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On Lacan and Mathematics

As I was, in October of 1997, contemplating the idea of this essay, an e-mail arrived from a physicist friend of mine. The message concerned Lacan and reflected the recent events sometimes referred to as the “Science Wars,” in the wake of Paul Gross and Norman Levitt’s book Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrel with Science and physicist Alan Sokal’s hoax article published in the journal Social Text. Sokal and his co-author, a Belgian physicist Jean Bricmont, then just published their book, Impostures intellectuelles, devoted to the misuse or even abuse (alleged by the authors) of mathematics and science by some among leading French intellectuals. Lacan’s work appears to be seen by the authors as arguably the most notorious case of this alleged abuse, and some of Lacan’s statements they cite were bound to attract a special attention, which prompted my friend’s e-mail. It said: