Northern Theory School

Ontology and Perversion: Deleuze, Agamben, Lacan

Futures of the Archive (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2019)

This book examines the philosophical and political relevance of perversion in the works of three key representatives of contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis: Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Lacan. Perversion is often understood simply in terms of cultural or sexual phenomena. By contrast, Boštjan Nedoh places perversion at the heart of philosophical, ontological and political issues in the works of Deleuze, Agamben and Lacan. He examines the relevance of their discussions of perversion for their respective critical ontological projects. By tracing the differences between these thinkers’ understanding of perversion, the book finally draws lines of delimitation between the vitalist and the structuralist or psychoanalytic philosophical positions in contemporary philosophy.

Endorsements:

Why is perversion not simply a social phenomenon but a mode of being? In this remarkable book, Nedoh audaciously stalks a novel ontology that dresses in variegated furs. Lacan’s indifferently ferocious superego is juxtaposed to and played against the vitalist simulacra of Deleuze’s Masoch and Agamben’s Sphinx. Should critique drive with high heels? – Lorenzo Chiesa

Boštjan Nedoh is a Research Fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Institute of Philosophy, Ljubljana

Sensing the Arts

Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts and Languages (CIDRAL) at the University of Manchester

Roundtable with Adam Phillips: Psychoanalysis, Morality and the Senses

Adam Phillips with Dr Monica Pearl and Professor Ian Parker. Chair: Professor Jackie Stacey (CIDRAL Director)

Recommended background readings:

1. ‘Punishing Parents’ in One Way and Another (2013), pp. 351-371

2. ‘On Satisfaction’  Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life  (2012), pp. 137-168

3. ‘On a More Impersonal Note’ in Intimacies (Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips) (2008), pp. 89-117

Additional background reading:

4. ’The Pragmatics of Passion’ (Ch 20) Promises, Promises: Essays on Literature and Psychoanalysis (2000), pp. 296-309

(PDFs available at: http://events.manchester.ac.uk/event/event:ki-hwl172v1-d9rs2u)

Adam Phillips is a freelance psychoanalyst and wrier. After studying English at the University of Oxford, he trained as a child psychotherapist and became Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital in London. He is the author of nineteen books, including: Winnicott (1988), On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored (1993), Monogamy (1996), Houdini’s Box (2001), Missing Out (2012), One Way and Another (2013). A regular contributor to the London Review of Books, Raritan, and The Threepenny Review, Phillips is also the general editor of new translations of Freud’s work published by the Penguin Press.

Dr Monica Pearl is Lecturer in Twentieth Century American Literature at the University of Manchester. She is the author of AIDS Literature and Gay Identity: The Literature of Loss (Routledge, 2013) and essays on the graphic memoir Fun Home, the play Angels in America, the writing of W.G. Sebald, and opera.

Professor Ian Parker is Professor of Management in the School of Management at the University of Leicester, Co-Director of the Discourse Unit (www.discourseunit.com), secretary of Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix and a practising psychoanalyst in Manchester. He is also Honorary Professor of Education at the University of Manchester. His recent books include Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Revolutions in Subjectivity (Routledge, 2011), and six books in the series ‘Psychology after Critique’ (Routledge, 2015).

3.30-5.30pm, 4 February 2015

University Place Lecture Theatre A,

University of Manchester

Followed by wine reception at Cafe Muse.

For more information: email: clara.bradbury-rance@manchester.ac.uk, go to www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/cidral/ or tweet @cidral_uom

Reading and Interpretation: Getting Over Freud is a discussion group for staff and postgraduate students interested in questions about how we read literature.

This series of seminars will look at contemporary writers, such as Martin Hägglund and Adam Phillips, who have challenged our strategies of reading and ways of interpreting everything from death and dreams to sex and selfhood. The focus of discussion will be topics such as: should we read for surface or for depth? Does a text have an unconscious? And do texts say what they mean or mean what they say? We might all be reading after Freud, but the thinkers this series will explore are all getting one over, getting out from under, or getting (a leg) over Freudian modes of interpretation.

In the next meeting, Dr Ziad Elmarsafy (University of York) will be introducing a seminar looking at Edward Said as a reader, focusing on the essay ‘Secular Criticism’ from The World, the Text, and the Critic. Dr Elmarsafy, a Reader in the English Department at the University of York, is the author of The Enlightenment Qur’an (2009) and Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel (2012), and co-editor of Debating Orientalism (2013) and the forthcoming collection What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say.

Future speakers include: Professor Hugh Haughton (introducing three essays by Adam Phillips); Professor Derek Attridge, (introducing a chapter from his forthcoming book, The Work of Literature) and Dr Nicholas Ray (introducing Jean Laplanche’s essay, ‘The Unfinished Copernican Revolution’). Please see Events page for further details.

Monday, 5th May, 6:30pm.

Room BS/007, Berrick Saul Building, Heslington West Campus, University of York.

For more information and copies of readings, please contact Alex Alonso (aa611@york.ac.uk) or Doug Battersby (djmb501@york.ac.uk).

Interested staff and postgraduate students from all universities are welcome to attend.

A workshop with Professor Agata Bielik-Robson (University of Nottingham) on political theology, divine violence and tragedy in the thought of Benjamin.

Agata Bielik-Robson is Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Nottingham. She has published widely in all areas of Jewish philosophy with special emphasis paid on modern Jewish thought, from Spinoza to Derrida. She also researches contemporary philosophy and psychoanalysis, particularly when in a dialogue (or polemic) with theology. This workshop will be of benefit to Benjamin scholars (or those curious about his work) across a spectrum of disciplines: critical theory, philosophy, theology, art history, literature and beyond.

Friday 28th February, 3.00-5.30 pm

Leeds Humanities Research Institute, 29-31 Clarendon Place

University of Leeds

In order to reserve a place, please contact Stefan Skrimshire (s.skrimshire@leeds.ac.uk).

This event is hosted by the Quilting Points reading group at the University of Leeds and the Northern Theory School. It is generously supported by the Leeds Humanities Research Institute.