Bad Dreams and Secret Artists: Translating Freud into Literature

2002 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Popular Approach ◽  
English Reader ◽  
Creative Writer ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This article addresses the increasingly popular approach to Freud and his work which sees him primarily as a literary writer rather than a psychologist, and takes this as the context for an examination of Joyce Crick's recent translation of The Interpretation of Dreams. It claims that translation lies at the heart of psychoanalysis, and that the many interlocking and overlapping implications of the word need to be granted a greater degree of complexity. Those who argue that Freud is really a creative writer are themselves doing a work of translation, and one which fails to pay sufficiently careful attention to the role of translation in writing itself (including the notion of repression itself as a failure to translate). Lesley Chamberlain's The Secret Artist: A Close Reading of Sigmund Freud is taken as an example of the way Freud gets translated into a novelist or an artist, and her claims for his ‘bizarre poems' are criticized. The rest of the article looks closely at Crick's new translation and its claim to be restoring Freud the stylist, an ordinary language Freud, to the English reader. The experience of reading Crick's translation is compared with that of reading Strachey's, rather to the latter's advantage.

Managing Race in the American Workplace

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Skrentny
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Racial Diversity ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
The Way

This chapter introduces the problems of the roles racial differences play in the workplace. It discusses the changes in the way Americans talk about race and what pragmatic and progressive voices say that they want since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Never before has such a wide variety of employers, advocates, activists, and government leaders in American society discussed the benefits of racial diversity and the utility of racial difference in such a broad range of contexts. Thus, the chapter points out the emerging discourse of race as a qualification for employment, and briefly details the many issues as well as the role of established laws on such an issue. It also lays out the conceptual foundations upon which the following chapters will be based on.

The Science of Worldlessness

2020 ◽  
pp. 128-192
Author(s):  
Roland Végső
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
The Way

The chapter examines the role of worldlessness in the works of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. The first half of the chapter concentrates on Freud and the way the worldlessness of life becomes the central problem of his metapsychological reflections. This inquiry allows us to define the Freudian unconscious as the location where the worldlessness of life and the worldlessness of thought meet. The second half of the chapter traces the idea of worldlessness in the works of Lacan. It focuses on Lacan’s discussions of the signifier, psychosis and anxiety. It concludes by arguing that Lacan defines psychoanalysis as the science of worldlessness.

Experience and its Others

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipa Rothfield
Keyword(s):  
Human Agency ◽  
Active Type ◽  
Postmodern Dance ◽  
Subjective Agency ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

This chapter draws on Deleuzian thought in order to think through the role of experience within dance and the activity of dancing more generally. It contrasts phenomenological approaches to dancing, which appeal to notions of subjective agency, with a Deleuzian re-reading of subjectivity. In the process, it refers to Deleuze’s reading of Nietzsche, using Nietzsche’s concept of force to account for the many ways in which forces combine to produce movement. The notion of force is able to explain the way action unfolds without being the product of human agency. It offers a way of rethinking phenomenological notions of agency. According to this account, relations of force underlie action, as well as the many modes of interiority (subjectivity). But these two kinds of formation (of force) are different in kind. They belong to differing types (of force). The pursuit of action, including the utilisation of experience in action, constitutes a certain type of ethos, which Deleuze calls the active type, whereas the formation of experience belongs to ‘the reactive apparatus’, that which reacts but does not act. The active type drives a wedge between the dancing and the dancer. Deleuze’s treatment of Nietzsche can be adapted to account for the variety of dance practices, their production of training and technique, custom and virtuosity. In particular, it is able to account for the specific ways in which postmodern dance displaces the subjectivity of the dancer.

scholarly journals “Our Bravest and Most Beautiful Soldier”: Pola Negri, Wartime and the Gendering of Anxiety in Hotel Imperial

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-176
Author(s):  
Elisabetta Girelli
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
Narrative Function

This article focuses on Pola Negri, one of the most iconic stars of the silent era, and concentrates on her performance and image in the Hollywood film Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1927). Assessing Negri's character within the wartime context of the plot, her screen presence and narrative function are analysed in relation to wartime anxiety, gender roles, and the role of the home front. Specifically, this article argues that Negri's exceptional display of anxiety, in contrast to the acting of her male co-protagonists, can be fruitfully understood as a distinctly “female”, empowering quality, aiding her role of main agent in the film. In the light of selected texts by Sigmund Freud, Charles Bachelard, and Lindsey Stonebridge, this article offers a close reading of Negri's performance, showing that Negri productively unblocks and mobilises the inherent anxiety of the film's time and place. Positioned in traditionally female locations, the home front and the domestic space, Negri acts upon the former by controlling the latter, enabling not only her own rescue, but also that of her menfolk: her soldier lover and, indirectly, the whole Austro-Hungarian army. This discussion is linked to the dramatic shift in Negri's image in Hotel Imperial, a shift which has traditionally been criticised as a weakening of her persona; this article instead argues that, far from being “tamed” by the shedding of her vamp connotations, Negri emerges as the film's strongest presence, gaining agency and power while explicitly rejecting patriarchal constructions of female sex-appeal.

scholarly journals A Doctor and a Scholar

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-74
Author(s):  
Ronald Ross
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
The Way

Too often critics ignore the philosophic significance of Eryximachus, the physician from Plato’s Symposium, and mistakenly dismiss Eryximachus’ presence in the text. However, this paper argues that a review of the role of medicine in the Platonic dialogues, coupled with a close reading of the Symposium’s structure and language reveals how the physician’s emphasis on love as a harmonizing force is analogous to Socrates’ emphasis on balance and harmony throughout the dialogues. Also, the description of the good physician is reflective of the way a good philosopher operates. By employing the medical trope, Eryximachus’ speech allows the reader greater insight into Platonic philosophy.

