When Freud revised his view of the drives, he was living under the shadow of death and the threat of biological and cultural genocide. Like the early twentieth century, our times are marked by massive geopolitical trauma and shifts in technological, epistemic and sexual-representational practices. This book argues for the renewed relevance of the Freudian theory of drives through a variety of works ranging from cinema and literature to metapsychology and cultural theory. After presenting Freud's successive configurations of the drive in the form of a guide, 'illustrated' with reference to popular films, Teresa de Lauretis discusses two instances of philosophical-political contestation: Foucault's critique of Freud's 'stubborn drive', which served as foundation for the notion of social construction, and Laplanche's critique of Freud's biologism. The last two chapters trace the figural inscription of the death drive through close readings of Djuna Barnes's high-modernist novel Nightwood (1936) and David Cronenberg's postmodern film eXistenZ (1999).

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