Jean Laplanche: Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Jean Laplanche: Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man Cont Philos Rev DOI 10.1007/s11007-016-9383-3 BOOK REVIEW Jean Laplanche: Between seduction and inspiration: man. Translated by Jeffrey Mehlman The Unconscious in Translation, New York, 2015, pp. xxi + 304, $68.50 (hbk), ISBN 9781942254041, $48.50 (pbk), ISBN 9781942254058 Lucas Fain1 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016 Originally published as Entre se´duction et inspiration: l’homme (Paris: PUF, 1999), the present volume is the most recent title by the late French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924–2012) to emerge from the aptly named press: The Unconscious in Translation. In accordance with Laplanche’s lifetime wish to make all of his writings available in English, this volume follows as part of a plan to release translations of Laplanche’s complete works in more or less reverse chronological order. The present volume was preceded by the publication, in 2011, of Freud and the Sexual: Essays 2000–2006 and, in 2015, The Temptation of Biology: Freud’s Theories of Sexuality.1 In the collection under review, Laplanche assembles his ‘‘principal writings’’ from the years 1992 to 1998 (3). The essays do not develop thematically, but according to Laplanche they share an ‘‘overriding motif,’’ namely, ‘‘the fundamental anthropological situation,’’ or the asymmetrical relation between infans and adult, which designates the real point of departure for Laplanche’s entire oeuvre: that of putting psychoanalysis upon ‘‘new foundations’’ through a strenuous and highly critical return to Freud (3). Since the lack of complete and easily accessible translations has so far prevented Laplanche’s work from obtaining a larger audience, I will first make some preliminary remarks about the significance of this volume to the wider scope of Laplanche’s thought before commenting more directly on why this collection should be of interest to philosophers today. Of the thirteen essays contained in this volume, seven were previously translated into English. Three of these are contained in John Fletcher’s edited collection, Essays on Otherness (New York: Routledge, 1999), while the remaining four 1 Originally Sexual: La sexualite´e´largie au sense freudien: 2000–2006 (Paris: PUF, 2007) and Proble´matiques VII: Le Fourvoiement biologisant de la sexualite´ chez Freud, suivi de ‘‘Biologisme et biologie’’ (Paris: PUF, 2006). & Lucas Fain [email protected] 1 University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA 123 L. Fain appeared in more difficult to obtain journals or edited books. With regard to issues of translation, the most significant difference is that under the general editorship of Jonathan House more rigorous attention is now being paid to ensure terminological consistency across Laplanche’s writings. Important terms such as e´tayage, apre`s- coup, and the neologism e´trange`rete´ are rendered respectively as ‘‘leaning on,’’ ‘‘apre`s-coup,’’ and ‘‘strangerness.’’ These decisions are not without controversy, as there has been substantive debate about the rendering of e´tayage (Freud’s Anlehnung, Strachey’s ‘‘anaclisis’’) as ‘‘propping,’’2 and Laplanche himself had recommended ‘‘afterwardsness’’ as the best English translation for apre`s-coup— itself a rendering of Freud’s German term: Nachtra¨glichkeit.3 For readers already attuned to Laplanche’s sensitivity regarding issues of psychoanalytic terminology— as first indexed by Laplanche’s authorship, with J.-B. Pontalis, of the incomparable Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Paris: PUF, 1967)—the editorial notes included on Laplanche’s terminological apparatus are highly appreciated (xix–xxi). This volume also carries the distinction of having been translated (with an autobiographical Preface) by Jeffrey Mehlman, the eminent traducteur of Vie et mort en psychanalyse (Paris: Flammarion, 1970), who was among the first to recognize the seminal importance of Laplanche as both a reader of Freud and a vital correction to the authoritarian influence of Jacques Lacan in academic appropriations of French psychoanalytic thought. Indeed, Laplanche refuses not only the authority of Lacan, but that of Freud as well. What Mehlman wrote in his Introduction to Vie et mort therefore applies with equal force here, for ‘‘what has authority in this reading is, in the final analysis, the perverse rigor with which a certain bizarre structure of Freud’s text persistently plays havoc with the magisterial pronouncements—or authority— of Freud.’’4 At the crux of Laplanche’s critical return to Freud is his recovery of Freud’s abandoned seduction theory of 1895, and his further development of a ‘‘general theory of seduction,’’ which concerns the concomitant origins of psychoanalytic theory and the human subject. With respect to Freud’s initial theory—which Laplanche calls the ‘‘restricted theory of seduction,’’ in phrasing that deliberately recalls the distinction between Einstein’s general and restricted theories of relativity—the aim was to explain