In "The Vanishing" Christopher Pye combines psychoanalytic and
cultural theory to advance an innovative interpretation of
Renaissance history and subjectivity. Locating the emergence of the
modern subject in the era's transition from feudalism to a modern
societal state, Pye supports his argument with interpretations of
diverse cultural and literary phenomena, including Shakespeare's
"Hamlet" and "King Lear, "witchcraft and demonism, anatomy
theaters, and the paintings of Michelangelo.
Pye explores the emergence of the early modern subject in terms
of a range of subjectivizing mechanisms tied to the birth of a
modern conception of history, one that is structured around a
spatial and temporal horizon--a vanishing point. He also discusses
the distinctly economic character of early modern subjectivity and
how this, too, is implicated in our own modern modes of historical
understanding. After explaining how the aims of New Historicist and
Foucauldian approaches to the Renaissance are inseparably linked to
such a historical conception, Pye demonstrates how the early modern
subject can be understood in terms of a Lacanian and Zizekian
account of the emerging social sphere. By focusing on the
Renaissance as a period of remarkable artistic and cultural
production, he is able to illustrate his points with discussions of
a number of uniquely fascinating topics--for instance, how demonism
was intimately related to a significant shift in law and symbolic
order and how there existed at the time a "demonic" preoccupation
with certain erotic dimensions of the emergent social
subject.
Highly sophisticated and elegantly crafted, "The Vanishing" will
be of interest to students of Shakespeare and early modern culture,
Renaissance visual art, and cultural and psychoanalytic theory.
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