Description
Drawing on the writings of travelers and philosophers such as Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire, Grosrichard goes further than merely cataloguing their intense fascination with the vortex of capriciousness, violence, cruelty, lust, sexual perversion and slavery which they perceived in the seraglio. Deftly and subtly using a Lacanian psychoanalytic framework, he describes the process as one in which these leading Enlightenment figures were constructing a fantasmatic Other to counterpose to their project of a rationally based society. The Sultan's Court seeks not to refute the misconceptions but rather to expose the nature of the fantasy and what it can reveal about modern political thought and power relations more generally.
"A classic of the theory of ideology." -Slavoj Zizek
About the Author
Alain Grosrichard is Professor of Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century French Literature at the University of Geneva and was a member of the Ecole de la Cause Freudienne. He has published widely on psychoanalysis and the history of literature.
Reviews
What Said's Orientalism achieves in breadth, The Sultan's Court provides in depth: the precise outline-the elementary formula-of the sexual-political fantasy of 'Oriental Despotism' which structures our perception of the Muslim countries from the seventeenth century to our own times, and on to which Western ideology projects its own inconsistencies and repressed traumas. Combining French elegance and clarity of style with the highest conceptual stringency, this immensely readable book demonstrates the extraordinary potential of Lacanian pyschoanalysis for social analysis. A classic of the theory of ideology, to be ranged with the greatest achievements of Adorno, Foucault or Jameson! -- Slavoj Zizek
Book Information
ISBN 9781859841228
Author Alain Grosrichard
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 366g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 137mm * 20mm