World of Perversion, The: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Absolute of Desire

"In The World of Perversion, James Penney argues that antihomophobic criticism has nothing to lose - and indeed everything to gain - by reclaiming the psychoanalytic concept of perversion as psychic structure. Analyzing the antagonism between psychoanalytic approaches to perversion and those inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, Penney explores how different assumptions about sexuality have determined the development of contemporary queer theory, and how the universalizing approach to homosexuality in psychoanalysis actually leads to more useful political strategies for nonheterosexual subjects. Having established this theoretical context, Penney focuses on works by Georges Bataille, Blaise Pascal, Denis Diderot, and Jacques Lacan, tracing the implications of various sexual and moral understandings of the term perversion, and illustrating how a psychoanalytic approach to the question of perversion enables politicized readings that are foreclosed by a Foucauldian methodology."--Jacket Part I: Epistemologies of perversion Perversity and perversion Perversion as power Perversion as structure Fetishism, sexual difference, homosexuality Worlds of perversion : a reader's guide Part II: Confessions of a medieval sodomite Meet Gilles de Rais The spectacle of perversion The tragedy of history An innocent transference Radically evil? The perverse sacrifice Part III: Cleopatra's nose Pascal's modernity The tragic absolute From sin to infinity Ideological state automatons A distracted dialectic Grace, or the act of faith Part IV: This whole world of perversion Dialogue and dialectic The cynical other A revolt against the negative Wealth and power Hysterical pantomime The beyond of perversion Part V: The guardian of criminal being Lacan contra Hegel Ethical beauty The real of destiny Pleasure unbound Suffering for beauty Artfully screwed Part VI: Concluding (un)queer-theoretical postscript Perversion and its discontents A dynamic perversion The minoritarian temptation Hysteria in the shadow of the state The paradox of desublimation The subject of sex. An Original Critique Of Queer Theory, From A Psychoanalytic Perspective.