Abstract
Attending to 3 themes—the favored levers of revolution, the relation of inscription to the corporeal, and the function of the phallus within heteronormativity—this essay responds to Van Haute’s (this issue) important critique of some pathways through Lacanian territory. Careful consideration of the parameters marking clinical work and social theory bear attention as well as formulating the terms of radical clinical work. The reification of perversion as it is cast in Lacanian circles does merit careful scrutiny, but the meaning of this nomination, perversion, as well as both its cultural and clinical dimensions requires close examination. Although rightly showing a certain diagnostic reification in Lacanian use of the term perversion, Van Haute at times is himself a bit incautious in thinking through the stakes of the domain of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, and perhaps conflating some political perspectives with approaches that may take their mooring elsewhere.