Download or read book The Trouble with Pleasure written by Aaron Schuster and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the strange and troublesome relationship to pleasure that defines the human being, drawing on the disparate perspectives of Deleuze and Lacan. Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze's work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In The Trouble with Pleasure, Aaron Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure." Along the way, Schuster offers his own engaging and surprising conceptual analyses and inventive examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud's theory of neurosis to Spinoza's intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate, among other things, a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.

Download or read book The Trouble with Pleasure written by Aaron Schuster and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the strange and troublesome relationship to pleasure that defines the human being, drawing on the disparate perspectives of Deleuze and Lacan. Is pleasure a rotten idea, mired in negativity and lack, which should be abandoned in favor of a new concept of desire? Or is desire itself fundamentally a matter of lack, absence, and loss? This is one of the crucial issues dividing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Lacan, two of the most formidable figures of postwar French thought. Though the encounter with psychoanalysis deeply marked Deleuze's work, we are yet to have a critical account of the very different postures he adopted toward psychoanalysis, and especially Lacanian theory, throughout his career. In The Trouble with Pleasure, Aaron Schuster tackles this tangled relationship head on. The result is neither a Lacanian reading of Deleuze nor a Deleuzian reading of Lacan but rather a systematic and comparative analysis that identifies concerns common to both thinkers and their ultimately incompatible ways of addressing them. Schuster focuses on drive and desire—the strange, convoluted relationship of human beings to the forces that move them from within—“the trouble with pleasure." Along the way, Schuster offers his own engaging and surprising conceptual analyses and inventive examples. In the “Critique of Pure Complaint” he provides a philosophy of complaining, ranging from Freud's theory of neurosis to Spinoza's intellectual complaint of God and the Deleuzian great complaint. Schuster goes on to elaborate, among other things, a theory of love as “mutually compatible symptoms”; an original philosophical history of pleasure, including a hypothetical Heideggerian treatise and a Platonic theory of true pleasure; and an exploration of the 1920s “literature of the death drive,” including Thomas Mann, Italo Svevo, and Blaise Cendrars.

Download or read book Lacan and Deleuze written by Bostjan Nedoh and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-26 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often said that Lacan is the most radical representative of structuralism, a thinker of negativity and alienation, whereas Deleuze is pictured as a great opponent of the structuralist project, a vitalist and a thinker of creative potentialities of desire. It seems the two cannot be further apart. This volume of 12 new essays breaks the myth of their foreignness (if not hostility) and places the two in a productive conversation. By taking on topics such as baroque, perversion, death drive, ontology/topology, face, linguistics and formalism the essays highlight key entry points for a discussion between Lacan's and Deleuze's respective thoughts. The proposed lines of investigation do not argue for a simple equation of their thoughts, but for a 'disjunctive synthesis', which acknowledges their differences, while insisting on their positive and mutually informed reading.

Download or read book Why I Read written by Wendy Lesser and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Wendy Lesser's extraordinary alertness, intelligence, and curiosity have made her one of America's most significant cultural critics," writes Stephen Greenblatt. In Why I Read, Lesser draws on a lifetime of pleasure reading and decades of editing one of the most distinguished literary magazines in the country, The Threepenny Review, to describe her love of literature. As Lesser writes in her prologue, "Reading can result in boredom or transcendence, rage or enthusiasm, depression or hilarity, empathy or contempt, depending on who you are and what the book is and how your life is shaping up at the moment you encounter it." Here the reader will discover a definition of literature that is as broad as it is broad-minded. In addition to novels and stories, Lesser explores plays, poems, and essays along with mysteries, science fiction, and memoirs. As she examines these works from such perspectives as "Character and Plot," "Novelty," "Grandeur and Intimacy," and "Authority," Why I Read sparks an overwhelming desire to put aside quotidian tasks in favor of reading. Lesser's passion for this pursuit resonates on every page, whether she is discussing the book as a physical object or a particular work's influence. "Reading literature is a way of reaching back to something bigger and older and different," she writes. "It can give you the feeling that you belong to the past as well as the present, and it can help you realize that your present will someday be someone else's past. This may be disheartening, but it can also be strangely consoling at times." A book in the spirit of E. M. Forster's Aspects of the Novel and Elizabeth Hardwick's A View of My Own, Why I Read is iconoclastic, conversational, and full of insight. It will delight those who are already avid readers as well as neophytes in search of sheer literary fun.

