About Us
Lacan Salon is a psychoanalytic study group based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The purpose of the Salon is to share, discuss, and promote the transmission of psychoanalytic discourse by creatively reading and engaging with the works of Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud in a non reductive way. We discuss a wide range of topics such as subjectivity, the analytic act, and cultural phenomena. We place a premium on close, critical readings of Lacan’s Seminars and Écrits, as well as secondary psychoanalytic criticism.
The Salon was founded in September 2007 and developed under the guidance of Hilda Fernandez, Clint Burnham, Paul Kingsbury and Jesse Proudfoot. On June 24, 2014 Lacan Salon was incorporated as a society under the Society Act of British Columbia. The current board of directors is comprised of Hilda Fernandez and Sanem Guvenc (Presidents); Alois Sieben (Vice-President); Mandana Mansouri (Secretary); Chris Dzierzawa (Treasurer); Alessandra Capperdoni (Director); Ted Byrne (Director) Alma Krilic (Director); Paul Kingsbury (Director) and Desiree Jung (Director) .
Lacan Salon has grown to an average of twenty participants each term who come from a wide variety of academic disciplines and therapeutic traditions and who continue to push the Salon in new directions.
While some members have received Lacanian analytical training or have studied more extensively at Lacanian schools, others are new to Lacan. Some are artists, writers, or activists, although our study group is largely composed of academics and graduate students from the social sciences including Literature, Geography, Philosophy, Art, Education and Political Science. This heterogeneity and interdisciplinary focus enriches our study by opening up new readings of psychoanalytic texts, as well as by fostering a plurality of textual meanings. We encourage this diversity and affirm the creation of singular ideas that resonate for some but not necessarily for all. We promote a fragmented knowledge, a dismembering of conventional agreements, and strive to remain faithful to the original radicality of the Freudian unconscious, questioning the comfortable belief in a whole knowledge or the existence of a single truth.
Lacan Salon meets regularly from September to June fortnightly on Tuesday evenings 7-9pm in room 2205 at SFU Woodward’s, on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples. Please see our schedule above for further information. Lacan Salon is open to the public and welcomes participants from all academic disciplines and levels of experience. Our meetings are also offered online, email secretarylacansalon@gmail.com to receive the zoom link for online access.