Master signifier: A brief genealogy of lacano-maoism

Historical studies of Mao Tse-Tung and Maoism are mostly damning moralisations. As for Mao's influence in philosophy, such studies are rare if not completely nonexistent. By conducting a brief genealogy of Lacano-Maoism, a hybrid of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Maoist politics which emerged post-May 68 in France and whose adherents still include Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, this article considers the extent to which this fusion of Mao and Lacan may still have implications for contemporary philosophy and related theoretical discourses. The article speculates on Mao, not as a historical figure, but as a "master signifier" in French theory of the 1960s and 1970s.