The Other in Deleuze and Husserl

ABSTRACT There is no consensus regarding whether Gilles Deleuze offers a cogent theory of the Other. Deleuze develops the notion of the Other-structure, but given his scarce remarks on this concept, his treatment of this issue is debated. This article argues that to elucidate Deleuze's philosophy of the Other, his notion of the Other-structure must be analyzed in parallel to Edmund Husserl's intersubjective theory. This comparison, made possible by Natalie Depraz's reading of the Husserlian alterity, reveals nuanced phenomenological traces in Deleuze's Other-structure and its implicated structural moments while substantiating his affirmation of the Otherless world, as an impetus to surpass phenomenology.

The Pleasures of Daldaldal: Freud, Jokes, and the Development of Intersubjective Aesthetics

This article focuses on Freud's account of joking in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten, 1905) in its historical and cultural context. Freud's treatise, the author argues, must be reclaimed for modernist studies for at least two reasons. First, Freud's contribution to theories of laughter presents an important threshold in intellectual history – one that sees the emergence of contemporary notions of intersubjectivity, language, and art-production. Second and consequential to the first, Freud's 1905 assessment of joke-work deserves to be recontextualized as a modernist text in its own right. These motives provide the argumentative line and shape to the present article. It first investigates the Freudian intersubjective theory of jokes and its diverse contexts and then suggests some avenues for assessing Freud's book on jokes as a meaningful participant in a discourse and practice of modernist artistic engagement with the comic. Freud's reflections on joke-work, it is argued, amount to a seminal modernist theory not only because they purposefully depart from and rework traditional and contemporary assessments of humour but also because of their particular position in relation to modernist artistic discourse-practice as such.

The psychic life of freedom: Social pathology and its symptoms

This paper discusses the relationship between Axel Honneth?s intersubjective theory of recognition and his political theory of democratic ethical life by addressing the potentials and difficulties attached to the notion of social pathology. Taking into account the diverse uses of this concept throughout Honneth?s oeuvre, it focuses initially on two of its formulations: first, the more recent discussions presented in ?The Diseases of Society?, some of which can be read in continuity with arguments presented in Freedom?s Right; second, an implicit conception of social pathology that can be found in Struggle for Recognition. These formulations involve contrastingly different premises with regard to phenomenological, methodological, social-ontological and etiological matters. I argue that such differences can be better grasped if one bears in mind two distinctive ways of understanding the fundamental intuition at the basis of the notion of social pathology: either as an analogy or as a homology. By disclosing the actual or potential discrepancies between both conceptions, the aim is to outline the grounds on which they could be brought together within the framework of a comprehensive concept. With this purpose, I then critically examine a third conception of social pathology which was first presented in Suffering from Indeterminacy and later developed, with some restrictions, in Freedom?s Right. Finally, a definition of social pathology is suggested which can bring together the different contributions of each conception while avoiding their pitfalls.

“Remember... Whose girl you are”: Dynamics of domination in Sarah Waters’s Affinity (1999)

<p>This paper discusses, from a psychoanalytic perspective, Sarah Waters’s novel <em>Affinity</em> (1999)<em> </em>which has played a crucial role in the consolidation of the neo-Victorian genre and, indeed, has become a touchstone for contemporary feminist fiction. Through Jessica Benjamin’s intersubjective theory it analyses Waters’s extraordinary re-presentation of women’s same-sex relationships, with particular focus on the dynamics of domination and submission which characterises the female couples in the novel. Benjamin's approach to the problem of domination gives valuable insight into the psychological structures of erotic hierarchy and, in turn, opens up for new ways to understand erotic desire and power dynamics between men and women, or between people of the same sex. In addition, an exploration of <em>Affinity</em> from an intersubjective perspective casts light onto how the novel transgresses both Victorian boundaries and those that persist in contemporary culture.</p>

L'uso del modello dell'attaccamento individuale nel lavoro di coppia basato sulla psicologia del sé/intersoggettiva

- In this article Shelley Doctors presents an effective synthesis of three different theoretical contributions in the contemporary psychoanalytic field: Self Psychology, Intersubjective Perspective, Attachment Theory and the effects resulting from similar combination about Psychoanalytic Couples Treatment. In her paper, Doctors summarizes and redefines, compares and differentiates the basic concepts of the different theories with particular reference to organizing principles, to internal working models, narrative themes and to Bowlby's Attachment Theory. The paper states and demonstrates through a clinical vignette, how recognizing the internal working models aids the couples treatment based on Self Psychological/intersubjective theory. According to Doctors "the psychological organization emerging from the negotiation of attachment needs can be a ‘royal road' for the intersubjective understanding".