Resisting ArrestOther Press, 2007 M05 17 - 216 pages A volume in the Cultural Studies Series edited by Samir Dayal An innovative and entertaining look at genre, popular culture, enjoyment, and psychoanalysis. Detective fiction, a category that, broadly defined, runs the gamut from Oedipus Rex to "The Purloined Letter," continues to draw a range of fans and scholars, and to play a pivotal role in popular entertainment, contemporary literature, and psychoanalytic theory. But how do we derive pleasure from reading about or watching a detective’s exploits? Is our enjoyment in the vicarious experience of genius? Or in witnessing the commission of a crime, an equally vicarious experience of violence? Resisting Arrest looks at the detective genre in its many different cultural manifestations, from popular fiction (Christie) to high literature (Eco), from art films (Antonioni) to popular television series (Monk). In each case, Rushing finds that detective stories have less to do with fulfilling our hidden desires, as psychoanalytic explanations have traditionally asserted, than with purposively thwarting them. He argues that the genre is in fact constituted principally by the promises on which it fails to deliver, including the vicarious experience of both genius (readers expecting to play Sherlock Holmes are almost always cast as Watson) and antisocial violence, so that our pleasure is based on what Slavoj Zizek has called "the endless circulation around the always-missed object." Organized around the key ideas that structure the detective genre ("Desire," "Repetition," "Violence"), Resisting Arrest offers a thoroughly new interpretation that will appeal to scholars interested in questions about genre and cinema studies, popular culture, and psychoanalysis. |
Contents
Levine Mankell Camilleri | 17 |
Hitchcock and Christie | 37 |
Antonioni and Minghella | 63 |
Copyright | |
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addiction already appears arrest authority avoidance becomes begins blood body called chapter character Christie classic detective fiction clear Conan course crime critical death desire detective novel detective's Dickie discussing domestic drive effect enjoy enjoyment entirely example face fact fantasy father figure film final follows fundamental genre give guilt hand hard-boiled Holmes instance irritation Italian Italy Jeff killed killer kind Lacanian literally logic looking marked Miss Monk murder mystery namely narrative nature never normal object offers Orient Express original perhaps play pleasure Poirot police popular position possible precisely procedural psychoanalytic question reader reading real of desire repeated repetition revealed satisfaction scene seems sense shot social solution space stain story structure suggest symbolic takes thing tion true truth turn viewer violence Watson woman writes Žižek