Seductions and Enigmas: Cultural Readings with Laplanche

Jean Laplanche (1924–2012) was one of Europe’s most distinguished and influential psychoanalytic thinkers. The essays collected in this volume explore Laplanche’s distinctive critical approach to textuality and interpretation, and map the usefulness of his metapsychological theory for cultural reflection and analysis. The collection brings together work by scholars and clinicians from France, the United Kingdom and the United States. The contributions discuss the implications of Laplanche’s thought for the reading and interpretation of cultural products – literature, the visual arts and film. The book explores, among other things: Laplanche’s distinctive methodology and its metapsychological implications; the central Laplanchean notion of enigmatic signification and its effects in relation to cultural texts; and the psychoanalytic question of femininity and feminine desire in light of the general theory of seduction. Both international and interdisciplinary, this is the first anthology of critical and cultural readings organised around Laplanche’s metapsychology and inspired by his interpretative methodology. With essays by Laplanche himself, as well as Judith Butler and Jacques André, this volume represents both a theoretical engagement with psychoanalysis and an interpretation of cultural production and critical analysis.