MOURNING AND OTHER DETOURS

Abstract

Drawing on a singular way of reading Lacan, Jean Allouch proposed an innovative approach to mourning, to the point of developing a theory of it. Among its effects, this theory inspired a series of publications that further explored ideas first presented in his seminal 1995 book The Erotics of Mourning in the Time of Dry Death. This article brings Allouch into dialogue with Pedro Lemebel—the Chilean writer, chronicler, and performer—to demonstrate once again that literature is an interlocutor for psychoanalysis. It also seeks to pay tribute to Allouch, whose intellectual trajectory marked a turning point in this discipline.