The Self and Its Pleasures Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject

• Main Author: Dean, Carolyn J. (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Press 2016
• Subjects: Literary theory; Structuralism and Post-structuralism; History of medicine
• Online Access: DOAB: download the publication; DOAB: description of the publication

Summary

Why did France spawn the radical poststructuralist rejection of the humanist concept of 'man' as a rational, knowing subject? 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. Arguing that the widely shared belief that the boundaries between self and other had disappeared during the Great War helps explain the genesis of the new concept of the self, Dean examines an array of evidence from medical texts and literary works alike. The Self and Its Pleasures offers a pathbreaking understanding of the boundaries between theory and history. ; Why did France spawn the radical poststructuralist rejection of the humanist concept of 'man' as a rational, knowing subject? 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. Arguing that the widely shared belief that the boundaries between self and other had disappeared during the Great War helps explain the genesis of the new concept of the self, Dean examines an array of evidence from medical texts and literary works alike. The Self and Its Pleasures offers a pathbreaking understanding of the boundaries between theory and history.

Physical Description

1 electronic resource (288 p.)

ISBN

mes6-q464
9781501705410
9781501705403
9780801426605
9780801499548

Access

Open Access