Download or read book This Is Pleasure written by Mary Gaitskill and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.

Download or read book Pleasure Unbound written by Larissa Ione and published by Forever. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dark and intriguing paranormal romance from New York Times bestselling author Larissa Ione, a forbidden romance turns deadly when a slayer is tasked with killing the demon who saved her life. In a place where ecstasy can cost you your life . . . She's a demon-slayer who hungers for sensual pleasure-but fears it will always be denied her. Until Tayla Mancuso lands in a hospital run by demons in disguise, and the head doctor, Eidolon, makes her body burn with unslakable desire. But to prove her ultimate loyalty to her peers, she must betray the surgeon who saved her life. Two lovers will dare to risk all. Eidolon cannot resist this fiery, dangerous woman who fills him with both rage and passion. Not only is she his avowed enemy, but she could very well be the hunter who has been preying upon his people. Torn between his need for the truth and his quest to find his perfect mate before a horrific transformation claims him forever, Eidolon will dare the unthinkable-and let Tayla possess him, body and soul...

Download or read book Seeking Pleasure in the Old West written by David Dary and published by Knopf. This book was released on 1995 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 110 photographs and illustrations in text.

Download or read book Love and Trouble written by Claire Dederer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-05-09 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blazingly intelligent, wickedly funny, and piercingly honest, a memoir that captures the perils and pleasures of girlhood, womanhood, and life itself. “One of my favorite books of the last few years.” —Cheryl Strayed “Sentence for sentence, a more pleasure-yielding midlife memoir is hard to think of.” —The Atlantic At mid-life, Claire Dederer developed a sudden yearning for jailbreak. In this exuberant memoir, she reflects on two periods in her life uncannily similar in their emotional intensity: her present experience as a middle-aged mom in the grip of unruly and mysterious new hungers, and her recollections of herself as a teenager.

Download or read book Beyond the Pleasure Principle written by Sigmund Freud and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.

Download or read book Pleasure written by Eric Jerome Dickey and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-01 with total page 765 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, “one of the most successful Black authors of the last quarter-century”* explores the depths of desire in this sensual blockbuster. Born in Trinidad and living in Atlanta after a relationship gone bad, Nia Simone Bijou is an ambitious writer who has it all. Except for the one thing that'll give her the control she craves-and the power she deserves: absolute, uninhibited sexual satisfaction. Now, in the sweltering days and nights of summer, the heat is on. Nia's fantasies will become a reality-with man after man after man. She will shatter the limits of erotic love. She will open herself up to experiences she never dared before. And as her fantasies begin to spin out of control, she'll discover the unexpected price of the extreme. *The New York Times

Download or read book Modern Classics Beyond the Pleasure Principle written by Sigmund Freud and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-07-29 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: in Freud's view we are driven by the desire for pleasure as well as by the desire to avoid pain. But the pursuit of pleasure has never been a simple thing. Pleasure can be a form of fear, a form of memory and a way of avoiding reality. Above all, as these essays show with remarkable eloquence, pleasure is a way in which we repeat ourselves. The essays collected in this volume explore, in Freud's uniquely subtle and accessible style, the puzzles of pleasure and morality - the enigmas of human development.

