A fascinating collection of Lacanian commentary

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	• Gaze and Voice As Love Objects Duke University Press, 1996 - 255 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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A fascinating collection of Lacanian commentary

Ever since Jacques Lacan entered the intellectual ring in the 1950s he has been a focal point of discussion and stimulation. His elusive, intriguing, often profound writings have generated wave upon wave of commentary and inspiration. Slavoj Zizek is one of the most lucid (and certainly entertaining) explicators of Lacan. He and Renata Salecl have edited a superb collection of essays by some of the most interesting and articulate writers in the field. Though these writings require a certain familiarity with the disciplines of philosophy and psychoanalysis they should entice adventurous readers by their combination of erudition and wit. Both of Zizek's contributions are astonishing as well as entertaining. Fine as it is, the essay by Frederick Jameson seems out of place, as though it belonged in a different anthology.

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The gaze entices, inspects, fascinates. The voice hypnotizes, seduces, disarms. Are gaze and voice part of the relationship we call love . . . or hate? If so, what part? How do they function? This provocative book examines love as the mediating entity in the essential antagonism between the sexes, and gaze and voice as love?s medium. The contributors proceed from the Lacanian premise that ?there is no sexual relationship,? that the sexes are in no way complementary and that love?figured in the gaze and the voice ?embodies the promise and impossibility of any relation between them.
The first detailed Lacanian elaboration of this topic, Gaze and Voice as Love Objects examines the status of gaze, voice, and love in philosophy from Plato to Kant, in ideology from early Christianity to contemporary cynicism, in music from Hildegard of Bingen to Richard Wagner, in literature from Edith Wharton?s Age of Innocence to Kazuo Ishiguro?s The Remains of the Day, and in cinema from Michael Powell?s Peeping Tom to Kieslowski?s A Short Film on Love. Throughout, the contributors seek to show that the conflict between the sexes is the site of a larger battle over the destiny of modernity. With insights into the underlying target of racist and sexist violence, this book offers surprising revelations into the nature of an ancient enigma?love.
Approaching its topic with utter disregard for predominant multiculturalist and deconstructionist commonplaces, this volume will be indispensable for anyone interested in the uses of psychoanalysis for philosophy, cultural studies, and the analysis of ideology.

Contributors. Elisabeth Bronfen, Mladen Dolar, Fredric Jameson, Renata Salecl, Slavoj Zizek, Alenka Zupancic

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