Teresa Brennan

The `riddle of femininity', like Freud's reference to women's sexuality as a `dark continent', has been treated as a romantic aside or a sexist evasion, rather than a problem to be solved. In this first comprehensive study, Teresa Brennan suggests that by placing these theories in the context of Freud's work overall, we will begin to understand why femininity was such a riddle for Freud.

Freud and Femininity

The Interpretation of the Flesh

Lacan was not an ahistorical post-structuralist. Starting from this controversial premiss, Teresa Brennan tells the story of a social psychosis. She begins by recovering Lacan's neglected theory of history which argued that we are in the grip of a psychotic's era which began in the seventeenth century and climaxes in the present. By extending and elaborating Lacan's theory, Brennan develops a general theory of modernity. Contrary to postmodern assumptions, she argues, we need general historical explanation. An understanding of historical dynamics is essential if we are to make the connections between the outstanding facts of modernity - ethnocentrism, the relationship between the sexes and ecological catastrophe.

History After Lacan

It has long been realised that the poorer countries of the south have paid for the unstoppable onward rush of globalisation in the exploitation of their natural and human resources. Recent events have made it clear that there may be a price to be paid in the west as well. In this elegant, lucidly argued account, Teresa Brennan argues that the evidence already exists that globalisation has for years been harming not just the poor of the third world but also its alleged beneficiaries in the affluent west. She shows how the speeding-up of contemporary capitalism, in which space is substituted for time, means that neither then environment nor the people who live in it are given the opportunity to regenerate and how this leads directly to pollution-induced, immune-deficient and stress-related disease. In a final chapter she suggests some alternative ways forward through a return to regionally based production and an emphasis on local economies.

Teresa Brennan

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