A Father

Puzzle

Sibylle Lacan, Adrian Nathan West (Translator (Spanish and German to English))

$39.99

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

MIT Press
11 June 2019

Biography: general; Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology)

Series: The MIT Press

The daughter of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan tries to make sense of her relationship with her father.""When I was born, my father was already no longer there."" Sibylle Lacan's memoir of her father, the influential French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, is told through fragmentary, elliptical episodes, and describes a figure who had defined himself to her as much by his absence as by his presence. Sibylle was the second daughter and unhappy last child of Lacan's first marriage- the fruit of despair (""some will say of desire, but I do not believe them""). Lacan abandoned his old family for a new one- a new partner, Sylvia Bataille (the wife of Georges Bataille), and another daughter, born a few months after Sibylle. For years, this daughter, Judith, was the only publicly recognized child of Lacan-even if, due to French law, she lacked his name.

In one sense, then, A Father presents the voice of one who, while bearing his name, had been erased. If Jacques Lacan had described the word as a ""presence made of absence,"" Sibylle Lacan here turns to the language of the memoir as a means of piecing together the presence of a man who had entered her life in absence, and in his passing, finished in it. In its interplay of absence, naming, and the despair engendered by both, A Father ultimately poses an essential question- what is a father? This first-person account offers both a riposte and a complement to the concept (and the name) of the father as Lacan had defined him in his work, and raises difficult issues about the influence biography can have on theory-and vice versa-and the sometimes yawning divide that can open up between theory and the lives we lead.

By: Sibylle Lacan
Translated by: Adrian Nathan West (Translator (Spanish and German to English))
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 127mm, Spine: 14mm
ISBN: 9780262039314
ISBN 10: 0262039311
Series: The MIT Press
Pages: 104
Publication Date: 11 June 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Sibylle Lacan (1940-2013) was Jacques Lacan's second daughter from his first marriage. A translator of Spanish, English, and Russian, she followed A Father with a book devoted to her mother (Points de suspension).

Reviews for A Father: Puzzle

Slim, fragmented memories of the daughter that Lacan and readers barely knew. —Kirkus Reviews ...a moving and laconic narrative of unrequited love... —TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT