Reinventing the Symptom

These essays explore the final period of Jacques Lacan's teaching, focusing on his 1975-76 seminar "Le Sinthome". The collection aims to shed light on the central questions of this last "phase" of Lacanian theory and unravels the principal enigmas of the seminars. The work as a whole intends to break through previous obstacles to the act of reading Lacan's last work, among them the notorious restrictions placed upon the publication and translation of Lacan's teaching. The contributors examine Lacan's late work from a variety of perspectives. They consider his theories on Boromean knot topology and rethink readings of his views on sexual difference, his encounter with Joyce and even his consideration that his work was not theory at all, but rather a kind of writing. These essays offer a reading of works previously considered elusive. The collection should be of interest to students and practitioners alike. The contributors mark the territory for a more widespread deployment of Lacanian theory in our cultural landscape, from modernism to deconstruction and feminism.