The World of Perversion: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Absolute of Desire argues that antihomophobic criticism has nothing to lose -- and everything to gain -- by reclaiming the psychoanalytic concept of perversion as psychic structure.
Illuminating the conflict between the psychoanalytic approach to perversion and the one inspired by Michel Foucault, the book explores how different assumptions about sexuality have informed the development of contemporary queer theory. Looking at works by Georges Bataille, Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, and Jacques Lacan, the author shows how the psychoanalytic concept enables politicized readings of culture which are foreclosed by Foucault's insistence of perversion's omnipotence.
Illuminating the conflict between the psychoanalytic approach to perversion and the one inspired by Michel Foucault, the book explores how different assumptions about sexuality have informed the development of contemporary queer theory. Looking at works by Georges Bataille, Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, and Jacques Lacan, the author shows how the psychoanalytic concept enables politicized readings of culture which are foreclosed by Foucault's insistence of perversion's omnipotence.