Download or read book The Darkest Pleasure written by Gena Showalter and published by HQN Books. This book was released on 2016-02-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reyes is a man possessed. Bound by the demon of pain, he is forbidden to know pleasure. Yet he craves a mortal woman, Danika Ford, more than breath and will do anything to claim her—even defy the gods. Danika is on the run. For months she's eluded the Lords of the Underworld, immortal warriors who won't rest until she and her family have been destroyed. But her dreams are haunted by Reyes, the warrior whose searing touch she can't forget. Yet a future together could mean death to all they both hold dear…. And be sure to check out the latest book in the irresistibly seductive Lords of the Underworld series, The Darkest Torment, featuring the fierce warrior Baden who will stop at nothing to claim the exquisite human with the power to soothe the beast inside him…

Download or read book Enjoying What We Don t Have written by Todd McGowan and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2020-03-01 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although there have been many attempts to apply the ideas of psychoanalysis to political thought, this book is the first to identify the political project inherent in the fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis. And this political project, Todd McGowan contends, provides an avenue for emancipatory politics after the failure of Marxism in the twentieth century. Where others seeking the political import of psychoanalysis have looked to Freud's early work on sexuality, McGowan focuses on Freud's discovery of the death drive and Jacques Lacan's elaboration of this concept. He argues that the self-destruction occurring as a result of the death drive is the foundational act of emancipation around which we should construct our political philosophy. Psychoanalysis offers the possibility for thinking about emancipation not as an act of overcoming loss but as the embrace of loss. It is only through the embrace of loss, McGowan suggests, that we find the path to enjoyment, and enjoyment is the determinative factor in all political struggles--and only in a political project that embraces the centrality of loss will we find a viable alternative to global capitalism.

Download or read book In Youth Is Pleasure written by Denton Welch and published by Galley Beggar Press. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1945, In Youth Is Pleasure recounts a summer in the life of 15-year-old Orvil Pym, who is holidaying with his father and brothers in a Kentish hotel, with little to do but explore the countryside and surrounding area. 'I don't understand what to do, how to live': so says the 15-year-old Orvil - who, as a boy who glories and suffers in the agonies of adolescence, dissecting the teenage years with an acuity, stands as a clear (marvelously British) ancestor of The Catcher In The Rye's Holden Caulfield. A delicate coming-of-age novel, shot through with humour, In Youth Is Pleasure, has long achieved cult status, and earned admirers ranging from Alan Bennett to William Burroughs, Edith Sitwell to John Waters. 'Maybe there is no better novel in the world that is Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure,' wrote Waters. 'Just holding it my hands... is enough to make illiteracy a worse crime than hunger.'

Download or read book Read My Desire written by Joan Copjec and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2015-06-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Read My Desire, Joan Copjec stages a confrontation between the theories of Jacques Lacan and those of Michel Foucault, protagonists of two powerful modern disciplines—psychoanalysis and historicism. Ordinarily, these modes of thinking only cross paths long enough for historicists to charge psychoanalysis with an indifference to history, but here psychoanalysis, via Lacan, goes on the offensive. Refusing to cede history to the historicists, Copjec makes a case for the superiority of Lacan’s explanation of historical processes and generative principles. Her goal is to inspire a new kind of cultural critique, one that is “literate in desire,” and capable of interpreting what is unsaid in the manifold operations of culture.

Download or read book The Debt to Pleasure written by John Lanchester and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 1997 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws the reader, through descriptions of food and cooking, into a world of murder and art. Narrated by Tarquin, an ironist, epicurean and a snob, this novel is constructed around a series of seasonal menus, which unfold his autobiography.

Download or read book For the Earl s Pleasure written by Anne Mallory and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beneath every scornful smile . . . They were once cherished childhood companions, until a scandalous secret tore them apart. Now Valerian Rainewood and Abigail Smart are the fiercest of enemies. To Abigail, Rainewood is a notorious rake, hell-bent on mischief and not fit for polite society. So what if it seems as if he can seduce her with nothing but his eyes? She will not succumb. But when the earl is viciously attacked, Abigail's distress tells her that something still binds her to the wild Rainewood. Lies an unquenchable desire . . . Though the ton believes there is nothing between them, Rainewood knows the truth. Abigail tempts him the way no other woman has. Wanton lust overwhelms him whenever she is near. But keeping her too close may put her precious life in danger. He must destroy his enemies—so that with every touch he may prove to Abigail that though their past was filled with trouble, their future will be nothing but pleasure.