Why War?

Over the past decade, psychoanalysis has been a focus of continuing controversy for feminism, and at the centre of debates in the humanities about how we read literature and culture. In these essays, Jacqueline Rose continues her engagement with these issues while arguing for a shift of attention - from an emphasis on sexuality as writing to the place of the unconscious in the furthest reaches of or cultural and political lives. With essays on war, capital punishment and the dispute over seduction in relation to Freud, she opens up the field of psychopolitics. Finally in two extended essays on Melanie Klein and her critics, she suggests that it is time for a radical rereading of Klein's work.

Preface viii

Introduction 1
Michael Payne

Part I Psycho-Politics 13

1 ‘Why War?’ 15

2 Margaret Thatcher and Ruth Ellis 41

Part II The Death Drive 87

3 ‘Where Does the Misery Come From?’ – Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Event 89

4 Shakespeare and the Death Drive 110

Part III Returning to Klein 135

5 Negativity in the Work of Melanie Klein 137

6 War in the Nursery 191

An Interview with Jacqueline Rose 231

Jacqueline Rose: A Bibliography, 1974–1992 256
Nancy Weyant

Appendix: Intellectual Inhibition and Eating Disorders 262
Melitta Schmideberg

Index 271

"In eloquent critiques, Rose explicates the complex, contradictory relations between gender and fantasy, feminism and psychoanalysis, and the dialogue initiated here certainly deserves a wide audience." Anthony Elliott, Times Higher Education Supplement Jaqueline Rose is Professor of English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. Her numerous publications include The Case of Peter Pan or the Impossibility of Children's Fiction (1984) and The Haunting of Sylvia Plath (1991). What is so compelling about war? On what powers of fascination and repulsion did Margaret Thatcher draw? What part does unconscious fantasy play in the way our political identities are formed? Why has there been so much dispute over the work of Melanie Klein?

Over the past decade, psychoanalysis has been a focus of continuing controversy for feminism, and at the center of debates in the humanities about how we read literature and culture. In these essays, Jacqueline Rose continues her engagement with these issues while arguing for a shift of attention - from an emphasis on sexuality as writing to the place of the unconscious in the furthest reaches of our cultural and political lives. With essays on war, capital punishment and the dispute over seduction in relation to Freud, she opens up the field of psychopolitics. Finally in two extended essays on Melanie Klein and her critics, she suggests that it is time for a radical rereading of Klein's work.