This classic work by one of the most important philosophers and critics of our time charts the genesis and trajectory of the desiring subject from Hegel's formulation in Phenomenology of Spirit to its appropriation by Kojève, Hyppolite, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze, and Foucault. Judith Butler plots the French reception of Hegel and the successive challenges waged against his metaphysics and view of the subject, all while revealing ambiguities within his position. The result is a sophisticated reconsideration of the post-Hegelian tradition that has predominated in modern French thought, and her study remains a provocative and timely intervention in contemporary debates over the unconscious, the powers of subjection, and the subject.
- Contents
- Foreword by Philippe Sabot
- Preface to the Paperback Edition
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1. Desire, Rhetoric, and Recognition in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
- The Ontology of Desire
- Bodily Paradoxes: Lordship and Bondage
- 2. Historical Desires: The French Reception of Hegel
- Kojeve: Desire and Historical Agency
- Hyppolite: Desire, Transience, and the Absolute
- From Hegel to Sartre
- 3. Sartre: The Imaginary Pursuit of Being
- Image, Emotion, and Desire
- The Strategies of Pre-reflective Choice: Existential Desire in Being and Nothingness
- Trouble and Longing: The Circle of Sexual Desire in Being and Nothingness
- Desire and Recognition in Saint Genet and The Family Idiot
- 4. The Life and Death Struggles of Desire: Hegel and the Contemporary French Theory
- A Questionable Patrilineage: (Post-)Hegelian Themes in Derrida and Foucault
- Lacan: The Opacity of Desire
- Deleuze: From Slave Morality to Productive Desire
- Foucault: Dialectics Unmoored
- Final Reflections on the "Overcoming" of Hegel
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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