In a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche... more In a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924–2012) elaborated a distinctive methodology for the reading of Freud’s corpus and evolved, in connection with it, a radical new metapsychology – one that critically recast Freud’s early ‘seduction’ theory of trauma and placed at the heart of psychic life a particular model of ‘enigmatic signification.’
Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche’s thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche’s unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research. Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche’s critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic.
In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche’s theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud’s legacy.
Contents:
Introduction
Seductions and Enigmas: Laplanche, Reading, Theory - John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray
Reading and Interpretation: Laplanche and the Case of Freud
Interpreting (with) Freud - Jean Laplanche
Exigency and Going-Astray - Jean Laplanche
Sublimation and/or Inspiration - Jean Laplanche
Seduction, Sexuality, Gender
Primal Femininity - Jacques André
Seduction, Gender and the Drive - Judith Butler
Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts
Culture, Cognition and Jean Laplanche’s Enigmatic Signifier - Allyson Stack
Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: the Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla - Mike Davis
The Ides of March: from Mastery to Vampirism - Éric Toubiana
The Scenography of Trauma: a ‘Copernican’ reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King - John Fletcher
Seduction and Infraction in the Visual and Aural Fields
Breast-Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction: Giorgione’s La Tempesta - Jacqueline Lanouzière
Femininity and Passivity in the Primal Scene - Jacques André
Seduction, Receptivity and the ‘Feminine’ in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book - Nicholas Ray
Bruce Nauman, Jean Laplanche and the Art of Helplessness - Josh Cohen
When The Shield first appeared on US television in March 2002, it broke ratings records with the ... more When The Shield first appeared on US television in March 2002, it broke ratings records with the highest audience-rated original series premiere in cable history. In the course of its subsequent seven-season run, the show went on to win international acclaim for its abrasive depiction of an urban American dystopia and the systemic political and juridical corruption feeding it. The first book dedicated to the analysis of this immensely successful series, Interrogating "The Shield" brings together ten critical essays, written from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives. Topics range from an exploration of the series’ derivation, genre, and production, to expositions of the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of the show.
As may be expected from a multiauthored collection, this volume does not seek to present a homogenized account of The Shield. The show is variously applauded and critiqued. In their critical variety, however, the essays in this book are a testament to the cultural significance and creative complexity of the series. As such, they are a reminder of the renewed power of quality television drama today.
This book presents a new account of the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and th... more This book presents a new account of the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the key tragic dramas by Sophocles and
Shakespeare in which it has often sought exemplars and prototypes. Examining the close historical and theoretical connections between
Freud’s interpretative appeal to tragic drama and his professed abandonment of the ‘seduction’ hypothesis in 1897, the author explores
the ways in which otherness has subsequently been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it endeavours
to comprehend. Drawing on Jean Laplanche’s critical reformulation of the seduction theory, the book offers close rereadings of Oedipus
Tyrannus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet in order to outline an approach to tragedy which takes account of the constitutive priority of the other in the
itinerary of the tragic subject. By reopening the theme of seduction in relation to these key literary dramas, the book aims to generate a better
understanding both of the function which psychoanalysis has called upon tragedy to perform, and the radical modes of otherness within tragedy
for which psychoanalysis has hitherto remained unable to account.
This article discusses two BBC television adaptations of M. R. James’s classic ghost story ‘Oh, W... more This article discusses two BBC television adaptations of M. R. James’s classic ghost story ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ (1904), the first directed by Jonathan Miller (1968) and the second by Andy de Emmony (2010). Arguing that de Emmony’s film takes Miller’s as a point of departure, it attempts to track the progressive ‘psychologization’ of James’s tale, a development that it explores with reference to Sarah Cardwell’s notion of ‘meta-textual’ lineage. The article outlines how Miller knowingly reimagines James’s story as a Freudian parable by drawing on the resources of classical psychoanalysis and its understanding of neurosis as the expression of a dynamic interior conflict, one in which something repressed menacingly returns. It goes on to read de Emmony’s film, which reorganizes the story around a case of dementia, as an effort to extend the tale into the psychic terrain of the ‘new wounded’, a term coined by philosopher Catherine Malabou to describe emergent psychopathologies unique to neurological injury or degeneration. Taking conceptual support from Malabou, the article demonstrates both the self-consciousness with which the later adaptation builds from its antecedent and its reinscription of the story within a frame of reference that specifically exceeds the psychoanalytic ontology presupposed by Miller. The films reimagine and contemporize the Jamesian haunting – with its climactic coming of a mysterious other – in ways that are utterly distinct but also cumulatively psychological. Looked at in apposition, the article suggests, they exemplify adaptation not simply as a revival or reconstitution of a past text but as an ongoing, intertextual and incremental labour of reinvention.
