Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles was named the greatest film of all time by the BFI’s Sight and Sound poll late last year, the first work by a woman to top the list.[1] Laura Mulvey wrote of how the film “agonizingly depicts women’s oppression” and how “Akerman transforms cinema, itself [...]
In Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, there is a strange object that disturbs the painting’s opulence. In Seminar XI, Lacan tells us that the spectator can only see the true form of this object on his way out of the room. Along a similar line, towards the end of the seminar, Lacan points towards a cause [...]
In late fall of 2022, an article titled "Du lässt immer das Licht an!” [You always leave the lights on!] was published by Austrian newspaper[1]. The author writes in a humorous way about dynamics between family members, partners, and flatmates regarding the contemporary topic of energy saving within the household[2]. When she leaves the room [...]
On 6 December 1896, Freud wrote in his letter to Wilhelm Fliess: "Consciousness and memory are in fact mutually exclusive" (Bewußtsein und Gedächtnis schließen sich nämlich aus.).[1] This is the letter in which Freud for the first time addressed his reflections on the psychic apparatus in the draft of his Project,[2] the linking of perceiving-thinking-remembering, [...]
Just like the analysand has to pay for his desire, the analyst needs to bring something to the table, as well. He, too, has to pay, to maintain his status as an analyst. “He pays in words, in his interpretations […].”[1] But he also pays by rejecting a certain order, by opening up the possibility [...]
"I have never been interested in psychoanalysis, as you know," Annie Ernaux said in an interview with Laure Adler for the program “L’heure bleue” on Radio France Inter. Ernaux has made the same remarks several times, expressing the distance she maintains from psychoanalysis. These words were qualified by the addition of "but perhaps because I [...]
Judith Butler's political project is that of a gathering of minority and disparate communities founded on an LGBTQI+ type of gender or racial identification, as the various movements of the black, Latino or Indian communities may embody in the United States. In Eric Marty's critical study of the theoretical framework underlying this project, the notion [...]
After the 2022 midterm election, in which the Democrats won the senate majority, media coverage focused on the growing discontent in the Republican Party. [1] The Party is trying to figure out why it did not get the promised victory. They are now split in two, between candidates backed by Trump and those backed by [...]
In the early 50’s, a few years after the World War II, Iakovos Kambanellis,[1] a prominent Greek playwright, wrote the satirical play “Daddy War”.[2] The play is set in 305 BC in Rhodes (one of the most famous and very touristic Greek islands), which has managed to maintain its political neutrality and has avoided involvement [...]
On September 26, 2022, the documentary "A Trip to Infinity" was released on Netflix.[1] This film introduces a group of mathematicians, physicists and cosmologists who talk about infinity (the mathematical symbol of which ( ∞ ) is called 'a lemniscate' or 'lazy eight'). Along the way, the viewers are confronted with seemingly simple questions concerning [...]
