James Macmillen

The Just City

The influence of psychoanalysis on critical social theory and philosophy has been marked, owing much to the destabilizing of the Cartesian subject from Freud onwards. The figure and thinking of Jacques Lacan has been a central reference point in this development, acting as a crucial point of departure for the pervasive influence of ‘continental’ thinkers including Althusser, Lefebvre, Derrida, Laclau, Mouffe, Deleuze and Guattari. As anyone who has attempted to engage with this work can testify, these are formidable bodies of thought, and attest to the complexity and density of Lacanian-influenced thinking. However, this roll-call of names also provides some clue as to the pervasive influence of Lacan in the contemporary social sciences, and the potential of these ideas to provide a sophisticated source of theoretical insight into social and political practices. More recently, Lacanian thinking has become particularly, and more explicitly, associated with the work of Slavoj Zizek and his influential attempts to revive the Marxist tradition of ideology critique. This has led to something of a boom in the application (or entanglement) of Lacanian thought with disciplines such as politics, organizational sociology, and now planning. This is both a challenging and a highly promising project. Certainly it seems appropriate for planning theory to seek to explore the potential of ‘cuttingedge’ modes of thinking to shed new light on the discipline. Perhaps more significantly, however, applying psychoanalytic thought to planning theory opens up the prospects of developing a genuinely post-rational planning theory, encompassing a much more sophisticated conception of human agency and the challenge of governing societies than more traditional approaches to policy analysis have allowed. In this context, this volume represents a useful primer, bringing together a publishing project that has established the two authors as the principle interpreters of what a Lacanian theory of planning might entail. As the title suggests, the book is structured around a series of keywords, terms that are central to contemporary planning thought and practice and which the authors proceed to deconstruct, introducing as they do so some of the key concepts and modes of Lacanian thought that they draw upon. The basic premise of this is that planning as a practice is inherently ideological and that certain key terms, ‘empty signifiers’, are central to its operation, stitching together multiple narratives about the role of planning, whilst providing a key point of identification for the various actors involved in urban governance. In this way planning helps to ease social anxieties, providing a series of fantasies (of, for example, smart growth or sustainability) that help to manage the unconscious drives and desires that structure the social. Of course, this rather crude synopsis does not do justice to the complexity of Lacanian thought. This requires careful navigation, and in general the authors do a good job of International Planning Studies Vol. 17, No. 1, 103–112, February 2012