The undergrowth of enjoyment: how popular culture can serve as an introduction to Lacan

New Formations - ISSN 0950-2378
Volume 1989 Number 9

The undergrowth of enjoyment: how popular culture can serve as an introduction to Lacan
Slavoj Žižek pages -

Abstract

Zizek uses Lacanian psychoanalysis to read film texts, focussing on the crucial break in Lacan’s thinking which occurred in 1959/60, when an emphasis on desire was transformed into a focus on jouissance or enjoyment. Zizek looks at ideas of communication, and the cinematic gaze and voice, as well as the motif of dreaming and waking (in particular the popular ‘it was all a dream’ ending) in relation to films by Hitchcock, Spielberg, Gilliam and others, as well as in the writing of Robert Heinlein, Franz Kafka, Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith. He pays particular attention to films which feature technical ‘prohibitions’, such as a rule of ‘no cuts’, ‘no speech’ or ‘no objective viewpoint’. These, he argues, induce a kind of claustrophobia and psychosis in the viewer, rendering such formal experiments ultimately unsatisfying.

SORRY - you are not registered as being permitted online access to the full text of this article

You have the following options:

  1. If you are viewing this via an institution or academic library you can ask that your institution takes out a Subscription to this journal.
  2. If you already have a Personal Subscription please login below


    Forgotten your username / password? Click here to locate

  3. Purchase an annual Personal Subscription
    PRINT + DIGITAL personal subscription (£45 / year)
    DIGITAL personal subscription (£30 / year)
    A Personal Subscription provides immediate access not only to the single article you are seeking, but also to all past and future articles in this journal up to the expiry of your annual (calendar year) subscription.
  4. Purchase immediate access to this single article (UK£7.00) - Buy article Coming Soon

To cite this article
Slavoj Žižek (1989) The undergrowth of enjoyment: how popular culture can serve as an introduction to Lacan, New Formations, 1989(9), -

Share this