CartWhat is Eco-Freud? Instructor: Michael MarderProgram: Transdisciplinary StudiesCredit(s): 2Date: May 9th, 23rd, 30th, June 6th, 13th, 20th, 27th, July 4th.Time: 14:00-16:30 ET
DESCRIPTION: This is, again, Freud’s moment. Just when “the father of psychoanalysis” has been all but written off, his agile, living thinking and method becomes more important than ever. To be more precise, this is the time of the weird (perhaps the weirdest) Freud, who finds the anachronistic structures of past ages preserved in our psychic life as though no time had elapsed; who locates the entire development of humankind, the history of life on earth, and a succession of geological epochs in a miniaturized and sped-up fashion within the story of a single human life; who, beyond the pleasure principle, discovers the death drive in the temptation of absolute regression to a state devoid of all tension in the inorganic prelude of organic existence; who revives the ancient thinking of eros, translated into a drive toward the aggregation of multiplicities, human or not; who locates the origins of time-perception in the rhythmic acts of reality testing by the antennae-like apparatus of consciousness, which is but a small retractable part of the unconscious.
The list of strange and evermore relevant aspects of Freud’s work goes on almost indefinitely. The physiological, ecological, geological, and planetary aspects of Freud’s works, long overlooked or dismissed as sheer eccentricities, are finally coming to the forefront as astute features of psychoanalysis, uniquely fitting to contemporary thought. In this Seminar, we will analyze the invaluable contributions of “eco-Freud,” a barely recognized conceptual figure who holds essential insights on how to relate to, deal with, counteract, and transform the ever-worsening situation of planetary devastation, understanding the relevance of psychoanalysis in a world ablaze or in ruins.
Session 1: Eco-Psychoanalysis and Geo-Psychoanalysis, Part I
Session 2: Eco-Psychoanalysis and Geo-Psychoanalysis, Part II
Session 3: Anxiety and Hysteria: Between Organismic and Ecological Bodies
Session 4: Freud on Plants and Animals, Part I
Session 5: Freud on Plants and Animals, Part II
Session 6: Biodiversity and the Death Drive
Session 7: Joking, Kissing, Knowing
Session 8: Trauma and Beyond
IMAGE: Antonio Rodriguez, Untitled, 2022
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