MA/PhD Session Schedule
2023

Desire and its concept have a very interesting fate in psychoanalysis. Understood as an emblematic figure of desire, hysteria belongs to the birth of psychoanalysis, one could say it is one of its conditions. Lacan also made it the inevitable first step in any analytic process – the beginning of analysis entails the “hysterization of discourse.” Desire also appears as a central concept in the seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis, after which it somehow seems to lose its central place. Not only did other concepts such as drive and enjoyment, jouissance, become more prominent, but there were also important critical evaluations of the logic and paradoxes of desire that revealed its possible limits, including its political limits. After last year’s seminar was dedicated to the concept and phenomenon of disavowal, which includes the disavowal of desire, it is time to re-examine the question of desire in its radical and often controversial dimension. And to perhaps revive not only its ethical but also its political dimension. The seminar will address various facets of desire, including some of the most radical and powerful ones, as we can observe, for example, in Afro-pessimism. It will raise anew the question of the emancipatory power of desire and insist on desire as an objective indication of a fundamental “imbalance of being.” It will also not shy away from opening up and dwelling on the figure of the hysteric. Theoretical analyses and works will be combined with examples from contemporary emancipatory struggles, as well as from art and literature.

This seminar will look at the subjunctive component in black life, the as if, in its social, ritual and aesthetic manifestations. We will build on the work of Fumi on ìtàn-òrò-oríkì, and more broadly on African/black life ‘a logical exorbitance that fails to trigger a crisis.’  We will also draw from Dubois concept of sociology, Laura Harris’s notion of the subjunctive, and Cedric Robinson’s ontological totality.  We will ask with Fumi: why can thought as it has been historically constituted not think ‘the lack of insistence, the spread of possibility that is black social life?’  What is it about administered thought that can only seek to redeem African/black reason?  And ‘is it not this ability to walk in multiple worlds that unites black study?’

The last battle fought in the United States (during its Civil War) is that of Palmito Ranch in May 1865. The last battle fought in Europe is that of Berlin in May 1945. We used to think that total war was a specialty of the last century and that wars of attrition occurred only in marginal areas. However, the current war has the characteristics of a total war, and it is taking place near the heart of Europe. Philosophers have often contrastingly assessed reasons for this war (for example, Bojanić and Ferraris have different views on this matter). While it is painfully clear that war cannot be erased from the world stage, the reasons that cause it to erupt can be reduced. In this seminar, we will examine conceptual frameworks and protocols related to the institution of war. Namely, ethics and reasons for war, usage of force, justification, and the end of violence. We will also attempt to understand the development of technology (often perceived as something that enhances new forms of war and efficient killing) as an opportunity for ending enmities. In order to show this, we will use the concept of Webfare, which ensures an equitable distribution of the enormous wealth humanity produces on the Web, leaving aside the paranoia of surveillance capitalism and creating a foundation more worthy of the name homo sapiens.

What is the relationship between chaos and order in artistic creation? In what way can creative writing be said to be creative, and what are the stakes of such creativity? This course concerns fundamental ideas in creative writing, and is intended for both practitioners and theorists interested in exploring what creative writing might be from a philosophical and theological perspective. No background in either philosophy or theology is assumed; although we will be dealing with difficult ideas, the emphasis is on the creative use that can be made of them.

The seminar will address the question of the mood that accompanies the diagnosis of our times as disoriented (Badiou) and interesting (Žižek). After an introduction to the basic concepts of the authors on which we will base our analysis (Badiou: event, truth, subject; Žižek: real, enjoyment, fantasy), we will highlight the arguments why the nightmare is the mood that accompanies the modern times of constant crises, stagnation, fatigue, war and catastrophe. The mood should not be understood as something subjective or psychological, but rather philosophically and critically as an effect of the ruling ideology. The concept of mood will be further explained by delineating it to Heidegger’s notion of mood and attunement (Stimmung, Befindlichkeit) and by relating it to Lacan’s analysis of anxiety and fantasy. In what follows, we will elaborate the narrower and broader concept of nightmare, distinguish it from terror and horror, and relate it to Freud’s concept of the uncanny and to Ernest Jones’ interpretation of it (On the Nightmare, 1951). Theoretical analyses will be combined with examples from contemporary philosophy and ideology as well as from art and literature.