"Slavoj Žižek had me at the title of his 1992 book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock). The words were a siren call to those of us who fear that vast essential insight lies locked in texts with which we simply don't play well. It's not that I'm not interested in Lacan's writings, but rather that pleasure, of some variety, is always at the wheel of how I read."
"I can persist with prose that restricts or denies me these pleasures, and often do, in pursuit of other rewards. Yet there are times when I feel truly helpless with theoretical concepts that have been left ungrounded in tangible example or evocative metaphor. Even if I forgo pleasure and fight my way through such material, there's scant uptake. In such cases, I'm reliant instead on paraphrase or analogy-in the case of Žižek's book, an introduction to Lacan­ian theory by way of The Birds and Vertigo."
"I'm refreshed in my fascination with films I've known for 50 years; I'm vitaminized with Lacanian epiphany; and I discover a nutty new friend in the provocateur Žižek, whose own thoughts are accessible to me only about half the time (elsewhere I may find myself hunting for an accessible paraphrase of Žižek). All my life, I've known that certain strains of inquiry-philosophy and political theory and psychoanalysis-had the potential to give names to my inchoate feelings"
A late story about a philosopher dog and other animal narratives cast animal figures as mirrors for eroded human empathy and moral loss. Reading pleasures such as narrative, imagery, gossip, puns, and vicariousness shape engagement with difficult theoretical material. Untethered theoretical concepts require grounding in tangible examples or evocative metaphors to register and exert influence. Paraphrase and analogy, including film-based analogies, can render dense psychoanalytic theory accessible and invigorating. Certain strains of inquiry and theory can name inchoate feelings and bolster moral courage, prompting readers to seek accessible paraphrase to unlock those insights.
Read at The Nation
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