Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Emancipatory Politics

The chief question providing the general background for this international workshop is whether psychoanalysis as a clinical praxis can at the same time philosophically be regarded as a credible form of emancipatory politics. Provisionally assuming that this is the case, we should equally ask: 1) How can we theoretically think psychoanalysis, a distinctly individualised one-to-one and costly kind of therapy, as also an egalitarian societal discourse? 2) What are the practical implications of such a discourse, or politics of psychoanalysis, if there is one? 3) Specifically, is it possible for a politics of psychoanalysis to effectively counter the contemporary resurgence of new Fascisms and related religious obscurantisms in the context of highly-technologised capitalism as, apparently, our only global discourse? 

These questions may also be considered in the guise of an interrogation on the viability of an updating, adjusted to the 21st century, of the tradition of so-called Freudo-Marxism, which includes seminal 20th century philosophers such as Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse. For the former, fascist propaganda and capitalist culture industry are "psychoanalysis in reverse". For the latter, the fascistic elements of technology-driven capitalist ideology function according to "repressive desublimation". We will also draw on the work of Louis Althusser and Alain Badiou, who have initiated a survey of the intersection of psychoanalysis with emancipatory politics, but left it uncompleted. For both, there is no construction of an egalitarian society and "communist hypothesis" without a concomitant exploration of psychoanalysis as an atheistic theory of the "discourse of the unconscious". 

In this framework, we moreover need to pay close attention to Freud’s and Lacan’s notorious scepticism about the alignment of psychoanalysis with not only political philosophy in general but also and especially Marxist theory and praxis as, in the end, a lay religion. Reopening these debates in a new age and challenging Freud’s and Lacan’s conclusions, this workshop wagers on the possibility of formulating a neo-Freudo-Marxism.

Gosposka Hall ZRC SAZU // Online session (via Zoom)

Programme: 

9:15-9:45

Introduction and opening remarks / Lorenzo Chiesa, “Beyond Interpellation Beyond Interpellation”

9:45-11:15

Frank Ruda (online), “… encore de l’audace”

11:15-11:30

Coffee break

11:30-13:00

Boštjan Nedoh, “What Is True Materialism? From “Conflictual Science” to Social Bond”

13:00-14:30

Break

14:30-16:00

Nadia Bou-Ali (online), “We Are Not All Defeated in the Same Way”

16:00-16:15

Coffee break

16:15-17:45

Samo Tomšič, “Where Does Violence Come From? The Primal Father Revisited”

17:45-18:00

Coffee break

18:00-19:30

Alenka Zupančič, “Psychoanalysis and politics in ‘the time of monsters’”

This international workshop is funded by ZRC SAZU, Institute of Philosophy and The Leverhulme Trust, in the context of Lorenzo Chiesa’s (Newcastle University) Leverhulme International Fellowship “Is Psychoanalysis a Political Praxis?”, hosted by ZRC SAZU, Institute of Philosophy.