Description

Book Synopsis

In this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds light on the origins of poststructuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers.



Trade Review

Carolyn J. Dean's book is an intelligent, well-researched, and thought-provoking study of an important problem in modern cultural and intellectual history. Focusing on the difficult work of Jacques Lacan and Georges Bataille, Dean furnishes a critical history of the decentered subject in early twentieth-century France—a history that has broader implications given the widespread influence of modern French thought.

* American Historical Review *

Carolyn J. Dean's central question in this complex and allusive book is 'why has France been the home of a certain model of self-dissolution?’, and the answer is pursued largely in the criminolegal and psychoanalytical domain, eschewing the more literary ‘death of the author’ institutionalized by Barthes.

* Modern Language Review *

Self and Its Pleasure

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    A Paperback / softback by Carolyn J. Dean

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      Book details

      Publisher Cornell University Press
      Published 1 November 2016
      ISBN-13 9780801499548
      978-0801499548
      ISBN-10 0801499542
      Also in:
      Literary theory History of medicine Structuralism and Post-structuralism

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      In this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds light on the origins of poststructuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers.



      Trade Review

      Carolyn J. Dean's book is an intelligent, well-researched, and thought-provoking study of an important problem in modern cultural and intellectual history. Focusing on the difficult work of Jacques Lacan and Georges Bataille, Dean furnishes a critical history of the decentered subject in early twentieth-century France—a history that has broader implications given the widespread influence of modern French thought.

      * American Historical Review *

      Carolyn J. Dean's central question in this complex and allusive book is 'why has France been the home of a certain model of self-dissolution?’, and the answer is pursued largely in the criminolegal and psychoanalytical domain, eschewing the more literary ‘death of the author’ institutionalized by Barthes.

      * Modern Language Review *

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