Madness and Cinema Psychoanalysis, Spectatorship and Culture [Paperback]

Madness and Cinema offers a radical approach to the issue of what happens when we watch films. By exploring cinema's relationship to meaning and proposing new ways to read cinema through psychoanalysis, this book develops the idea that the spectator engages in what has previously been described as an act of madness. By considering some of the key concepts from Freud and Lacan, as well as ideas from Derrida and Foucault, we are shown the common features that cinema and madness share. The film spectator is shown as the psychotic, neurotic and hysteric, as the book examines the ways in which the foundations of culture and meaning are challenged when we become the spectator of a film.Madness and Cinema offers a radical approach to the issue of what happens when we watch films. By exploring cinema's relationship to meaning and proposing new ways to read cinema through psychoanalysis, this book develops the idea that the spectator engages in what has previously been described as an act of madness. By considering some of the key concepts from Freud and Lacan, as well as ideas from Derrida and Foucault, we are shown the common features that cinema and madness share. The film spectator is shown as the psychotic, neurotic and hysteric, as the book examines the ways in which the foundations of culture and meaning are challenged when we become the spectator of a film.

Madness and Cinematisation.- Representing the Impossible.- The Neurotic Spectator Who Eroticises.- The Psychotic Spectator Who Transgresses.- The Hysterical Spectator Against the Good.- The Limits of Knowledge.- Bibliography.

PATRICK FUERY is Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. He has published a number of books in the fields of film studies and critical theory.A radical new approach to the issue of how we watch films which is likely to stir up debate in the film theory community
A new interpretation of psychoanalyl“õ