Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Series | Book | Chapter

208642

Geometry and abjection

Victor Burgin

pp. 11-26

Abstract

Although it makes no direct reference to Althusser's essay of 1970, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses",1 Roland Barthes's essay of 1973, "Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein", had the effect of spatialising the Althusserian concept of ideology as representation: "there will still be representation for so long as a subject (author, reader, spectator or voyeur) casts his gaze towards a horizon on which he cuts out the base of a triangle, his eye (or his mind) forming the apex".2 Laura Mulvey's essay of 1975, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema",3 subsequently theorised the voyeuristic subject of Barthes's theatrical space in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis. The change across this five-year period is profound. Instead of a contingent set of ideas which might be dissipated by reason, "ideology" was now conceived of in terms of a space of representations which the subject inhabits, a limitless space which the desiring subject negotiates by predominantly unconscious transactions.

Publication details

Published in:

Donald James (1991) Psychoanalysis and cultural theory: thresholds. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Pages: 11-26

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-21170-8_2

Full citation:

Burgin Victor (1991) „Geometry and abjection“, In: J. Donald (ed.), Psychoanalysis and cultural theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 11–26.