FREN 4330 - The Will of the People

(crosslisted)
(also COML 4335, GOVT 4636) (CA-AS)

Spring. 4 credits.

Conducted in English.Co-meets with COML 6781/FREN 6331/GOVT 6636.

T. McNulty.

This course departs the premise that the Freudian theory of the subject as an eventual, episodic subject that manifests itself only in rare moments of speech remains the theory of the subject most relevant for political and social theory-and this despite the fact that it is largely dismissed as a “bourgeois individualist” take on the private subject withdrawn from the social link. We will focus our attention on the problem of the act: its definition and function, possible manifestations, and consequences for the social link and for political change. For Freud, an act gives expression to the desire of an individual subject, a desire that is absolutely singular and cannot be represented on the social stage. Nonetheless, we know an act only by the effects or consequences it produces for a collectivity or group. How then can we think about the paradoxical articulation of individual and collectivity that the acts enables, and how does it differ from what Freud calls the “group psychology,” founded upon mechanisms of identification and idealization? Psychoanalytic theories of the subject will be put in dialogue with the works of a number of different authors from different periods and contexts who have likewise attempted to think through the relationship between the individual subject (of desire) and the collectivity.