a renewed sense of the indispensable powers of psychoanalysis for today.Justin Clemens is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. He has written and co-edited major collections in the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy and art.