Description
Book SynopsisConsider the usefulness of the category of the perverse for exploring how social relations are formed, maintained, and transformed. This book focuses on perversion as a psychic structure and provides an alternative to models of social interpretation based on classical Oedipal models of maturation and desire.
Trade Review"The only true awareness of our subjection is the awareness of the obscene, excessive pleasure (surplus enjoyment) we get from it. This is why the first gesture of liberation is not to get rid of this excessive pleasure, but to assume it actively."--Slavoj Žižek, from his chapter, "The Ambiguity of the Masochist Social Link"
“[T]his work represents an intriguing attempt to rethink social functioning and relationality in the light of perversion.” -- Lisa Downing * Archives of Sexual Behavior *
"[A] kaleidoscopic analysis of the perverse condition within cultural, ideological and social contexts. . . . [N]ine erudite essays. . . . This anthology can be seen as a noteworthy synthesis of Lacanian and Freudian views on the logic of perversion that would be essential for any neophyte in the field of Lacanian or cultural studies. . . ." -- Antonios Vadolas * Journal of Lacan Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Beneath the Skin: Perversion and Social Analysis / Molly Anne Rothenberg and Dennis Foster 1
Fatal West: W. S. Burrough's Perverse Destiny / Dennis Foster 15
Perversion / Bruce Fink 38
“I Know Well, But All the Same . . .” / Octave Mannoni 68
Exotic Rituals and Family Values in
Exotica / Nina Schwartz 93
The Ambiguity of the Masochist Social Link / Slavoj Zizek 112
Confessions of a Medieval Sodomite / James Penney 126
“As If Set Free into Another Land”: Homosexuality, Rebellion, and Community in William Styron's
The Confessions of Nat Turner / Michael P. Bibler 159
Contamination's Germinations / E. L. McCallum 187
Works Cited 211
Contributors 217
Index 219