the origin and genesis of the psychoneuroses: most especially, hysteria and other neuroses of defense. After realizing, however, that some of his patients were reporting fantasies of seduction instead of actual events of sexual assault, Freud abandoned his seduction theory in 1897, and subsequently replaced it with a quasi-universal theory of human sexual develop- ment, famously structured by the schemata of Oedipus and Castration. For Laplanche, this shift designates, perhaps, the most egregious instance of Freud’s numerous ‘‘goings astray’’ (fourvoiements), as it effectively marginalized the primacy of the adult other in Freud’s account of the psychosexual development of 2 See Jeffrey Mehlman’s Preface to this volume: ‘‘Interpreting [with] Laplanche,’’ ix–x. See also Jeffrey Mehlman, ‘‘Verweile doch!: pour l’e´tayage’’ in Colloque international de psychanalyse: Jean Laplanche (Paris: PUF, 1994). 3 Discussed in Article 2: ‘‘Notes on apre`s-coup.’’ 4 In Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in Psychoanalysis, Jeffrey Mehlman, trans. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press 1976), ix. 123 Jean Laplanche: Between seduction and inspiration: Man… the individual. Thus, beginning from the fundamental anthropological situation, Laplanche invokes a ‘‘general theory of seduction,’’ which finds the ultimate realism of the unconscious in the young nursling’s inevitable failure to translate the ‘‘enigmatic messages’’ it receives from the adult for whom such messages are also enigmatic and unconscious. Primal repression, the process by which the uncon- scious is produced through the interpersonal genesis of the human psyche, is accordingly understood to result from an originary failure of translation in the communication between infant and adult. The articles contained in the present volume presuppose significant familiarity with Laplanche’s intellectual development through his landmark works in Vie et mort, Nouveaux fondements pour la psychanalyse (Paris: PUF, 1987), and the title essay from La re´volution copernicienne inacheve´e: Travaux 1967–1992 (Paris: Aubier, 1992). These texts are all available in English, with the last having been included in the aforementioned assemblage by John Fletcher. (The collection itself is expected to appear in a forthcoming translation by Luke Thurston, another of Laplanche’s experienced translators.) Nevertheless, readers unfamiliar with Laplanche should not avoid the essays in this book for reasons of technical complexity or theoretical obscurity. More than most in this field, Laplanche is concerned with the lucid explication of complex psychoanalytic concepts and ideas. Moreover, Article 7: ‘‘Psychoanalysis in the Scientific Community’’ presents Laplanche’s theoretically grounded views about the scientific character of psychoanalysis and its appropriate relation to the university. First, concerning the scientific character of psychoanalysis, Laplanche argues: ‘‘There is thus, in the first place, in psychoanalytic science, metapsychology itself: a model attempting to account conjointly for the unconscious and the method allowing access to it’’ (149). What accounts for the scientificity of psychoanalysis is therefore the ‘‘inseparability of the method and its object’’ (149). Here Laplanche defends the rightful place of psychoanalysis in the academy, in step with the demands for reproducibility found in the physical and human sciences, while at the same time he avows the need for psychoanalysis to maintain a certain, crucial, ‘‘extraterritoriality’’ in tension with the university as a regulative institution (154). Related comments are also found in Article 4: ‘‘The Training Analysis: A Psychoanalysis ‘on Command’,’’ which summarizes Laplanche’s critique of the ideological indoctrinating power of psychoanalytic training institutions. At bottom, Laplanche argues that the therapeutic and professional goals of psychoanalysis are simply in contradiction with each other, for the process of analysis—which ‘‘attempts asymptotically to make once again ‘our own’ (eigen) what is most foreign in us’’—is itself diametrically opposed to the normative controls of institutional professionalization (106). Throughout this volume it is possible to identify a broad set of concerns regarding ‘‘two levels’’ of psychoanalytic theory: ‘‘On the one hand, metapsycho- logical theory taken in the broadest sense; on the other, ‘psychoanalytic’ ideologies,’’ which presuppose a metapsychological theory that can account for the appearance and function of the second level (148). Laplanche here distinguishes the formalization of psychoanalytic theories—and their elevation to mythological status—from
Recommended publications
  • Syllabus PT 154 Comparative Psychoanalysis T. Morgan Fall 2018
