Name: Neurosis by Why Theory
Duration: 1 h 21 min 20 s
Description: Ryan and Todd discuss the diagnostic categories of psychoanalysis, beginning with neurosis. They analyze the three forms of neurosis--hysteria, obsession, and phobia--while also focusing on the different manifestations of these three forms in the contemporary political arena.

Happy anniversary! Still my favourite podcast, looking forward to seeing you in Utrecht.

How does the idea of phobia being the basic form of subjectivity or neurosis as such square with Zizek's (and I think Lacan's) idea that subjectivity is at its most basic, hysteric?

enjoyment  and  castration go hand by hand// Is it fair that enjoyment is achieved through suffering , at the expense of suffering ? If so where the obcessive neurotic enjoyment is situated

the neurotic enjoys using hysterics as a prop. the hysteric enjoys using the real master's debasement ( castration) through the eyes of the imaginary master.

What would it be to let the preserve become coextensive with the national/political terrain? Are there competing fantasies or do these things come together commensurably?

Ryan and Todd are joined for the episode by James Godley, who recently organized a conference on mourning and the pandemic, entitled "In the Wake of the Plague" (which one can access here: https://sites.dartmouth.edu/wake-of-the-plague/), to discuss Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia." They probe the cultural resonances of the text and question the reasons for its massive popularity among Freud's writings.

Mourning and Melancholia

Ryan and Todd begin a series of discussions about the classical Hollywood genres with the screwball comedy, a genre that centers on the sexual antagonism. They look at the film that kicks off the genre, It Happened One Night, as well as the high point of the genre, Bringing Up Baby, in addition to others. 


Ryan was recently a guest discussing graduate student conferences, which one can listen to here: https://soundcloud.com/lclcoralhistory

Screwball Comedy

In their penultimate episode on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Ryan and Todd analyze the religion section of the book. They focus most on the comic work of art and the revealed religion sections as they try to make sense of why Hegel gives religion such a prominent place in the Phenomenology.

Ryan was recently a guest discussing graduate student conferences, which one can listen to here: https://soundcloud.com/lclcoralhistory
 
Barry Manilow’s “misunderstood” Dr. Pepper song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyonMvAh1Bw

Hegel's Religion

Ryan and Todd discuss the diagnostic categories of psychoanalysis, beginning with neurosis. They analyze the three forms of neurosis--hysteria, obsession, and phobia--while also focusing on the different manifestations of these three forms in the contemporary political arena.

Neurosis

Ryan and Todd explore the philosophical concept of the event, tracing its trajectory through three thinkers--Martin Heidegger, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek. They make this discussion concrete with an extended discussion of the current revolutionary feminist actions occurring in Iran.

Event

Ryan and Todd trace the history of how thinkers have dealt with the problem of love--the varying definitions of love, the view of love's role in society, and love's philosophical importance. They begin with Plato's Symposium, touch on the New Testament, explore the role of love in Hegel's thought, discuss Badiou's love event, and conclude with the psychoanalytic conception of love, as developed by Jacques Lacan and Mari Ruti.

Love

Ryan and Todd discuss Todd's latest book Enjoyment Right & Left, which examines the political divide in terms of the different forms that enjoyment takes. They engage with this divide across a variety of issues, from anti-trans violence to the controversy surrounding the World Cup.

Enjoyment Right & Left

Ryan and Todd delve into Freud's late essay "Analysis Terminable and Interminable." They focus on the role that the death drive plays in this essay and in Freud's later thought. They view this through the lens of Freud's claim in this essay that psychoanalysis represents one of the three impossible professions.

Analysis Terminable & Interminable

Ryan and Todd attempt to show why the term "poststructuralism" is inapt for describing any of the thinkers that it usually is thought to indicate. They go through the major theorists known under this moniker and reveal why poststructuralism doesn't exist.

Poststructuralism

Ryan and Todd unpack Marx's concept of surplus value and explore its fundamental role in the interpretation of capitalist society. They discuss the relationship between surplus value and profit, while considering how we should think about the drive to amass surplus value.

Surplus Value

Ryan and Todd explore the idea of surplus enjoyment as the basis for a theory of capitalism. They consider the psychic hold that capitalism has in terms of the surplus enjoyment that it both promises and provides.

Surplus Enjoyment

Why Theory brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomena.

Neurosis

Why Theory

Recent comments

Erik Warner

Maisch Krane

Maisch Krane

Ryley Alger-hempstead

Related tracks