Anxiety and the Contradictions of Culture - A Lacanian Approach to Gaze, Sex, Race, and Social Change

Anxiety as not only a feeling of dread, but a feeling that we dread is widely considered by both philosophical and psychoanalytic thinkers as an important signal related to our experience of the cultural and intersubjective world. Stephen Felder explores the experience of anxiety through the writings of the existentialist, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic traditions, especially Jacques Lacan, to make sense out of this dreadful experience. Working from Lacan's claim that the structure of anxiety and fantasy are the same, Felder shows that anxiety is a signal of the Lacanian Real and thus provides us with a point of view from which to critique the cultural world by clarifying how we experience ourselves and others. The chapters examine the implications of this insight for how we think about the visual field, sex, race, consumerism, and what Stuart Hall called the "contradictions of culture" in our attempts to live more vibrant lives and create more emancipatory practices in the twenty-first century.

List of contents

Introduction: Feeling Anxiety
Chapter 1: Theorizing the Subject of Anxiety
Chapter 2: Anxiety and the Contradictions of Culture
Chapter 3: Anxiety in the Field of Vision
Chapter 4: Anxiety as the Truth of Sexuality
Chapter 5: Anxiety and the Fantasy of Race
Conclusion: In Defense of Anxiety, Or, How to Get Cancer without Becoming Wise

About the author

By Stephen Felder

Product details

• Authors: Stephen Felder
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 20.09.2024
• EAN: 9781666947212
• ISBN: 978-1-66694-721-2
• No. of pages: 216
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Philosophy; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Popular Culture, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Popular Culture, History of Ideas, Philosophy, PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Critical Theory, Modern philosophy: since c 1800, Psychoanalytical & Freudian psychology, Psychoanalytical theory (Freudian psychology), PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Psychoanalysis