Handbook of French Popular Culture

by Pierre L. Horn

1991 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Throughout the world, there has been much scholarly and general interest in French popular culture, but very little has been written on the subject in English. The authors of this book address that lack in a series of highly readable and well-documented essays describing French life styles, attitudes, and entertainments as well as the writers and performers currently favored by the French public. Several chapters explore French tastes in popular literature and other reading matter, including comics, cartoons, mystery and spy fiction, newspapers and magazines, and science fiction. Film, popular music, radio, and television are also discussed in detail, and influences from other cultures--particularly American imports--are assessed. The remaining essays examine French sports, the use of leisure time, the French style of eating and drinking, and relations between men and women and their attitudes toward romantic love. Each chapter provides up-to-date historical and bibliographic information that will enable the reader to pursue subjects of particular interest. Written by an international group of specialists, this handbook offers the benefits of broad coverage, a variety of viewpoints, and solid scholarship.

Lacan and Marx

by Pierre Bruno

2019 · Routledge

Lacan and Marx: The Invention of the Symptom provides an incisive commentary on Lacan’s reading of Marx, mapping the relations between these two vastly influential thinkers. Unlike previous books, Bruno provides a detailed history of Lacan’s reading of Marx and surveys his references to Marx in both his writings and seminars. Examining Lacan’s key argument that Marx "invented the symptom", Bruno shows how Lacan went on to criticize Marx and contrasts Marx’s concept of surplus-value with Lacan’s surplus-enjoyment. Exploring the division between Marxist and psychoanalytic perspectives on social and psychological need and Lacan’s formalisation of the capitalist discourse, the book compares the positions of Althusser, Deleuze and Guattari, and Žižek on the relations between Lacan, Marx and capitalism, using a wide range of cultural examples, from Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Brecht’s Joan Dark and Pierpont Mauler. Through these readings, Bruno also elaborates an extended commentary on Lacan’s central idea of the division of the subject. His focus is not only on showing how we can exit from capitalism but also, and just as importantly, on showing how we can make capitalism exit from us. This book will be of great interest to scholars and readers of Lacan and Marx from across the fields of psychoanalysis, philosophy and political economy, and will also appeal to Lacanian psychoanalysts in clinical practice.