(Per)Versions of Love and HateWhy, when we are desperately in love, do we endlessly block union with our love object? Why do we often destroy what we love most? Why do we search out the impossible object? Is it that we desire things because they are unavailable, and therefore, to keep desire alive, we need to prevent its fulfillment? Renata Salecl explores the distributing and complex relationships between love and hate, violence and admiration, libidinal and destructive drives, through an investigation of phenomenon as diverse as the novels The Age of Innocence and The Remains of the Day, classic Hollywood melodramas, the Sirens’ song, Ceaușescu's Rumania and the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik, who acts like a dog and bites his audience. (Per)Versions of Love and Hate presents a unique and timely intervention in contemporary debates by questioning the legitimacy of the calls for tolerance and respect by multiculturalism and exploring practices such as body-mutilation as symptoms of the radical change that has affected subjectivity in contemporary society. |
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actually Age of Innocence Andy Anerton animals architectural artist authority becomes body art castration Ceauşescu's project claim clitoridectomy communist concert culture Danyers deal Deep ecology desire Disneyland drive Ego Ideal encounter example exist Face/Off fact falls in love fantasy father feminine film Francesca freedom Freud gaze hand hate speech human rights hysteric Ibid identify identity Jacques Lacan Jacques-Alain Miller James jouissance Kafka's Kulik Lacanian lack language linked logic Lulu Lulu's Lustmord mall masochist means memory Miss Kenton mutilation Newland Nicholas nonetheless object of love obsessional Odysseus Other's paradox Paul perceived phallic play presents prison problem prohibition psychoanalysis question racist radical reality regime relationship Rendle Rendle's ritual role Romanian Seventh Veil sexual Silvia simply Sirens Slavoj Žižek social symbolic structure song Stevens story superego symbolic order transsexual trauma tries University victim violence voice Western woman women