Horror and Evil in the Name of Enjoyment

This book argues for the significance of ideology critique and moral judgment in the fields of literary, cultural, political and philosophical studies. By drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s theory of ideology the author examines postmodern horror films like Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, multiculturalism, post-September 11 political discourses and the society of enjoyment in terms of paranoia and perversion and reveals patterns of enjoyment structured through ideological fantasy. The Lacanian/Žižekian theory of ideological fantasy and ethics of psychoanalysis is then applied to broader philosophical, political and cultural contexts.