A woman looking at men looking at women: essays on art, sex, and the mind

Abstract

This collection combines in a single work Hustvedt's trilogy of essays which draw in insights from both the sciences and the humanities. Among the subjects she explores are the biases that influence how we judge art, literature, and the world; how mind-body problems have shaped contemporary thought in the sciences; and an analysis of suicide.

Contents

Introduction -- A woman looking at men looking at women. A woman looking at men looking at women -- Balloon magic -- My Louise Bourgeois -- Anselm Kiefer: the truth is always gray -- Mapplethorpe / Almodóvar: points and counterpoints -- Wim Wenders's Pina: dancing for dance -- Much ado about hairdos -- Sontag on smut: fifty years later -- "No competition" -- The writing self and the psychiatric patient -- Inside the room -- The delusions of certainty -- What are we? : Lectures on the human condition. Borderlands: first, second, and third person adventures in crossing disciplines -- Becoming others -- Why one story and not another? -- I wept for four years and when I stopped I was blind -- Suicide and the drama of self-consciousness -- Subjunctive flights: thinking through the embodied reality of imaginary worlds -- Remembering in art: the horizontal and the vertical -- Philosophy matters in brain matters -- Kierkegaard's pseudonyms and the truths of fiction.