Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the current psychoanalytic feminist dialogue with Lacanian theory, particularly the French post-Lacanian feminist theories of sexual difference. It presents a relatively schematized account of the theories of Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno, assessing their analyses of the fragmentation and destructive tendencies of the modern subject. The book examines some of the psychoanalytic themes that are developed in contemporary critical theory to support this emancipatory critique. It provides an exegesis of Lacan's account of the imaginary - that it is the inevitable 'loss' and 'lack' of psychical life which generates imaginary constructions of concealment. The book reviews Louis Althusser's application of Lacan's category of the imaginary to the notion of ideology, focusing on how the dominant ideologies of modern societies are reproduced and sustained.