Shop By

The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents

Elisabeth Bronfen (Ed.)

€ 82.89

€ 64.07

You save € 18.82!

FREE Delivery in Ireland

Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days

Description for The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents Paperback. Series: Princeton Legacy Library. Num Pages: 490 pages, 20 halftones 5 line illus. BIC Classification: JFC; JFSJ; JMAF; PSXM. Category: (P) Professional & Vocational; (U) Tertiary Education (US: College). Dimension: 229 x 152 x 25. Weight in Grams: 685.
Surrealist writer Andre Breton praised hysteria for being the greatest poetic discovery of the nineteenth century, but many physicians have since viewed it as the "wastebasket of medicine," a psychosomatic state that defies attempts at definition and cure and that can be easily mistaken for other pathological conditions. In light of a resurgence of critical interest in hysteria, leading feminist scholar Elisabeth Bronfen reinvestigates medical writings and cultural performance to reveal the continued relevance of a disorder widely thought to be a romantic formulation of the past. Through a critical rereading, she develops a new concept of hysteria, one that ... Read morechallenges traditional gender-based theories linking it to dissatisfied feminine sexual desire. Bronfen turns instead to hysteria's traumatic causes, particularly the fear of violation, and shows how the conversion of psychic anguish into somatic symptoms can be interpreted today as the enactment of personal and cultural discontent. Tracing the development of cultural formations of hysteria from the 1800s to the present, this book explores the writings of Freud, Charcot, and Janet together with fictional texts (Radcliffe, Stoker, Anne Sexton), opera (Mozart, Wagner), cinema (Cronenberg, Hitchcock, Woody Allen), and visual art (Marie-Ange Guilleminot, Cindy Sherman). Each of these creative works attests to a particular relationship between hysteria and self-fashioning, and enables us to read hysteria quite literally as a language of discontent. The message broadcasted by the hysteric is one of vulnerability: vulnerability of the symbolic, of identity, and of the human body itself. Throughout this work, Bronfen not only offers fresh approaches to understanding hysteria in our culture, but also introduces a new metaphor to serve as a theoretical tool. Whereas the phallus has long dominated psychoanalytical discourse, the image of the navel--a knotted originary wound common to both genders--facilitates discussion of topics relevant to hysteria, such as trauma, mortality, and infinity. Bronfen's insights make for a lively, innovative work sure to interest readers across the fields of art and literature, feminism, and psychology. Originally published in 1998. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. Show Less

Product Details

Format

Paperback

Publication date

2014

Publisher

Princeton University Press United States

Number of pages

490

Condition

New

Series

Princeton Legacy Library

Number of Pages

490

Place of Publication

New Jersey, United States

ISBN

9780691608372

SKU

V9780691608372

Shipping Time

Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days

Ref

99-1

Reviews for The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents

Honorable Mention for the 1999 Barbara Perkins and Geroge Perkins Award of the Society for the Study of Narrative Literature

Shop By

Categories

The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents

Elisabeth Bronfen (Ed.)

Product Details

Goodreads reviews for The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and Its Discontents

Subscribe to our newsletter