Daniel Tutt

Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics

Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics (SGPP) launched in May, 2020 at the early apex of the COVID-19 global pandemic with a reading group on Sylvain Lazaraus’s great work Anthropology of the Name. With the success of this reading group, which was followed by a symposium on Lazarus’s political thought, we began to host reading groups every month on important texts in psychoanalytic and Marxist thought.

SGPP is a network of scholars, thinkers, psychoanalysts, political activists, militants and philosophers. We offer advanced study opportunities at virtually no cost other than the cost to pay lecturers and guest presenters. The model consists of a guided discussion for each session analyzing the text followed by a plenary on the text or concept under study upon the conclusion of the text. We also convene seminars and symposia on psychoanalytic and Marxist oriented writers and themes.

Please sign up to be notified of up and coming study groups and or to organize or propose a new study group.

This reading group will include six two-hour sessions by Zoom every Monday evening from 7 – 9 pm EST time starting July 6th. We will read The Structure of World History over six weeks in sequential order and will additionally consider excerpts from Karatani’s other work including Transcritique and his work on psychoanalysis. Each session will be led by a presenter who will guide the discussion amongst the group.

In partnership with the Circle of Studies of Idea and Ideology

This coming Thursday I will be starting a reading series on Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). I will host this series via Zoom on Thursday nights starting September 24th. We will read the text closely and reference Lacan’s work throughout the series. On our first night, we will consider the famous “fort-da” game that Freud invokes in chapter two.

You can join us by reserving a spot at this link.

I’m happy to announce that we have an upcoming keynote lecture by Samo Tomsic on “The Politics of Resentment” on December 3rd at 7 pm. You can register for this talk here and check out our prior two sessions here (on ressentiment, sublimation and neoliberalism) and here (on Lacan, affects, and the ~~four~~ five discourses). This is hosted by Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics, a new working group I have helped to establish in the pandemic time. The cost to attend is totally sliding scale – so whatever you are able to contribute is fine.

Our study groups will continue with a timely public seminar with scholar and author Clyde Barrow on the class composition of Trumpism and understanding Marx’s concept of the lumpenproletariat. Barrow’s latest book, The Dangerous Class: The Concept of the Lumpenproletariat brings analytical coherence to the concept of the lumpenproletariat, revealing it to be an inherent component of Marx and Engels’ analysis of the historical origins of capitalism. However, a proletariat that is destined to decay into an underclass may pose insurmountable obstacles to a theory of revolutionary agency in post-industrial capitalism. Barrow thus updates historical discussions of the lumpenproletariat in the context of contemporary American politics and suggests that all post-industrial capitalist societies now confront the choice between communism and dystopia.

This lecture will be followed by a group discussion with presentations from members of Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics and members from Cosmonaut Magazine, the partner of this working group. This study group will entail an overview of the book and elaboration of Barrow’s argument that Trump’s rise to power mirrors Louis Bonaparte’s rise as presented in The Eighteenth Brumaire. It will also entail an analytical discussion of what constitutes the lumpenproletariat, and how the lumpenproletariat functions in the contemporary development of capitalism; finally, we will turn to Trump’s mobilization of the lumpen and the definition of a lumpen-state.

Hosted by Study Groups on Psychoanalysis and Politics and Cosmonaut Magazine

Readings (available upon registration)

Marx, Capital Vol. I, Chap. 25, sections 1-4.
Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire
Clyde Barrow, The Rise of a Lumpen State?

The Lumpen State

bracha final FINAL (final)

Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia:

The Romantic Idealist Reformer Becomes an Aggressive Paranoid

Study Groups in Psychoanalysis and Politics Presents:

Wilfried Ver Eecke on “Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia”

Dr. Ver Eecke is a Lacanian Psychoanalyst and Professor of Philosophy, Georgetown University

In this seminar, Dr. Wilfried Ver Eecke will discuss Hegel’s idea of the “Romantic Reformer” and its linkage to paranoia and proceed to connect this important, but often overlooked, concept to Lacan’s theory of paranoia. Participants will read excerpts of Lacan and excerpts of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit.

To register please visit https://hegel-lacan.eventbrite.com

Dr. Ver Eecke’s research explores the connections between Hegel and psychoanalysis, specifically the work of Jacques Lacan. He is the author of the recent work, Breaking through Schizophrenia. Lacan and Hegel for talk therapy and Negativity and Subjectivity and his research has made important contributions to the clinical understanding of schizophrenia.

Readings:

1. Wilfried Ver Eecke 2019. Breaking through Schizophrenia Chapter 8. “Hegel and Lacan on Paranoia and the question of how to avoid the dangers inherent in ideas of social reform”

2.Lacan, Jacques. 1975. De la psychose paranoiaque, suivi de Premiers Ecrits sur ka Paranoia. (in English)

3. Excerpts from Hegel’s Phenomenology on the “beautiful soul” and the “romantic reformer”

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