ABSTRACT
This prologue presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book examines the relationship between art and death from the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It takes a unique approach to the topic by making explicit reference to the death drive as manifest in theories of art and in artworks. A fundamental concept of psychoanalysis, for there is no force in human life more fundamental than the compulsion to summon suffering and destruction in what rhetorician Richard Sherry, when talking about pleonastic repetition, calls superabundancia. This fascinated attraction, Lacan teaches in the last lesson of his seminar on the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, is nothing but compliance with the imperative to sacrifice to what Lacan calls the "dark gods".
