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Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the
philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l'Analyse (1966-69), the most
ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French
structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and
Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever
philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or
experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure
specific configurations of discourse, from the psychological and
ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate
analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they
argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary
transformation. Volume One of Concept and Form translates some of
the most important theoretical texts from the Cahiers pour
l'Analyse; this second volume collects newly commissioned essays on
the journal, together with recent interviews with people who were
either members of its editorial board or associated with its
broader theoretical project. It aims to help reconstruct the
intellectual context of the Cahiers, and to assess its contemporary
theoretical legacy. Prefaced by an overview of the project's
rigorous investment in science and conceptual analysis, the volume
considers in particular the Cahiers' distinctive effort to link the
apparently incommensurable categories of 'structure' and 'subject',
so as to prepare for a new synthesis of Marxism and psychoanalysis.
Contributors include Alain Badiou, Etienne Balibar, Edward Baring,
Jacques Bouveresse, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Peter Hallward,
Adrian Johnston, Patrice Maniglier, Tracy McNulty, Jean-Claude
Milner, Knox Peden, Jacques Ranciere, Francois Regnault, and Slavoj
Zizek.
Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) has justly attracted great respect
and attention for its account of Western perceptions and
representations of the Orient, but the English-speaking world has
for too long been unaware of another classic in the same field
which appeared in France only a year later. Alain Grosrichard's The
Sultan's Court is a fascinating and careful deconstruction of
Western accounts of "Oriental despotism" in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, focusing particularly on portrayals of the
Ottoman Empire and the supposedly enigmatic and opaque structure of
the despot's power and his court of viziers, janissaries, mutes,
dwarfs, eunuchs and countless wives. Drawing on the writings of
travelers and philosophers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and
Voltaire, Grosrichard goes further than merely cataloguing their
intense fascination with the vortex of capriciousness, violence,
cruelty, lust, sexual perversion and slavery which they perceived
in the seraglio. Deftly and subtly using a Lacanian psychoanalytic
framework, he describes the process as one in which these leading
Enlightenment figures were constructing a fantasmatic Other to
counterpose to their project of a rationally based society. The
Sultan's Court seeks not to refute the misconceptions but rather to
expose the nature of the fantasy and what it can reveal about
modern political thought and power relations more generally.
Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the
philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l'Analyse (1966-69), the most
ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French
structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and
Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever
philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or
experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure
specific configurations of discourse, from the psychological and
ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate
analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they
argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary
transformation. This first volume comprises English translations of
some of the most important theoretical texts published in the
journal, written by thinkers who would soon be counted among the
most inventive and influential of their generation: Alain Badiou,
Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Serge Leclaire, Jacques-Alain
Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, and Francois Regnault. The book is
complemented by a second volume, consisting of essays and
interviews that assess the significance and legacy of the journal,
and by an online edition of the full set of original Cahiers texts,
produced by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy
at Kingston University, London and accessible at
cahiers.kingston.ac.uk.
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