    Syllabus PT 154 Comparative Psychoanalysis T. Morgan Fall 2018 Wed. 3:30-5:30 CMPS: 30 Clock Hours NYGSP: 2 Credits Course Description This semester’s work will familiarize candidates with the motifs, idioms and preoccupations of a not- exhaustive list of schools of psychoanalysis as well as field influencers who fall between the theoretical cracks. We will aim to traverse a cross-section of meta-psychologies, diverse understandings of the human subject, unique concepts of cure, and (to the degree that ways of working are made apparent), various clinical techniques. Modern candidates will have the opportunity to prepare to interact with the ideas of many psychoanalytic tribes. Toward that end we will whet our appetites for Kleinian, Relational, Contemporary Freudian, Lacanian, Intersubjective, Feminist, and Interpersonal points of view. Objectives The candidate will be able to: • think historically about the genesis of transformations and developments in the field of psychoanalysis; • identify themes germane to discrete schools of psychoanalytic thought; and • employ psychoanalytic terminology such as “repression, conflict, dissociation, co-construction, thirdness, drive derivatives, internalized objects, regression, self-states, symbolization, “not-me”, trauma, wish, projective identification, introject, adaptation, ego defense, enigmatic messages, object a, attacks on linking, and more. Requirements *Reading requirements will, on average, tally about 50 pages a week. Pay attention to feelings aroused by the readings. *Come to class prepared to share what you loved and hated about the readings. *Submit, every other class, a 2-3 page, double-spaced written exploration of the last two week’s readings. Find what interests you and elaborate upon it. Email it to the instructor at [email protected] by Sunday before 6 pm the class before it is due if you want written commentary.
    [Show full text]
  • The Apres-Coup, Apres Coup: Concerning Jean Laplanche Problématiques VI
    The Apres-Coup, Apres Coup: Concerning Jean Laplanche Problématiques VI. L’Après-Coup1 Sergio Benvenuto Italian Council for Scientific Research Abstract Here the author examines the question of après-coup (afterwardsness) in psychoanalysis, commenting in particular on Jean Laplanche’s book, Après-Coup. The author appreciates Laplanche’s determination to avoid either a positivist interpretation of après-coup (as a “delay-action bomb”, as simply a delayed psychic effect) or an hermeneutic interpretation that makes of it a post-factum re-signification of past events. Yet at the same time, the author shows that Laplanche’s solution— which assumes an initial trauma to the subject, who must “translate” an ambiguous and enigmatic message originating from an adult other—ends up being, in effect, a clever combination of the two approaches, positivist and hermeneutic, that Laplanche was trying to avoid. Laplanche advances a much too linear theory, placing “the other” (that is, the desire of the adult) at the beginning of the process, while Lacan’s approach to après-coup opens up far more complex and disturbing perspectives for psychoanalysis. The author, having shown the limitations of Laplanche’s result (“the primacy of the other”), proposes his own interpretation of après-coup, wherein it would connect, in a unique way, the cause and the sense of the psychic world: a subsequent event in some way makes the sense of a preceding event to function as the cause of later psychic phenomena or symptoms. Introduction In time, later, we realize that the question of nachträglich – après-coup in French – is one of the central knots of psychoanalysis.
    [Show full text]
  • Ja a LAPLANCHE
    APAXXX10.1177/0003065116675878Book EssayLaplanche 675878research-article2016 j a P a Deborah L. Browning 64/5 LAPLANCHE: FROM THE ENIGMATIC MESSAGE OF THE OTHER TO THE UNCONSCIOUS ALTERITY WITHIN THE TEMPTATION OF BIOLOGY: FREUD’S THEORIES OF SEXUALITY. By Jean Laplanche. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: The Unconscious in Translation, 2015, xii + 140 pp., $73.50 hardcover, $39.50 paperback. BETWEEN SEDUCTION AND INSPIRATION: MAN. By Jean Laplanche. Translated and with an introduction by Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: The Unconscious in Translation, 2015, xxii + 304 pp., $68.50 hardcover, $48.50 paperback. DOI: 10.1177/0003065116675878 These two books, The Temptation of Biology: Freud’s Theories of Sexuality (hereafter, Temptation) and Between Seduction and Inspiration: Man (hereafter, Seduction), by the French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche are complete English translations, compiled by Laplanche himself, of his major writings and lectures from 1992 through 1999 and published here in 2015 by the American press The Unconscious in Translation. Although Laplanche’s name is well known, linked with J.-B. Pontalis as co-author of The Language of Psycho-Analysis (1967; hereafter, Language), as well as from his Life and Death in Psychoanalysis (1970) and New Foundations for Psychoanalysis (1987), it is important to keep in mind that until his death in 2012 Laplanche was also in charge of the complete translation of the works of Freud from German into French, translating many of the papers himself. This process provided him a particularly intimate knowl- edge of certain aspects of Freud’s writing, not easily available to the exclusively anglophone reader of Strachey’s Standard Edition.
