Overview

When we oppose or disagree with something important, do we ever really do it dispassionately? Isn’t setting the world to rights or condemning a political opponent always done with a hint of relish, or at least enthusiasm? This book’s challenging essays explore the modes in which that transgressive pleasure of political ‘jouissance’ operates. Rather than delegitimizing or depoliticising, the tacit enjoyment of outrage can in fact facilitate different forms of engagement. The tendency for groups to be bonded by a common enemy, for example, brings with it a protection from censure or persecution, and a way of alleviating guilt. In this collection, the authors seek out jouissance in the battle against patriarchy, in social revolts, in the age of mechanical surveillance, in the necrosociety of neoliberalism, or the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Drawing on Lacan’s insistence that jouissance is intrinsically political by its nature, we can understand how readily psychoanalytic ideas can be put to use across the geopolitical spectrum.

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9781350352742

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In this impressive multi-disciplinary collection, we have what we so badly needed: a series of socio-historically grounded studies that apply the concept of jouissance in properly analytical and critically-nuanced ways. An invaluable resource for anyone wishing to apply the concept of jouissance to the complexities of socio-political analysis today. * Derek Hook, Professor of Psychology, Duquesne University, USA *

Author Information

Slavoj Žižek is a Hegelian philosopher, a Lacanian psychoanalyst, and a Communist. He is International Director at the Birkbeck Institute for Humanities, University of London, UK, Visiting Professor at the New York University, USA, and Senior Researcher at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Nicol A. Barria-Asenjo is a writer and essayist, as well as a member of the Chilean “Le Monde Diplomatique” and “Nuestra República"", Chile.

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