Concept and Form, Volume 1

Selections from the 'Cahiers pour l'Analyse'

Knox Peden, Peter Hallward, Knox Peden, Peter Hallward

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781844678723
• eBook ISBN: 9781781684535
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophical Essays

Concept and Form is a two-volume monument to the work of the philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l'Analyse (1966-69), the most ambitious and radical collective project to emerge from French structuralism. Inspired by their teachers Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan, the editors of the Cahiers sought to sever philosophy from the interpretation of given meanings or experiences, focusing instead on the mechanisms that structure specific configurations of discourse, from the psychological and ideological to the literary, scientific, and political. Adequate analysis of the operations at work in these configurations, they argue, helps prepare the way for their revolutionary transformation.
This first volume comprises English translations of some of the most important theoretical texts published in the journal, written by thinkers who would soon be counted among the most inventive and influential of their generation: Alain Badiou, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Serge Leclaire, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, and Fran?ois Regnault.
The book is complemented by a second volume, consisting of essays and interviews that assess the significance and legacy of the journal, and by an online edition of the full set of original Cahiers texts, produced by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London and accessible at cahiers.kingston.ac.uk.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction to Volume One: ‘Theoretical Training’, by Peter Hallward
• 1 Forewords to the Cahiers volumes 1–9
• 2 Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘Action of the Structure’
• 3 Yves Duroux, ‘Psychology and Logic’
• 4 Jacques-Alain Miller, ‘Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier)’
• 5 Serge Leclaire, ‘The Analyst in His Place?’
• 6 Jean-Claude Milner, ‘The Point of the Signifier’
• 7 François Regnault, ‘Dialectic of Epistemologies’
• 8 The Cercle d’Épistémologie, ‘Questions for Michel Foucault’
• 9 Alain Badiou, ‘Mark and Lack’
• 10 Alain Badiou, ‘Infinitesimal Subversion’
• 11 Alain Grosrichard, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Psychological Experiment’ (followed by Chevalier de Mérian, ‘The History of Molyneux’s Problem’)
• 12 François Regnault, ‘The Thought of the Prince’
• Appendix: The Cahiers pour l’Analyse, Tables of Contents
• Copyright