Eugene Goodheart (Books)

Eugene Goodheart Books

Eugene Goodheart is an emeritus professor of humanities whose work delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and thought, alongside literary theory. He critically examines profound aspects of the human experience through rigorous literary analysis. His scholarship offers insightful perspectives on the evolution of ideas and artistic expression.

Desire and Its Discontents

200 pages
7 hours of reading

Challenging the imperialism of desire in contemporary academic discourse Goodheart confronts a crucial strain of utopianism in modern thought and literature. This utopianism is the position of desire in modern culture. Goodheart argues that the classic moderns (Proust, Durkheim, Mann, and Lawrence) appreciated desire for its potential to liberate the imagination, but also understood its tendencies toward destructiveness. Since the "cultural revolution" of the 1950s and 1960s, modern thoerists have forgotten or ignored the wise ambivalence of the classic moderns and their respect for boundaries, however fluid, between the writing life and life itself.In Desire and Its Discontents Goodheart engages in a discourse with both the academy and general culture in an effort to discriminate among the discourses of between Marcuse's "rationalism of desire" and Lacan's celebration of tragedy, and between early and late Foucault.