1st Edition

On Psychoanalysis and Violence Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives

Edited By Vanessa Sinclair, Manya Steinkoler Copyright 2019
    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    232 Pages
    by Routledge

    Psychoanalysis has not examined violence as such since it is a sociological and criminological concept; psychoanalysis is concerned with speech. On Psychoanalysis and Violence brings together noted Lacanian psychoanalysts and scholars to fill an important gap in psychoanalytic scholarship that addresses what the contributors term the "angwash" of our current time.

    Today violence is everywhere. We are inundated with it, exhausted by it, bombarded by images and reports of it on a daily, even hourly basis. This book examines how psychoanalysis can account for the many manifestations of violence in contemporary society. Drawing on a broadly Lacanian perspective, the authors explore violence in war, terrorism, how the media portrays violence, violent video games, questions of identity, difference and the ‘other’; violence narratives and violence and DSM, and explain how to account for how violence arises and the effect it has on us on both an individual and social level. These are just some of the daily social realities of the present day whose aggression are felt by everyone, which horrify us and which we often feel powerless to change. The contributors have therefore coined a term for this cultural malaise: "angwash", arguing that we are awash in angoisse or anxiety, in a constant panic regarding the impossible and contradictory demands of a "civilization" in crisis.

    On Psychoanalysis and Violence will be of great interest to Lacanian psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists.

    Foreword: Is the American Youth Rebelling Against America? Gérard Pommier Introduction Vanessa Sinclair and Manya Steinkoler Chapter 1: Bodies and the Object-Death Jean-Jacques Moscovitz Chapter 2: Political Philosophy in Freud: The Death Drive and the Critical Faculty Judith Butler Chapter 3: The End(s) of Violence Juliet Flower MacCannell Chapter 4: The Sex in Their Violence: Eroticizing Biopower Todd McGowan Chapter 5: Lone Wolf Terrorists: Howling in the Eye of the Wind - The Case of Adam Lanza Manya Steinkoler Chapter 6: The Tortured Child Franz Kaltenbeck Chapter 7: Click and Destroy: The Clinic of Video Games Vincent Le Corre Chapter 8: Violence in Repetition Martine Fourré Chapter 9: The Violence of Psychiatric Diagnosis Patrick Landman Chapter 10: How to Measure What: Notes on Universals and Particulars Todd Dean Chapter 11: Violence to Aggressiveness Guy Dana Chapter 12: Why the Zombies Ate My Neighbors: Whither Ambivalence? Carol Owens & Stephanie Swales Chapter 13: Susan Stern: Sham Geneviève Morel Chapter 14: Breaking the Spell of the Slave Revolt in Morality: From the Subreption of Identity-in-Difference to the Repetition of the Paraconsistent Alireza Taheri Chapter 15: Terror and the Unconscious: Psychoanalysis in Argentina 1976-1983 Patricia Gherovici

    Biography

    Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst based in New York City, USA and Stockholm, Sweden, author of Switching Mirrors (Trapart, 2016) and the upcoming Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (Routledge, 2019) and editor of Rendering Unconscious (Trapart, 2018).

    Manya Steinkoler, Ph.D. is an English Professor at Borough of Manhattan College CUNY and a psychoanalyst in New York City, USA. She is co-editor with Patricia Gherovici of Lacan on Madness: Madness Yes You Can’t (Routledge, 2015), Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and forthcoming Psychoanalysis and Sexuality: From Feminism to Trans (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

    "In this superb collection of essays, the editors have brought together a stellar cast of international scholars for the purpose of testing psychoanalytic theory and practice against the seemingly unstoppable instances of violence that have come to define and dominate the still young 21st Century. Probing into the motives behind ostensibly gratuitous acts of aggression and considering how violence itself has been transformed by the current age of connectivity, this book offers a fresh perspective on the traumatic disruptions of our contemporary social fabric, whilst unlocking fascinating new dimensions of Freud’s brainchild. As such, it will leave a lasting imprint on the minds of its readers."-Dany Nobus, Professor of Psychoanalytic Psychology, Brunel University London

    "This fascinating collection of essays presents a much needed psychoanalytic explanation for old and new forms of violence we are experiencing today. People, however, are not only aggressive towards others, but more and more towards themselves. And, sadly, in times of constant surveillance, violence is on the increase in the way governments and corporations treat people. Anyone who is puzzled by the question of what violence means today and how the forms of aggression changed in the last decade will greatly benefit from this highly original book."-Renata Salecl, Professor, School of Law, Birkbeck College, London, author of Tyranny of Choice