Beyond Sexuality

Front Cover
University of Chicago Press, 2000 - Psychology - 304 pages
Beyond Sexuality points contemporary sexual politics in a radically new direction. Combining a psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious with a deep respect for the historical variability of sexual identities, this original work of queer theory makes the case for viewing erotic desire as fundamentally impersonal. Tim Dean develops a reading of Jacques Lacan that—rather than straightening out this notoriously difficult French psychoanalyst—brings out the queer tensions and productive incoherencies in his account of desire.

Dean shows how the Lacanian unconscious "deheterosexualizes" desire, and along the way he reveals how psychoanalytic thinkers as well as queer theorists have failed to exploit the full potential of this conception of desire. The book elaborates this by investigating social fantasies about homosexuality and AIDS, including gay men's own fantasies about sex and promiscuity, in an attempt to illuminate the challenges facing safe-sex education. Taking on many shibboleths in contemporary psychoanalysis and queer theory—and taking no prisoners—Beyond Sexuality offers an antidote to hagiographical strains in recent work on psychoanalysis, Foucault, and sexuality.
 

Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
4
Beyond the Couch
6
How to Read Lacan
Transcending Gender
35
The Psychoanalysis of AIDS
45
SafeSex Education and Death Drive
3
Bodies That Mutter
7
Lacan Meets Queer Theory
18
The Ineluctability of Sublimation
18
References
Index of Names
11
Index of Psychoanalytic Concepts
14
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2000)

Tim Dean is professor of English and director of the Humanities Institute at the University at Buffalo. He is the author or editor of several books, including Beyond Sexuality, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bibliographic information