As the repressed is wont to return, we will start this group off by diving into the deep end of psychoanalysis with the Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Our selected text for Fall ’11 will be, “Seminar XX: ‘Encore’ On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge” – as it is not only an entry point into the ‘later Lacan’ but is also an ‘encore’ of many of the concepts that he had already been developing through his career. Main topics for this Seminar will include: jouissance, discourse theory, sexuation, love, theories of knowledge and the topology of the subject.

In the Spring of ’12 we will likely go whichever way our unconsciousnesses lead us to further explore texts which are relevant (or not) to Seminar XX; from Badiou, or Deleuze and Guattari, or to Lacaninas that don’t necessarily bear the surname Žižek.

For the Fall semester of 2012 we will come back to Lacan’s Seminar, and the options will include one of the following:

Seminar I: Freud’s Papers on Technique
Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis

Since there isn’t really any one good place or time to begin reading Lacan, students, or non-students, of any level or department are welcome to join the group at any time.

For more information please contact Ben Kozicki at bjk4@rice.edu.