As an historian of ideas I have sought a methodology beneath and beyond ideational analysis, identifying the presuppositions of our ideas. It was not until reading a review of several books by Slavoj Zizek several months ago that I begin to realize that this task is the life work of Jacques Lacan (1901-81).
Zizek's HOW TO READ LACAN is an insightful introduction to realities that escape our conscious awareness, resting deep beneath geologic layers of symbolic pretensions. With a double doctorate in both philosophy and pyschoanalysis, Zizek is especially qualified to introduce us to Lacan's work, arguably the most renowned psychoanalyst since Sigmund Freud.
Not sharing Zizek's expertise in popular culture, this reviewer is not qualified to give HOW TO READ LACAN five stars. And yet, while enabling us to probe more deeply the microscopic dimensions of our daily lives, Zizek's reading of Lacan also empowers us to understand and stand under the macroscopic dimensions of geopolitics on the fragile planet that is our home.
An instance of this reading is Zizek's interpretation of Donald Rumsfeld's March 2003 rendition of 1) known knowns, 2) known unknowns and 3) unknown unknowns. Zizek continutes that what Rumsfeld "forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the 'unknown knowns,' things we don't know that we know -- which is precisely the Freudian unconscious, the 'knowledge that doesn't know itself,' as Lacan use to say, the core of which is fantasy." These 'unknown knowns,' Zizek continues, are "the disavowed beliefs and suppositions we are not even aware of adhering to ourselves, but which nonetheless determine our acts and feelings."