Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people's lives, Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.In this forceful and engagingly written book, Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan's theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse,...

This collection introduces and develops Lacanian thought concerning the relations among language, subjectivity, and society. Lacanian Theory of Discourse provides an account of how language both interacts with and constitutes structures of subjectivity, producing specific attitudes and behaviors as well as significant social effects.

Radical Pedagogy articulates a new theory of identity based on recent research in psychoanalysis, social psychology and cognitive science. It explains how developing identity is a prerequisite for developing intelligence, personal well being, and the amelioration of social problems, including violence, prejudice and substance abuse.

Radical Pedagogy articulates a new theory of identity based on recent research in psychoanalysis, social psychology and cognitive science. It explains how developing identity is a prerequisite for developing intelligence, personal well being, and the amelioration of social problems, including violence, prejudice and substance abuse.

Social Symptoms of Identity Needs explains how our major social problems, including crime, violence, terrorism, war, substance abuse and prejudice, are the result of efforts by their perpetrators to maintain a secure identity, or sense of self. It demonstrates, further, how our ineffective and counterproductive responses to these problems--including the War on Drugs, the War on Crime, and the War on Terrorism--are themselves the result of the fact that we don't really want to solve them, because they serve as means for us, the general public, to maintain our own identities. The book...

Originally published in 1991, this volume tackles the diverse teachings of the great psychoanalyst and theoretician. Written by some of the leading American and European Lacanian scholars and practitioners, the essays attempt to come to terms with his complex relation to the culture of contemporary psychoanalysis. The volume presents useful insights into Lacan's innovative theories on the nature of language and the subject. Many of the essays probe the importance of psychoanalysis for problems of signifier and referent in the philosophy of language; others explore the difficulties men and...

Drawing on developments in cognitive science, Bracher formulates pedagogical strategies for teaching literature in ways that develop students' cognitive capabilities for cosmopolitanism, the pursuit of global equality and justice. Several staple classroom texts, such as Things Fall Apart, provide detailed examples for teaching practices.