Customer Reviews

The Knotted Subject

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There are simply too many mistakes in this book for it to be of the academic standard it aspires to. Zizek, Bal, Kristeva, Butler... too many of those people have found this book "feminist", which it is not, or "breathtaking"; too many people are too easily convinced nowadays by such lousy arguments and are heading forward to what you could call a hysterical delirium or "Hegelioglobalisation" or the euphoria of the wildest dialectical syntheses (did Zizek start the fire? hard to tell...). The mistakes contain formost her remarks on Nietzsche (he was the Super-Hysteric! not one among others!), not to speak of the Wagner-Kundry-Hytericization, the reference on Deleuze in a footnote that refers to a book which does not (!) contain the notion of the "rhizome" she quotes (she probably did not care to read Deleuze, for the rhizome is rather the contrary of her "Omphalos") etc. etc.

This is a very detailed analysis of various artists and films etc. Bronfen has done an exhaustive anlysis of Hitchcock's Marnie which seems inaccurate. It is very doubtful that Marnie fulfills the diagnosis of being an hysteric. Marnie would appear to have narcissistic wounds;a narcissitic personality disorder;PTSD, and a quite sever disorder of the Self. . And anyway one wonders how usefu this is as a way of viewing the film or book. although the book is very intersting, its basic tennent is unconvincing.