Dead Subjects

“Bringing to bear psychoanalysis on the study of the Latino subject, Viego’s book manages to bridge two fields that until recently have not found a way to converse with one another. Building heavily on the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Dead Subjects provides a much-needed illumination of why Lacan matters to those thinking about race, ethnicity, and the politics of minority groups in the U.S.” - Ramón E. Soto-Crespo, MLN

“This well researched book is able to show the enormous potential of the Lacanian approach to Latino/a studies, and the complexities that we must take into account in the field of Latino/a studies if we are to forge a new research agenda for the twenty-first century.” - Juan Velasco, American Studies

“Viego provides performance scholars with an important theory to understand the psychoanalytic dimensions of the performance of identity—especially in relation to processes of ethnic racialization. . . . His analysis of the way that the subject exceeds language can lay the psychoanalytic foundation for what performance analysis has theorized in other dimensions as embodied repertoires and hauntings. In this way, Viego’s theorization can provide a strong foundation to include Lacanian psychoanalysis as an important dimension of identity-based performance analysis.” - Edwin Emilio Corbin Gutiérrez, e-misférica

“Viego’s impressive marshalling of Lacanian theory and its dense registers will prove particularly instructive for scholars of psychoanalysis, psychology and identity politics as well as those involved in advanced theoretical questions in Latin American Studies, Latino Studies and other Ethnic Studies programmes.” - Gilberto Rosas, Bulletin of Latin American Research

“Dead Subjects offers an approach that could remediate many of the impasses and failures of the ego-psychological underpinnings of contemporary ideas of ethnicity and identification. These ideas have had a strong impact not only on academic ethnic studies but also on the very shaping of American law. Antonio Viego provides an important alternative model to them that will have immediate academic relevance. I also think that the influence of Dead Subjects may well be broader than the American case that Viego emphasizes. As thinkers all over the world struggle to frame new ways of dealing with immigrant and ethnic identities, the book can serve as an important guidepost. Viego’s carefully drawn distinction between the ego and the subject, based on Lacan’s work, is key to the new model.” - Juliet Flower MacCannell, author of Figuring Lacan: Criticism and the Cultural Unconscious

“A strikingly original contribution, Dead Subjects represents a new and sophisticated movement in Latino/a studies and the critical discourse on race and psychoanalysis. Arguing that the psychic realm should be read along with the social if our analysis of ethnic/racial subjectivity is ever to surpass ‘weak multiculturalism,’ Antonio Viego situates Lacanian analysis through carefully chosen case studies and examples. He reveals Lacanian thought as relevant in a way that will be nothing short of startling for most readers.” - José Esteban Muñoz, author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics