No detailed description available for "Politics of Desire".

In his preface to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, Michel Foucault notes that in the late sixties, there is a turn away from Freud anda movement toward what he calls an “experience and technology of desire that is no longer Freudian”. Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari were interested in, and engaged with this shift and their collective work in these areas spawned a larger post-Freudian literature. This book gathers contributions from international scholars with the aim of exploring the social, political, and philosophical dimension of Deleuze and Guattari’s, and Foucault’s critical encounters with psychoanalytic thought: Their possible connections, their divergences, the fields of reflection that these encounters open, and the problems and debates that led Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari to engage with psychoanalysis in the ways that they did. In doing so, the main goal of the book is not to engage in a critique of the discipline of Psychoanalysis as such, but to investigate how Foucault’s and Deleuze’s critique of Psychoanalysis gives rise to a political reflection that draws on some of Psychoanalysis key notions. Among these, the concept of Desire is central as it allows us to grasp the different ways in which Foucault and Deleuze politically engage with Psychoanalysis: for Deleuze, Desire is the element through which Revolution becomes possible, whereas for Foucault Desire is a cornerstone of the modern mechanisms of subjection. Drawing both on new material like Confessions of the Flesh, the 4th volume of Foucault’s History of Sexuality and on Foucault and Deleuze main work, the book covers a variety of topics including the contrast between Foucault’s and Deleuze political understanding of desire and pleasure; the genealogy of desire as a way to investigate the historical shaping of psychoanalysis; the relationship between psychoanalysis and the normalizing mechanisms of power (e.g. biopolitics and disciplinary regimes); the ways in which psychoanalysis and neoliberalism come together in particular moments, the status and role of desire in revolt, resistance, and transformation; Foucault and Deleuze’s different approaches to the unconscious; the role of desire in the formation of identity; etc.,. In the 50th anniversary of Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus, one of the major references that inspires the many chapters in this book, we aim to pay homage to these two important figures of contemporary thought by enriching and opening new lines of thought and problematization of the political reflection on Desire that Foucault and Deleuze developed.

Liberalism, Miguel de Beistegui argues in The Government of Desire, is best described as a technique of government directed towards the self, with desire as its central mechanism. Whether as economic interest, sexual drive, or the basic longing for recognition, desire is accepted as a core component of our modern self-identities, and something we ought to cultivate. But this has not been true in all times and all places. For centuries, as far back as late antiquity and early Christianity, philosophers believed that desire was an impulse that needed to be suppressed in order for the good life, whether personal or collective, ethical or political, to flourish. Though we now take it for granted, desire as a constitutive dimension of human nature and a positive force required a radical transformation, which coincided with the emergence of liberalism. By critically exploring Foucault’s claim that Western civilization is a civilization of desire, de Beistegui crafts a provocative and original genealogy of this shift in thinking. He shows how the relationship between identity, desire, and government has been harnessed and transformed in the modern world, shaping our relations with others and ourselves, and establishing desire as an essential driving force for the constitution of a new and better social order. But is it? The Government of Desire argues that this is precisely what a contemporary politics of resistance must seek to overcome. By questioning the supposed universality of a politics based on recognition and the economic satisfaction of desire, de Beistegui raises the crucial question of how we can manage to be less governed today, and explores contemporary forms of counter-conduct. ?Drawing on a host of thinkers from philosophy, political theory, and psychoanalysis, and concluding with a call for a sovereign and anarchic form of desire, The Government of Desire is a groundbreaking account of our freedom and unfreedom, of what makes us both governed and ungovernable.

This title, first published in 1990, offers a feminist and psychoanalytic reassessment of the Joycean canon in the wake of Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva. The author centres her discussion of Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Finnegans Wake, and Exiles around questions of desire and language and the politics of sexual difference. Suzette Henke’s radical "re-vision" of Joyce’s work is a striking example of the crucial role feminist theory can play in contemporary evaluation of canonical texts. As such it will be welcomed by feminists and students of literature alike.

A particular model of masculine desire has traditionally been evoked in an effort to understand the subordinate role of women in male-authored fiction. Because of this, the belief that male-authored texts are unfailingly built upon the denial of feminine difference has come to dominate many aspects of literary studies. "Surfacing" the Politics of Desire re-examines the "myths" of masculine desire in order to challenge this premise, placing literature at the centre of recent feminist debates over the ontology and politics of sexual difference. Citing examples of textual resistance to analytical feminist thought, Rajeshwari S. Vallury argues that literature is expressive of desires that are not always configured in terms of oppression or the denial of difference. In other words, a particular politics of reading obscures the multiplicity of desire that literature is capable of affirming and risks sacrificing the possibilities of both literature and desire. Through a re-evaluation of the sexual politics practiced by nineteenth-century male writers such as Balzac, Gautier, and Maupassant, Vallury moves towards a reconfiguration of the relationship between aesthetics and politics. "Surfacing" the Politics of Desire calls into question dominant feminist approaches to the literary representation of gender. Enlisting the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari, Vallury calls for a different method of reading, one based on a deeper understanding of the politics of literature.

This accessible book examines critically the writings of Deleuze and Guattari, clarifying the ideas of these two notoriously difficult thinkers without over-simplifying them. Divided into three sections - Knowledge, Power, and Liberation of Desire - the book provides a systematic account of the intellectual context as well as an exhaustive analysis of the key themes informing Deleuze and Guattari′s work. It provides the framework for reading the important and influential study Capitalism and Schizophrenia and, with the needs of students in mind, explains the key concepts in Deleuze and Guattari′s discussion of philosophy, art and politics. Definitive and incisive, the book will be invaluable in situating the philosophy of these two major figures within the perspective of the social and human sciences.

Designed for students, academics and the general reader alike, Sexual Politics of Desire and Belonging provides theoretical and empirical insights into the linkages between sexualities and forms of desire, and ways of belonging and relating to others in specific contexts and moments in time. Opening with a substantial introduction by one of the editors, this collection of thirteen essays is organised into three parts, each section making important contributions to contemporary debates regarding the sexual politics of citizenship, marriage, friendship, pornography, intimacies, eroticism and desire. As such, the essays introduce fresh perspectives for thinking about how individuals construct senses of belonging and modes of relating to others in their everyday lives, within the disciplinary frameworks of sociology, organisational analysis and cultural studies. As well, the volume analyses representations of desire and eroticism in British Pop Art, trauma and feminist fiction, polyamory self-help literature, Hollywood films, and sociological and psychoanalytic theory. Analytical insights offered within these essays will do much to stimulate debate about aspects of the socially and historically constituted relationship between desire and sexuality. Because of the diverse approaches and conclusions it contains, the volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in engaging with inter- and multidisciplinary perspectives in order to understand the dynamics between constructions of desire and belonging, and discourses of gender, sex and sexuality.