Cheap Perversion and the Social Relation (Sic (Durham, N.C.), 4.) (Book) (Molly Anne Rothenberg, Dennis Foster, Slavoj Zizek) Price

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complexity of perversion
The essays in this collection represent the range of psychoanalytic theories on perversion and their application to cultural analysis as well as literary, historical, and cinematic texts. It contains a reprint of Bruce Fink's accessible discussion of the Lacanian theory of perversion as well as Octave Mannoni's seminal, and previously untranslated, article, which informs the work of many French scholars and analysts of perversion. Other essays include Burroughs' Cities of the Red Night, Egoyan's Exotica, Finch's Fight Club, De Lillo's White Noise, the confessions of medieval pederast Gilles de Rais, Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner and homosexuality. Rothenberg and Foster make clear in their introduction that these selections demonstrate the premise that perversion ought to be approached as a contribution to the social relation than simply as a pathology. Very little work has been done in this area, but the collection represents a wide range of possible approaches and should serve as a stimulus to further work in this important subject.

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Barely worth it
You'd think that it would be impossible for an essay-compilation on perversion to crash and burn, but this one pulls it off! I own and enjoy the three other installments in the 'Sic' series ("Gaze and Voice as Love Objects", "Cogito and the Unconscious", and "Sexuation"), so the incredible awfulness of this offering came as an unpleasant surprise. You can't blame me for looking forward to a book on perversion, especially since it belonged to a decent series and was co-edited by one of my favourites (Slavoj).

Unfortunately, editors Molly Anne Rothenberg, Dennis A. Foster, and the Z-Man have haphazardly thrown together a collection of weak, watered-down essays on perversion and its partnership with social relation. Bruce Fink (best known for his translation of Lacan's seminars), contributes a painfully general piece which is appropriately titled "Perversion"; Nina Schwartz's "Exotic Rituals and Family Values in 'Exotica'" subjects Egoyan's film to the standard boring reading demanded by the film. Zizek's "The Ambiguity of the Masochist Social Link" is downright embarrassing - while I love Zizek and often jump to his defense, there's nothing worth defending in this essay. It consists mostly of bits cobbled together from some of his better works which don't connect to one another in any meaningful way. We all know that Zizek can be (and often is) arrogant, pretentious, self-plagiarizing, WRONG, and occasionally completely stupid - but this paper was the limit. In somewhat better news, James Penney's "Confessions of a Medieval Sodomite" is okay (but it's just okay), and the book also includes Octave Mannoni's "I Know Well, but All the Same..." (we can thank Mannoni for giving us the catchphrase "Je sais bien, mais quand meme" to explain the fetishistic split). So there's a plus. An insignificant plus, but still a plus.

I'd recommend borrowing this one at the library first, so you can be disappointed for free.