Miguel de Beistegui offers us an extensive and intriguing genealogy of the central Lacanian concept of desire. On the one hand this genealogy is undertaken in Foucauldian spirit, extending the critical assessment of psychoanalytic focus on desire and Law, but on the other hand the book also convincingly shows how Lacan’s project exceeds this framework and offers powerful tools for critical thought and radical engagement with the liberal logic of desire. Insightful and absorbing.

Mladen Dolar, Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

No superlative can do justice to the originality of this book. Using the notion of desire as a key to unlock the hermetic seal of Lacan’s writings, de Beistegui demonstrates how the psychoanalyst’s work generates a conception of subjectivity that allows for a radical reinterpretation of contemporary debates around self-governance, power-relations and identity politics. I have always known that only a non-Lacanian would be capable of taking Lacan’s thought outside the conceptually sterile, dogmatic cult into which it has descended, but this is by far the best book on Lacan I have read in the past decade.

Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Brunel University London, and Founding Scholar of the British Psychoanalytic Council, UK