This book sets out to determine the validity of an accusation made against Jacques Lacan by Noam Chomsky in an interview in 1989. He stated that Lacan was a charlatan not that his ideas were flawed or wrong, but that his entire discourse was fraudulent, an accusation that has since been repeated by many other critics. Examining the arguments of key anti-Lacanian critics, Mathews weighs and contextualizes the legitimacy of Lacans engagements with structural linguistics, mathematical formalization, science, ethics, Hegelian dialectics, and psychoanalysis. The guiding thread is Lacans own recurrent interrogation of authority, which inhabits an ambiguous zone between mastery and charlatanry. This book offers a novel contribution to the field for students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, sociology, critical and literary theory.

Peter D. Mathews is Professor of English Literature at Hanyang University, South Korea.

Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Lacan the Linguistic Charlatan.- Chapter 3: Lacan the Mathematical Charlatan.- Chapter 4: Lacan the Scientific Charlatan.- Chapter 5: Lacan the Ethical Charlatan.- Chapter 6: Lacan the Absolute Charlatan.- Chapter 7: Lacan the Master Charlatan.