What is the relationship between the author and the reader of a text? Recent contributions to reader-response theory suggest that the reader is relatively passive. Foster argues that the relationship is more complex than that: readers enter into complicity with writers and create the illusion of the writer's mastery over meaning in order that they might also see themselves as masters and become writers in their own place. This dynamic model of the reading process is most clearly revealed in confessional narratives, and so Foster explores the intricate patterns of the reader/writer symbiosis...

The masochist, the voyeur, the sadist, the sodomite, the fetishist, the pedophile, and the necrophiliac all expose hidden but essential elements of the social relation. Arguing that the concept of perversion, usually stigmatized, ought rather to be understood as a necessary stage in the development of all non-psychotic subjects, the essays in "Perversion and the Social Relation" consider the usefulness of the category of the perverse for exploring how social relations are formed, maintained, and transformed.

By focusing on perversion as a psychic structure rather than as aberrant behavior,...

The masochist, the voyeur, the sadist, the sodomite, the fetishist, the pedophile, and the necrophiliac all expose hidden but essential elements of the social relation. Arguing that the concept of perversion, usually stigmatized, ought rather to be understood as a necessary stage in the development of all non-psychotic subjects, the essays in "Perversion and the Social Relation" consider the usefulness of the category of the perverse for exploring how social relations are formed, maintained, and transformed.

By focusing on perversion as a psychic structure rather than as aberrant behavior,...

Linking classic American literature to contemporary popular culture, Sublime Enjoyment argues that the rational systems of normal social life are motivated and sustained by "perverse" desires. This perversity arises from the failure of symbolic satisfaction--love, work, success--to make us happy, and from our refusal to accept that failure. Examining the ways in which this inadvertence is represented in American literature and culture, Dennis Foster identifies ways that longings are linked to social forces.

What is the relationship between the author and the reader of a text? Recent contributions to reader-response theory suggest that the reader is relatively passive. Foster argues that the relationship is more complex than that: readers enter into complicity with writers and create the illusion of the writer's mastery over meaning in order that they might also see themselves as masters and become writers in their own place. This dynamic model of the reading process is most clearly revealed in confessional narratives, and so Foster explores the intricate patterns of the reader/writer symbiosis...