Overview

What if Jacques Lacan--the brilliant and eccentric Parisian psychoanalyst--had worked as a police detective, applying his theories to solve crimes? This may conjure up a mental film clip starring Peter Sellers in a trench coat, but in Lacan at the Scene, Henry Bond makes a serious and provocative claim: that apparently impenetrable events of violent death can be more effectively unraveled with Lacan's theory of psychoanalysis than with elaborate, technologically advanced forensic tools. Bond's exposition on murder expands and develops a resolutely i ekian approach. Seeking out radical and unexpected readings, Bond unpacks his material utilizing Lacan's neurosis-psychosis-perversion grid. Bond places Lacan at the crime scene and builds his argument through a series of archival crime scene photographs from the 1950s--the period when Lacan was developing his influential theories. It is not the horror of the ravished and mutilated corpses that draws his attention; instead, he interrogates seemingly minor details from the everyday, isolating and rephotographing what at first seems insignificant: a single high heeled shoe on a kitchen table, for example, or carefully folded clothes placed over a chair. From these mundane details he carefully builds a robust and comprehensive manual for Lacanian crime investigation that can stand beside the FBI's standard-issue Crime Classification Manual.

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Reviews

Lacan at the Scene is a brilliant, ground-breaking work that will appeal to cultural practitioners and theorists, and to everybody interested in the dialogue between psychoanalysis and visual studies. -- Viola Brisolin, European Legacy

As a student of Lacan, Henry Bond shows it is only a step from The Purloined Letter to Murders on the Rue Morgue. Bond leads us to terrain we might prefer not to visit, but those scandalized by his images might recall that ordinary mass culture feeds on them. --Victor Burgin, writer and artist Unlike the majority of researchers who merely import into their own field of inquiry a few psychoanalytic terms here and there when they find it convenient, Bond creatively rethinks forensics and psychoanalysis together. Mindful of the structural Lacanian distinctions between neurosis, psychosis, and perversion, he casts an acute psychoanalytic gaze on crimes committed in England between 1955 and 1970, and uncovers surprisingly impressive orders, disorders, and reorderings. The results of his 'long look into the abyss' should be of interest to clinicians, criminologists, and even crime fiction writers! --Bruce Fink, Lacanian psychoanalyst, translator of Lacan's Ecrits, and author of A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Henry Bond's pioneering analysis of crime scene photography is sparklingly original and written with wonderful clarity. A delight for connoisseurs and casual readers alike. --Dylan Evans, School of Medicine, University College Cork, Ireland, author of The Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Author Information

Henry Bond is a writer and photographer living in London. Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press).

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