The first book on Lacan in India : “The Literary Lacan : From Literature to Lituraterre and Beyond”

Dear Jacques-Alain Miller,

The first international conference on Jacques Lacan in India, entitled ‘The Literary Lacan: From Literature to Lituraterre’, was held on 3 and 4 December 2007, under the aegis of the Centre of Advanced Study (CAS) and the Department of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata (Calcutta). Jean-Pierre Klotz, one of its participants, had reported on the conference soon thereafter in Le Nouvelle Âne. The other participants in the conference were Ellie Ragland, Nancy Blake, Christopher Lane, Patricia Gherovici, Samya Seth, myself and a few others. Impressed by its quality and success, the Co-ordinator of the CAS wanted me to edit the proceedings for publication, spoke with the Kolkata and London based ‘Seagull’ publishers, and paid them a subvention following the norms of the CAS. 

The collection of essays that finally evolved from the exercise, entitled The Literary Lacan: From Literature to Lituraterre and Beyond, is due to be published by Seagull in Spring 2012, as part of their joint list with the University of Chicago Press. The ‘Preface’ to the collection, by Jacques-Alain Miller, is a new English translation of his seminal ‘Préface’ to Jacques Aubert’s Joyce avec Lacan (1987) by Russell Grigg. The collection includes essays by Slavoj Žižek, Jean-Pierre Klotz, Ellie Ragland, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Christopher Lane, Patricia Gherovici, Nancy Blake, Russell Grigg, Geoff Boucher, Matthew Sharpe, Gautam Basu Thakur and myself.  

Thank you.