Writing Prejudices

Robert Samuels is Lecturer in the Writing Program at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the author of Hitchcock's Bi-Textuality: Lacan, Feminisms, and Queer Theory, also published by SUNY Press.

"This book is important on a number of different levels: It contributes original readings of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, shows the relevance of psychoanalysis to social issues, and articulates a new theory of how homophobia, racism, and sexism are intertwined. Its arguments are original and of immediate importance, and its application of psychoanalytic theory is often brilliant and always interesting." — Jean Wyatt, author of Reconstructing Desire: The Role of the Unconscious in Women's Reading and Writing"Interpreting the literary texts, Samuels is deft, moving, sometimes comical, but, in addition, with each reading he gives another turn to the Lacanian screw of subjectivity, deepening its bite while exposing to view yet another of its threads." — Marcia Ian, author of Remembering the Phallic Mother: Psychoanalysis, Modernism, and the Fetish

• Acknowledgments 1. Introduction PART ONE: Early Modern Prejudice 2. Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in Othello 3. The Cycle of Prejudice in Shakespeare's Miscegenating Sonnets 4. The Tempest: Colonial Desire, Homophobic Racism, and the Ideological Structures of Prejudice PART TWO: Colonialism, Slavery, and Racist Homophobia 5. Frankenstein's Homosocial Colonial Desire 6. The Heart of Darkness and Homophobic Colonial Desire PART THREE: Postmodern Prejudices 7. Internalized Racism and the Structures of Prejudice in The Bluest Eye 8. Beloved: Psychoanalytic Cultural Criticism and the National Unconscious 9. Conclusion Notes Works Cited Index