Abstract

When we oppose or disagree with something important, do we ever really do it dispassionately? Isn't setting the world to rights or condemning a political opponent always done with a hint of relish, or at least enthusiasm? This book's challenging essays explore the modes in which that transgressive pleasure of political 'jouissance' operates. In this collection, the authors seek out jouissance in the battle against patriarchy, in social revolts, in the age of mechanical surveillance, in the necrosociety of neoliberalism, or the proliferation of conspiracy theories. Drawing on Lacan's insistence that jouissance is intrinsically political by its nature, we can understand how readily psychoanalytic ideas can be put to use across the geopolitical spectrum.