Beyond Sexuality

by Tim Dean

Beyond Sexuality points contemporary sexual politics in a radically new direction. Combining a psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious with a deep respect for the historical variability of sexual identities, this original work of queer theory makes the case for viewing erotic desire as fundamentally impersonal. Tim Dean develops a reading of Jacques Lacan that—rather than straightening out this notoriously difficult French psychoanalyst—brings out the queer tensions and productive incoherencies in his account of desire.

Dean shows how the Lacanian unconscious "deheterosexualizes" desire, and along the way he reveals how psychoanalytic thinkers as well as queer theorists have failed to exploit the full potential of this conception of desire. The book elaborates this by investigating social fantasies about homosexuality and AIDS, including gay men's own fantasies about sex and promiscuity, in an attempt to illuminate the challenges facing safe-sex education. Taking on many shibboleths in contemporary psychoanalysis and queer theory—and taking no prisoners— Beyond Sexuality offers an antidote to hagiographical strains in recent work on psychoanalysis, Foucault, and sexuality.

Genres: Sexuality, Theory, Queer, Psychoanalysis, Sociology, Psychology, Nonfiction

318 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2000

About the author

Tim Dean joined the University Buffalo faculty in 2002, after several years teaching at University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and University of Washington (Seattle). A former British civil servant, he was educated at University of East Anglia (BA in American Studies), Brandeis University (junior year abroad), and Johns Hopkins University (MA and PhD).
He wrote an undergraduate dissertation on Gary Snyder and a doctoral dissertation on Hart Crane. He also has been a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.

His research and teaching interests include Anglophone modernism, poetry and poetics, queer theory, gender theory, aesthetic theory, and psychoanalytic theory.

Reviews

[M.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tim Dean provides a remarkable cogent and coherent introduction to Lacanian psychoanalysis, and makes some pretty stunning arguments about queer theory and activism. In my reading group on Lacanian psychoanalysis, we recently read his chapter entitled "How to Read Lacan". I was quite impressed with this book, and would recommend it for anyone interested in high (aka frenchified) gender theory, or anyone getting into Lacan and psychoanalytic theory.

Unfortunately, however, there are some serious downsides. Tim Dean sides with Catherine Millot in condemning trans women as psychotic (fuck you too) and comes across, overall, as an asshole. I definitely wouldn't want this man over for dinner. As a trans woman very interested in Lacan, I find Dean and his cohort to be a sad and sickening bunch.

[Emrys · Rating 3 out of 5]

I disagree vastly with a lot of Dean's conclusions and methods of approach, but practically no other author addresses transness with connection to Lacan in any useful (if misled) way, so. Dean unhelpfully separates gender from sexuality though, and insists on the non-essentialism of Lacanian conceptions of sexuality without addressing the (potential?) binary essentialism of Lacanian sexual difference.

[Bárbara Berger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book looking for ways of linking feminist deleuzian posthumanism with psychoanalysis and his thinking of sexuality as impersonal and predicated on the object a provides some paths to do this.
Dean has a style of writing that is considerably clear to follow (for a Lacanian) so it is also a good tool to remind lacanian concepts, though it still can be overwhelming for beginners.
His writing also had a tone that sometimes amused me, and others annoys me. Anyway, I prefer an academic book with a 'personality' than a dry typical academic book.

[Nico · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's hard for me to summon a book that infuriated me more. If one were a pseudo-Lacanian (that is, the sort of person who gleefully revels in pointless infantile perversity), perhaps that might serve to recommend it.

But if you, like me, find the self-congratulatory and treacherous "naughtiness" of Dean's arguments (particularly those about race and trans identity) both intellectually laughable and politically pernicious, you would perhaps do well to stay away.

[Tobias Wiggins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important contribution to psychoanalytically founded queer theory (primarily lacanian), which makes substantial use of 'object a' and the Real. Unfortunately the chapter on transsexuality, although drawing from theories of sexuation that do not reduce gender to genitals, still pathologies trans experience by claiming that most trans subjects repudiate the Real through surgeries. Nevertheless, I would recommend this title.