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Events and Seminars

Event	:	Taking a Knife to the Hegemon
Venue	:	Online
Date	:	08/11/2023
Duration	:	6 - 8pm GMT / 1-3pm EDT
Extra Info	:	Taking a Knife to the Hegemon: Psychoanalytic Implications for a Dionysian Father by Louis Rothschild This talk is based on Louis Rothschild's new book Rapprochement Between Fathers and Sons Although the Freudian project addresses the social from both the perspectives of tradition and living in the present, Freud’s gendered conceptions crumble under subsequent feminist and post-structural critique to reveal alienation where intersubjective mutuality might be. The Freudian conception of masculinity entails a portrait of an atomized and resentful individual that psychoanalysts as diverse as Reich, Ferenczi, and Lacan found to be traumatically reactive in a manner that eschews vulnerability. This talk aims to situate work within psychoanalysis to rework conceptions of masculine identity in a fashion that problematizes desire for domination and control in favor of mutuality. Here, Jessica Benjamin’s insight that the absence of parental nurturance causes submission is brought to bear on ecological, governmental, and familial spheres. In addition to clinical material and personal reflections, well known stories such as Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, the tragedy of Icarus, and that of Abraham and Isaac will be considered to illuminate fault lines within masculine identity and to situate our respective hopes and fears. A rigid or hegemonic masculinity is contrasted by the idea of a Dionysian or poetic father who can avow vulnerability in a fashion that privileges care in attunement to the ebbs and flows of relational co-participation. This talk is part of the Psychoanalysis and Politics series Crises and Transmission
Organised By	:	Psychoanalysis and Politics
Web Link	:	https://www.psa-pol.org/crises/taking-a-knife-to-the-hegemon-psychoanalytic-implications-for-a-dionysian-father/