Perversion's Beyond : Life at the edge of knowledge

We live in a time of perversion. With the decaying importance of the great institutions of truth and tradition – the church, state, and dynastic rule – the pervert has become the “junkie of our time”: the figure that most essentially captures what it means to live in this age. While sexual perversions are merely one component of a much larger phenomenon it is Freud's notion of a “perversion of the sexual instinct” that has become the defining claim to perverted knowledge. What this volume sets out to do is to advocate a stricter definition of the pervert, and to chart a path that takes us to the other side of perversion under the acknowledgement that we should give up our attempts to cleanse ourselves from the perverted logic. Instead we should adopt the pervert as a homeostatic device: innovation in our time entails a necessary component of perversion.

This book is suitable for students of subjectivity, mediatisation and being, and anyone with in an interest in psycho-analysis, literature or the ethics of desire.