Concept and Form, Volume 1

Book excerpt: Edited by a small group of students—including Alain Badiou, Jacques-Alain Miller and François Regnault—at the Ecole normale supérieure in Paris, the Cahiers pour l’Analyse appeared in ten volumes between 1966 to 1969. The journal was conceived as a contribution to a philosophy based on the primacy of concepts and the rigor of logic and formalization, as opposed to lived experience or the interpretation of meaning. The Cahiers published landmark texts by the most influential thinkers of the day, including Derrida, Foucault, Irigaray, and Lacan, and were soon recognized as one of the most significant and innovative philosophical projects of the time. The two volumes of Concept and Form offer the first systematic presentation and assessment of the Cahiers legacy in any language. The first volume translates a selection of original Cahiers texts.