Lacan at the Scene

What if Jacques Lacan--the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst--had workedas a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clipstarring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bondmakes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can bemore effectively unraveled with Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate,technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond's exposition on murder expands and develops aresolutely ?i?ekian approach. Seeking out radical and unexpected readings, Bond unpackshis material utilizing Lacan's neurosis-psychosis-perversion grid.

Bond placesLacan at the crime scene and builds his argument through a series of archival crime scenephotographs from the 1950s--the period when Lacan was developing his influential theories. It is notthe horror of the ravished and mutilated corpses that draws his attention; instead, he interrogatesseemingly minor details from the everyday, isolating and rephotographing what at first seemsinsignificant: a single high heeled shoe on a kitchen table, for example, or carefully foldedclothes placed over a chair. From these mundane details he carefully builds a robust andcomprehensive manual for Lacanian crime investigation that can stand beside the FBI's standard-issue Crime Classification Manual.