In Pouvoir impérial et vertus philosophiques, Anne Gangloff offers a thorough analysis of the Roman political thought, examining the way in which the good prince is described from the Julio-Claudians to the end of the third century. Dans Pouvoir impérial et vertus philosophiques, Anne Gangloff propose une analyse précise de la pensée politique romaine, à travers la manière dont la figure du bon prince est décrite depuis les Julio-Claudiens jusqu'à la fin du IIIe siècle.

Why does Kant, who extensively wrote on sexual life in all its diversity, never mention paedophilia? I elaborate a hypothesis on the basis of the work of Foucault and Hacking: paedophilia as a “possibility of personhood” only came into being at the end of the nineteenth century. This “possibility” is linked to the introduction of a “deployment of sexuality” over and against a “deployment of alliance.” It is only at the very moment that sexuality starts being conceived in terms of (...) feelings, fantasies, and capacities that can be different in adults and children that propositions on paedophilia become intelligible. This was not yet the case in Kant’s day. I illustrate the distinction between these two “deployments” further through analysis of the approach of the Hungarian psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi. Finally, I state that this debate should not be reduced to epistemology and that Foucault’s “deployments” or Hacking’s “possibilities of personhood” are rooted in the material conditions of our existence. (shrink)

Valerie Solanas deserves fresh assessment. An innovator whose aberrant humour has not been fully recognized, Solanas embarked on the male-dominated route of a type of satire that has most commonly been represented in the form of male stand-up comedy. She does not engage in the irony, absurdly overstated ‘femininity’ or parodic self-reference with which many women comedians have ridiculed male behaviour. Her Scum Manifesto (1968) declares war on the patriarchal establishment in all its multiple forms: government, capitalism, the economy, law, (...) work, the family and male sexuality. She uses the term men to condemn all persons of either sex who perpetuate the supremacy of patriarchal institutions, which she believes in all seriousness to be a deadly threat to humanity. Solanas also denounces all forms of withdrawal, separatism and élitism, which, in her view, seriously compromise the wider political applications of SCUM. This paper interprets the notorious shooting of Andy Warhol, which, especially since the film made on this subject, is often uncritically regarded as proof of Solanas’s insanity, as an iconoclastic act of theatre in which Solanas abandoned clear-cut distinctions between life and art. (shrink)

Lacan reads Antigone, like Heidegger, in the light of the problematic of the truth (of the desire of) the subject/Dasein. The privilege accorded to the figure of Antigone and the rejection of Creon to which his interpretation bears witness, must also be understood against philosophical background. It also provides an insight into why Lacan gives Antigone – and only Antigone – a paradigmatic significance in the determination of the aim of analysis. we pointed to the analogy made by Lacan between (...) Tiresias and the analyst. the intervention of Tiresias may be understood according to the model of an analytical interpretation. The intervention of Tiresias then also corresponds to what Lacan writes elsewhere about the aim of analysis: The analysis must aim at the passage of true speech, joining the subject to another subject, on the other side of the wall of language. (shrink)

This book reflects on the problematic relation of ethics to politics in our 'democratic' era.

In this article, I question the actuality of Freud's ideas on sexuality. First, I investigate why Freud thinks that the main psychopathological syndromes are determined by problems related to sexuality. I then show in what sense Freud's theories on sexuality make it impossible to simply think of psychoanalysis as yet another developmental psychology. Then, I turn to Fonagy's recent claim that sexual emotions cannot be mirrored and that this is the reason why sexuality can only be an imposed burden. Or, (...) rather, this impossibility explains why sexuality belongs to the borderline spectrum. Fonagy further links this idea to Laplanche's theory of a generalized seduction that it is meant to explain. I argue that it is the other way around: the theory of a generalized seduction explains the lack of mirroring in the case of sexuality. In my conclusion, I state that although the metapsychological claims of both Fonagy and Laplanche allow us to reaffirm the special place sexuality has in understanding the human being, their theories fall short when it comes to defending an exclusive primacy of sexuality. (shrink)

In this article we show how the Lacanian theory of the Imaginary , as elaborated in Lacan's earlier texts, is strongly influenced by the Hegelianism of Alexandre Kojève. In the first part we explain how Lacan is giving a fresh interpretation of Freud's theory of Narcissism by making use of the category of the Imaginary. The second part indicates how the Kojèvian interpretation of the dialectics of Self-consciousness serves as a paradigm for imaginary intersubjectivity. Imaginary intersubjectivity, however, leads to an (...) impasse since authentic recognition requires a symbolic context. That is why Lacan's theory of a fundamental desire for recognition is intrinsically linked up with his theory of the Symbolic. According to Lacan this aspect has been neglected by Hegel . Hegel did not see the importance of the symbolic order. This affirmation, however, implies a severe misinterpretation of Hegel's text. In the last part we elaborate the relation between the Imaginary and the Symbolic as a dialectical one. The Lacanian interpretation of Freud's theory, ' Hegelianizes' Freud. We illustrate this in reference to the Freudian concept of 'libido'. (shrink)

In his seminar on 'Desire and its Interpretation' Lacan gives a detailed interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. We present this interpretation as an alternative to the psychobiographic approach which has been dominant in the psychoanalytic tradition. According to Lacan Hamlet is a poetic creation and nothing else. In order to understand it wedon't have to look at the unconscious motives of the author, but at the composition of the text. The deliberate articulation of the signifier accounts for the effect of the (...) play on its readers. According to Lacan Hamlet is a tragedy of desire that informs us onthe truth of human existence. It also shows how we can get access to this truth. In that sense Shakespeare's text can, according to Lacan, also learn us something about the aim of the psychoanalytic process. The conclusion argues that Lacan's interpretation of the nature of the psychoanalytic process is heavily dependent on the phenomenological tradition and more particularly that it ressembles the problematic of the 'phenomenological reduction'. (shrink)

In this article we discuss Foucault's genealogical critique of psychoanalysis as it was articulated in the first volume of The History of Sexuality. We first show on what grounds Foucault claims that psychoanalytic theory and practice can be considered to be the acme of the 'repressive hypothesis'. Through an analysis of the Freudian and Lacanian theory of the the law we then try to make plausible that Foucaults interpretation of this theory might be nothing but a philosophical translation of the (...) analysant's fantasies regarding the therapy and his/her analyst in the beginning of the cure, rather than an accurate account of it. However, this analysis of Foucault's misreading of psychoanalytic theory allows for a re-evaluation of his relation towards this theory. In our conclusion we suggest that Foucault might be much closer to Lacanian psychoanalysis then he himself realized. (shrink)