The Castration of Oedipus : : Psychoanalysis, Postmodernism, and Feminism / / Carla J. Ferstman, Joseph C. Smith.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Smith, Joseph C.,; Ferstman, Carla J.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [1996]; ©1996
• Year of Publication: 1996
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

The intellectual movements of psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and feminism have redefined the ways in which we think about human experience. And yet, an integration of these movements has been elusive, if not impossible. In this landmark book, J.C. Smith and Carla J. Ferstman combine these disparate traditions to create a provocative, unified, and tightly woven perspective that transcends the misogyny implicit in much of Freudian psychoanalytic theory. The dialectics of domination and submission are central to Smith and Ferstman's argument. Men and women, they insist, must avoid the temptation to fetishize equality and recognize the roles of domination and submission in the human psyche, or, in Nietzsche's terms, the Will to Power. They argue that the unification of psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and feminism leads us to a shocking conclusion--that women and men cannot move beyond the suffering which so haunts the human condition, unless heterosexual men surrender the power that is causing their misery and affirm life by joyfully accepting domination by women. And women, conversely, must reaffirm their power by rejecting Oedipal genderization and embracing a liberating matriarchal consciousness and a matriphallic sexuality. A work of tremendous insight and extraordinary intellectual energy, The Castration of Oedipus will provoke strong reactions in all readers regardless of ideology.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- ONE. Thinking the Unthinkable -- TWO. The Sexuality of Politics -- THREE. Knowledge and the Languaging Body -- FOUR. The Dialectics -- FIVE. The Dialectics of Fantasy -- SIX. The Dialectics of Signification -- SEVEN. The Dialectics of Desire -- EIGHT. Ariadne and Dionysus -- NINE. Medusa Depetrified -- TEN. Oedipus -- Notes -- Index