Synopses & Reviews
The gaze entices, inspects, fascinates. The voice hypnotizes, seduces, disarms. Are
gaze and
voice part of the relationship we call love . . . or hate? If so, what part? How do they function? This provocative book examines love as the mediating entity in the essential antagonism between the sexes, and
gaze and
voice as loveand#39;s medium. The contributors proceed from the Lacanian premise that andquot;there is no sexual relationship,andquot; that the sexes are in no way complementary and that loveandmdash;figured in the gaze and the voice andmdash;embodies the promise and impossibility of any relation between them.
The first detailed Lacanian elaboration of this topic, Gaze and Voice as Love Objects examines the status of gaze, voice, and love in philosophy from Plato to Kant, in ideology from early Christianity to contemporary cynicism, in music from Hildegard of Bingen to Richard Wagner, in literature from Edith Whartonand#39;s Age of Innocence to Kazuo Ishiguroand#39;s The Remains of the Day, and in cinema from Michael Powelland#39;s Peeping Tom to Kieslowskiand#39;s A Short Film on Love. Throughout, the contributors seek to show that the conflict between the sexes is the site of a larger battle over the destiny of modernity. With insights into the underlying target of racist and sexist violence, this book offers surprising revelations into the nature of an ancient enigmaandmdash;love.
Contributors. Elisabeth Bronfen, Mladen Dolar, Fredric Jameson, Renata Salecl, Slavoj and#381;iand#382;ek, Alenka Zupancic
Review
andldquo;A marvelous collection of essays written by some of the most prominent figures working today from within a Lacanian paradigm. Though centered on the objects of the voice and the gaze and their status within the experience and structure of love, these essays range over an amazing topography of issues, from penitentiary fantasy and utilitarianism, to film theory and false memory syndrome.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;The volume is exemplary. The essays collected in it illuminate a range of subjectandmdash;film and film history, literature and literary history, the figure of the blind man in Enlightenment writing, andlsquo;love at first sight,andrsquo; Augustine on intellectuals and sexualityandmdash;and they all work together to explicate three crucial and difficult terms in the Lacanian vocabulary: object, voice, gaze.andquot;
About the Author
Renata Salecl is Researcher at the Institute for Criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. She is the author of The Spoils of Freedom and Sexuation (published by Duke University Press).
Slavoj and#381;iand#382;ek is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His latest books include Tarrying with the Negative (Duke University Press) and The Indivisible Remainder.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Part I: Gaze, Voice
1. The Object Voice / Mladen Dolar 7
2. Philosophers' Blind Man's Buff / Alenka Zupancic 32
3. Killing Gazes, Killing in the Gaze: On Michael Powell's Peeping Tom / Elisabeth Bronfen 59
4. andquot;I Hear You with My Eyesandquot;; or, The Invisible Master / Slavoj Zizek 90
Part II. Love Objects
5. At First Sight / Mladen Dolar 129
6. On the Sexual Production of Western Subjectivity, or, Saint Augustine as a Social Democrat / Fredric Jameson 154
7. I Can't Love You Unless I Give You Up / Renata Salecl 179
8. andquot;There Is No Sexual Relationshipandquot; / Slavoj Zizek 208
Notes on Contributors 251
Index 253