I argue for a psychoanalytic approach to spatial questions. I then examine whether the topological (philosophical and mathematical) work of Alain Badiou is compatible with such an approach. French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, whom Badiou cites, also deployed topology, but I argue that Lacan's use of topology is fundamentally antithetical to Badiou's. As illustration, I analyze Badiou's treatment of The Paris Commune (also contrasting it with the work of Walter Benjamin on the same subject). I then draw out the implications for social and spatial thinking of Badiou's concept of the site (the locus of an Event which is, according to Badiou, the place of the advent of truth).
BadiouA, 1992, “Lacan avec les philosophes”Umbr@1(1) 15, translation from l'Être et l'Événement (Éditions du Seuil, Paris)
3.
BadiouA, 1997Saint Paul: La Fondation de l'Universalisme (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris)
4.
BadiouA, 1999Manifesto for Philosophy (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY)
5.
BadiouA, 2001Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil translated by HallwardP (Verso, London)
6.
BadiouA, 2002, Lecture on psychoanalysis and philosophy, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA
7.
BadiouA, 2003a, “One divides into two”, translated by ToscanoA, http://www.lacan.com/divide.htm (Lectures originally delivered at the Collège International de Philosophie, 1999)
8.
BadiouA, 2003b, “Logic of the site”, translated by CorcoranSBosteelsBdiacritics33(3/4) 141–150
9.
BadiouA, 2004, “Huit thèses sur l'universel”, 19 novembre, Centre International d'Étude de la Philosophie Française Contemporaine, Paris; translated as “Eight theses on the universal”, http://www.Lacan.com/badeight.htm
10.
BadiouA, 2005aMetapolitics translated by BarkerJ (Verso, London)
11.
BadiouA, 2005bBeing and Event (Continuum, London)
12.
BadiouA, 2007Polemics translated by CorcoranS (Verso, London)
13.
BenjaminW, 1969, “Theses on the philosophy of history”, numbers 14 – 15, in Illuminations translated by ZohnH (Schocken Books, New York) pp 261–262
14.
de ManP, 1988 [1941], “The Jews in literature”, in Wartime Journalism, 1939 – 1943 Eds HamacherWHertzNKeenan LincolnT (University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE) page 288
15.
FreudS, 1922Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego translated by StracheyJ (The International Psychoanalytical Review, Vienna)
16.
FreudS, 1950Project for a Scientific Psychology in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I translated by StracheyJ (The Hogarth Press, London) pp 281–387
17.
FreudS, 1955On the History of an Infantile Neurosis (‘The Wolfman’): Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume 17 (The Hogarth Press, London)
18.
LacanJ, 1973Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis translated by SheridanA (W W Norton, New York)
19.
LacanJ, 1977, “The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire”, in Écrits translated by SheridanA (W W, Norton, New York) pp 292–325
20.
LacanJ, 1992Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (W W Norton, New York); originally published 1986 in French
21.
LacanJ, 1991Séminaire XVII: L'Envers de la Psychanalyse (Seuil, Paris)
22.
LacanJ, no date Seminar XIII: The Object of Psychoanalysis translated by GallagherC from unedited French manuscripts [not yet published in French or English]
23.
MacCannellJ F, 1996, “Signs of the fathers: on Freud's collection of antiquities”, in Excavations and Their Objects: Freud/History/Art Ed. BarkerS A (SUNY Press, New York) pp 33–55
24.
MacCannellJ F, 2001, “Las Vegas: the post-cinematic city”Performance Research646–64
25.
MacCannellJ F, 2005a, “FreudSpace”, in Architecture and Psychoanalysis Eds WinerJAndersonJ WDanzeEThe Annual of PsychoanalysisXXXIII93–107
26.
MacCannellJ F, 2005b“Alain Badiou: philosophical outlaw”, in Philosophy and its Conditions Ed. RieraG (State University of New York Press, Albany, NY) pp 137–184
27.
MacCannellJ F, 2005c, “Das negative Universale: die Suche nach der Liebe am falschen Ort?” [The negative universal: looking for love in all the wrong places?], in Wieder Religion? [Religion, again?] Christentum im Zeitgenössichen Kristichen Denken (Lacan, Žižek, Badiou u. a.) translated from the English by VogtE (Turia + Kant, Vienna) pp 235–268
28.
MacCannellJ F, 2007a, “The city at the end of history”, in The City of Late Capitalism and its DiscontentsBAVO, The Netherlands Architectural Institute, Rotterdam, pp 162–181
29.
MacCannellJ F, 2007b, “The city, year zero: memory and the spatial unconscious”Journal of Romance Studies7(2) 1–18
