Abstract
'Sinthomosexuality' is Lee Edelman's coinage, combining 'homosexuality' with Lacan's concept of the 'sinthome': the "senseless jouissance" which ties a particular Subject together, binding their Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic aspects into a functional unity called 'I'. At the termination of a successful Lacanian analysis, a subject should have shifted their perspective fundamentally from "believ[ing] in" their sinthome, to simply "identifying with it", no longer expecting it to bear any Symbolic meaning (No Future, p.37). I read the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, through and against Edelman's work. Bond's symbolic death provides the occasion for a profoundly 'Queer' reinvention of the character – seen in the way that the villain, Javier Bardem's exuberantly 'Queer' rogue agent, holds up a mirror to Bond which Daniel Craig's blue eyes meet without a hint of disavowal. But if something like Edelman's sinthomosexual is embodied in the latest Bond, why does the film ultimately uphold profoundly reactionary fantasies of Britishness?
How to Cite
Hocking, N., (2014) “Letting the /Skyfall/ or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love James Bond”, Studies in the Maternal 6(1), 1-23. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/sim.7
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