Après-Coup Psychoanalytic Association presents

Lacan and the English Language with Jean-Pierre Cléro
Friday, April 13, 2018 · 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm Saturday, April 14, 2018 · 10:30 am – 2:00 pm

The School of Visual Arts 136 West 21st Street, New York, NY

Lacan’s thesis “the unconscious is structured like a language” seems to contradict his later suggestion that certain languages are better suited than others for the practice and theory of psychoanalysis. We will focus on Lacan’s relation to English, and further elaborate on the themes dealt with in the book Lacan et la Langue Anglaise (Cléro, Essaim, 2017). We will also explore Lacan’s approach to other languages —German, Greek, Latin, Hebrew— and take a close look at what, in them, facilitates or prevents the expression of the unconscious.

Suggested Readings: J. Lacan: Seminar III, The Psychoses, 1955-56, class of May 9, 1956; Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60; E. Porge: Le ravissement de Lacan, Paris, 2015; G. Guillaume: Temps et verbe. Théorie des aspects, des modes et des temps, Paris, 1984. B. Fink, “A psychoanalytic ethics of translation”, in Against Understanding, Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key,vol. I, London and New York, 2014.

Jean-Pierre Cléro taught philosophy at the universities of Nanterre-Paris X and Rouen; now an emeritus professor, he teaches at SciencesPo (L’Institut d’études politiques) in Paris. A scholar of the notion of passion in Hume and other British authors since the 17th century, he has gradually shifted his investigations from a philosophy of affectivity to one of fictions. His books include: ; Déterminisme et liberté; L’experience; Qu’est ce que l’autorité; Les mathématiques et l’experience; Bentham; Y a-t-il une philosophie de Lacan?; Dictionnaire Lacan; Le vocabulaire de Lacan; Calcul morale, ou comment raisonner en éthique; and Lacan et la langue anglaise.

Fee: $25 per session; students with ID, $15 per session
Attendance is free for members of Après-Coup as well as for the
faculty and students of the School of Visual Arts.

For more information, visit www.apres-coup.org