The theory of law and economics that dominates American jurisprudence today views the market as rational and individuals as driven by the desire to increase their wealth. It is a view riddled with misconceptions, as Jeanne Lorraine Schroeder demonstrates in this challenging work, which looks at contemporary debates in legal theory through the lens of psychoanalysis and continental philosophy. Through metaphors drawn from classical mythology and interpreted via Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian philosophy, Schroeder exposes the hidden and repressed erotics of the market. Her work shows how the predominant economic analysis of markets and the standard romantic critique of markets are in fact mirror images, reflecting the misconception that reason and passion are inalterably opposed.
Jeanne Lorraine Schroeder is Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. She is the author of The Vestal and the Fasces: Hegel, Lacan, Property, and the Feminine (California, 1998).
"Jeanne Schroeder is one of the finest theorists in today's legal academia. She has broad knowledge not only in law, economics, and feminist jurisprudence, but also in psychoanalysis and philosophy. Schroeder brings together very different theories and provides a completely new view on law and economics. The Triumph of Venus will be a cornerstone to a whole new approach to legal theory."—Renata Salecl, author of The Spoils of Freedom: Psychoanalysis and Feminism After the Fall of Socialism
"Jeanne Schroeder takes basic points from Hegel and Lacan and applies them to the theories that inform mainstream debates on private law. No one else does private law critique that approaches this work's ambition and scope. No one else asks questions of this depth about the private law scholarship's theoretical presuppositions. And yet that lone voice that is Schroeder's is remarkably accurate in its observations."—William W. Bratton, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
326 pp.6 x 9
9780520234314$85.00|£71.00Hardcover
Feb 2004