In "Read My Desire," Joan Kopjec directs a confrontation between the theory of Jacques Lacan and the theory of Michel Foucault, featuring two dynamic, modern fields of science—psychoanalysis and historicism.
Typically, the paths of these ways of thinking intersect only until the historicists accuse psychoanalysis of indifference towards history, but here psychoanalysis, through Lacan, takes a stand. Refusing to concede history to the historicists, Kopjec argues for the superiority of the Lacanian interpretation of historical processes and genetic principles.
Her goal is to inspire a new kind of cultural criticism that is "literate in desire" and able to interpret what is unspeakable in the multiple functions of culture. (From the book's back cover presentation)
"After 'Read My Desire,' nothing in the field of cultural studies will remain quite the same: film theory, feminism, philosophy, and psychoanalysis will need to be related to one another in entirely new ways. For the first time, an American author has taken Lacan seriously, relegating the predominant appropriation of Lacanian theory by cultural studies to the irrelevance it deserves. Beyond political correctness, the book is theoretically sound: if it did not exist, we would have to invent it!" (Slavoj Zizek)
