<strong>Beyond Sexuality</strong> points contemporary sexual politics in a radically newdirection. Combining a psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious with a... » 

Beyond Sexuality points contemporary sexual politics in a radically newdirection. Combining a psychoanalytic emphasis on the unconscious with a deeprespect for the historical variability of sexual identities this original workof queer theory makes the case for viewing erotic desire as fundamentallyimpersonal. Tim Dean develops a reading of Jacques Lacan thatrather thanstraightening out this notoriously difficult French psychoanalystbrings outthe queer tensions and productive incoherencies in his account of desire.Dean shows how the Lacanian unconscious deheterosexualizes desire and alongthe way he reveals how psychoanalytic thinkers as well as queer theorists havefailed to exploit the full potential of this conception of desire. The bookelaborates this by investigating social fantasies about homosexuality and AIDSincluding gay mens own fantasies about sex and promiscuity in an attempt toilluminate the challenges facing safesex education. Taking on many shibbolethsin contemporary psychoanalysis and queer theoryand taking no prisonersBeyond Sexuality offers an antidote to hagiographical strains in recent workon psychoanalysis Foucault and sexuality. «