Lacan and Theological Discourse

Edited by Edith Wyschogrod, David Crownfield, and Carl A. Raschke

Subjects: Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791401118, 179 pages, August 1989
Hardcover : 9780791401101, 179 pages, August 1989

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Table of contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

RE-MARKS
Edith Wyschogrod

INTRODUCTION: FRAMING LACAN?
David H. Fisher

SUMMARIES
David Crownfield

1. Lacan and Theological Discourse
Charles E. Winquist

2. Refusal of the Bar
Mark C. Taylor

3. Jacques Lacan and the Magic of Desire: A Post-Structuralist Subscript
Carl Raschke

4. The Pathology of the Father's Rule: Lacan and the Symbolic Order
Charles E. Scott

5. Recontextualizing the Ontological Argument: A Lacanian Analysis
Edith Wyschogrod

6. God and the Utopianism of Language
Gabriel Vahanian

7. Religion and Television
William James Earle

EXTRADUCTION
David Crownfield

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Description

The authors examine implications of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic theory of discourse for the understanding of theological language. Topics include self, desire, post-structuralism, the unconscious, the father's rule, dwelling (in Heidegger's sense), Anselm, ontological argument, alterity, utopia, signifiers/signifieds, God, reason, and text.

Edith Wyschogrod is Professor of Philosophy at Queens College, City University of New York. She has written Spirits in Ashes: Hegel, Heidegger and Maan-Made Mass Death and Emmanuel Levinas: The Problem of Ethical Metaphysics. David Crownfield is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Northern Iowa. Carl A. Raschke is Professor of Religion at the University of Denver. He has written New Dimensions in Philosophical Theology, Theological Thinking, and Religion and the Human Image.

Reviews

"This book will confirm the contemporary magisterium of the French in critical theory, as it will confirm their widest possible cultural fruition—in America. I admire the boldness and rigor with which the authors take up 'motifs' in Lacan's discourse that hold the potential certainly for re-marking, and perhaps for re-making, theology in a deconstructionist context. " — Ray L. Hart

"The topic is extremely significant. A Lacanian approach is central at this time to rescue scholarly interest in Christian theology, and to revive the philosophy of religion. These essays explain why religion is important in a psychoanalytic framework. The topic is important in itself, and it is crucial to both the philosophy and the psychology of religion. This is an outstanding effort (and I'm rarely this enthusiastic). The older logical, epistemological, existential treatments of Christian theology are dead. This is one of the very few ways that the subject can be kept exciting. " — Robert Ackermann

"Talk about Lacan's 'goddess' or the ontological argument in this frame comes with the force of a revelation. (Wyschogrod's essay is a tour de force. )" — Darrell Taylor