Talk:Seminars of Jacques Lacan

This page needs a cleanup without doubt. A cleanup means arranging Lacan's seminars orderly, first in French and then in English, citing the translations. I would like to be able to do it but I am unfamilair with Wiki layout. In any case a commentary albeit brief of each one of them is, I think, unnecessary. Bobbyperou

Why, unnecessary? It's an encyclopedia and first stage in familiarising, so while it could be unnecessary, it might be helpful. Julia Rossi 06:14, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to clean up this page. I arranged the information in a table format, cited translations of published seminars, and updated the dead links. It looks good for now. Riot Hero 12:51, 01 July 2007 (UTC)

Wholesale reversion of edits

@Refusecollection: It is good practice not to make many small edits in a row, as this clutters watchlists and taxes the servers. Also, before wholesale reverting edits, you could first check some simple things like WP:MOS and WP:MOSBIO. Besides removing some absolutely trivial unencyclopedic stuff (like mentioning vacations in Italy and such), I made many edits that were purely formatting, to make the article comply with the manual of style rules linked just before. Erasing all that work and asking that it all be done again one by one is unreasonable. Please explain why the edits made are "unjustifiable". Please explain why headings in this article should not follow WP:MOS. Please explain why references should be placed with a space before them or a period or comma after them, against the binding recommendations of WP:MOS. if you cannot justify that, then please revert the last edit. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 14:49, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Reply. Were it simply a matter of minor changes to headings and references, I would have no qualms about the modifications and they would be fully justified "wholesale". The problem is that the modifications also include considerable "heavy" editing that is poorly researched: using the lower-case "s" for Lacan's Seminar is misleading and contrary to customary use in all historical documents; what may indeed strike the uninformed reader as "trivial" details are in fact major historical elements that have recently come to light and have major consequences for issues that were hotly contested over the last two decades; finally, it is poor editing practice to provide English translations of institutions that have no international representation. Refusecollection (talk) 14:59, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but you're wrong in all respects. If events are "major historical events", then you should provide references for them and tell the reader why this is not trivial. A "seminar" is just that, there is absolutely no reason to write that with a capital. As for the English translations: this is the English Wikipedia and those are the names of the corresponding articles. You are welcome to open discussion on the talk pages of those articles and try to have them moved. Until then, using those names in articles is standard practice and there is no reason to change that. Just imagine what WP would look like if we would only take local names (just think of names of people and institutions in Thailand, Japan, China, Russia, etc. - even if we would transcribe them from their own writing systems). Without any better justification for your reversal than this, I urge you to undo your edit. --Randykitty (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• dear RandyKitty. With all respect, you have not demonstrated in what way I might be "wrong". Firstly, if the article lacked references, there is a system in place for prompting inclusion of further references. You declined to use this function. Secondly, you are confusing "translation" and "transliteration": it is common practice, as you note, to transliterate nomenclature from the Far East and elsewhere due to issues of alphabet and pronunication, but this is a very different issue from translating French institutional titles. Of course, I would concede that in the two cases in question here, the existing WP articles for those institutions have opted for an English-language translation, but I would argue that this is a poor and misleading practice. I would also concede that the talk pages for these articles are the correct place for a discussion as to their representation on WP. However, this does not imply that every article that links to their page should conform to their questionnable practice. Refusecollection (talk) 15:42, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• You're diverting the discussion to just one of the many issues that I addressed in my edits to the article and mentioned above. As for article names, I wish you good luck in trying to single-handedly change WPs policies. Just have a look at the articles List of colleges and universities in France and List of public universities in France, where all institutions have titles like "University of...", etc. --Randykitty (talk) 15:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Well, with all due respect to Refusecollection, Randykitty's comments are valid. I've made two minor edits to put my money where my mouth is, but I believe it is more appropriate to make a grand revert of this grand revert. No, "seminar" shouldn't be capitalized unless it's in a title (in this possibly philosophical matter, I believe that "seminar" when used by itself should be lowercase since it does not refer to some entity, and that it should probably be plural in those cases, but see below). No, names shouldn't be given in French if there is an appropriate English translation, let alone if that English translation is the name of the wikilinked article. No, needless redirects (like for psychoanalyst) should be avoided. No, the removal of the links in the earlier version is unwarranted: they seem solid to me. I also believe that vacations in Italy should be had, not mentioned. As for those names in translation, however poor a practice may seem, it is a practice that is accepted here, and consensus is the name of the game.

