Why, 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 fulfilment? In (Per)versions of Love and Hate, Renata Salecl explores the disturbing and complex relationships between love and hate, violence and admiration, libidinal and destructive drives, through investigation of phenomena as diverse as the novels The Age of Innocence and The Remains of the Day, Hollywood melodramas, the Siren song, Ceaucescu's Rumania and the Russian performance artist Oleg Kulik, who acts like a dog and bites his audience. For Salecl who questions the legitimacy of the calls for tolerance and respect by multiculturalists practices such as body-mutilation are symptoms of the radical change that has affected subjectivity in contemporary society.
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From Publishers Weekly
In an effort to examine why love and hate are often connected in literature, film and life, Salecl (The Spoils of Freedom) crafts an argument that draws heavily from Lacan and sparingly from her own thoughts. The book is flawed by academic language and frequent dips into the well of indigestible theory. According to Salecl, love and hate are forever interlinked because both emotional states contain elements of attraction and repulsion. She cites such novels as Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (both of which have been turned into films) to strengthen her argument. But she also veers into digressions on multiculturalism, hate speech, body mutilation and Oleg Kulik, a performance artist who acts like a dog and bites members of his audience. Salecl is such an avidly far-ranging cultural critic that she buries her original points in a quagmire of lit crit, obscure quotations and Freudian thought. Navigating from mythological sirens to Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, all on a raft of Lacanian philosophy, Salecl manages to address a dizzying number of topics, ultimately leading not to a clarifying insight but to a theory hangover. Readers interested in the pleasure of cultural criticism grounded in psychoanalytic theory would do much better by turning to Louise Kaplan's Female Perversions.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
The theme was Oscar Wilde's, that each of us kills the thing we love. Through forests of psychoanalytical theory, the East European author pursues it formidably . . . this is challenging, moving and thought-provoking stuff. -- The Mail on Sunday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
this book,
By Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: (Per)Versions of Love and Hate (Paperback)
The book collects several essays by the author Renata Salecl. She applies Lacanian precepts and her critical thinking might to cultural objects such as films, artists, politics, tatooing and clitoridectomy. This book accomodates its readers, for all psychoanalytic hypostases are glossed. It is rare that an author has the ability to write amusingly and provokingly on a series that ranges from Homer's Sirens to the Remains of the Day, Romanian politics and architecture to films about Japanese calligraphy on the body and sexual transgression, all the while informed by a sense of purpose and psychoanalytic expertise. For me the most notable sparks result from the essays that reflect on human rights, cultural relativism and the big Other, the symbolic structure that we live within but do not entirely respect or feel we can take responsibility for. Despite the reservations I have for the application of psychoanalytic precepts to objects other than patients, I feel that this book thoroughly fulfilled its cause by educating me on select cultural matters as a means of provoking bigger thoughts on my part. I think the chapter on hate speech is the weakest. Still, I feel that this book furthers discussion that is necessary in my country (America) that seems to have prevented itself from significant reflection while pushing for so many demands in the global sphere.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A re-freshing Lacanian analysis into the "other",
This review is from: (Per)Versions of Love and Hate (Paperback)
Renata Salecl offers a digestible analysis of contemporary American society and identity using theater, cinema, relationships, and art in general. She manages to clarify complex socio/psychological concepts to the average audience. Even while heavily relying on Lacanian theory to support her theories, her writing is clear and her theories are easy to follow. Her diagnosis of identity in the chapter before the last is an especially revealing critique of dissent within social identity through such means as the clitoridectomy and tatoos. To conclude, I think this book would benefit anyone confused about contemporary identity and the role of desire in both intimate and social relationships.
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