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rejected the subject of knowledge, focusing on the subject of power, influencing later cultural analysis through Michel Foucault
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- introduced the concept of the unconscious and desire as central to human subjectivity
- key works include The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), which introduced the death drive
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- reinterpreted Freud through structural linguistics, emphasizing language's role in splitting the subject
- introduced concepts such as the mirror stage, the objet a, and the gaze, with key seminars spanning the 1950s-70s
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- aligned the cinematic apparatus with Lacan's mirror stage, emphasizing ideological effects of cinema
- developed semiotic and psychoanalytic film theory
- published "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," highlighting the male gaze and patriarchal structures in cinema
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- critiqued screen theory's focus on power and identification, emphasizing the role of desire and the gaze
- merged Lacanian psychoanalysis with ideology critique, notably in The Sublime Object of Ideology
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- advocated for a return to desire-centered analysis in media, critiquing ideological fantasies and emphasizing the traumatic encounter with the gaze
- emphasis on expanding psychoanalytic criticism beyond cinema to include television, video games, and digital media, addressing contemporary challenges