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This chapter examines the political encounters between feminism movements and Lacanian psychoanalysis. It argues that fourth wave feminisms might usefully reengage with Lacan’s work in the current political conjuncture. It begins this analysis by examining the first encounter of the feminist movement and Lacanian psychoanalysis in the 1970s. This encounter takes place in the context of second wave feminist analyses of the politics of gender. This encounter was both highly contentious, and also highly productive. The second wave developed an important strategy of productive appropriations of Lacan’s work. This strategy identifies the political problematic that frames these readings of Lacan, as well as engaging with the specificity and precision of psychoanalytic concepts. Building on this second wave strategy of reading Lacan, the chapter then identifies sexual difference and the new sexual contract as the problematic confronting fourth wave politics. It argues that this problematic frames the potential political encounter between this feminist generation and Lacanian psychoanalysis. This encounter can be elaborated in a feminist account of fraternal and feminist social links, which draws on the later Lacanian theory of sexuation and the social bond of discourse. This fourth wave appropriation of Lacanian psychoanalysis can offer an important strategy for understanding not only the psychic life of power that makes social change so difficult, but also for identifying transformative possibilities for fourth wave feminist politics.

At the international level, criminal trials have been characterised as having two important – and sometimes conflicting – adjudicative functions. 3 First, international proceedings are characterised as mechanisms for finding fact and determining criminal responsibility, and so have a similar function to national criminal trials. Second, unlike national criminal trials, international trials are also perceived as having broader ‘transitional’ functions. The adjudicative functions range from establishing ‘historical facts’ of conflict to providing ‘rule of law’ principles for adjudicating conflict. 4 What role, then, does testimony play in establishing the ‘truth’ of international crimes? And how do international criminal trials\ud adjudicate the testimonial proof or disproof of such crimes?

This book outlines a compelling new agenda for feminist theories of identity and social relations. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis with feminist epistemology, the author sets out a groundbreaking psychoanalytic social theory. Campbell's work offers answers to the important contemporary question of how feminism can change the formation of gendered subjectivities and social relations. Drawing on the work of third wave feminists, the book shows how feminism can provide new political models of knowing and disrupt foundational ideas of sexual identity.