Lacan and the Nonhuman

Gautam Basu Thakur is Associate Professor of English at Boise State University, USA where he teaches courses in critical theory, postcoloniality and globalization, and British Empire studies. His first book, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar, was published in 2015.Jonathan Michael Dickstein is an independent scholar. He teaches literature and media studies and researches connections between psychoanalysis, mathematics, and narrative theory.

• PART I: DEFINITIONS AND CONTEXTS.- Chapter 1: “Bestiarum Vocabulum Lacaniensis: A Concise Outline of Psychoanalytic Zoology” by Dany Nobus (Brunel University London).- Chapter 2: “Man is not Entirely in Man” by Kiarina Kordela (Macalester University).- Chapter 3: “Freud, Lacan, and the Human Nonhumanity of Coitus Interruptus” by Jamieson Webster (Eugene Lang College and New York University).- Chapter 4: “‘L’extermination de tout symbolisme des cieux’: Reading the Lacanian Letter as Inhuman ‘Apparatus’ and its Implications for Ecological Thinking” by Kevin Andrew Spicer (University of St. Francis).- Chapter 5: “Affective Posthumanism” by Marie-Louise Angerer (University of Potsdam).- Chapter 6: “The Undead: Lacan and Vico, the Critical Link” by Donald Kunze (Penn State University).- Chapter 7: “The Sovereign Signifier: Agamben and the Nonhuman” by Paul Eisenstein (Otterbein University).- Chapter 8: “Lacan and the Mechanism of Full Speech” by Ed Pluth (California State University, Chino).- PART 2: APPLICATIONS.- Chapter 9: “Like an Animal: A Simile Instead of a Subject” by Todd McGowan (University of Vermont).- Chapter 10: “A horse—no worse? Phobia and the failure of human metaphors in psychoanalysis” by Celeste Pietrusza and Jess Dunn (Duquesne University).- Chapter 11: “Beckett’s ‘Marionette Theater’: Psychoanalysis, Ontological Violence and The Language of Desubjectification in Malloy and Malone Dies” by Amanda Duncan (Pacific University).- Chapter 12: “Do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids?” by Calum Neill (Edinburgh Napier University).- Chapter 13: “ASMR Mania, Trigger Politics, and the Anxiety of Digital Repletion” by Hugh Manon (Clark University).- Chapter 14: “For the Love of Nonhumanity: Transference and the Anxiety of Algorithmic Critique” by Jonathan Michael Dickstein (Independent Scholar).

“Thakur (English, Boise State Univ.), and Dickstein (independent scholar) have collected essays which integrate a neglected discourse between the recent ‘nonhuman turn’ in the humanities and psychoanalysis … . This new, original angle is lively with possibilities. … The book is suited to faculty and advanced students of philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis (especially Lacanian), and the history of ideas. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals.” (R. H. Balsam, Choice, Vol. 56 (5), January, 2019)​