ABSTRACT
The scope of a Baudrillardian critique of Lacanian psychoanalysis has not begun to be appreciated for its potential role in questioning psychoanalytic practice and theory. This chapter introduces key elements of a Lacanian approach to psychic suffering and the coordinates of its theory of the subject. Arguably the Lacanian ‘real’ as a register of the subject takes on a theistic connotation in a kind of negative ontology assumed to be structured in accordance with a dualistic logic of that which is, or is not, outside of the order of the symbolic. Outside of the signifying system, the real is also not of the order of the imaginary. The Lacanian subject is formed through the cut introduced by language, initiating the possibility of an albeit illusory representational system. The subject grapples with the singular effects of the knotting of these registers (real, symbolic, imaginary). Through a critical appraisal of this formulation, that which agitates Lacan, that for which there is no answer within his conceptual elaboration, progressively clarifies. Baudrillard's rejection of the structure of language assumed as inevitable within the Lacanian system is introduced, along with his orders of simulacra that position such structures historically and politically.
