Amorous Acts: Lacanian Ethics in Modernism, Film, and Queer Theory

Amorous Acts illustrates the value of psychoanalytic theory for comprehending relationships, experiences, art, politics, and all sorts of human interactions. More specifically, it employs psychoanalysis to show how queer theory is operating to effect a non-heterosexist social order. Although the Lacanian subject in Love can only experience his/her self-shattering, Lacan's concept of Love is seen here as politically useful. This study breaks down Lacanian Love into three different forms and tries to unveil the danger, as well as especially the cultural potential, of the most intense of these variations. To arrive at this position, Amorous Acts first works out the meaning of Lacan's "ethics of desire" by analyzing several modern British novels (by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Graham Greene), as well as some contemporary films (Breaking the Waves, Seventh Heaven, and Damage) and then by arguing with Zizek through a reading of Kieslowski's film "White". Finally, queer theory as it has been brought into being by Foucault, Halperin, Bersani, Butler, and Edelman is put into relation with Lacan's notion of the authentic act. Queer theory engages Lacan's conception of self-shattering Love to traverse the pernicious fundamental fantasy of heterosexist reproduction.