    [Show full text]
  • Redalyc.Homenagem a Jean Laplanche
    Ágora: Estudos em Teoria Psicanalítica ISSN: 1516-1498 [email protected] Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Brasil Dejours, Christophe; Martens, Francis Homenagem a Jean Laplanche Ágora: Estudos em Teoria Psicanalítica, vol. XV, núm. 2, julio-diciembre, 2012, pp. 345- 347 Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Brasil Disponível em: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=376534586011 Como citar este artigo Número completo Sistema de Informação Científica Mais artigos Rede de Revistas Científicas da América Latina, Caribe , Espanha e Portugal Home da revista no Redalyc Projeto acadêmico sem fins lucrativos desenvolvido no âmbito da iniciativa Acesso Aberto Homenagem HOMENAGEM A JEAN LAPLANCHE Christophe Dejours e Francis Martens Christophe Dejours Membro do Conselho Científico oi num piscar de olhos apoiado pelo destino que Jean La- da “Fundação Jean Laplanche, Novos Fplanche (21 de junho de 1924 a 6 de maio de 2012) faleceu fundamentos para a este ano em Dijon, no dia do aniversário de nascimento de Psicanálise”, Institut Freud (6 de maio de 1856). Com uma obstinação de camponês, de France. esse neto de trabalhador em vinhedos não parou de labutar Francis Martens no campo freudiano, para reencontrar aí as linhas de força, Membro do Conselho Científico as escapadas por pouco, a radical subversão, que a abundância da “Fundação Jean de Freud, a babel em que resultou sua herança e o fato de ter Laplanche, Novos sido resgatado pela moda, contribuíram para obscurecer tanto fundamentos para a Psicanálise”, Institut quanto para banalizar. de France. Formado em Beaune, antigo aluno da Escola Normal Superior, doutor em filosofia, com formação complementar Tradução Pedro Henrique em Harvard (onde encontrou o psicanalista Rudolph Löwens- Bernardes Rondon tein), esse mestre assistente na Sorbonne, depois professor em Paris VII, era também interno dos hospitais psiquiátricos da região do Sena.
    [Show full text]
  • Radical Psychoanalysis
    RADICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS Only by the method of free-association could Sigmund Freud have demonstrated how human consciousness is formed by the repression of thoughts and feelings that we consider dangerous. Yet today most therapists ignore this truth about our psychic life. This book offers a critique of the many brands of contemporary psychoanalysis and psychotherapy that have forgotten Freud’s revolutionary discovery. Barnaby B. Barratt offers a fresh and compelling vision of the structure and function of the human psyche, building on the pioneering work of theorists such as André Green and Jean Laplanche, as well as contemporary deconstruction, feminism, and liberation philosophy. He explores how “drive” or desire operates dynamically between our biological body and our mental representations of ourselves, of others, and of the world we inhabit. This dynamic vision not only demonstrates how the only authentic freedom from our internal imprisonments comes through free-associative praxis, it also shows the extent to which other models of psychoanalysis (such as ego-psychology, object-relations, self-psychology, and interpersonal-relations) tend to stray disastrously from Freud’s original and revolutionary insights. This is a vision that understands the central issues that imprison our psychic lives—the way in which the reflections of consciousness are based on the repression of our innermost desires, the way in which our erotic vitality is so often repudiated, and the way in which our socialization oppressively stifles our human spirit. Radical Psychoanalysis restores to the discipline of psychoanalysis the revolutionary impetus that has so often been lost. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, mental health practitioners, as well as students and academics with an interest in the history of psychoanalysis.
