Why War?

What is so compelling about war? On what powers of fascination and repulsion did Margaret Thatcher draw? What part does unconscious fantasy play in the way our political identities are formed? Why has there been so much dispute over the work of Melanie Klein?

Over the past decade, psychoanalysis has been a focus of continuing controversy for feminism, and at the centre of debates in the humanities about how we read literature and culture. In these essays, Jacqueline Rose continues her engagement with these issues while arguing for a shift of attention—from an emphasis on sexuality as writing to the place of the unconscious in the furthest reaches of our cultural and political lives.

With essays on war, capital punishment, and the dispute over seduction in relation to Freud, she opens up the field of psychopolitics. Finally, in two extended essays on Melanie Klein and her critics, she suggests that it is time for a radical rereading of Klein's work.