Amorous Acts: Lacanian Ethics in Modernism, Film, and Queer Theory

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"Amorous Acts" illustrates the value of psychoanalytic theory for comprehending relationships, experiences, art, politics, and all sorts of human interactions. More specifically, it employs psychoanalysis to show how queer theory is operating to effect a non-heterosexist social order. Although the Lacanian subject in Love can only experience his/her self-shattering, Lacan's concept of Love is seen here as politically useful. This study breaks down Lacanian Love into three different forms and tries to unveil the danger, as well as especially the cultural potential, of the most intense of these variations. To arrive at this position, Amorous Acts first works out the meaning of Lacan's "ethics of desire" by analyzing several modern British novels (by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Graham Greene), as well as some contemporary films ("Breaking the Waves," "Seventh Heaven," and "Damage") and then by arguing with Zizek through a reading of Kieslowski's film "White." Finally, queer theory as it has been brought into being by Foucault, Halperin, Bersani, Butler, and Edelman is put into relation with Lacan's notion of the authentic act.Queer theory engages Lacan's conception of self-shattering Love to traverse the pernicious fundamental fantasy of heterosexist reproduction.

Hitchcock's Bi-Textuality: Lacan, Feminisms, and Queer Theory

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This book combines three elements: an articulation of Lacan's theory of ethics; a discussion of recent theories of feminine subjectivity and queer textuality; and close readings of Hitchcock's films. Hitchcock's Bi-Textuality argues that just as Freud posited a fundamental ground of bisexuality for every subject, we can affirm a form of universal "bi-textuality" that is repressed through different modes of representation, yet returns in unconscious aspects of textuality (dreams, word play, jokes, and symbolism). In order to illustrate this notion of bi-textuality, this work discusses how Hitchcock's films are extremely heterogeneous and present multiple forms of sexual identification and desire, although they have most often been read through the reductive lens of male heterosexuality.

Throughout this book, the work of Julia Kristeva, Kaja Silverman, Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Slavoj Zizek is examined. One of the central concerns is the way that different psychoanalytic and feminist theories tend to equate the Real and the unconscious with the feminine. This feminization of the Real tends to block the awareness of the bisexual nature of the unconscious. In order to return to Freud's fundamental theory of polyvalent sexuality, recent notions of queer sexuality and textuality are explored. This book extends psychoanalytic theory by incorporating new feminist and queer conceptions of sexuality and representation.