    [Show full text]
  • Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism / Benjamin Y
    !"#$% #&! '#($")* &"+ !,)"-$,.&( ,& -),$,-#/ $%".)* New Directions in Critical Theory Amy Allen, General Editor New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contempo- rary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex interconnections. Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment, María Pía Lara The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, Amy Allen Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Noëlle McAfee The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment, Alessandro Ferrara Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Adriana Cavarero Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Nancy Fraser Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, Axel Honneth States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, Jacqueline Stevens The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Négritude, Vitalism, and Modernity, Donna V. Jones Democracy in What State?, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensaïd, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Kristin Ross, Slavoj Žižek Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues, edited by Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics, Jacques Rancière The Right to Justification: Elements of Constructivist
    [Show full text]
  • Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction
    J O H N F L E T C H E R .................................................................................................................................................. Gender, Sexuality and the Theory of Seduction o readdress the conjunction of psychoanalysis and gender one must first pose the question as to whether psychoanalysis is, or has, or can be expected to Tprovide, a theory of gender as such. For it was in something like that hope that certain forms of feminism and radical social theory turned to psycho- analysis in the 1970s. Is gender, however, a properly psychoanalytic or metapsychological category? Or, rather, does not psychoanalysis borrow the categories of masculine and feminine from the life-world of social practice and its ideologies, even at times from the theories of sociology, just as it purloins certain theoretical concepts and categories of biology and physi- ology with their accounts of the body and its functions of self-preservation? However, psychoanalysis borrows and purloins understandings of both gender and the body in order to give an account of something else: something that indeed bears on how we live subjectively our gendered and embodied lives, although this cannot make of psychoanalysis a substitute for an explanation of the social production of gender categories and gendered positions within the various fields of social practice, anymore than psycho- analysis can be a substitute for a science of the body and its developmental and self-preservative functioning. This something else is the unconscious and sexuality, the object of psychoanalysis. I want provisionally to hold apart, to separate at least analytically gender, sexuality and sexual difference, in order to interrupt the too easy assimilation ............................................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Temporal Relation in the Narration of Orpheus Myth
    The emotional value of narrative and Infant Observation Denis Mellier Abstract Narration is defined between these two limits, historicizing and observation. Every narrative tends to be transformed into a history, every narrative is based on sensorial data and on the observation of others. Psychic temporality suitable for narration would not yet be that of historicizing, nor would it be the temporality of attention or observation. In this communication, we advance the hypothesis that narration introduces a kind of psychic temporality into bonds in order to face the "outside-of- time" of very primitive anxieties. Using clinical data from work with babies, we regard the narration as a capacity of rêverie (Bion) that acquires an emotional value in intersubjective situations. First, we explore the “present moment” (Stern) and the relationship between narration and primitive sufferings, in order to differentiate the narrative process from historicizing. Secondly, we study the Esther Bick’s method of infant observation. The time of observation is used to develop the observer’s capacity of rêverie the group can contain and transform primitive sufferings by the work of “associating different points of view”. An example illustrates our thesis. Key words: Narration, reverie, associating Narration is particularly related to the process of historicizing and the process of observation. On one hand, every narrative tends to be transformed into a history. On the other hand, every narrative is based on sensorial data and on the observation of others. In this communication, we will seek to show how narration is nonetheless distinct from history and from observation. Using clinical data from work with babies, we will show that narration acquires an emotional value in intersubjective situations.
    [Show full text]
  • The Unconscious As a Message from the Other. Theory and Practice of Psychoanalysis According to Jean Laplanche
    PSYCHOTERAPIA 2 (185) 2018 pages: 21–34 Antoni Grzybowski, Dariusz Grabowski THE UNCONSCIOUS AS A MESSAGE FROM THE OTHER. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS ACCORDING TO JEAN LAPLANCHE Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University psychoanalytic psychotherapy therapeutic relationship mother-child diad Summary The purpose of this article is to present the most important aspects of Jean Laplanche's theory. The work is divided into three parts: the first concerns the critical method of reading Freud's works, which was a starting point for Laplanche's own theory; the second presents key aspects of the general theory of seduction and other theoretical postulates connected with it; the third includes aspects of the psychoanalytic method raised by the French psychoanalyst in a practical context. Deriving from the student community of Jacques Lacan, Laplanche proposed a new approach to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis, which led him to critically read the works of Sigmund Freud and look at psychoanalysis primarily through the prism of its unique method. One of Laplanche's main postulates was the return to the Freudian theory of seduction, which the creator of psychoanalysis rejected at some stage of his work. This theory was intended to explain the etiology of neuroses by demonstrating that sexual abuse by an adult occurred in the early life of neurotic patients. According to the French psychoanalyst, the theory of seduction, though wrongly rejected, required extension and modification, so that it may have corresponded to the analytical experience and at the same time could form the core of psychoanalytic theory. To this end, he developed an original concept of the "general" theory of seduction, which could cover non-pathological childhood experience.
