SOURCE: Guerra, Gustavo. “Psychoanalysis and Presuppositions.” Style 34, no. 1 (spring 2000): 144-48.

In the following essay, Guerra finds basic inconsistencies in Žižek's theoretical framework in Cogito and the Unconscious that ultimately undermine the volume as a whole.

I start from the obviously basic premise that most readers of this review would like to get some information about Cogito and the Unconscious. That being the case, it follows that my title here may be somewhat misleading, if not blatantly confusing, and perhaps even irrelevant. But readers even vaguely familiar with pragmatist philosophy will notice, in my title, the echo of Richard Rorty's well-known essay “Does Academic Freedom Have Philosophical Presuppositions?” In that essay Rorty summarizes, better than anything I can think of, a central tenet of the brand of pragmatism that has of late been known as “neopragmatism,” or “the new pragmatism.” Rorty argues that our traditional reliance on guiding...