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Exploring the Interplay of Edward Sapir's Anthropology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Culture and Subjectivity
Exploring the Interplay of Edward Sapir's Anthropology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Culture and Subjectivity
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Description
Was Edward Sapir's perspective on culture and personality groundbreaking, or should we regard it as just one more theory that reached a scientific dead-end? Exploring the Interplay of Edward Sapir's Anthropology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Culture and Subjectivity introduces a fresh perspective to traditional anthropological discourse by exploring Edward Sapir's insights into culture and personality relationship alongside Jacques Lacan's theories on the individual and collective. This book reassesses the dynamics between subjective and social realms, paving the way for potentially a new anthropological model of subjectivity and the definition of culture. Exploring the historical context of anthropology-psychoanalysis relationships, this book synthesizes diverse conceptions of culture and personality through an interdisciplinary lens. By leveraging Lacan's theoretical framework to interpret Sapir's bold ideas on the culture-personality dyad, it assesses integrating Lacanian subjectivity into the culture-individual relationship, bridging commonalities between the two fields and introducing insights into their interdisciplinary interplay. This book summarizes key findings from Lacanian subjectivity theory and examines a new perspective on the process of cultural transmission and socialization by highlighting Sapir`s pioneering view on the relationship between the individual and society. It also addresses ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions in anthropology through Lacanian dynamics of desire.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Introduction: How to Fail Better?
Chapter 2: Theory on the Couch: Anthropology and Psychoanalysis, a Love at First Sigh(t)
Intersecting Paths: Freudian Anthropological Endeavors and Structuralist Engagement of Lacan and Lévi-Strauss
The Concept of “Culture” in Anthropology
The Birth of a Concept
Subjectivity in Anthropology – Culture and Personality Studies
Subjectivity “in the Field”: Descriptive Use of Psychoanalytic Theory in Psychological Anthropology - Kardiner, Mead, Kluckhohn and Whitings
The Odd Couple: Methodological and Epistemological Dilemmas with “Culture” and “Personality” in Anthropology
The Illusory Dichotomy of “Culture-Personality”: A Psychoanalytic Approach
The Unconscious and Freud's Legacy of the “Deceptive” Ego
Chapter 3: Culture and the Unconscious - Edward Sapir and Jacques Lacan: From Culture and Personality to the Subject of the Unconscious
Subjectivity in the Theory of Jacques Lacan
Pattern of Culture and Logic of the Signifier
The Grammar of the Unconscious – the Symbolic and the Subject
Edward Sapir: From the Subject`s History to the Subject of History
Culture and Subjectivity: Intersubjective Relations and the Intrasubjective Structure
Culture and Phantasm
Chapter 4: Anthropology, Knowledge, Truth
The “Sobject” of Anthropology
Desire and the Method
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Product details
Published | Mar 05 2025 |
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Format | Hardback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 212 |
ISBN | 9781666967227 |
Imprint | Lexington Books |
Illustrations | 12 b/w illustrations; 2 tables |
Dimensions | 9 x 6 inches |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |

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