    [Show full text]
  • Review: Discourses of Impossibility: Can Psychoanalysis Be Political? Author(S): Elizabeth J. Bellamy Source: Diacritics, Vol. 23, No
    Review: Discourses of Impossibility: Can Psychoanalysis Be Political? Author(s): Elizabeth J. Bellamy Source: Diacritics, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring, 1993), pp. 23-38 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/465244 . Accessed: 26/01/2011 21:31 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Diacritics. http://www.jstor.org DISCOURSES OF IMPOSSIBILITY: CAN PSYCHOANALYSIS BE POLITICAL? ELIZABETHJ. BELLAMY Jean-Joseph Goux.
    [Show full text]
  • Jean Laplanche En Señal De Duelo
    (2012) Revista uruguaya de Psicoanálisis (en línea) (115): 185-189 | 185 issn 1688 - 7247 in memoriam Jean Laplanche En señal de duelo María Cristina Fulco1 «El psicoanalista post lacaniano, cuyo nombre ha quedado unido al de J. B. Pontalis, ha muerto el domingo 6 de mayo en París a la edad de 87 años.» Así anunciaba la prensa francesa, el martes 8 de mayo de 2012, la pérdida de Jean Laplanche. Nacido el 21 de junio de 1924, de padre oriundo de la Borgoña y madre de la región de Champagne, hubiera podido dedicarse como ellos al cultivo de la viña y a la producción de vino y haber pasado su vida en su propie- dad de comienzos del siglo xix, en su querido pueblo de Pommard, en la Côte d’Or, zona vitivinícola por excelencia. Pero su apego a la campiña francesa no impidió el surgimiento de las otras pasiones que marcaron su vida: la filosofía, la medicina y la psiquiatría, por un lado, así como el compromiso político y social con el tiempo que le tocó vivir, que lo llevó en su adolescencia a militar en la Acción Católica y a entrar en 1943 en la Resistencia frente a la ocupación nazi, luego en el movimiento de extrema izquierda antiestalinista, y en 1948 a fundar junto a Cornelius Castoriadis y Claude Lefort el grupo (y la revista) Socialismo y Barbarie. Importa tam- bién recordar su compromiso militante vinculado al mayo francés del 68. 1 Miembro titular de la Asociación Psicoanalítica del Uruguay. [email protected] 186 | maría cristina fulco issn 1688 - 7247 | (2012) Revista uruguaya de Psicoanálisis (en línea) (115) Tuvo como maestros en la Escuela Normal Superior a Gaston Bache- lard, Jean Hyppolite y Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Philosophy Through Art, Design, and Film
    AN INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY THROUGH ART, DESIGN, & FILM Jeffrey Stuker Description Key concepts in modern philosophy introduced through the analysis of creative work in the visual arts, film, and design. Psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, structuralism, and poststructuralism will be examined in relation to modern and interdisciplinary movements in the arts, including cubism, surrealism, arte povera, pop, minimalism, conceptual art, performance art, video art and narrative cinema, the pictures group, and the current relational aesthetics movement. While this course requires a general curiosity about philosophy and the arts, no previous formal study of either field will be expected. Structure The first half of the semester will be dedicated to the interpretation of foundational ideas and texts of critical theory by Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Saussure. The second half of the semester will be spent gaining an understanding of the re-interpretation and re-reading of these thinkers, after the Second World War, by Althusser, Rancière, Lacan, Foucault, Barthes, and others. The corresponding works of art considered in relationship to the foundational texts of critical theory will be taken from the era of the the historical avant-gardes; the artists paired with the the "re-readers" of foundational texts will be taken from the neo-avant-garde, which springs up, simultaneously, in the post-war context. Introduction Pass out syllabus, micro-reading assignment, first slide presentation with discussion. Introduction to two modes of critical perception:
    [Show full text]