Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue

Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan explores convergences and divergences in the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan, with a special focus on the implications of their work for critical theory, broadly construed. The book is co-authored in the form of a dialogue between Amy Allen, a prominent representative of Frankfurt School critical theory with expertise on Klein, and Mari Ruti, a leading Lacanian critical theorist. Klein and Lacan are among the two most important and influential psychoanalytic theorists after Freud. Their work has profound implications for how we understand subjectivity, intersubjectivity, autonomy, agency, desire, affect, trauma, history, and the potential for individual and social change. Allen and Ruti offer distinctive interpretations of Klein and Lacan that not only bring out their complexities but also highlight productive points of convergence where most psychoanalytic and critical theorists see irreconcilable differences. The book is organized around key themes that cut across and through the work of Klein and Lacan, culminating in an assessment of the implications of their theories for thinking about politics.

Mari Ruti (PhD, Harvard University) was Distinguished Professor of Critical Theory and of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. She was the author of numerous important works, including thirteen books The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within (2012); Between Levinas and Lacan: Self, Other, Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2015); The Age of Scientific Sexism (Bloomsbury, 2015); Feminist Film Theory and Pretty Woman (Bloomsbury, 2016); Penis Envy and Other Bad Feelings: The Emotional Costs of Everyday Life (2018); Distillations: Theory, Ethics, Affect (editor; Bloomsbury, 2018); and Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue - with Amy Allen (Bloomsbury, 2019).

Amy Allen is Liberal Arts Professor of Philosophy and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University, USA. She is the author of three books, including, most recently, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (2016).

Peter L. Rudnytsky is Professor of English at the University of Florida as well as Head of the Department of Academic and Professional Affairs and Chair of the Committee on Confidentiality of the American Psychoanalytic Association. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the editor of American Imago. A coeditor of the Psychoanalytic Horizons series and editor of the History of Psychoanalysis series for Routledge, Rudnytsky is the author of books from Freud and Oedipus (1987) to Reading Psychoanalysis: Freud, Rank, Ferenczi, Groddeck (2002), for which he received the Gradiva Award, and Mutual Analysis: Ferenczi, Severn, and the Origins of Trauma Theory (2022). He maintains a private practice in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in Gainesville.

Hilary Neroni is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Vermont, USA. She is the author of Feminist Film Theory and Cléo from 5 to 7 (Bloomsbury, 2016), The Subject of Torture (2015), and The Violent Woman (2005) and has also published numerous essays on film and theory.