Desire of the Analysts

Sheila

Description

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 Zðizûek. 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 an indispensable resource for critiquing our contemporary condition.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Greg Forter and Paul Allen Miller

Part One  Psychoanalysis and the Future of Cultural Criticism

1. Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got das Ding
Paul Allen Miller

2.Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Cultural Criticism at the New Millennium
Henry Sussman

Part Two  Psychoanalysis and Collectivity

3. Lacan’s Four Discourses: A Political Reading
Slavoj Žižek

4.Signs of Desire: Nationalism, War, and Rape in Titus Andronicus, Savior, and Calling the Ghosts
Deneen Senasi

Part Three  Psychoanalysis and the Author

5. Moving beyond the Politics of Blame: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Kaja Silverman

6. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Psychobiography, and the Fin-de-Siècle Crisis in Masculinity
Greg Forter

Part Four  Psychoanalysis and Sexuality

7. Desiring Death: Masochism, Temporality, and the Intermittence of Forms
Domietta Torlasco

8. Sadistic and Masochistic Contracts in Voltaire’s La pucelle d’Orléans and Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne; or, What Does the Hymen Want?
Sharon Diane Nell

9. Queer(ing) Pleasure: Having a Gay Old Time in the Culture of Early-Modern France
Pierre Zoberman

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Literary theory

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 10 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791479070
• Langue: English

Extrait

DESIRE OF THE ANALYSTS Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism GREG FORTER AND PAUL ALLEN MILLER, EDITORS

Desire of the Analysts

SUNY series in Psychoanalysis and Culture Henry Sussman, editor

Desire of the Analysts

Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criticism

Edited by Greg Forter and Paul Allen Miller

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2008 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Judith Block and Eileen Meehan Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Desire of the analysts : psychoanalysis and cultural criticism / edited by Greg Forter, Paul Allen Miller. p. cm. — (SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7299-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7914-7300-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Psychoanalysis and culture I. Forter, Greg. II. Miller, Paul Allen, 1959–

BF175.4.C84D47 150.19'5—dc22

2007

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2007016659

Contents

1.

2.

3.

4.

Acknowledgments

Introduction Greg Forter and Paul Allen Miller

Part One Psychoanalysis and the Future of Cultural Criticism

Sartre, Politics, and Psychoanalysis: if It Ain’t Gotdas Ding Paul Allen Miller

It Don’t Mean a Thing

Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Cultural Criticism at the Millennium Henry Sussman

Part Two Psychoanalysis and Collectivity

Lacan’s Fo  ur Discourses:  Slavoj Zizek

A Political Reading

Signs of Desire: Nationalism, War, and Rape inTitus Andronicus,Savior, andCalling the Ghosts Deneen Senasi

v

vii 1

35

57

81

99

vi

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

CONTENTS

Part Three Psychoanalysis and the Author

Moving beyond the Politics of Blame: Famous Men Kaja Silverman

Let Us Now Praise

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Psychobiography, and the Fin-de-Siècle Crisis in Masculinity Greg Forter

Part Four Psychoanalysis and Sexuality

Desiring Death: Masochism, Temporality, and the Intermittence of Forms Domietta Torlasco

Sadistic and Masochistic Contracts in Voltaire’sLa pucelle d’Orléansand Graffigny’sLettres d’une Péruvienne; or, What Does the Hymen Want? Sharon Diane Nell

Queer(ing) Pleasure: Having a Gay Old Time in the Culture of Early-Modern France Pierre Zoberman

Contributors Index

123

147

179

195

225

253 255

Acknowledgments

This volume grew out of a conference that took place at the University of South Carolina in February 2003: the fifth annual University of South Carolina Comparative Literature Conference, organized by the editors and entitled “The Desire of the Analysts: Psychoanalysis and Cultural Criti- cism in the New Millennium.” We wish to thank all the conference partic- ipants for making it an unusually stimulating event. The South Carolina Humanities Council and the following units at the University of South Carolina provided generous support: the College of Liberal Arts, South Carolina Honors College, the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the English Department, the Women Studies Program, and the Philosophy Department. We also wish to thank Noreen Doughty and Paulette Jiménez for their adminstrative assistance, as well as the following graduate students in Comparative Literature: Mandy Bayer, Kay Clowney, Atussa Hatami, Georg Schwartzman. Portions of Paul Allen Miller’s chapter (chapter 1) will appear in altered form as “L’espace littéraire, la pensée du dehors, et l’objet sublime,” inLa Lit- térature a-t-elle un espace?, edited by Pierre Zoberman (Paris: Presses Univer- sitaires de Vincennes, 2006). A shorter version of Greg Forter’s chapter on Fitzgerald (chapter 6) appeared inAmerican Literature78.2 ( June 2006): 293–323. We are grateful to that journal’s editors for permission to reprint.

vii

This page intentionally left blank.

Introduction

G REG F ORTER AND P AUL A LLEN M ILLER

Why do we—or at least some of us—continue to desire psychoanalysis? How might that desire contribute to the project of interpreting, perhaps even changing, the world in which we find ourselves at the dawn of a new millennium? What, finally, is the relationship between the desire for psy- choanalysis and the domain of expressive culture, a relationship that the title of this collection assumes in its yoking of “psychoanalysis” with the enterprise of “cultural criticism”? These questions in part reflect longstanding concerns among cultural critics, but they have a special urgency in the current intellectual climate, for there has recently been much talk of the death or irrelevance of psy- choanalysis. The proclamation has come from many quarters. Psychiatrists have trumpeted new discoveries in biochemistry that they say render quaint such concepts as repression, displacement, transference, uncon- scious motivation, and even the mind itself (as opposed to the brain). They contend that we must confine our discussions of mental activity to empiri- cally verifiable facts, implying that the intangible quality of “the psyche” renders it no more than a metaphysical leftover of religious belief in the soul. Perhaps most damningly, these critics point to the development of powerful psychotropic drugs, especially for the treatment of depression, as proof of the obsolescence of Freud and his followers. For if depression is simply the effect of a genetically influenced chemical imbalance, and if this imbalance can be redressed through the diligent application of Zoloft, who needs talk therapy of any kind, let alone of the kind that can take years and 1 perhaps cost thousands of dollars? A similar form of skepticism has come to prevail in the humanities and social sciences. In the latter field, the criticisms leveled are closely related to those in psychiatry. Freudian thought is disreputable, on this view, be- cause the existence of unconscious processes cannot be empirically verified.

1