{"product_id":"a-father-puzzle-9780262039314","title":"A Father: Puzzle","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe daughter of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan tries to make sense of her relationship with her father.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"When I was born, my father was already no longer there.\" Sibylle Lacan's memoir of her father, the influential French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, is told through fragmentary, elliptical episodes, and describes a figure who had defined himself to her as much by his absence as by his presence. Sibylle was the second daughter and unhappy last child of Lacan's first marriage: the fruit of despair (\"some will say of desire, but I do not believe them\"). Lacan abandoned his old family for a new one: a new partner, Sylvia Bataille (the wife of Georges Bataille), and another daughter, born a few months after Sibylle. For years, this daughter, Judith, was the only publicly recognized child of Lacan--even if, due to French law, she lacked his name. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn one sense, then, \u003ci\u003eA Father\u003c\/i\u003e presents the voice of one who, while bearing his name, had been erased. If Jacques Lacan had described the word as a \"presence made of absence,\" Sibylle Lacan here turns to the language of the memoir as a means of piecing together the presence of a man who had entered her life in absence, and in his passing, finished in it. In its interplay of absence, naming, and the despair engendered by both, \u003ci\u003eA Father\u003c\/i\u003e ultimately poses an essential question: what is a father? This first-person account offers both a riposte and a complement to the concept (and the name) of the father as Lacan had defined him in his work, and raises difficult issues about the influence biography can have on theory--and vice versa--and the sometimes yawning divide that can open up between theory and the lives we lead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e MIT Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/11\/2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780262039314\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 104\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.40lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.10h x 5.20w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eReview Citations: \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e 04\/01\/2019\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Sibylle Lacan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52181247426741,"sku":"9780262039314","price":16.96,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_55afaf02-0e0e-4e68-8cb0-717d6cc59c59.jpg?v=1768922326","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/a-father-puzzle-9780262039314","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}