Aneconomy, Indirection, Undecidability

This essay explores how, in each of Jacques Derrida’s late encounters with psychoanalysis, he critiques the limit of a certain economic principle of the Freudian death drive, opening up its deterministic logic to a principle of indetermination. The essay draws out three key terms—aneconomy from Archive Fever, indirection from “Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul,” and undecidability from Glas and The Death Penalty seminars—to show how Derrida suggests a move beyond an “economy of the possible,” thereby showcasing the potentiality of a properly deconstructive psychoanalytic thought. With these three movements, the essay traces the implications of Derrida’s “principled” critique of the economy of the death drive for his consideration of the death penalty.

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Context

Against the Death Penalty ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691209883.003.0003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 54-84

Author(s):

Giuseppe Pelli

Keyword(s):

Death Penalty ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Legal Practice ◽

Dynamic Phase ◽

Provincial Capital ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Church ◽

Opening Up ◽

Formative Years

This chapter reviews the early and formative years of Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli in a Tuscan, an imperial and a Roman Catholic context. It introduces the top officials with whom Giuseppe Pelli had to deal when he was embarking on his career in the late 1750s and early 1760s. The chapter recounts the time when he was composing a draft of his treatise Against the Death Penalty, which provides valuable information about the opportunities that were opening up for new men to work in the local and imperial administration, and about the nature of the relationship between the seat of power in Vienna and the provincial capital of Florence. The chapter also details the more dynamic phase of reform in Tuscany, included, and culminated in, the publication of a new code of laws which, among other things, abolished torture and the death penalty. Ultimately, it elaborates the power of the Papacy and the influence of the Church in the society, culture, economy, law and legal practice.

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For the Love of Psychoanalysis

10.5422/fordham/9780823284115.001.0001 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Elizabeth Rottenberg

Keyword(s):

Foreign Body ◽

Death Penalty ◽

Psychoanalytic Theory ◽

Death Drive ◽

History Of ◽

The Difference ◽

Psychoanalytic Writing ◽

Psychoanalysis And Philosophy

For the Love of Psychoanalysis: The Play of Chance in Freud and Derrida is a book about what exceeds or resists calculation—in life and in death. It is a book about what emerges, and perhaps only emerges, from the difference between psychoanalysis and philosophy. Part I, “Freuderrida,” opens with a nontraditional Freud: a Freud associated not with sexuality, repression, unconsciousness, and symbolization, but with accidents and chance. It begins with the accidents both in and of Freud’s writing, the unexpected insights that simultaneously produce and disrupt our received ideas of psychoanalytic theory. Whether this disruption is figured as a “foreign body,” as “traumatic temporality,” as “spatial unlocatability,” or as the “death drive,” it points to something that is neither simply inside nor simply outside the psyche, neither psychically nor materially determined. Where Part I, “Freuderrida,” leaves us open to the accidents of psychoanalytic writing, Part II, “Freuderrida,” addresses itself to what transports us back and limits the openness of our horizon. And here the example par excellence is the death penalty and the cruelty of its calculating decision. If “Freuderrida” insists on the death penalty, if it returns to it compulsively, it is not only because its calculating drive is inseparable from the history of reason as philosophical reason; it is also because the death penalty provides us with one of the most spectacular and spectacularly obscene expressions of Freud’s death drive.

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The Death Drive of Evolution (From the Perspective of Depressive Realism)

Stasis ◽

10.33280/2310-3817-21-11-1-156-180 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 156-180

Author(s):

Julie Reshe

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Evolutionary Biology ◽

Charles Darwin ◽

Central Place ◽

Natural Order ◽

Death Drive ◽

Human Species ◽

Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽

Human Exceptionalism ◽

Psychoanalytic Thought

This paper analyses Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud as depressive realists who attempted to dethrone the human species from their central place in nature and history. Both evolutionary theory and Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis partly preserve the idea of human exceptionalism, while considering psychoanalysis’s negative conceptualization of humans as the most maladapted species. This maladaption is conventionally conceptualized in psychoanalysis as a rupture from the natural order and is sometimes presented as the embodiment of the death drive. Such a concept of the death drive tends to be seen as an exclusively human drive. Developments in recent evolutionary biology and psychoanalytic thought suggest ways to elaborate on the concept of the death drive as not being exclusively human. Nature’s evolution is not the embodiment of progress that results in the appearance of the human species, and it is not the embodiment of a harmony from which humans deviate, but it is rather a rupture with itself. Nature as such is an embodiment of the death drive.

