Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism

by Forter, Greg; Miller, Paul Allen

• ISBN13: 9780791473009
• ISBN10: 0791473007
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-01-10
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

Why do we continue to desire psychoanalysis? What can this desire contribute to a vital cultural criticism? In Desire of the Analysts, these and other questions are addressed by leading contributors from a variety of fields, including Sharon Nell, Deneen Senasi, Kaja Silverman, Henry Sussman, Domietta Torlasco, Pierre Zoberman, and Slavoj Zizek. They argue for the urgency of a psychoanalytic criticism that is at once intellectually vibrant, politically engaged, and uniquely able to illuminate the psychic motivations and gratifications underlying a range of contemporary cultural phenomena. These phenomena include nationalistic violence, the formation of normative masculinity, the psychic appeal of domination and submission, and the place of the "queer" desire in counterhegemonic practices. The contributors explore the role of psychoanalysis in shaping the future of cultural criticism; elaborate on innovative ways to approach group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective; rethink psychoanalytic understandings of authorship; and offer original interpretations of the intersections between gender, sexuality, and domination. Desire of the Analysts demonstrates that psychoanalysis remains on indispensable resource for critiquing our contemporary condition. Book jacket.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Psychoanalysis and the Future of Cultural Criticism
Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got das Ding	p. 35
Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Cultural Criticism at the Millennium	p. 57
Psychoanalysis and Collectivity
Lacan's Four Discourses: A Political Reading	p. 81
Signs of Desire: Nationalism, War, and Rape in Titus Andronicus, Savior, and Calling the Ghosts	p. 99
Psychoanalysis and the Author
Moving beyond the Politics of Blame: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men	p. 123
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Psychobiography, and the Fin-de-Siecle Crisis in Masculinity	p. 147
Psychoanalysis and Sexuality
Desiring Death: Masochism, Temporality, and the Intermittence of Forms	p. 179
Sadistic and Masochistic Contracts in Voltaire's La pucelle d'Orlenas and Graffigny's Letters d'une Peruvienne; or, What Does the Hymen Want?	p. 195
Queer(ing) Pleasure: Having a Gay Old Time in the Culture of Early-Modern France	p. 225
Contributors	p. 253
Index	p. 255
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