Freud's drive : psychoanalysis, literature and film / Teresa de Lauretis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Lauretis, Teresa

Contributor:

George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

Series:

Language, discourse, society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Psychological aspects.

Motion pictures.

Psychoanalysis and motion pictures.

Sex in motion pictures.

Literature--Psychology.

Literature.

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.

Freud, Sigmund.

Physical Description:

x, 190 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

When Freud revised his view of the drives, he was living under the shadow of death and the threat of biological and cultural genocide. Like the early twentieth century, our times are marked by massive geopolitical trauma and shifts in technological, epistemic and sexual-representational practices. This book argues for the renewed relevance of the Freudian theory of drives through a variety of works ranging from cinema and literature to metapsychology and cultural theory. After presenting Freud's successive configurations of the drive in the form of a guide, 'illustrated' with reference to popular films, Teresa de Lauretis discusses two instances of philosophical-political contestation: Foucault's critique of Freud's 'stubborn drive', which served as foundation for the notion of social construction, and Laplanche's critique of Freud's biologism. The last two chapters trace the figural inscription of the death drive through close readings of Djuna Barnes's high-modernist novel Nightwood (1936) and David Cronenberg's postmodern film eXistenZ (1999).

Contents:

Introduction: Death @ Work 1

Reflections for the end of a century 1

Psychoanalysis, literature, cinema 9

1 Basic Instincts: An Illustrated Guide to Freud's Theory of Drives 20

Fetishism 35

Melancholia 36

2 The Stubborn Drive: Foucault, Freud, Fanon 39

Trieb and bio-pouvoir 46

Implantation 53

3 The Queer Space of the Drive: Rereading Freud with Laplanche 58

The drive as trope 59

The drive and the ego 65

The death drive 74

4 Becoming Inorganic: Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Virtuality and the Death Drive 88

Creative destruction 92

Repetition, refraction 108

5 The Odor of Memory: On Reading Djuna Barnes with Freud 114

The psyche as text 114

Djuna Barnes and Nightwood 121

'Watchman, what of the night?' 127

Nightwood beyond the pleasure principle 136

Figures of translation 145.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-182) and indexes.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George R. Fink Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0230524788

9780230524781

OCLC:

213375893

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description