Winner of the 2004 Gary Olson Award for best book in cultural theory presented by JAC
Exploring the emergence of a societal imperative to enjoy ourselves, Todd Mc Gowan builds on the work of such theorists as Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zðizûek, Joan Copjec, and Theresa Brennan to argue that we are in the midst of a large-scale transformation—a shift from a society oriented around prohibition (i.e., the notion that one cannot just do as one pleases) to one oriented around enjoyment. Mc Gowan identifies many of the social ills of American culture today as symptoms of this transformation: the sense of disconnection, the increase in aggression and violence, widespread cynicism, political apathy, incivility, and loss of meaning. Discussing these various symptoms, he examines various texts from film, literature, popular culture, and everyday life, including Toni Morrison’s Paradise, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and such films as Dead Poets Society and Trigger Effect. Paradoxically, The End of Dissatisfaction? shows how the American cultural obsession with enjoying ourselves actually makes it more difficult to do so.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Psychoanalysis after Marx
1. From Prohibition to Enjoyment
2. The Decline of Paternal Authority
3. Embracing the Image
4. Shrinking Distances
5. Interpretation under Duress
6. The Appeal of Cynicism
7. The Politics of Apathy
8. A Missing Public World
9. Explosions of Incivility, Aggressiveness, and Violence
Conclusion: From Imaginary Enjoyment to Its Real Counterpart
Notes
Index
About the author
Todd Mc Gowan is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Vermont and the author of
The Feminine ‘No!’: Psychoanalysis and the New Canon, also published by SUNY Press.
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