  So, I will revert since in my opinion Randykitty's version is much more in agreement with our MOS and other practices--however, Refusecollection, generally speaking you have done an excellent job in improving this important article, and I thank you for it. That I don't agree with minor things does not take away from my appreciation: please allow me to give you thanks for the content, and to give Randykitty thanks for style. Let's try and work together and settle a few things that our policy has nothing to say about--for instance, if "seminar" should be singular or plural if used not as a proper name, etc. Drmies (talk) 16:33, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Dear Randykitty and Drmies. Thank you both for your comments, but I think we're missing the point here. I couldn't agree more about sharpening up the minor details to meet WP criteria (as I indicated above), and I too feel that the discussion has been diverted, but my opening point was that when you compare the two versions, there is substantial "heavy" editing of style and content that goes far beyond the question of minor details, and most of it seems to be ignorant of the history of Lacan's Seminar and the issues surrounding it. The article certainly requires more references, and they shall be forthcoming, but the proposed re-writing was insenstive to these issues and did not seek to justify them in any discussion. As to the author of the said "diversion", any reader can scroll up and see where each topic was introduced and the weight it was given. Ascribing this diversion to me is disingenuous to say the least. Refusecollection (talk) 18:43, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

• Since you disregarded my pleas (above) to maintain the original article on grounds of historical accuracy, I've ammended the article so that: 1. It is clear that the Seminar was established by Miller at Lacan's initiative (and not at Miller's, as Randykitty's version suggested) and 2. Lacan entrusted the transcription of the entire series to Miller. These two points were hotly contested over the history of the psychoanalytic movement until the publication of important documents last year. As I argued above, it was a great shame that you saw fit to elide these details from the article.

Refusecollection (talk) 00:43, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

References

In note 18--what is "unpublished"? Does this mean the book is unpublished? Should be indicated differently, not in a reference note. In notes 25-28, what is "Ornicar?"? In note 16, what does "(object relations)" mean? Drmies (talk) 00:16, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

• Relics from original version; these points have been ammended.Refusecollection (talk) 00:45, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Here's another thing--right now the article says nothing about the content of the individual books. I don't really want to start sticking content of books in the "History" section, and probably the best place to put it is in the table, but that table will fill up pretty quickly and it might not be pretty. I'm wondering if there shouldn't be individual articles on all of them; I saw you already made one for Television. Drmies (talk) 02:26, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

• Dear Drmies. I've been working on a draft of two further sections: "Public Reception" and "Style and Content", but I wanted to keep them fairly brief. I agree that separate articles on the Books that have been established and translated thus far would be preferable. Don't know if I'll be able to get down to that before the new year... Refusecollection (talk) 02:46, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
  • Well, Refuse, it's a lot of work to get it right: your Television looks like a very acceptable stub, much more fleshed out than my The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis. No rush either with creating new articles or adding to this one: Lacan won't go out of style, or at least not any more than he has gone out of style in some circles. What I hoped to do, with a few simple searches, was make a few quick statements about the importance of the Seminars, but even that is difficult since the secondary and tertiary bibliography is huge. Well, I assume your bookshelves are fuller than mine, so I will gladly leave that to you. All the best, and pardon my interfering; like I said earlier, I think this is an important article and in general French psychoanalysts and philosophers are not well covered on Wikipedia. Drmies (talk) 03:06, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
• Woke up this morning to a vastly improved article! Good job people, kudos! --Randykitty (talk) 15:54, 18 December 2012 (UTC)