Overview

Alison Horbury investigates the reprisal of the myth of Persephone - a mother-daughter plot of separation and initiation - in post-feminist television cultures where, she argues, it functions as a symptom expressing a complex around the question of sexual difference - what Lacan calls 'sexuation', where this question has been otherwise foreclosed.

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9781349569441

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Reviews

"Professor in Television, Middlesex University, UK ""Learned, scholarly, respectful, Horbury's work is a return in the real on which the feminine question is waged. The mysteries of Eleusis stand revealed."" - Tim Themi, author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's critique of Platonism, (2014)"

Horbury's innovative use of the Persephone myth to explain the recurring themes and pleasures of 'heroine television' in post-feminist programming is fresh, convincing and illuminating. After historically contextualizing the myth through foundational accounts and interpretations, the book usefully draws on both literary and clinical psychoanalysis to argue its continuing relevance to contemporary culture. Judicious attention to Ally McBeal acknowledges the key place this text has had in the development of post-feminist television and its criticism, while each subsequent chapter uses an example that enables the exploration of a different facet of post-feminist culture as understood through the Persephone myth. The book offers new insights into contemporary culture that go well beyond the serials discussed, constituting an original shift in psychoanalytic methods of cultural interpretation that is sure to have an impact on debates about television and post-feminism. - Jane Arthurs, Professor in Television, Middlesex University, UK Learned, scholarly, respectful, Horbury's work is a return in the real on which the feminine question is waged. The mysteries of Eleusis stand revealed. - Tim Themi, author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's critique of Platonism, (2014)

Professor in Television, Middlesex University, UK Learned, scholarly, respectful, Horbury's work is a return in the real on which the feminine question is waged. The mysteries of Eleusis stand revealed. - Tim Themi, author of Lacan's Ethics and Nietzsche's critique of Platonism, (2014)

Author Information

Alison Horbury completed her doctoral degree in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she currently lectures in the fields of Media Studies, Gender Studies, and Communications.

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