'Between the unspeakable and the speculum: Poetry and Psychoanalysis

source: University of Essex    2014年4月30日
An open seminar, hosted by our Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, featuring John Gale, Chief Executive of Community Housing and Therapy.
Abstract: "In his discussion of the Homeric epic Professor Jaeger, in 1939, noted that according to Hölderlin 'that which endures is the work of the poet and his words express the law'. This paper will be a reflection on what endures and on the archaeology of utterance - an archaeology that is intimately connected to castration. As a Symbolic artefact poetry stands between the darkness of the unknowable -- Freud's navel -- and Lacan's mirror of semblance in which false architectures of the self emerge as a parody of the truth. Drawing on a number of writers including Hopkins, Tagore and Celan it is suggested here that it is at the point where poetic and analytic discourse intersect with truth that the complicity between these heterologies can be seen."
To find out more about our Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies go to: http://www.essex.ac.uk/cps/