This abstract is from the cover of the book.
This book combines a psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious with a deep respect for the historical variability of sexual identities, making the case for viewing erotic desire as fundamentally impersonal. Tim Dean develops a reading of Jacques Lacan that brings out the queer tensions and productive incoherences 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 the concept of desire. By investigating social fantasies about homosexuality and AIDS, including gay men's own fantasies about sex and promiscuity, the book attempts to illuminate the challenges facing safe-sex education.
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