Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (October Books) - Hardcover

Slavoj Zizek

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0262240319 ISBN 13: 9780262240314

Publisher: Mit Pr, 1991

Synopsis

Slavoj i ek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. i ek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis. He approaches Lacan through the motifs and works of contemporary popular culture, from Hitchcock's Vertigo to Stephen King's Pet Sematary, from McCullough's An Indecent Obsession to Romero's Return of the Living Dead—a strategy of "looking awry" that recalls the exhilarating and vital experience of Lacan.

i ek discovers fundamental Lacanian categories—the triad Imaginary/Symbolic/Real, the object small a, the opposition of drive and desire, the split subject—at work in horror fiction, in detective thrillers, in romances, in the mass media's perception of ecological crisis, and, above all, in Alfred Hitchcock's films. The playfulness of i ek's text, however, is entirely different from that associated with the deconstructive approach made famous by Derrida. By clarifying what Lacan is saying as well as what he is not saying, i ek is uniquely able to distinguish Lacan from the poststructuralists who so often claim him.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

In this book Slavoj Zizek, a leading intellectual in the new social movements that are sweeping Eastern Europe, provides a virtuoso reading of Jacques Lacan. Zizek inverts current pedagogical strategies to explain the difficult philosophical underpinnings of the French theoretician and practician who revolutionized our view of psychoanalysis.

About the Author:

Slavoj Zizek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press).

About this edition

• Publisher: Mit Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0262240319
• ISBN 13: 9780262240314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200