ABSTRACT
I preface this analysis of televisual masculinity and racial incorporation with an anecdote regarding recent debates over analytical method. I sat down to complete this text soon after chatting with the film and humanities editor of an influential university press. In response to my enthusiastic remarks about recent work on visuality in French psychoanalysis, the editor playfully voiced her suspicion that I would disagree with the spin cast by a midwest colleague whose historical and feminist work on cinema I strongly value. This materialist colleague was reported to insist that psychoanalytic film theory had spent all of its limited resources and met its death drive - her point being, no doubt, that this editor should shy away from publishing such deadly work.
