Clifford T. Manlove III

Many of the essays contained in psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s Écrits have been invaluable to my research and publishing in critical theory, postcolonial studies, and film ever since my first semester in a PhD program. Among the most crucial essays—some of which have been widely anthologized and referenced—are: The Mirror Stage, Beyond the ‘Reality Principle,’ Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’ The Signification of the Phallus, and The Instance of the Letter in the Unconscious,. Lacan’s work is pioneering and remains unparalleled in its ability to demonstrate the unconscious, linguistic underpinnings of knowledge, whether it is humanistic or scientific. Lacan’s Écrits not only make sense of Freud’s “discovery” of the unconscious, and its role in shaping consciousness, they also describe the deep linkages between seemingly unrelated fields, such as: philosophy, literature, philology, law, film, art and art history, history and historiography, mathematics, biology, etc.