Free Market of Desire
Libidinal Economy and the Rationalization of Sex in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12920518 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sarah Bernstein (0000-0003-4279-7663, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 348-365 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-13 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Women s Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-1476 • E-ISSN: 1754-1484 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/cww/vpv010 |
| OpenAlex | W2553044254 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 8 |
This article reads Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) as resonating with current theoretical discourses on accelerationism, reflecting a contemporaneity with writers said to be its points of origin: French theorists of libidinal economy writing in the early 1970s, especially Jean-François Lyotard. Considering the novel in the context of Carter’s work of this period, I argue that Infernal Desire Machines registers a shift in governmental and economic policy from the organized welfare statism of the postwar years to a society that resembles the neoliberal state Britain will become under Thatcher, prefigured in the novel as a kind of libidinal economy; for, in Infernal Desire Machines, this tension is worked out on the planes of sexuality and desire and the regulation thereof
Aesthetics · Economics · Economy · Free market · Management · Market economy · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Psychoanalysis · Rationalization (economics · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Theater, Performance, and Music History · Law · Philosophy
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |