Psychoanalysis and cultural theory

thresholds

Edited by
James Donald

Communications and Culture | 1

Palgrave Macmillan

1991

Abstract

The transactions between the social and the psychical, between history and the unconscious, remain one of the most tantalising enigmas in the human sciences. In the past, the competing explanations offered by psychoanalysis and by cultural studies have led to mutual incomprehension, uncritical partisanship or outright rejection. The contributors to this volume juxtapose psychoanalysis with a number of cultural perspectives without collapsing either into the other. Their reflective and often self-critical surveys of cultural categories, forms and disciplines suggest that a new phase in these debates may have arrived.