Theres No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship

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Jacques Lacan's 1973 essay 'L'Étourdit' is a pivotal, yet opaque and still under-appreciated, piece of his corpus. In Badiou and Cassin's concise tour de force, two significant thinkers in their own rights tackle this crucial-but- enigmatic Lacanian text. Through their combined efforts, Badiou and Cassin render 'L'Étourdit' crystal-clear, situating the later Lacan's teachings in relation to the history of philosophy and logic starting in ancient Greece. In the process, two of France's most important living minds provocatively address and weave together a range of topics: the distinction between the philosophical and the anti-philosophical; the relations between, on the one hand, language, logic, and ontology and, on the other hand, sex, love, and subjectivity; as well as truth, formalism, and the (in)famous Lacanian register of the Real. This three-way encounter between Lacan, Badiou, and Cassin, stimulating and surprising to equal degrees, will be enthralling for anyone interested in what philosophy and psychoanalysis have to say to each other. Adrian Johnston, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.