Social Theory Since Freud: Traversing Social Imaginaries

by Elliott; Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780415271639
• ISBN10: 0415271630
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2004-09-24
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In this compelling book, Anthony Elliott traces the rise of psychoanalysis from the Frankfurt School to postmodernism, exploring in detail the social and political factors that have led intellectuals to draw from the insights of Freud. Examining how pathbreaking theorists such as Adorno, Marcuse, Lacan and Lyotard have deployed psychoanalysis to politicize issues like desire, sexuality, repression and identity, Elliott develops a powerful assessment of the gains and losses arising from this appropriation of psychoanalysis in social theory and cultural studies. Moving from the impact of the Culture Wars and recent Freud-bashing to contemporary debates in social theory, feminism and postmodernism, Elliott argues for a new alliance between social-theoretical and psychoanalytic perspectives.

Author Biography

Anthony Elliott is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgements	ix
Introduction: imagination in the service of the new	1	(6)
Theories of imagination	7	(7)
The argument of this book	14	(2)
Pretext: you'll never dream the same dream twice	16	(34)
Social theory since Freud: traversing social imaginaries	21	(29)
Freud and the interpretation of the social	22	(3)
The legacy of Freud	25	(3)
Psychopathologies of rationality: the Frankfurt School	28	(8)
Returning to Freud: Jacques Lacan	36	(5)
Lacanian and post-Lacanian contexts	41	(1)
Feminist psychoanalytic criticism	42	(5)
Psychoanalysis and postmodern theory	47	(3)
Pretext: perplexing messages of the social	50	(22)
Situating psychoanalysis in the social field: culture wars, Freud-bashing, memory	54	(18)
Trauma talk and recovered memory: toward a critique of antipsychological psychology	59	(7)
Opening and closing Freud: modern constructions, postmodern revisions	66	(6)
Pretext: subjectivity, signification and writing: Kristeva and the Barthes system	72	(35)
The psychic constitution of the subject: imagination, identification, primary repression	76	(31)
Rethinking representation: fantasy, creation, imagination	78	(5)
Freud and his followers: on the concepts of repression and identification	83	(2)
Primary repression and the loss of the thing: Kristeva's exploration of the imaginary father	85	(4)
Enigmatic messages: Laplanche	89	(2)
Primary repression rethought: rolling identifications and representational wrappings of self and other	91	(12)
The significance of primary repression, and the politicization of identification	103	(4)
Pretext: on the adventures of difference	107	(25)
Sexuality, complexity, anxiety: the encounter between psychoanalysis, feminism and postmodernism	115	(17)
Feminism, post-structuralism and postmodernism	116	(5)
Sexual difference, or more of the same?	121	(3)
From ambivalence to inflexibility: the fear of difference	124	(7)
Conclusion	131	(1)
Pretext: ethics, psychoanalysis and postmodernity	132	(38)
Psychoanalysis at its limits: navigating the postmodern turn (with Charles Spezzano)	137	(21)
Modernism and postmodernism: the alleged dichotomy	138	(2)
Three faces of postmodernism	140	(4)
Postmodern psychoanalysis: two recent views	144	(5)
The critique of `inescapable fragmentation'	149	(1)
Criticisms of the postmodern collapse of signification	150	(2)
Postmodernity and psychoanalytic heterogeneity	152	(4)
Beyond hermeneutics and constructivism	156	(2)
Social theory, psychoanalysis and the politics of postmodernity: Anthony Elliott talks with Sean Homer	158	(12)
Notes	170	(2)
References	172	(7)
Index	179