Abstract
Rousselle offers two possible ways forward for American sociology. First, he posits a contemporary theoretical system from Alain Badiou. Badiou’s theory of the “event,” as the moment of a contingent encounter with the Real, disrupts the consistency of the imaginary social link. Thus, Badiou offers a sociology capable of working through the category of the Real. Second, Talcott Parsons, whose work was critiqued so forcefully by C. Wright Mills, offers us a possible way forward with psychoanalysis and “grand theory.” It is only by developing insights such as these into Parsons’ and Badiou’s work that we stand to make any headway in sociological theory today. If we are not prepared to take the Real seriously then we shall continue to suffer from the same problems sociologists were charged with addressing in the first place.
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Rousselle, D. (2019). Ways Forward. In: Jacques Lacan and American Sociology. The Palgrave Lacan Series. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19726-1_6
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