Author Archives: PsyArt

By: Gautam Basu Thakur  Abstract: In the climactic scene from the film The Great Debaters (2007), James L. Framer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), speaking for the motion “Resolved: Civil Disobedience is a Moral weapon in the fight for Justice,” rebuts the opponent team from Harvard University and clinches a win for his team, Wiley College, withContinue reading ““You Should Pray I Choose the Latter”: Rioting, Violence, & Jouissance”

By: Alexander Venetis  Abstract: The notion of the subject as conceived by Jacques Lacan should not be conflatedwith the subject as conceived by linguists or philosophers or other academic theorists concerned with this notion. For Lacan, the subject is empty, meaning that it neither pertains to relationality nor to positivity. Neither a positive determination canContinue reading “The Subject as Contradiction: Atomicity, the Void & the Aesthetic Experience”

By: Nick Popow Abstract: Althusser and Lacan: Theory of the SubjectFrom Descartes’ Cogito to Husserl’s transcendental consciousness, the Subject has undergone countless formulations over the course of philosophical history. In “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser proposed a complete rethinking of the Subject. For Althusser, to be a Subject is to have one’s thoughts,Continue reading “Wounds and Repetition: The Death Drive in the Subject’s Sensorium”

By: Christopher Power Abstract: This paper highlights certain affinities between the work of Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. It takes as a starting point the notion of madness articulated in Jacques Lacan’s “Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse”, the speech he gave in Rome in 1966 that marked his breakContinue reading “Madness in Lacan and Foucault”

By: Jerry Aline Flieger Abstract: In a talk delivered in 2016, (“Why do We Laugh at UFO’s?”), I referenced Freud’s theory about the social function of jokes to speculate on why the mention of UFO’s is almost always met with laughter (34th International Psyart Conference, Reims, France; published as “Objets trouvés: L’autre qui hante laContinue reading “Uncanny Foreign Objects (Unheimliche Fremde Objekte): Lacan’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

By: Efrat Biberman Abstract: In 2005, Jean Clair curated a grand exhibition dedicated to melancholy. Theexhibition encompassed an array of the copious representations of melancholythrough a historical prism, and included various spectacular images of skulls, dolefuleyes, ticking clocks and ample images of the posture most identified withmelancholy— figures leaning their heads on their hands. MelancholyContinue reading “Melancholy as an Artistic Position: The Case of Bas Jan Ader”

By: Gerald C. Wood Abstract: Near the end of Persuasion Anne Elliot informs Captain Wentworth that despite Lady Russell’s opposition to the couple, Anne will continue to be connected to, even influenced by, her mother figure. This scene is indicative of Austen’s dramatic shift from the Cinderella stories in her earlier novels to a psychologicalContinue reading ““That quarter of the mind”: The Psychodynamics of the Female Will In Jane Austen’s Persuasion”

By: Genevieve Smart Abstract: In its analysis of Mina Loy’s 1914 poem “Parturition” alongside Jacques Lacan’s theory of the Real, this article considers how childbirth problematises dominant notions of subjectivity, gender, and temporality. Beyond the identity category of ‘mother,’ it begins by examining childbirth as an intersubjective phenomenon which complicates the distinctions between inside andContinue reading “Impossible Births: Childbirth Beyond the (M)other in Jacques Lacan and Mina Loy”

By: Barbara Rumain Abstract: This paper argues that it is Sherlock Holmes’ characterization as a Narcissistic Personality which is largely responsible for his immense popularity. It maintains that Watson serves two functions: One function is that of being a constant source of narcissistic supply and the other is to mitigate and counteract what would otherwiseContinue reading “A Study in Sherlock: Our Fascination with Pathological Narcissism and the Narcissistic Personality”

By: Joyanta Dangar Abstract: The Spire (1964) is a novel about Jocelin, Dean of an English cathedral in the fourteenth century, who thinks that God has selected him to build a spire on his cathedral and carries it out to an impending disaster, despite his mason’s warning that the cathedral is built without adequate foundations.Continue reading “Religion and Trauma in William Golding’s The Spire”