Dr. Amanda Holmes (University of Applied Arts, Vienna): "Failure and other forms of negativity in the thought of Jacques Lacan"

TOPIC

In this semester, the Research Area Performativity of the Graduate Center for the Study of Culture of the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen engages with the topic of sexuality and failure. While the possibility of failure enables performances in the first place, and defines our understanding of performativity, we are interested in failure's potential and actual performances - both politically problematic ones and/or productive ones. Similarly, we frame sexuality performatively and, thus, include discourses on gender, sex, sexuality, the sexual, desire, and so forth in this broad conception of sexuality. Therefore, we are concerned what performances of failure do to sexuality, and how performances of sexuality impact failure and negotiate their risk of failure.

In the digital and public session on Thursday, 23/6/22, at 12:00 (CEST), Dr. Amanda Holmes will talk to us about failure and other forms of negativity in the thought of Jacques Lacan. Dr. Holmes is Universitätsassistentin in the Philosophy department at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She wrote a dissertation at Villanova University on the Eros in Lacan under Professor Zupančič's supervision and has published extensively on Lacanian theory and the relationship between philosophy and psychoanalysis.

READING MATERIAL

 For this purpose, Dr. Holmes invites us to read:

- The chapter on 'The Forgetting of Proper Names' (pp.1-7) in Freud's Psychopathology of Normal Life, from Volume 6 of the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (ISBN: 0 7012 0067 7).

- 'The ego and the other' (pp. 38-51) from the Seminar of Lacan, Book 1 Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-4 (ISBN: 0 393 30697 6)

→ If you experience difficulties accessing the texts, feel free to message beate.absalon@gcsc.uni-giessen.de .

PROGRAMME

At the start of the session, Dr. Holmes welcomes questions about the terminology and arguments of the texts for clarification. Afterwards, Dr. Holmes will provide a brief input on failure and sexuality in Lacan. An open discussion will follow that Paul Kaletsch, Visiting Scholar at the GCSC and Politics PhD Student at SOAS University of London, will moderate.

We are aware of the political baggage that accompanies Lacan as a person, his teaching and writing, as well as psychoanalysis as such. Therefore, we want to engage with Lacan here, but explicitly not submit to his mastery. To criticize, dismiss Lacan, or play around with his concepts, we need to read him first.

ACCESS:

You can join our discussion via BigBlueButton. Please contact Paul Kaletsch to receive the link and access code.