Abstracts Symposium in Ghent Belgium - Friday 13th January 2017 - Marx, Lacan and a Third Thing
David Pavón Cuéllar
“Marxism, psychoanalysis and the critique of psychological dualism: from dualist repression to the return of the repressed in hysteria and class consciousness”
A Lacanian perspective is adopted to show how Marx and Freud, as well as Marxism and Marxist psychoanalytical theories, have critically approached the psychological separation of the psyche from everything else, including the body or the soma, society and the world. As we will see, this dualism of psychology has been described in at least three ways: as an effect and expression of the class division between manual labour and intellectual work (Marx and Engels), as the result of a repressive process (Freud and Adorno), and as a form of domination, oppression and possession of being, the truth and the body (Andrade and Crevel). These descriptions will be related to each other in such a way as to make it possible to appreciate how Marxism and psychoanalysis respectively allowed two correlative symptomatic disclosures of the truth of monism in the faults of the dualistic knowledge distributed between the dominant and the dominated: on the one hand, how Freud’s elucidation of hysteria discovered the return of the repressed soma in the bourgeois psyche, of the corporeal element in the spiritual totality, of the sexual drive in the amorous feeling; on the other hand, how Marx’s clarification of class consciousness revealed the return of the repressed psychic life, of the mind and its intellectual work, in proletarians whose existence was completely reduced to their somatic subsistence, to their muscles and their manual labour. A number of Marxist and Marxist-Freudian strategies for deliberately producing the symptom of overcoming dualism will be examined: the spontaneous prefiguring movement towards idealism and self-determination of masses (Rosa Luxembourg), the reconceptualization of materialism as a consideration of the theoretical-practical totality (Lukács, Korsch and Pannekoek), the recognition of the psychic basis or core of the non-psychic socioeconomic world (Adler, Bernfeld, Reich, Fenichel and Audard), the reconstitution of an ontological-matriarchal communist logic of being instead of the economic-patriarchal classist logic of having (Andrade and Fromm), the destruction of walls between reality and madness or dreams (surrealism and institutional psychotherapy), the theoretical practice of class struggle in an ideological field that immanently presents and overdetermines the material basis (Althusser), the assumption of a materialism of the idea (Badiou), and the confusion between form and content, appearance and essence (Žižek).
Samo Tomšič
“Labour and Psychoanalysis”
Although Freud's name is usually not listed among the theoreticians of labour, his theory of the unconscious contains an important contribution, which resonates with Marx's critique of political economy in several aspects. The idea of unconscious labour introduced in the Interpretation of Dreams and maintained throughout Freud's work was soon joined by the idea of analytic labour. In doing so Freud placed at the heart of the analytic procedure an antagonism, which is supposed to progressively mobilize the unconscious labour for the transformative goals of analysis. From this perspective one can fully understand why Lacan spoke of psychoanalysis as a social bond and as a procedure seeking for an exit from the capitalist discourse. By exploring the political implications of the "organization of labour" in psychoanalysis the presentation will thus rethink some of the less prominent conceptual foundations that sustain the alliance between Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marx's critique of political economy.
“Marxism, psychoanalysis and the critique of psychological dualism: from dualist repression to the return of the repressed in hysteria and class consciousness”
A Lacanian perspective is adopted to show how Marx and Freud, as well as Marxism and Marxist psychoanalytical theories, have critically approached the psychological separation of the psyche from everything else, including the body or the soma, society and the world. As we will see, this dualism of psychology has been described in at least three ways: as an effect and expression of the class division between manual labour and intellectual work (Marx and Engels), as the result of a repressive process (Freud and Adorno), and as a form of domination, oppression and possession of being, the truth and the body (Andrade and Crevel). These descriptions will be related to each other in such a way as to make it possible to appreciate how Marxism and psychoanalysis respectively allowed two correlative symptomatic disclosures of the truth of monism in the faults of the dualistic knowledge distributed between the dominant and the dominated: on the one hand, how Freud’s elucidation of hysteria discovered the return of the repressed soma in the bourgeois psyche, of the corporeal element in the spiritual totality, of the sexual drive in the amorous feeling; on the other hand, how Marx’s clarification of class consciousness revealed the return of the repressed psychic life, of the mind and its intellectual work, in proletarians whose existence was completely reduced to their somatic subsistence, to their muscles and their manual labour. A number of Marxist and Marxist-Freudian strategies for deliberately producing the symptom of overcoming dualism will be examined: the spontaneous prefiguring movement towards idealism and self-determination of masses (Rosa Luxembourg), the reconceptualization of materialism as a consideration of the theoretical-practical totality (Lukács, Korsch and Pannekoek), the recognition of the psychic basis or core of the non-psychic socioeconomic world (Adler, Bernfeld, Reich, Fenichel and Audard), the reconstitution of an ontological-matriarchal communist logic of being instead of the economic-patriarchal classist logic of having (Andrade and Fromm), the destruction of walls between reality and madness or dreams (surrealism and institutional psychotherapy), the theoretical practice of class struggle in an ideological field that immanently presents and overdetermines the material basis (Althusser), the assumption of a materialism of the idea (Badiou), and the confusion between form and content, appearance and essence (Žižek).
Samo Tomšič
“Labour and Psychoanalysis”
Although Freud's name is usually not listed among the theoreticians of labour, his theory of the unconscious contains an important contribution, which resonates with Marx's critique of political economy in several aspects. The idea of unconscious labour introduced in the Interpretation of Dreams and maintained throughout Freud's work was soon joined by the idea of analytic labour. In doing so Freud placed at the heart of the analytic procedure an antagonism, which is supposed to progressively mobilize the unconscious labour for the transformative goals of analysis. From this perspective one can fully understand why Lacan spoke of psychoanalysis as a social bond and as a procedure seeking for an exit from the capitalist discourse. By exploring the political implications of the "organization of labour" in psychoanalysis the presentation will thus rethink some of the less prominent conceptual foundations that sustain the alliance between Freudo-Lacanian psychoanalysis and Marx's critique of political economy.