Panopticon's Author Index Ff | home | index | core | topics | quiz | beyond << PREVIOUS | NEXT >> Ff Michel Foucault Sigmund Freud Buckminster Fuller

MICHEL FOUCAULT ~k.i.s.s.~ Prominent French deconstructionist (1926-1984) who used the metaphor of the prison and the panopticon to examine the nature of power in history. Foucault was primarily concerned with the history of systems of social thought (see NEW special topic: foucault-a-gogo).

^ TOP OF PAGE ^ ~~~~~~~~~~ SIGMUND FREUD Austrian "father of psychoanalysis" who generated major theories concerning psychoanalysis, hypnosis, and sexuality. His ideas have been widely used in cultural theory by all sorts of people (psychoanalytical studies are really big in the humanities); his work also spurred later theorists such as Jacques Lacan. "If Marx looked at the consequences of our need to labour in terms of the social relations, social classes and forms of politics which it entailed, Freud looks at its implications for the psychical life" (Eagleton, 132-133; emphasis added). Freud's work centered on explaining personality in terms of sexual drives. Basically, we all repress our tendencies to simple gratification and pleasure (the "pleasure principle") in order to work, function, and survive in the modern world. Often we can deal with this repression, but sometimes it becomes too great and we become ill (actually, neurotic). This repression is centered in our unconscious, which contains many of the clues to why we become neurotic. The primary purpose of psychoanalysis, then, is to explore the unconscious and figure out what's wrong. There's a lot of stuff about ids, egos, penis envy, and Oedipus complexes, but we don't need to go into that here. Freud is relevant because he is a precursor to Lacan, who tried to "rewrite" Fruedianism in a way that was relevant to more modern studies of the human subject, its place in society, and most of all its relationship to language (Eagleton, 142). Freud provided inspiration to Lacan (who believed "the unconscious is structured like a language"), Jung, and others to examine the nature of the mind. ^ TOP OF PAGE ^ ~~~~~~~~~~ BUCKMINSTER FULLER A prominent "architect-cum-inventor-cum-engineer who preached a gospel of technological humanism that resonated with a generation more familiar with the technological oppression of war." He's also well-known for developing the geodesic dome that, thanks to Disney's EPCOT center, has become something of a symbol for futurism (Woolley, 26). CT. Author Index BACK TO TOP   | home | index | core | topics | quiz | beyond << PREVIOUS | NEXT >> © Contents are copyright by Douglas Bicket, unless stated otherwise. These may be reproduced for non-commercial, educational purposes provided this notice is included and contents are not altered. Email: bicket@geneseo.edu Last Updated: mar 3 2001