Relationship Issues: Revisiting Interdependence through Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Philosophy and the Arts
Project Team
Asst. Prof. Tadej Troha, PhD, Alenka Zupančič Žerdin, PhD, Marisa Žele, PhD, Aleš Mendiževec, PhD, Vesna Liponik-
ARIS Project ID
J6-70243
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Duration
1 March 2026–28 February 2029 -
Link to SICRIS
24561 -
Project Leader
Interdependence is a fundamental yet contested aspect of the human condition. A defining trait of our species is our complete helplessness in infancy, which makes us entirely reliant on our community during the early years before eventually entering a relationship of economic and social interdependence in adulthood. Since the Anthropocene era, we have also become interdependent with the planet itself - not only are we affected by it, but we are capable of influencing it, as the pressing environmental crisis reminds us. While in the past, (inter)dependency was confined to local communities and environments, it has now reached global proportions as technological development has rendered us economically, socially, and environmentally interdependent on a global scale.
Yet, this interdependence is repeatedly obscured by a narrative of individual self-sufficiency. Western political philosophy has long imagined the "state of nature" as one of solitary, self-reliant individuals, only renouncing their solitude due to external demands. Such thought experiments are significant as they convey a phantasmatic scene that structures our perceptions and interpretations of the world. Stating the harmful effects of the occultation of interdependence in dominant discourse, this project aims to critically analyze the phenomenon of interdependence denialism, along with its ideological, psychic, political, and philosophical implications. Furthermore, it will compare and unify different approaches to interdependence into a robust theoretical framework, in order to offer a significant new contribution to the understanding of interdependence as a psychic, cultural, and political phenomenon, as well as its theoretical and artistic conceptualizations.
This will be achieved through three interconnected work packages. The first will analyze the denial of interdependence as a cultural, psychic, and political phenomenon, employing an interdisciplinary humanities-based approach that integrates psychoanalytic frameworks with political theory, cultural analysis, and case studies. The second will investigate contemporary philosophical conceptualizations of interdependence, their theoretical intersections, and political implications, situating it in relation to theories of dependence and autonomy, agonistic public space, shared vulnerability, and politics of care. Concepts of translation and metabolism will also feature prominently as ways of imagining intercultural and environmental interdependence. The third work package will examine how literary, cinematic, and artistic practices engage with, challenge, and reimagine prevailing notions of interdependence, seeking to articulate a poetics of interdependence that disrupts dominant distributions of the sensible and opens up new modes of imagining our entangled world.
The project will be carried out through three interconnected work packages. The first approaches interdependence through the phenomenon of its denial, understood as a cultural, psychic and political phenomenon. This will be examined through an interdisciplinary humanities-based approach combining psychoanalytic theory with political philosophy, cultural analysis and case studies. The second work package investigates contemporary philosophical conceptualizations of interdependence, their theoretical intersections and political effects. It situates interdependence in relation to theories of dependence and autonomy, agonistic public space, shared vulnerability and the politics of care. Special attention will also be given to translation and metabolism as paradigmatic ways of imagining interdependence. The third work package examines how literary, cinematic and artistic practices engage with, challenge and reconfigure prevailing concepts of interdependence. Its aim is to formulate a “poetics of interdependence” that disrupts dominant distributions of the sensible and opens new ways of imagining an entangled world.
Work package plan
WP1: Forms of denial of interdependence and their psychic and political dimensions.
Methodology: We will combine psychoanalytic theory, textual analysis and case studies in order to examine the denial of interdependence as a cultural, psychic and political phenomenon. The work package adopts an interdisciplinary approach that brings psychoanalytic frameworks together with political theory and cultural analysis.
Task 1.0: Preliminary conceptual framework.
Task 1.1: The role of defense mechanisms in the denial and disavowal of interdependence.
Task 1.2: Ideology, identification and the political denial of interdependence.
Task 1.3: Ambivalences of interdependence.
Task 1.4: Review and reflection.
WP2: Contemporary philosophical conceptualizations of interdependence and their intersections.
Methodology: We will use a philosophical and interdisciplinary approach to analyze contemporary conceptualizations of interdependence, their intersections with political theory, ethics and ecology, and their implications for understanding social antagonisms. Through conceptual analysis, textual interpretation and critical synthesis, we will examine how interdependence is theorized and practiced within different philosophical frameworks.
Task 2.0: Preliminary conceptual analysis.
(a) Situating interdependence within the broader semantic and philosophical context of dependence and independence;
(b) Reviewing foundational works and examining key intellectual traditions related to interdependence, such as theories of recognition and domination.
Task 2.1: Interdependence in conflict.
(a) Analyzing the role of interdependence in selected chapters of political philosophy, with an emphasis on agonistic democracy, mutual vulnerability and the ethics of care;
(b) Exploring interdependence as a framework for addressing social antagonisms and rethinking universality.
Task 2.2: Conceptualizing interdependence.
(a) Translation as a paradigm: exploring translation as a paradigm of interdependence through decolonial and postcolonial approaches;
(b) Metabolism as a paradigm: analyzing the entanglement of the social, economic and ecological dimensions of interdependence through the conceptual framework of metabolism and metabolic rift.
Task 2.3: Synthesis.
WP3: Aesthetics of interdependence.
Methodology: This work package adopts a multidisciplinary and comparative approach combining aesthetic theory, cultural analysis and decolonial perspectives in order to examine how interdependence is represented, thematized and transformed through artistic and cultural forms. By bringing critical theory into dialogue with literary studies and visual analysis, it explores artistic and cultural expressions of interdependence in literature, film and the visual arts.
Task 3.1: Aesthetics of disruption: examining how artistic practices interrupt dominant sensory regimes and challenge normative understandings of interdependence.
Task 3.2: Narrative strategies of interdependence: analyzing how literary texts represent interdependence both as a thematic question and as a structural narrative element.
Task 3.3: Development of the theoretical framework and comparative synthesis.
WP4: Dissemination.