News – December 2024

News

20% off and free global shipping on all Routledge titles for LacanOnline.com readers. Use this link and code S031 at the checkout.

New Publications

Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity by Todd McGowan was published at the end of December by Columbia University Press. In his latest book, McGowan produces a new model of capitalism as a system based on the production of more – more wealth, opportunity, enjoyment – without the requirement of sacrifice. This ‘pure excess’ of the title is, he argues, the essence of capitalism. Using Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, McGowan demonstrates how capitalism promises the constant fulfilment of desire in spite of desire being an unsatisfiable longing with no end. He turns instead to art as a model to counter this logic of capitalism, revealing the need for limits, and envisioning a non-capitalist life in a non-capitalist society. Check out more of McGowan’s work on his excellent YouTube channel.

Lacan + Architecture, edited by John Shannon Hendrix and Francesco Proto, was published last month as part of the Palgrave Lacan Series. Using psychoanalysis in a revival of architectural theory, the contributors reflect on the perceived crisis in contemporary architecture, in conjunction with the threats to wellbeing and mental heath in the current climate of socio-political instability. Echoing some of Freud’s final published words (SE XXIII, 300), Don Kunze and Lorens Holm argue in their foreword that “Psyche is an apparatus, that apparatus is extended, and space is but a projection of that extension. If psyche is spatial, it puts it within the curtilage of architecture.”

Iranian Cinema with Psychoanalysis: The Interpreter of Desires by Farshid Kazemi has just been published by Routledge. Combining Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Iranian Shi’ite thought, and Islamicate sexualities, Kazemi considers post-revolutionary Iranian cinema in terms of censorship over the representation and expression of sexual desire which, despite this censorship, has had the effect of producing a ‘cinema of desire.’ This censorship, he argues, means that desire is inadvertently inscribed in the formal structure of Iranian cinema. Get 20% off this and all other Routledge titles using the link and the discount code at the top of this page.

The Origin of the Subject in Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Foundations of Lacanian Theory and Clinic by Alfredo Eidelsztein (translated by Nicolás Garrera-Tolbert) uses the theory of the Big Bang to consider the advent of subjectivity. Just as the origins of the universe have no ‘before’, the symbolic he argues is “ex-nihilo creation”, and he locates here a major conceptual difference between Freud and Lacan. The signifier is presented as the marker of absolute discontinuity, a condition of the experience of reality and subjecthood. Eidelsztein’s online seminars can be found on his site at http://www.eidelszteinalfredo.com.ar/.

Exploring the Interplay of Edward Sapir’s Anthropology and Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Culture and Subjectivity by Lenart Kodre uses the work of the American anthropologist and linguist alongside Lacan’s theories to reassess the dynamics between subjective and social realms, and work towards a new definition of culture. Setting this topic in the historically rich intersection between psychoanalysis and anthropology, Kodre utilises Sapir’s ideas on the culture-personality dyad, combining them with Lacan’s model for subjectivity, the knot of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real registers, and the logic of desire and fantasy.

New Recordings

On YouTube, Daniel Cho is interviewed by Todd McGowan on his new book Genius After Psychoanalysis. As heralded in last month’s Lacanian news update, Cho’s book proposes a new psychoanalytic theory of genius by re-examining the theory of sublimation, arguing against genius as an innate gift and instead proposing that it stems from how the drive transforms a lack of gratification into a new form of satisfaction.

Samuel McCormick, of the Lectures on Lacan series, discusses Lacan’s theory of the four discourses in a marathon 3-hour discussion on YouTube, hosted by Daniel Tutt. McCormick reviews Seminar XVII and his work – alongside others – in coming to grips with this much-studied text. His description of Lacan’s mathemes as an “algorithmic structure that marks a certain impasse”, and object a as the “minimum irreducible distance between any two entities that allows them to remain distinct”, are original and thought-provoking.

Upcoming Events

Lacan Toronto begins its events program for 2025 on 5th January with Samo Tomšič presenting on ‘The Symbolic-Machine: Extraction, Production, Destruction.’ The timetable, updated last month, includes Reading Groups (currently following Lacan’s Seminar XVI) and Teaching Sessions, both of which are free to join and available via Zoom.

Lacan Salon, also based in Canada, begins its Tuesday Seminar Series on 14th January, following Lacan’s Seminar XV on The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-1968). Sessions run up to the end of June and are either online only or hybrid (check the listing for details). All are welcome. With the text of Seminar XV published in France at the start of 2024, and the English translation planned, this is a timely Seminar to begin the year studying.

The timetable of public seminars from CFAR in its Spring Term is now available. Beginning on 18th January, seminars take place on Saturdays and are available to join remotely via Zoom as well as in-person. A Short Course of four seminars on Acting Out is also offered during this term.

The NLS’s Questions of the School videoconference will be held on 18th January and this year takes the title ‘In Supervision.’ Registration is open and the event will be bilingual, in both English and French.

Lacanian Compass in the US will hold its Knottings Seminar in Brooklyn, New York on 28th February, with clinical case presentations on the theme of the NLS Congress, ‘Painful Loves’. Registration is now open and the program is available to view. Straight after, its Clinical Study Days (CSD17) will take place 1st-2nd March, with special guests Patricia Bosquin-Caroz (NLS President) & Christiane Alberti (WAP President).

Also of interest to readers further ahead in the year will be an online conference – ‘After Lacan: The Other French School’ – organised by the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London for 20th Sept 2025. Lacan’s colleagues, students, analysands, and later opponents from the French tradition are given their own hearing. Contributions will discuss the work of Andre Green, Jean Laplanche, Didier Anzieu, Francoise Dolto, and Charles Melman among others.

Resources

Over on Freud2Lacan.com are some new translations uploaded in the past month. These include three new translations of Lacan’s 1951 paper on the Dora case, ‘Intervention on the Transference’ (number 57 on the Lacan page). Meanwhile on the Freud/Philosophy page is a new translation of Freud’s letter to Stefan Zweig, dated 2nd June 1932, where Freud discloses to Zweig his perspectives about Breuer’s treatment of Anna O (number 11). Also on that page is documentation evidencing that Freud visited New York City en route to deliver his Clark University lectures at the same time as Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O.) was delivering her own lecture as part of her campaign against enslaved prostitution (number 12 on that page).

Finally a new site, Contemporary Heretic, was launched last month. Described as a psychoanalytic blog for a politics of the present, its introductory text describes it as “a blog for the lovers of the unconscious and of psychoanalysis: for analysts and analysands, for the enlightened and inspired, and for the disenchanted and discouraged. Indeed, it is for all those who, at least once in their life, felt impassioned by a singularity of their experience.” Proposals for contributions on a range of themes are welcome, including on the inaugural theme of ‘Heresy.’

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