Concept and Form 2 Volume Set

Peter Hallward, Knox Peden

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781844678990
• eBook ISBN: 9781781687826
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Ensayos filosóficos

First systematic presentation and assessment of the groundbreaking journal Cahiers pour l'Analyse.

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. The 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. The second volume collects newly commissioned essays on the journal, together with recent interviews with people who were either members of its editorial board or associated with its broader theoretical project. Contributors include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Edward Baring, Jacques Bouveresse, Yves Duroux, Alain Grosrichard, Peter Hallward, Adrian Johnston, Serge Leclaire, Patrice Maniglier, Tracy McNulty, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Knox Peden, Jacques Rancière, François Regnault, and Slavoj Zizek.

First published by Verso 2012
In the Collection © Verso 2012
Chapters 1, 3 translation © Cécile Malaspina and Peter Hallward
Chapters 2, 5 translation © Christian Kerslake, revised by Peter Hallward
Chapter 4 translation © Jacqueline Rose
Chapters 6, 8 translation © Christian Kerslake, revised by Knox Peden
Chapters 7, 11 translation © Peter Hallward and Knox Peden
Chapter 9 translation © Zachary Luke Fraser with Ray Brassier
Chapter 10 translation © Robin Mackay with Ray Brassier
Chapter 12 translation © Christian Kerslake, revised by Steven Corcoran
Chapters 2 and 4 were reprinted in Jacques-Alain Miller, Un Début dans la vie (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), and are translated with kind permission of Gallimard.

Introduction © Peter Hallward 2012
Preface and editorial notes © Peter Hallward and Knox Peden

All rights reserved

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted

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eISBN: 978-1-84467-930-0

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

v3.1

Contents

Master - Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

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

Preface

Concept and Form is a two-volume work dealing with the 1960s French philosophy journal the Cahiers pour l’Analyse. Volume One is made up of English translations of some of the most important texts published in the journal. The introduction to Volume One tries to reconstruct the general context in which the journal was produced, and sketches the main intellectual and political influences that shaped its work. Volume Two collects newly commissioned essays on the journal and interviews with people who were either members of the editorial board or associated with its broader theoretical project. The introduction to Volume Two situates the journal in the context of twentieth-century French rationalism and considers how its commitment to conceptual analysis shaped its distinctive approach to Marxism and psychoanalysis.

These two printed books are complemented by an open-access electronic edition of the Cahiers, produced by the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) and hosted by Kingston University London, at cahiers.​kingston.​ac.​uk. The Concept and Form website provides the original French texts in both html and facsimile pdf versions, substantial synopses of each article, discussions of the most significant concepts at issue in the journal, and brief entries on the main people involved with it, as well as full-length French versions of the interviews abbreviated and translated in Volume Two. The materials in these two printed volumes are also included on the website, and posted as pdfs on the Verso website. The website’s search box and lists of concepts and names may serve to some extent as a substitute index for the books.

All the articles published in the Cahiers receive fairly thorough consideration in the Concept and Form website, but here space constraints have obliged us to include only those articles that seem to carry the most far-reaching theoretical implications (which serves to favour pieces by Miller, Badiou, Regnault and Milner) and that, at least in most cases, have not already been translated and published elsewhere (which serves to exclude articles by Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Irigaray, Leclaire, and Pêcheux). As anyone familiar with the original French texts can attest, these articles pose some formidable translation problems, and our attempts to solve them have drawn on a good deal of prolonged collaborative work; we are very grateful to the translators and to some of our bilingual friends for their help, in particular Patrice Maniglier, Alberto Toscano, Craig Moyes, Sinéad Rushe, Sebastian Budgen, Leslie Barnes, Peter Cryle, and Eric Hazan. Needless to say we assume responsibility for any errors that remain.

This project was made possible by a research grant awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2006–2009). We would like to thank Christian Kerslake for all the work he did on the website and for preparing some of the translations, Ray Brassier for helping to revise material for the website and the book, and all the colleagues at the CRMEP who helped with various aspects of the project. We’re especially grateful to Nick Balstone, Karl Inglis and Ali Kazemi for their technical work on the website, and to all those readers of the site who have helped to improve it.

Peter Hallward and Knox Peden

Abbreviations

CF1, CF2

Concept and Form, Volume 1 or 2.

