French Literature Reviews - 2026

Éric Alliez, Duchamp avec (et contre) Lacan – Essai de mutologie queer
Art and Visual Culture

Bridging art history, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, Éric Alliez offers a fresh perspective on the questions of eroticism and gender raised by Marcel Duchamp's “desiring-machines,” in a (non-)relation with Lacan. Through rich iconography and a bold, innovative analysis of the relationship between language—from wordplay to theoretical notes in Duchamp's notebooks and writings—and plastic materiality in his work, this essential book not only sheds new light on contemporary art history and provides new ways to navigate Duchamp's oeuvre, but also explores the intersections of language, psychoanalysis, and queer studies. With a few literary mavericks thrown into the mix (Brisset, Roussel, Jarry, and… Lacan), this serves as the ultimate lesson of Duchamp du signe: you cannot catch Duchamp off guard; rather, it is he who catches you off guard… long after catching art off guard, relegating it to the contemporaneity of a field that would become the sign of sex. Amid confusions of every kind—and of all genders.
One might dismiss these as mere dumb wordplay. Except that they underpin those (non-)works which, to some extent, must remain unacceptable as art in order to manifest a “deviation” whose theory (anti-scientific, anti-philosophical, anti-psychoanalytical) is shown to be fully integrated into the work itself. An operational and speculative apparatus disrupts the “decision of meaning” of words just as it defies the allure of aesthetics, substituting for them the rawest and most sophisticated deterritorialization of the ready-made or readymale refrain of sexuation.
Thus, in this “hinge” essay, we have exposed ourselves by blending a kind of detective story (with R. Mutt signing the urinal as the mirrored pseudonym of the goddess Mut from an American Freud) with a sort of science fiction (featuring flying machines and soft watches straightened out by Lacan) that creates such a “hole” in the speakable of the “Freudian field” that we found in it the material for a queer mutology.
This is ultimately in keeping with the “specular referral” of all the signs rapidly borrowed by Duchamp and subjected to the Litany of the Chariot, turning Rrose Sélavy and her countless eccentricities into a desiring-machine.

It is also possible that Duchamp might well be Lacan's Other, itself. Or again: “a Guest + a Host = a Ghost”. See also Marcel Duchamp & l'érotisme. Close to Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, who supervised his state doctorate, Éric Alliez holds the Chair of Philosophy and Contemporary Art Creations at Paris 8 University and is an associate researcher at the Centre for Research in Modern Philosophy (Kingston University, London). He has had an international career, teaching in Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Vienna (AKBILD), Karlsruhe (HfG), and London (Middlesex). He is the author of numerous major works in philosophy and various writings spanning art and philosophy.

The study of Marcel Duchamp’s oeuvre often involves navigating the complex relationship between his plastic materiality and the linguistic play found in his notebooks. Within the broader tradition of twentieth-century art history, Duchamp’s work is frequently examined through the lens of psychoanalysis and structuralist thought. By engaging with figures such as Brisset, Roussel, and Jarry, this volume situates Duchamp’s artistic practice within a wider intellectual field. Readers interested in the intersection of queer studies, philosophy, and the history of modern art may find this examination of Duchamp’s desiring-machines and his subversion of aesthetic meaning relevant.

This essay examines how Duchamp’s work functions as a deviation from traditional art, integrating anti-philosophical and anti-psychoanalytical theories into the materiality of his pieces. By analyzing the ready-made and the linguistic mechanisms of sexuation, the text explores how Duchamp’s output challenges the stability of meaning and aesthetic categorization. This approach draws upon a legacy of critical inquiry that considers the role of the Other and the destabilization of the subject in contemporary art. The discussion highlights the speculative apparatus that characterizes Duchamp’s engagement with language and the sign.