In a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche... more In a career spanning more than five decades the distinguished French psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche (1924–2012) elaborated a distinctive methodology for the reading of Freud’s corpus and evolved, in connection with it, a radical new metapsychology – one that critically recast Freud’s early ‘seduction’ theory of trauma and placed at the heart of psychic life a particular model of ‘enigmatic signification.’
Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche’s thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche’s unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research. Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche’s critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic.
In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche’s theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud’s legacy.
Contents:
Introduction
Seductions and Enigmas: Laplanche, Reading, Theory - John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray
Reading and Interpretation: Laplanche and the Case of Freud
Interpreting (with) Freud - Jean Laplanche
Exigency and Going-Astray - Jean Laplanche
Sublimation and/or Inspiration - Jean Laplanche
Seduction, Sexuality, Gender
Primal Femininity - Jacques André
Seduction, Gender and the Drive - Judith Butler
Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts
Culture, Cognition and Jean Laplanche’s Enigmatic Signifier - Allyson Stack
Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: the Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla - Mike Davis
The Ides of March: from Mastery to Vampirism - Éric Toubiana
The Scenography of Trauma: a ‘Copernican’ reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King - John Fletcher
Seduction and Infraction in the Visual and Aural Fields
Breast-Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction: Giorgione’s La Tempesta - Jacqueline Lanouzière
Femininity and Passivity in the Primal Scene - Jacques André
Seduction, Receptivity and the ‘Feminine’ in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book - Nicholas Ray
Bruce Nauman, Jean Laplanche and the Art of Helplessness - Josh Cohen
When The Shield first appeared on US television in March 2002, it broke ratings records with the ... more When The Shield first appeared on US television in March 2002, it broke ratings records with the highest audience-rated original series premiere in cable history. In the course of its subsequent seven-season run, the show went on to win international acclaim for its abrasive depiction of an urban American dystopia and the systemic political and juridical corruption feeding it. The first book dedicated to the analysis of this immensely successful series, Interrogating "The Shield" brings together ten critical essays, written from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives. Topics range from an exploration of the series’ derivation, genre, and production, to expositions of the ethics, aesthetics, and politics of the show.
As may be expected from a multiauthored collection, this volume does not seek to present a homogenized account of The Shield. The show is variously applauded and critiqued. In their critical variety, however, the essays in this book are a testament to the cultural significance and creative complexity of the series. As such, they are a reminder of the renewed power of quality television drama today.
This book presents a new account of the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and th... more This book presents a new account of the complex relationship between psychoanalytic theory and the key tragic dramas by Sophocles and
Shakespeare in which it has often sought exemplars and prototypes. Examining the close historical and theoretical connections between
Freud’s interpretative appeal to tragic drama and his professed abandonment of the ‘seduction’ hypothesis in 1897, the author explores
the ways in which otherness has subsequently been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it endeavours
to comprehend. Drawing on Jean Laplanche’s critical reformulation of the seduction theory, the book offers close rereadings of Oedipus
Tyrannus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet in order to outline an approach to tragedy which takes account of the constitutive priority of the other in the
itinerary of the tragic subject. By reopening the theme of seduction in relation to these key literary dramas, the book aims to generate a better
understanding both of the function which psychoanalysis has called upon tragedy to perform, and the radical modes of otherness within tragedy
for which psychoanalysis has hitherto remained unable to account.
