Table of Contents

Introduction Part I: Science and the Signifier I.1 “The Cunning of the Signifier”, Henrik Jøker Bjerre (Aalborg University, Denmark) I.2 “The Echo of the Signifier in the Body: On Drives Today”, Juliet Flower MacCannell (University of California, USA) I.3 “Secret in the Body – the Fantasy Structure of Genes and Brains”, Renata Salecl (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and Birkbeck College, UK) Part II: From Couch to Culture II.1 “Drives and Culture”, Mladen Dolar (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and European Graduate School, Switzerland) II.2 Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac and the Four Discourses, Kirsten Hyldgaard (Aarhus University, Denmark) II.3 “Courtly Capitalism”, Center for Wild Analysis II.4 “Is there a Way out of the Capitalist Discourse?”, René Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen) Part III: Application III.1 “Examples and Surplus-Meaning”, Brian Benjamin Hansen (VIA University College, Denmark) III.2 "Literature as Philosophy of the Real: Ethics and Sexual Difference in Coetzee’s Disgrace", Kari Jegerstedt (University of Bergen, Norway) III.3 “When I am Beside Myself”, Linus Nicolai Carlsen (University of Copenhagen) III.4 “Analysis Sounds Boring – Is there an Analytical Potential in Modern Electronic Music?”, Anders Ruby (Aarhus University, Denmark) Part IV: Materiality and the Signifier IV.1 “Lol V. Stein to the Letter”, Ida Nissen Bjerre (University of Copenhagen) IV.2 "Lacan and the Archeology of the Subject", Carin Franzén (Linköping University, Sweden) IV.3 “The Signifiers of Cherry Ripe – On the Trauma and Repetition of an Art-historical Motif”, Jakob Rosendal (The Women’s Museum, Denmark) (editor: Lilian Munk Rösing, University of Copenhagen) IV.4 “Colour of Flesh, Flesh of Colour”, Lilian Munk Rösing (University of Copenhagen)

Promotional Information

Identifying it as the “science of the signifier”, this book uncovers how psychoanalysis allows us to analyse not only the individual, but also the cultural unconscious.

About the Author

Lilian Munk Rösing is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has published four books (three in Danish, one in English) and a large number of articles combining psychoanalysis with literary and cultural criticism. Latest publication: Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric’s Guide to Animation (2016).

Reviews

The problem of applied psychoanalysis has historically been unsolvable. But now, the appearance of Analysing the Cultural Unconscious provides a whole new way of thinking about moving from a psychoanalysis focused on the individual to cultural psychoanalysis. Assembling a wide array of top psychoanalytic theorists, this collection opens up a previously unexplored path to thinking psychoanalytically about culture.
*Todd McGowan, Professor, University of Vermont, United States*

Tremendously smart, topical and diverse in its address, this collection really does ‘work’ the signifier as it promises. These superb essays remind one (not that it is possible to forget) that psychoanalysis is always speaking – out of turn, out of time, but never untimely.
*Sigi Jöttkandt, Senior Lecturer in English, University of New South Wales, Australia*