Book Description
The recent experience of the Yugoslav war and the rise of "irrational" violence in contemporary societies provides the theoretical and political context of this book, which uses Lacanian psychoanalysis as the basis for a renewal of the Marxist theory of ideology. The author's analysis leads into a study of the figure of woman in modern art and ideology, including studies of "The Crying Game" and the films of David Lynch, and the links between violence and power/gender relations.
From the Back Cover
The war in former Yugoslavia and the rise of the 'irrational' violence in late-capitalist societies provide the theoretical and political context of Slavoj Zizek's new book, which uses Lacanian psychoanalysis as the basis for a renewal of the Marxist theory of ideology.
Part I analyses the structural role of violence in late capitalism, beginning with a detailed Lacanian reading of the place of psychoanalysis in the Frankfurt School, and of the paradoxical notion of 'repressive desubimation'. Zizek then looks at how the superego is at work in today's ideological mechanisms: in the splitting of the domain of the law into public, 'written' law and its obscene reverse; in the outbursts of irrational, excessive violence that aim at the unbearable surplus-enjoyment embodied in the Other; in the libidinal economy of rape as a military instrument in the Bosnian war.
In Part II Zizek traces the vicissitudes of the figure of woman in modern art and ideology, and attempts to rescue for progressive thought certain authors who are usually dismissed as hopeless reactionaries. He shows how the logic of 'courtly love' continues to structure the fantasy-matrix of relations between the sexes, illustrating his argument with some revealing examples from contemporary cinema. Finally, he provides a fascinating analysis of one of the founding texts of modern anti-feminism and anti-Semitism, Otto Weininger's Sex and Character, demonstrating how Weininger unwittingly supplies the basis for a radical feminist reversal of patriarchal ideology.
The book's two parts are linked by the elusive status of enjoyment, and its 'metastases' in the realms of politics and culture. Thus they resemble the two surfaces of a Moebius band: by progressing far enough on one surface, we suddenly find ourselves on the opposite one. Zizek's analysis of ideology leads to the link between violence and jouissance feminine, while his examination of women's discursive status opens up an important debate on the theme of power relations.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
