Robbie McLaughlan – författare

Explores the fin de siècle mission to open up the ‘Dark Continent’This study maps the effects of a cartographic blankness in literature and its impact upon early Modernist culture, through the nascent discipline of psychoanalysis and the debt that Freud owed to African exploration. It demonstrates that tales of intrepid exploration and of dramatic cultural encounters between indigenous populations - often serialised in missionary magazines - had a profound influence on every facet of late Victorian and early Modernist culture. As Robbie McLaughlan shows, this influence manifested itself most clearly in the late Victorian ‘best-seller’ which blended this arcane Central African imagery with an interest in psychic phenomena. The chapters examine: representations of unexplored regions in missionary writing and Rider Haggard''s narratives on Africa; the cartographic tradition in Conrad''s Heart of Darkness and Jung''s Memories, Dreams, Reflections; and mesmeric fiction, such as Richard Marsh''s The Beetle, Robert Buchanan''s The Charlatan and George du Maurier''s Trilby.Key Features:* Opens up the ''dark continent'' and its literary, historical and theoretical manifestations* Argues for an anticipation of a modernist aesthetic suggesting an unexplored relation between fin de siècle sensation literature, in particular mesmeric fiction, and psychoanalysis* Diverges from established colonial histories by drawing on an archive of special and neglected material

Late Capitalist Freud in Literary, Cultural, and Political Theory proposes that late Freudian theory has had an historical influence on the configuration of contemporary life and is central to the construction of twenty-first-century capitalism. This book investigates how we continue to live in the Freudian century, turning its attentions to specific crisis points within neoliberalism—the rise of figures like Trump, the development of social media as a new superego force, the economics that underpin the wellness and self-care industries as well as the contemporary consumption of popular culture—to maintain the continued historical importance of Freudian thought in all its dimensions. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, literary theory, cultural studies, and political theory, this book assesses the contribution that an historical and theoretical consideration of the late Freud can make to analyzing certain aspects of late capital.