Beyond Pleasure

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud observed that the life-enhancing pleasure principle seems disrupted by something internal to the psyche. He took into account the possibility of a &“death instinct&” bent on returning the living organism to its origin of undifferentiated matter. In Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Margaret Iversen uses the writing of Freud, Lacan, the Surrealists, and Roland Barthes to elaborate a theory of art beyond the pleasure...
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In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud observed that the life-enhancing pleasure principle seems disrupted by something internal to the psyche. He took into account the possibility of a &“death instinct&” bent on returning the living organism to its origin of undifferentiated matter. In Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan, Barthes, Margaret Iversen uses the writing of Freud, Lacan, the Surrealists, and Roland Barthes to elaborate a theory of art beyond the pleasure principle. Lacan was in close contact with the Surrealists and, early in his career, exchanged ideas with Dalí. This book offers a detailed reading of Dalí&’s &“paranoiac-critical&” tour de force, The Tragic Myth of Millet&’s Angelus, in which he demonstrates a method of interpretation that involves the projection and analysis of paranoid fantasies. The author later discusses the aesthetic dimension of the disintegrative death drive explored in Georges Bataille&’s Eroticism and in Anton Ehrenzweig&’s Hidden Order of Art, both of which inspired Robert Smithson. Iversen also takes up a postwar-era narrative that examines Maya Lin&’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Robert Smithson&’s Spiral Jetty. Beyond Pleasure shows that the aesthetics of Freud&’s theory continue to resonate in the contemporary art world.