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Seeking to uncover biology's chemical roots

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20190012 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (5) ◽

pp. 435-443 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Addy Pross

Keyword(s):

Environmental Changes ◽

Biological Systems ◽

Significant Development ◽

The Road ◽

Physical Chemical ◽

Systems Chemistry ◽

Biological World ◽

Inanimate Matter ◽

The Origin Of Life ◽

Opening Up

Despite the considerable advances in molecular biology over the past several decades, the nature of the physical–chemical process by which inanimate matter become transformed into simplest life remains elusive. In this review, we describe recent advances in a relatively new area of chemistry, systems chemistry, which attempts to uncover the physical–chemical principles underlying that remarkable transformation. A significant development has been the discovery that within the space of chemical potentiality there exists a largely unexplored kinetic domain which could be termed dynamic kinetic chemistry. Our analysis suggests that all biological systems and associated sub-systems belong to this distinct domain, thereby facilitating the placement of biological systems within a coherent physical/chemical framework. That discovery offers new insights into the origin of life process, as well as opening the door toward the preparation of active materials able to self-heal, adapt to environmental changes, even communicate, mimicking what transpires routinely in the biological world. The road to simplest proto-life appears to be opening up.

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Job Validation Studies and Physical Agility Testing: Is the Vendor Telling You What They Think You Want or Are You Telling Them What You Need?

Guides Newsletter ◽

10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2016.novdec02 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 21 (6) ◽

pp. 5-11

Author(s):

E. Randolph Soo Hoo ◽

Stephen L. Demeter

Keyword(s):

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ◽

Job Analysis ◽

Specific Work ◽

Test Protocol ◽

Systematic Method ◽

Technical Standards ◽

Work Related ◽

Physical Abilities ◽

Specific Factors ◽

Key Terms

Abstract Referring agents may ask independent medical evaluators if the examinee can return to work in either a normal or a restricted capacity; similarly, employers may ask external parties to conduct this type of assessment before a hire or after an injury. Functional capacity evaluations (FCEs) are used to measure agility and strength, but they have limitations and use technical jargon or concepts that can be confusing. This article clarifies key terms and concepts related to FCEs. The basic approach to a job analysis is to collect information about the job using a variety of methods, analyze the data, and summarize the data to determine specific factors required for the job. No single, optimal job analysis or validation method is applicable to every work situation or company, but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission offers technical standards for each type of validity study. FCEs are a systematic method of measuring an individual's ability to perform various activities, and results are matched to descriptions of specific work-related tasks. Results of physical abilities/agilities tests are reported as “matching” or “not matching” job demands or “pass” or “fail” meeting job criteria. Individuals who fail an employment physical agility test often challenge the results on the basis that the test was poorly conducted, that the test protocol was not reflective of the job, or that levels for successful completion were inappropriate.

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Comparative Analysis: The State of Colorado Study, Part II

Guides Newsletter ◽

10.1001/amaguidesnewsletters.2004.marapr01 ◽

2004 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Christopher R. Brigham ◽

Kathryn Mueller ◽

Douglas Van Zet ◽

Debra J. Northrup ◽

Edward B. Whitney ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Daily Living ◽

Scientific Evidence ◽

Pain Syndrome ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Clinical Assessments ◽

Physician Judgment ◽

History Of ◽

Key Terms ◽

Causation Analysis ◽

Work Interference

Abstract [Continued from the January/February 2004 issue of The Guides Newsletter.] To understand discrepancies in reviewers’ ratings of impairments based on different editions of the AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), users can usefully study the history of the revisions as successive editions attempted to provide a comprehensive, valid, reliable, unbiased, and evidence-based system. Some shortcomings of earlier editions have been addressed in the AMA Guides, Fifth Edition, but problems remain with each edition, largely because of the limited scientific evidence available. In the context of the history of the different editions of the AMA Guides and their development, the authors discuss and contextualize a number of key terms and principles including the following: definitions of impairment and normal; activities of daily living; maximum medical improvement; impairment percentages; conversion of regional impairments; combining impairments; pain and other subjective complaints; physician judgment; and causation analysis; finally, the authors note that impairment is not synonymous with disability or work interference. The AMA Guides, Fifth Edition, contrasts impairment evaluations and independent medical evaluations (this was not done in previous editions) and discusses impairment evaluations, rules for evaluations, and report standards. Upper extremity and lower extremity impairment evaluations are discussed in terms of clinical assessments and rating processes, analyzing important changes between editions and problematic areas (eg, complex regional pain syndrome).

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