
Reviews
2023
Book Review Essay: Born to Sacrifice: Our Unfailing Preoccupation with Being Good, on “The Analyst’s Vulnerability” by Karen MarodaAdriano Bugliani
Review of The Analyst’s Vulnerability: Impact on Theory and Practice, by Karen Maroda, Routledge , 2022, 226 pp.
2023
Book Review Essay: The Limits and Gifts of Psychoanalysis, on “On Freud” by Elvio FachinelliHolden Rasmussen
Review of On Freud, by Elvio Fachinelli, The MIT Press, 2022, 152 pp.
2023
Book Review Essay: “Growing Through the Erotic Transference: An Analysand’s Journey” by Frances H. MooreNicolle Zapien
Review of Growing Through the Erotic Transference: An Analysand’s Journey, Frances H. Moore, Routledge, 2023 84 pp.
2023
Book Review Essay: “Disorganisation and Sex” by Jamieson WebsterIsabel Millar
Review of Disorganization and Sex by Jamieson Webster, Divided Publishing , 2022, 240 pp.
2023
Book Review Essay: Reason in Revolt: Freud Reopens the Radical Enlightenment, on “Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism” by Léon RozitchnerDaniel Tutt
Review of Freud and the Limits of Bourgeois Individualism, by Léon Rozitchner, BRILL , 2022, 524 pp.
2022
Book Review Essay: Shuffling with Wittgenstein, on “Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy – Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations” by Rupert ReadHannes Nykänen
Review of Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy – Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations by Rupert Read, Routledge, 2020 404 pp.
2022
Book Review Essay: “Real Love: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Religion, Society” by Duane RousselleMark Gerard Murphy
Review of Real Love: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Religion, Society by Duane Rousselle, Atropos Press, 2021 154 pp.
2022
Book Review Essay: The Ecstasies of Deconstruction, on “The Deconstruction of Sex” by Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving GohBenedetta Todaro
Review of Deconstruction of Sex by Jean-Luc Nancy and Irving Goh, Duke University Press 2021 120 pp.
2022
Book Review Essay: Through the Looking-Glass Darkly, on “Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering, and Satisfaction” by Darian LeaderDavid Lichtenstein
Review of Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering, and Satisfaction by Darian Leader, Routledge, 2021 138 pp.
2022
Book Review Essay: “Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations” by Richard Frankel and Victor J. KrebsNicolle Zapien
Review of Human Virtuality and Digital Life: Philosophical and Psychoanalytic Investigations by Richard Frankel and Victor Krebs, Routledge, 2021 286 pp.
2021
Book Review Essay: The Parentheses Have Been Blown Apart: Misrecognition in Late Capitalism, on “Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis” by Daniéle BrillaudCassandra Seltman
Review of A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 2020, Pp. 286
2021
Book Review Essay: “A Search for Clarity: Science and Philosophy in Lacan’s Oeuvre” by Jean-Claude MilnerFrank Ruda
Review of Milner, Jean-Claude. A Search for Clarity: Science and Philosophy in Lacan’s Oeuvre (Translated by Ed Pluth). Northwestern University Press, 2020. Pp. 160
2021
Book Review Essay: “Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger through Lacan” by Christos TombrasEd Pluth
Review of Tombras, Christos. Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger through Lacan. Palgrave, 2021. Pp. 232.
2021
Response to Ed Pluth’s Review of “Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World from Heidegger”Christos Tombras
Dear Sir, I was honoured to see my Discourse Ontology (2019) reviewed in the pages of your Journal (Pluth, 2021). As Pluth notes, Lacan was keen to avoid any kind of idealinguisterie, and I would find it very difficult to disagree on this. In fact, I also say so myself, for instance when I speak of Lacan’s “increasingly intense polemic against traditional metaphysics and ontology … [and…
2021
Book Review Essay: “Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan” by Sergio BenvenutoEmma Lieber
Review of Benvenuto, Sergio. Conversations with Lacan: Seven Lectures for Understanding Lacan. New York: Routledge, 2020. Pp. 198
2021
Book Review Essay: “The Writing Cure” by Emma LieberCalum Neil
Review of Lieber, Emma. The Writing Cure. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Pp. 160.
2021
A Response to Calum Neill’s Review of “The Writing Cure”Emma Lieber
Dear Calum Neill, Thank you for reading my book, even though, as you point out, you don’t know me, or know why I wrote it. Given that premise of non-knowledge, what we have at our disposal is writing, and reading. And so I would like to respond to your review as a reader, to attempt to point to some of the assumptions and ideologies undergirding your writing (and reading), and as a way …
2020
Book Review Essay: “Psychoanalysis, Clinic and Context – Subjectivity, History and Autobiography” by Ian ParkerNéstor Braunstein
Psychoanalysis, Clinic and Context – Subjectivity, History and Autobiography by Ian Parker London and New York, 2020, 208pp.
2020
Book Review Essay: “Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis” by Jamieson WebsterRicky Varghese
Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis Jamieson Webster (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018) 312 pp., £32.00 (hardcover), £32.00 (e-book)
2019
Book Review Essay: “Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis” by Warren PolandRené Major
Intimacy and Separateness in Psychoanalysis by Warren S. Poland With a preface by Nancy Chodorow. Edited and introduced by William F. Cornell Routledge 2018
2018
Book Review Essay: Para-Ontology and the Truth of Incompleteness, on “The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan” by Lorenzo ChiesaPaul Livingston
Review of Lorenzo Chiesa: The Not-Two: Logic and God in Lacan (MIT Press, 2016, 251+xxiii pp.)
2017
Book Review Essay: “On the Pleasure Principle in Culture: Illusions Without Owners” by Robert PfallerJennifer Friedlander
As the contemporary moment witnesses unprecedented levels of neoliberal horrors, Robert Pfaller makes the utterly compelling and refreshing argument that pleasure may be our strongest weapon of opposition. With uncompromising philosophical rigor, Pfaller brilliantly elucidates how under-appreciated psychoanalytic insights pave a path for combatting the hegemony of asceticism, in which societies zestfully pursue prohibitions and limitations to their pleasures. Such passionate concessions not only limit our capacity for experiencing pleasure, but also interfere with our ability to resist the increasingly repressive encroachments that threaten our social and political wellbeing.
2014
Book Review Essay: “Waiting for the Barbarians” by J. M. CoetzeeJanet Thormann
Since its inception political theory, insofar as it has been concerned with the subject in democracy, has treated the subject as citizen. The subject of citizenship in democracy is an abstraction: the legal identity conferred by belonging to a political community ascribing rights and status, a symbolic fiction. Citizenship coincides with belonging to a nation governed by state institutions, the nation itself a symbolic fiction. Yet even as a symbolic inscription that occludes the body that is its ground, citizenship is bolstered by imaginary fantasies and real dynamics: by identification with race, tribe, or ethnicity and with speakers of a common language and believers in a common religion; by being born in a territory and by inheriting a history. Participation in “the body politic” implicates an extra-political, extra-symbolic content to citizenship.