CALL FOR PAPERS for the ACLA Seminar/Panel

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE

Organizers: Chad Loewen-Schmidt, Rutgers University (email: lionsmith@optonline.net) and Sanja Bahun-Radunovic, Rutgers University

From the psychoanalytic perspective, all cultural constructions are coercive and inextricably bound to the dynamic of resistance. This is true not only because they are repressive, but because their systems, through numerous inter- and intra-subjective processes, circulate and spread, gaining power through endorsement. However, all cultural constructions, including literature and the arts, arise in resistance to and as an expression of the threat of the libidinal and potentially violent desires of the individual.

This seminar invites papers on the different strategies of resistance viewed through the psychoanalytic lenses of Freud, Lacan, Fromm, Klein, Kristeva, Fanon, and others. We understand the term “resistance” in the broadest sense as the interlacing of psychological, socio-political, and creative processes. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• psychoanalytic theory as the theory of resistance
• inter-theoretical denials and dialogues; resistance to psychoanalysis
• literature as resistance
• the aesthetics of resistance
• literary/artistic form as resistance: generic mixtures, inflections, experimentation
• silence as resistance: literary manifestations and theoretical elaborations
• laughter/jokes as resistance
• resistance and the epistemology of denial
• fathers and sons: literature and art of resistance and its ambivalent status in psychoanalytic theory
• transference resistance: resistance and the cultural Other
• repetition compulsion and narrative theory
• female writing as resistance

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Paper proposals (maximum 200 words) for 15-20 minute papers should be sent directly to the ACLA website, http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/ACLA/. The deadline for submission is October 15, 2004. For questions, please contact the seminar organizers (contact information provided above and below). Further information on the conference may be found at the ACLA homepage (web address shown below).