Jacques Lacan is the foremost psychoanalytic theorist after Freud. Revolutionising the study of social relations, his work has been a major influence on political theory, philosophy, literature and the arts, but his thought has so far been studied without a serious investigation of its foundations. Just what are the influences on his thinking, so crucial to its proper understanding?
In "Lacan: The Silent Partners" Slavoj Žižek, the maverick theorist and pre-eminent Lacan scholar, has marshalled some of the greatest thinkers of our age in support of a dazzling re-evaluation of...

This is a survey of Western accounts of Oriental despotism in the 17th and 18th centuries. It focuses particularly on portrayals of the Ottoman empire and the supposedly enigmatic structure of the despot's court - the seraglio - with its viziers, janissaries, mutes, dwarfs, eunuchs and countless wives.

A consideration of the legitimacy of the calls for tolerance and respect by multiculturalists and exploring practices such as body-mutilation as symptoms of the radical change that has affected subjectivity in contemporary society.