Read My Desire! Lacan and the Confrontation of Historicists Author: [US] Joan Copjie Translator: Wang Ruoqian Publisher: Baideya | Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House

★★ An eloquent denunciation of the "Foucault ghost" that pervades the humanities★★

★★ The spiritual successor of Zizek's "The Sublime Object of Ideology"★★

★★ Understand desire and read out the things that cannot be expressed in cultural narratives★★

-Editor's Recommendation-

★ A theoretical collision between Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysis) and Michel Foucault (historicism), a profound critique of historicism. Psychoanalysis and historicism parted ways on the question of "how to deal with desire?"

★ Just like being at Lacan's lectures in person, Copjie skillfully uses many of Lacan's key concepts to discuss a series of topics: Henri Bergson, utilitarianism, vampires, detective novels and film noir, Judith Butler... She gives sufficient reasons to prove to us that Lacan's thinking model is superior in the explanation of historical processes and generative principles.

★ By encouraging cultural analysts to understand desire and read out what cannot be expressed in cultural narratives, a new type of cultural criticism is about to emerge.

-Content Introduction-

This book is the first monograph by Joan Copperhead, an important American cultural theorist and Lacanian critic. She uses Lacan's psychoanalytic theory to launch an eloquent denunciation of the "Foucault ghost" that permeates the humanities from multiple perspectives such as film, philosophy, literature, and photography. Although Lacan and Foucault are both regarded as key figures emerging from the structuralism-poststructuralism trend, the implicit differences in their thoughts lead us to completely different understandings and reflections on many cultural phenomena.

In the book, the author not only attempts to regain the right to interpret important theoretical issues such as "sex" and "gaze" for psychoanalysis and clarify the dialectical relationship between language and subject, but also demonstrates psychoanalysis' unique insights into history: "The subject is a historical product that does not meet historical needs." The author argues that the mission of cultural criticism is to understand desire, that is, the unspeakable parts of cultural expression.

-Expert Recommendation-

After this book, nothing in cultural studies will remain the same: film theory, feminism, philosophy, and psychoanalysis will have to relate to each other in a completely new way. For the first time, an American scholar takes Lacan seriously and reduces the common appropriation of Lacan in cultural studies to a matter of course. This book goes far beyond political correctness, it is theoretically correct: if this book does not exist, it needs to be written!

——Slavoj Zizek

-About the Author-

Joan Copjec is a professor of contemporary culture and media at Brown University and the founder of the important psychoanalytic journal Umbr(a). She is also the author and editor of several books, including Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation and Supposing the Subject. Her latest research is on Abbas Kiarostami's films and medieval Islamic philosophy.

-Translator Profile-

Wang Ruoqian, who studied at Goldsmiths, University of London and Beijing Film Academy, focuses on left-wing politics, art history and psychoanalysis.