Lacan and the Question of Consent: Why Yielding is Not Consenting

Clotilde Leguil explores the boundary between “consenting” and “yielding” from a Lacanian standpoint.

Starting from the definition Lacan gave to psychical and sexual trauma, this book makes the distinction between the ambiguity of consent and the experience of coercion. Clotilde Leguil refers to the #MeToo movement, campaigns against femicides and Vanessa Springora’s book Le Consentement (Consent), elaborating on the various degrees of coercion to demonstrate that desire is not drive and that forcing leaves an indelible mark on the individual. Beyond the legal and contractual approach of consent, this book elaborates on the crucial stakes, both clinical and ethical, that this distinction entails.

Lacan and the Question of Consent will be of interest to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic theorists. It will be relevant for academics and scholars of Lacanian studies, gender studies, feminism and human rights.