Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change - A Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism (Paperback, New)

Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people's lives, Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.In this forceful and engagingly written book, Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan's theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse, asserting that the use of this model can promote collective psychological change. While cultural criticism has generally focused on texts, Bracher instead analyzes audiences' actual responses to a variety of discourses from "high" as well as popular culture: the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson, anti-abortion propaganda, pornography, Keats's "To Autumn," and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Through analyzing these responses, Bracher is able to uncover the unconscious identifications and fantasies of the respondents an intervention that, he argues, has the potential for altering subjectivity. In his view, such a method of cultural criticism is both unusually powerful and ethnically defensible, since instead of attacking or upholding a group's values, it reveals the psychological conflicts manifest in responses to particular texts.Lacan, Discourse, and Social Change will be essential reading for students as well as specialists in such fields as cultural criticism, feminist theory, literary theory, psychoanalytic criticism, reader-response criticism, reader-response criticism, and Lacanian theory."

General

Imprint:	Cornell University Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 1993
First published:	February 1993
Authors:	Mark Bracher
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 13mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade / Trade
Pages:	224
Edition:	New
ISBN-13:	978-0-8014-8063-8
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > General Promotions
LSN:	0-8014-8063-9
Barcode:	9780801480638

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