CpA

Cahiers pour l’Analyse. A reference of the form ‘CpA 6.2:36’ is to page 36 of the second article in the sixth volume of the Cahiers, as listed in its table of contents (online at cahiers.​kingston.​ac.​uk, and appended to this volume). Where an English translation for an article is available, inclusion of the English page number follows the French, after a forward slash. Numbers inside square brackets, set in bold type, refer to the original French pagination.

tm

Translation modified.

TN

Translator’s note.

WORKS BY LOUIS ALTHUSSER

ESC

Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Grahame Lock. London: New Left Books, 1976.

FM

For Marx, trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1969.

HC

The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings 1966–67, trans. G.M. Goshgarian. London: Verso, 2003.

LP

Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1971.

PSPS

Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists, ed. Gregory Elliott, trans. Warren Montag et al. London: Verso, 1990.

RC

[with Étienne Balibar] Reading Capital [1968 ed.], trans. Ben Brewster. London: New Left Books, 1970.

WORKS BY SIGMUND FREUD

SE

The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey et al. London: Hogarth Press, 1953–1974, in 24 volumes. A reference of the form ‘SE14:148’ is to page 148 of volume 14.

WORKS BY JACQUES LACAN

E

Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink, in collaboration with Héloïse Fink and Russell Grigg. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. References in the form ‘E, 803/680’ refer to the French/English pagination.

S

Seminars (1954–1980), in 27 volumes. A reference in the form ‘S11, 278’ is to page 278 of volume 11. References are to English translations where available. The published volumes have been edited by Jacques-Alain Miller; Cormac Gallagher has made available some draft English translations.

THE MAIN VOLUMES CITED INCLUDE:

• Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique [1953–54], trans. John Forrester. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.

• Seminar II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and Technique of Psychoanalysis [1954–55], trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: W.W. Norton, 1991.

• Seminar III: The Psychoses [1955–56], trans. Russell Grigg. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993.

• Seminar V: The Formations of the Unconscious [1957–58], trans. Cormac Gallagher, unpublished manuscript.

• Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis [1959–60], trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1988.

• Seminar VIII: Transference [1960–61], trans. Cormac Gallagher, unpublished manuscript.

• Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis [1963–64], trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Penguin, 1977.

• Seminar XII: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis [1964–65], trans. Cormac Gallagher, unpublished manuscript.

• Seminar XIII: The Object of Psychoanalysis [1965–66], trans. Cormac Gallagher, unpublished manuscript.

• Seminar XIV: The Logic of Fantasy [1966–67], trans. Cormac Gallagher, unpublished manuscript.

Peter Hallward

Introduction: Theoretical Training

‘Do you think that our movement cannot produce heroes like those of the seventies? But why? Because we lack training? But we are training ourselves, we will go on training ourselves, and we will be trained!’¹

The Cahiers pour l’Analyse was a journal edited by a small group of philosophy students at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris. Ten issues of the journal appeared between 1966 and 1969, arguably the most fertile and productive years in French philosophy during the whole of the twentieth century. The Cahiers published major articles by many of the most significant thinkers of the period, including Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray, and Jacques Lacan, and many of the young ENS students and graduates involved in the production of the journal (notably Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Alain Badiou, François Regnault, Yves Duroux and Jacques Bouveresse) were soon to become major figures in French intellectual life. The Cahiers was a ‘youthful’ and precocious venture in more ways than one, and no collective project did more to express the vaulting ambition and almost oracular quality of ‘structuralist theory’ in the run-up to the events of May 1968. Althusser himself was confounded by his students’ brilliance, and considered people like Badiou and Duroux to be among the most promising thinkers of their generation; after listening to one of Miller’s ‘sensational exposés’ of Lacanian theory, in January 1964, Althusser concluded that ‘at just twenty-one years old, this kid is already smarter than most of the philosophers in France.’²

Oriented by a concern for scientific rigour and guided in particular by the teachings of Lacan and Althusser, the Cahiers privileged the analysis of formal structures and concepts in opposition to theories based on the categories of lived experience or on the conscious subjects of such experience. Although the label remains notoriously vague and contested, the Cahiers’ project can be called ‘structuralist’ in the familiar sense of the term insofar as it attributes unilateral causal power to the r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Concept and Form, Volume One
• Concept and Form, Volume Two