Perversions of Love and Hate

Renata Salecl offers a digestible analysis of contemporary American society and identity using theater, cinema, relationships, and art in general. She manages to clarify complex socio/psychological concepts to the average audience. Even while heavily relying on Lacanian theory to support her theories, her writing is clear and her theories are easy to follow. Her diagnosis of identity in the chapter before the last is an especially revealing critique of dissent within social identity through such means as the clitoridectomy and tatoos. To conclude, I think this book would benefit anyone confused about contemporary identity and the role of desire in both intimate and social relationships.

The book collects several essays by the author Renata Salecl. She applies Lacanian precepts and her critical thinking might to cultural objects such as films, artists, politics, tatooing and clitoridectomy. This book accomodates its readers, for all psychoanalytic hypostases are glossed. It is rare that an author has the ability to write amusingly and provokingly on a series that ranges from Homer's Sirens to the Remains of the Day, Romanian politics and architecture to films about Japanese calligraphy on the body and sexual transgression, all the while informed by a sense of purpose and psychoanalytic expertise. For me the most notable sparks result from the essays that reflect on human rights, cultural relativism and the big Other, the symbolic structure that we live within but do not entirely respect or feel we can take responsibility for. Despite the reservations I have for the application of psychoanalytic precepts to objects other than patients, I feel that this book thoroughly fulfilled its cause by educating me on select cultural matters as a means of provoking bigger thoughts on my part. I think the chapter on hate speech is the weakest. Still, I feel that this book furthers discussion that is necessary in my country (America) that seems to have prevented itself from significant reflection while pushing for so many demands in the global sphere.