Esoteric Lacan

Jacques Lacan is a seminal figure in the history of thought, whose radical contributions to thinking on subjectivity, sexuality and language are hugely influential. However, Lacan's engagements with religion – and specifically with traditions beyond the hegemonic European tradition – have not received the attention they deserve. Lacan himself translated Taoist texts, studied Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed and engaged with occultism, Sufism and the Kabbalistic tradition. This book offers the first in-depth exploration of his work in this area, asking: how did the different discourses on 'religion' influence Lacan's own thinking? And what can Lacanian theory offer when it comes to the study of non-European religious beliefs? Can it help us to step outside of the Western Christian framework that still organizes the academic knowledge of what religion should be? This collection critically examines how Lacan helps us to question how far the European understanding of these texts and traditions is tied to the universal drive of capitalism and to the psychological internalization of the history of colonialism.

Can psychoanalysis be useful to cure anything more than the neuroses created by the European bourgeois family structure? This book finally tackles this most important issue by exploring the resources available for this task with Lacan's thinking. As such, it is a must read to deepen the much needed process of de-provincializing psychoanalysis.

Philipp Valentini is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.