Freud and Fundamentalism: The Psychical Politics of Knowledge / Edition 3

by Stathis Gourgouris

Overview

At the heart of this volume are questions about the psychic components of the modes of thinking we call fundamentalist-that is, thinking that disavows multiplicities of meaning, abhors allegorical elements, and strives toward an exclusionary orthodoxy that codifies not just its own world but that of its adversaries, itsothers. The essays address transcendentalist orthodoxies of all kinds, whether religious or secularist. Fundamentalist elements in psychoanalysis itself are also placed in question, at the same time as psychoanalytic thinking and practice is explored as a mode of knowledge that ultimately unravels fundamentalist tendencies.The texts in this collection represent a wide array of disciplinary standpoints. Their overall aspiration is to interrogate discourses of orthodoxy, literalism, exclusion, and dogma-that is, discourses obsessed with monolithic (monolingual, monological, monolateral, monomythical, and certainly monotheistic) encounters with the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823232246
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	09/12/2010
Edition description:	3
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Stathis Gourgouris is Professor Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction Stathis Gourgouris 1

Modeling Freud and Fundamentalism Andrew Parker 17

Myth and Dogma in 1920: The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy and Freud's "Death Drive" David Adams 26

Trees, Pain, and Beyond: Freud on Masochism Branka Arsic 38

Of Rats and Names Gil Anidjar 71

Mad Country, Mad Psychiatrists: Psychoanalysis and the Balkan Genocide Dusšan Bjelic 83

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About David Lynch, but Should Be Afraid to Ask Slavoj Zizek Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli 105

Fictions of Possession: Psychoanalysis and the Occult Lecia Rosenthal 125

Religion and the Future of Psychoanalysis Jacob Taubes 138

The Contribution of Psychoanalysis to Understanding the Genesis of Society Cornelius Castoriadis 145

The Hermeneutics of Suspicion Reconsidered Joel Whitebook 166

On the Epistemological Status of Psychoanalysis Aristides Baltas 182

Notes 215

List of Contributors 247

Index 251

Editorial Reviews

The key contribution of the volume is to combat our fundamentalist tendencies in thinking about fundamentalism. The essays collected by Gourgouris throw the meanings of fundamentalism open and make of it a newly vital term for secular criticism. The debates this book engages are global and urgent, even though its key figure-Freud-is neither.-Eva Badowska

From the Publisher

The key contribution of the volume is to combat our fundamentalist tendencies in thinking about fundamentalism. The essays collected by Gourgouris throw the meanings of fundamentalism open and make of it a newly vital term for secular criticism. The debates this book engages are global and urgent, even though its key figure—Freud—is neither.”

Fordham University - Eva Badowska