The Self and Its Pleasure: Bataille, Lacan, and the History of the Decentered Subject

Why was it France that spawned the radical post-structuralist rejection of the humanist concept of "man" as a rational, knowing subject? In this innovative cultural history, Carolyn J. Dean sheds new light on the origins of post-structuralist thought, paying particular attention to the reinterpretation of the self by Jacques Lacan, Georges Bataille, and other French thinkers.