scholarly journals To Dream of Fanon: Reconstructing a Method for Thought by a Revolutionary Intellectual

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Anjali Prabhu
Keyword(s):  
Half Century ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The People ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
The Many ◽  
Death Of The Author ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

The half-century, which is the time that has elapsed since the publication of Wretched of the Earth, seems such a short period when one imagines its author in all his intellectual magnificence, his anguish, and the many details we all know of his short-lived reality. Dare one say, after the concept has long been declared “dead” that we imagine him as having been a live “author”? As I write this, the idea of various notable intellectuals and revolutionary movements could come to mind in order for them to serve as interesting comparisons as we discuss and remember Fanon, his analyses of the colonial aftermath, and his many predictions, both explicit and implicit. However, the “death” of the author is, in fact, as Barthes’ polemical essay showed, a premise that empowers the text in its full potentiality well beyond the deism by which the identity of the author becomes the authority. Here, the liberation of the text joins up the enunciation with its “content” so to speak, or in Barthes’ words, reveals how Fanon “made of his very life a work for which his book was a model.” It is from this idea that I wish to see Fanon as incomparable. The reason to do so does not stem from some esoteric form of admiration, but rather a conviction that Fanon’s narration itself is both indicative and exemplary of a process of thinking that, for me, remains unparalleled in theorizing the role of the intellectual. Such a conviction requires us to read beyond the content of Wretched and be “reborn” in the Barthesian sense as readers. In essence, it is to simply follow the way Fanon himself allows us to actually trace how he dreams of “the native” or “the people” and thus accomplishes an affective leap, arguably, more completely than any other intellectual. This reading is, thus, an invitation to dream – even momentarily – of Fanon.

Impassioned Democracy: The Roles of Emotion in Deliberative Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 923-927
Author(s):  
MICHAEL A. NEBLO
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Democratic Deliberation ◽  
Arbitrary Power ◽  
Fruitful Research ◽  
The Way

In ordinary language, people often treat emotion as the opposite of reason. Deliberative democrats, however, typically use “reason” in a rather different way. They regard arbitrary power, not emotion, as the opposite of reason. Emotion, then, is not at all contrary to reason. Critics who rely on ordinary language to claim that deliberative democrats denigrate emotion are likely to misconstrue how both reason and emotion are deployed. In fact, most deliberative democrats have always assigned emotion an indispensable role in their theories. That said, emotion’s role in deliberation needs more, and more systematic, elaboration. I identify twelve distinct roles for emotion in deliberative theory and practice, clearing the way for a more fruitful research agenda on the role of emotion in democratic deliberation.

Music and Neo-Victorian Gothic Tropes: The Glass Armonica in A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-144
Author(s):  
Francesca Battaglia
Keyword(s):  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

This contribution analyses the role of music in A Slight Trick of the Mind (2005) by Mitch Cullin, highlighting the way in which the novel contradicts itself in its effort to reject Holmesian stereotypes. Indeed, although the common beliefs inspired by John Watson's authorship are disavowed in order to provide a more realistic portrait of the man behind the legend, the Victorian past keeps haunting Holmes through an old case concerning a glass armonica. Since a parallel can be drawn between the instrument and Holmes's iconic violin, it is argued that the sub-narrative ends up functioning as a neo-Victorian mise en abyme, where those gothic elements potentially related to Holmes's musicianship in the original texts appear to be projected onto the glass armonica and female characters, drawing attention to the gendered codes of music's discourse in neo-Victorian narratives. Indeed, while the violin may serve in the canon as a male signifier, albeit a controversial one, the glass armonica carries feminine connotations that shed new light on the many possible re-presentations of Sherlock Holmes's favourite instrument.

Calligraphic Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 199-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamil Jeppie
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Way

Is it possible to productively bring together two seemingly exclusive ideas: Africa and philology? This essay presents a case for working at multiple levels and numerous sites in bridging these apparently disparate realms. Indeed, there is already a tradition of philological study about and on the continent that reveal the many different trajectories of Islamic scholarship in particular. While surveying this field, which has advanced substantially in recent decades, it also suggests that there are key issues that require examination such as the question of the archive and the collection, their constitution and movement. Philology, no matter how it is conceived, rests on the availability of texts and therefore the histories of the way texts come to accumulate in certain places and are discovered or recovered at specific moments is part of the project of the philological encounter. We thus have to be mindful of the histories and practices before, in, and after the practice of deep, close reading.

Russian Stereotypes in the Freud-Jung Correspondence

Slavic Review ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
James L. Rice
Keyword(s):  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Sherlock Holmes ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Historic Significance ◽  
Fragmented Data ◽  
The Way

Your Russian (and I must tell you again how I admire your patience, or rather your resignation) probably has some Utopian dream of a world-benefiting therapy and feels the work is not getting on fast enough. I believe their race more than any other lacks the knack for self-inflicted drudgery. By the way, do you know the story about the “glass rear end”? A practicing physician should never forget it.Freud to Jung, June 3, 1909From 1906 to 1914 C. G. Jung and Sigmund Freud exchanged 360 personal letters, most of them mailed between Zürich and Vienna. These years saw the consolidation of an international Freudian school by 1909 and multiple schisms within the movement, from the defection of Adler in 1911 to the final alienation of Jung himself. Given the era and the specific localities, it is not surprising to find that Russians and Russian political issues now and then figure, oddly and elliptically, among the welter of topics raised in the Freud-Jung Briefwechsel. Out of the fragmented data an incident of sorts emerges, with a Russian cast in the role of seductress (later heroine), Jung as victim (and unwitting villain), and Freud himself intervening “Sherlock Holmes-like” (as he put it) to help solve the case. Beyond its intrinsic and eccentric appeal, the material holds a three-fold historic significance for the Slavicist.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document