This article discusses two BBC television adaptations of M. R. James’s classic ghost story ‘Oh, W... more This article discusses two BBC television adaptations of M. R. James’s classic ghost story ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ (1904), the first directed by Jonathan Miller (1968) and the second by Andy de Emmony (2010). Arguing that de Emmony’s film takes Miller’s as a point of departure, it attempts to track the progressive ‘psychologization’ of James’s tale, a development that it explores with reference to Sarah Cardwell’s notion of ‘meta-textual’ lineage. The article outlines how Miller knowingly reimagines James’s story as a Freudian parable by drawing on the resources of classical psychoanalysis and its understanding of neurosis as the expression of a dynamic interior conflict, one in which something repressed menacingly returns. It goes on to read de Emmony’s film, which reorganizes the story around a case of dementia, as an effort to extend the tale into the psychic terrain of the ‘new wounded’, a term coined by philosopher Catherine Malabou to describe emergent psychopathologies unique to neurological injury or degeneration. Taking conceptual support from Malabou, the article demonstrates both the self-consciousness with which the later adaptation builds from its antecedent and its reinscription of the story within a frame of reference that specifically exceeds the psychoanalytic ontology presupposed by Miller. The films reimagine and contemporize the Jamesian haunting – with its climactic coming of a mysterious other – in ways that are utterly distinct but also cumulatively psychological. Looked at in apposition, the article suggests, they exemplify adaptation not simply as a revival or reconstitution of a past text but as an ongoing, intertextual and incremental labour of reinvention.
The starting point for this interview with Jean Laplanche is a question regarding the place of in... more The starting point for this interview with Jean Laplanche is a question regarding the place of infantile sexuality within psychoanalysis today. Laplanche begins by underscoring the audaciousness of Freud's characterization of infantile sexuality and the significance of the expansion of the field of "the sexual" that this characterization entails. He goes on to outline his celebrated "general theory of seduction." In doing so he explains key terms associated with it, such as the "enigmatic message" and the "fundamental anthropological situation," and clarifies how the theory seeks to account for sexuality in the expanded sense. In particular, Laplanche stresses the intersubjective origins of "drive" sexuality in infancy, its chaotic evolution, its unique economic mode of functioning, and its subsequent conflict with innate "instinctual" sexual impulses that surge forth at puberty. He also positions the general theory of seduction in relation to the important advances made by attachment theory in the field of the adult-child relationship. Throughout the interview, the discussion touches on social contexts, and at points Laplanche outlines positions on topical concerns connected to education, media, and the law, and the importance of rethinking certain psychoanalytic paradigms in an age of new family structures that do not correspond to the nuclear unit.
Sitegeist: A Journal of Psychoanalysis & Philosophy, 2011
Translations of 'Extracts from an Interview with Jean Laplanche'; 'Levels of Proof'; 'In Debate w... more Translations of 'Extracts from an Interview with Jean Laplanche'; 'Levels of Proof'; 'In Debate with Freud'; 'Freud and Philosophy'; 'Displacement and Condensation in Freud'. Co-translated with J. Fletcher and J. House.
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Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche’s thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche’s unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research. Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche’s critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic.
In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche’s theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud’s legacy.
Contents:
Introduction
Seductions and Enigmas: Laplanche, Reading, Theory - John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray
Reading and Interpretation: Laplanche and the Case of Freud
Interpreting (with) Freud - Jean Laplanche
Exigency and Going-Astray - Jean Laplanche
Sublimation and/or Inspiration - Jean Laplanche
Seduction, Sexuality, Gender
Primal Femininity - Jacques André
Seduction, Gender and the Drive - Judith Butler
Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts
Culture, Cognition and Jean Laplanche’s Enigmatic Signifier - Allyson Stack
Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: the Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla - Mike Davis
The Ides of March: from Mastery to Vampirism - Éric Toubiana
The Scenography of Trauma: a ‘Copernican’ reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King - John Fletcher
Seduction and Infraction in the Visual and Aural Fields
Breast-Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction: Giorgione’s La Tempesta - Jacqueline Lanouzière
Femininity and Passivity in the Primal Scene - Jacques André
Seduction, Receptivity and the ‘Feminine’ in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book - Nicholas Ray
Bruce Nauman, Jean Laplanche and the Art of Helplessness - Josh Cohen
As may be expected from a multiauthored collection, this volume does not seek to present a homogenized account of The Shield. The show is variously applauded and critiqued. In their critical variety, however, the essays in this book are a testament to the cultural significance and creative complexity of the series. As such, they are a reminder of the renewed power of quality television drama today.
