Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock

by Slavoj Zizek (Editor), Pascal Bonitzer (Contribution by), Miran Bozovic (Contribution by), Michel Chion (Contribution by), Mladen Dolar (Contribution by)

Overview

The contributors bring to bear an unrivaled enthusiasm and theoretical sweep on the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, analyzing movies such as Rear Window and Psycho. Starting from the premise that ‘everything has meaning,’ the authors examine the films’ ostensible narrative content and formal procedures to discover a rich proliferation of hidden ideological and psychic mechanisms. But Hitchcock is also a bait to lure the reader into a serious Marxist and Lacanian exploration of the construction of meaning.

An extraordinary landmark in Hitchcock studies, this new edition features a brand-new essay by philosopher Slavoj Žižek, presenter of Sophie Fiennes’s three-part documentary The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781844676217
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	08/03/2010
Edition description:	New and Updated Edition
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His books include Living in the End Times, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, In Defense of Lost Causes, four volumes of the Essential Žižek, and many more.

Fredric Jameson is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University. The author of numerous books, he has over the last three decades developed a richly nuanced vision of Western culture’s relation to political economy. He was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. He is the author of many books, including Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, The Cultural Turn, A Singular Modernity, The Modernist Papers, Archaeologies of the Future, Brecht and Method, Ideologies of Theory, Valences of the Dialectic, The Hegel Variations and Representing Capital.

Renata Salcel is a philosopher and sociologist. She is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Criminology, University of Ljublijana, Slovenia, and Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics. Her previous books include The Spoils of Freedom and, edited with Slavoj Žižek, Gaze and Voice as Love Objects.

Alenka Zupancic is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, Ljublijana

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Second Edition vii

Introduction Alfred Hitchcock, or, The Form and its Historical Mediation Slavoj Zizek 1

Part 1 The Universal: Themes

1 Hitchcockian Suspense Pascal Bonitzer 15

2 Hitchcock's Objects Mladen Dolar 31

3 Spatial Systems in North by Northwest Fredric Jameson 47

4 A Perfect Place to Die: Theatre in Hitchcock's Films Alenka Zupancic 73

5 Punctum Caecum, or, Of Insight and Blindness Stojan Pelko 106

Part II The Particular: Films

1 Hitchcockian Sinthoms Slavoj Zizek 125

2 The Spectator Who Knew Too Much Mladen Dolar 129

3 The Cipher of Destiny Michel Chion 137

4 A Father Who Is Not Quite Dead Mladen Dolar 143

5 Notorious Pascal Bonitzer 151

6 The Fourth Side Michel Chion 155

7 The Man Behind His Own Retina Miran Bozovic 161

8 The Skin and the Straw Pascal Bonitzer 178