Perversity and Ethics

William Egginton is Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at SUNY Buffalo. He is also the author of How the World Became a Stage: Presence, Theatricality, and the Question of Modernity (2002).

• Contents Acknowledgments000 Preface000 1. Freud and the Banishment of Evil000 2. In the Beginning Was the (Orthos) Logos000 3. Deconstruction and the Theology of Desire000 4. Sexual Difference and the Ethics of Duplicity000 Notes000 Works Cited000 Index000

"In today's times, when the ruling ideology presents itself in the guise of the primacy of the ethical over politics—thereby soliciting us to dismiss every project of radical political change as ethically problematic—Egginton's book reasserts Freud's message about the perverse core of ethics in all its raw force. It strikes at the very heart of today's ideological mess and cuts through its Gordian knot!" - Slavoj Zizek, Co-director, International Center for Humanities, Birbeck College (University of London) "The naughty knottedness of law and desire is the focus of Egginton's illuminating study of the psychoanalytic reorientation in ethical thought. Giving Lacan's concepts a new philosophical lineage, Perversity and Ethics renews them and breaks fresh ground. Written for anyone interested in contemporary ethical theory, this book will engage committed Lacanians and sceptics alike." - Joan Copjec, Professor of English, Comparative Literature (and Media Study at the University at Buffalo)