Shakespeare in which it has often sought exemplars and prototypes. Examining the close historical and theoretical connections between
Freud’s interpretative appeal to tragic drama and his professed abandonment of the ‘seduction’ hypothesis in 1897, the author explores
the ways in which otherness has subsequently been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it endeavours
to comprehend. Drawing on Jean Laplanche’s critical reformulation of the seduction theory, the book offers close rereadings of Oedipus
Tyrannus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet in order to outline an approach to tragedy which takes account of the constitutive priority of the other in the
itinerary of the tragic subject. By reopening the theme of seduction in relation to these key literary dramas, the book aims to generate a better
understanding both of the function which psychoanalysis has called upon tragedy to perform, and the radical modes of otherness within tragedy
for which psychoanalysis has hitherto remained unable to account.
Seductions and Enigmas is a volume dedicated to the implications of Laplanche’s thought for reading and interpretation. It collects papers that elaborate Laplanche’s unique method for the interpretation of Freud, with its attention to the decentering and recentering movements of thought that structure the psychoanalytic field, and explore how the metapsychological developments arising from the implementation of that method open up new horizons for the psychoanalytic reading of other texts and oeuvres in the cultural domain. The volume comprises essays by Laplanche as well as by clinicians and scholars whose work takes inspiration from his research. Authors variously establish, develop or consolidate Laplanche’s critical methodology as such, or work through aspects of his major theoretical innovations as points of departure for the reading of cultural works of different kinds: fiction, drama, painting, visual and sound installations, and film. These theoretical innovations cover a breadth of topics including seduction, sublimation, gender, femininity, the functions of binding and unbinding, masochism and the role of the enigmatic.
In their range, the texts brought together here are a testament to the vitality and fertility of Laplanche’s theoretical endeavour, for anyone concerned with the re-reading of Freud or with continuing to recalibrate and advance the parameters of critical interpretation in light of Freud’s legacy.
Contents:
Introduction
Seductions and Enigmas: Laplanche, Reading, Theory - John Fletcher and Nicholas Ray
Reading and Interpretation: Laplanche and the Case of Freud
Interpreting (with) Freud - Jean Laplanche
Exigency and Going-Astray - Jean Laplanche
Sublimation and/or Inspiration - Jean Laplanche
Seduction, Sexuality, Gender
Primal Femininity - Jacques André
Seduction, Gender and the Drive - Judith Butler
Seductions, Enigmas, Literary Texts
Culture, Cognition and Jean Laplanche’s Enigmatic Signifier - Allyson Stack
Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier: the Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla - Mike Davis
The Ides of March: from Mastery to Vampirism - Éric Toubiana
The Scenography of Trauma: a ‘Copernican’ reading of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King - John Fletcher
Seduction and Infraction in the Visual and Aural Fields
Breast-Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction: Giorgione’s La Tempesta - Jacqueline Lanouzière
Femininity and Passivity in the Primal Scene - Jacques André
Seduction, Receptivity and the ‘Feminine’ in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book - Nicholas Ray
Bruce Nauman, Jean Laplanche and the Art of Helplessness - Josh Cohen
As may be expected from a multiauthored collection, this volume does not seek to present a homogenized account of The Shield. The show is variously applauded and critiqued. In their critical variety, however, the essays in this book are a testament to the cultural significance and creative complexity of the series. As such, they are a reminder of the renewed power of quality television drama today.
Shakespeare in which it has often sought exemplars and prototypes. Examining the close historical and theoretical connections between
Freud’s interpretative appeal to tragic drama and his professed abandonment of the ‘seduction’ hypothesis in 1897, the author explores
the ways in which otherness has subsequently been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it endeavours
to comprehend. Drawing on Jean Laplanche’s critical reformulation of the seduction theory, the book offers close rereadings of Oedipus
Tyrannus, Julius Caesar and Hamlet in order to outline an approach to tragedy which takes account of the constitutive priority of the other in the
itinerary of the tragic subject. By reopening the theme of seduction in relation to these key literary dramas, the book aims to generate a better
understanding both of the function which psychoanalysis has called upon tragedy to perform, and the radical modes of otherness within tragedy
for which psychoanalysis has hitherto remained unable to account.