The Body in Theory: Essays After Lacan and Foucault - Paperback

by Becky R. McLaughlin (Editor), Eric Daffron (Editor)

The body has always had the potential to unsettle us with its strange exigencies and suppurations, its demands and desires, and thus throughout the ages, it has continued to be a subject of interest and obsession. This collection of twelve peer-reviewed essays on Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault interrogates the body in all of its beauty...and with all of its blights and blemishes.

Written by a diverse body of scholars--art historians, cultural theorists, English professors, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and sociologists from North America and Europe--these essays bring into conversation two intellectual giants frequently seen as antagonists, and thus rarely seen together. Topics covered include: the intersections of Foucault and Lacan and how they bring to light new thoughts on the senses, the self-destructive body, ableism and disability in Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, body image and the ego, selfie-culture, and metamorphosis in Ottessa Moshfegh's novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, among others.

Author Biography

Becky R. McLaughlin is a professor of English at the University of South Alabama, where she teaches critical theory, film, and gender studies. She has published essays on topics such as fetishism, feminine jouissance, sexual fantasy, epistemological trauma, auto-ethnography, the voice, and rock music. Her current research is on gender, madness, and film. Eric Daffron is a professor of literature at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he teaches gothic literature and literary theory, among other subjects. He has published on male homosociality, gothic literature, and other topics. His current research is devoted to Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault and to questions regarding the body and sexuality.