NEGOTIATING THE SOCIAL BOND OF POETICS: A Reading and Seminar Series

This reading and critical workshop are part of an ongoing series that will run for the equivalent of one academic year, with one writer a month presenting a reading one evening and participating in a workshop, which will address the theme below, the following day. Watch the main page of the KSW website for upcoming dates.

The theme of this series returns to and departs from Jacques LacanÕs theory of the Four Discourses in order to discuss the social bond of poetics. Lacan develops this theoretical frame in Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, and Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, and some of the selected fragments from Television. He proposes that there are four fundamental discourses, or structures of discourse, that produce different social bonds for the subject. These discourses consist of the masterÕs discourse, the hystericÕs discourse, the university discourse, and the analystÕs discourse. While Lacan is concerned with the limitation of the masterÕs discourse and the university discourse, he sees the potential of transformation in the analystÕs discourse. Although he asserts that it is necessary to make an hysterization of discourse in the process of analysis—because this is the first step towards questioning the masterÕs discourse—he asserts that this discourse must then be shifted to the analystÕs discourse for Real change to occur. Seminar XVII, which took place in 1969, follows the student and social revolt of May 68, a historical moment in which Lacan was immersed. He is critical of revolutions that appear to simply question the master and the university, and as a consequence only reproduce a new master, without shifting social bonds, as he skeptically suggests that the Parisian students of 68 were in danger of doing. However, we do find moments in LacanÕs seminars in which he suggests that a writer can have a similar position as an analyst, and thus one would assume, also be able to shift these other discourses to enact some social change. Therefore, I am using this frame to ask questions, develop a dialogue, about poetics and social change. Can poetics operate like the analystÕs discourse to create a different social bond through language? Do poets intervene in these other discourses or intersect with them in subversive ways that shift discourse and social bonds? Is LacanÕs concept of the structure of the four discourses useful for us today, particularly as we head into financial cuts in the arts and academia that may limit interventions in hegemonic discourses? Or do we need to rethink what poetics and discourse are and reconsider how we engage with and disseminate them?

- Dr. Nancy Gillespie

A further description of LacanÕs four discourses will be available for those attending the workshop. If you have any further questions about the theme or reading material, feel free to contact Nancy by email: Gillespie.nancy@gmail.com.

This series is organized by Nancy Gillespie and Nikki Reimer. Nancy completed her PhD on Lacanian subjectivity and feminist poetics at the University of Sussex UK in 2008. She has been a colleague of the London Society of the New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis for six years, and is pursing her analysis training with WAP in Paris, as well as returning to her own poetics as a new member of KSW. Nikki Reimer is a poet and has been a member of KSW since 2005-6 and January 2009 to present.

Lacan References and Resources:

Lacan, Jacques. Seminar XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Russell Grigg.
    Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 2007.
 
--- Seminar XX: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Trans. Bruce   
    Fink. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. New York: Norton, 1999.

---Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment. Trans. Denis Hollier,
     Rosalind Krauss, Anette Michelson, and Jeffrey Mehlman. Ed. Joan Copjec. New  
     York: Norton, 1990. 

Critical Resources:

Clements, Justin and Russell Grigg Eds. Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of
    Psychoanalysis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Negotiating the Social Bond of Poetics, 2009-10

September 4 & 5, 2009 - Peter Jaeger

October 10, 2009 - Steve McCaffery

November 27 & 28, 2009 - David Marriott

January 16 & 17, 2010 - Kaia Sand & Jules Boykoff

March 19 & 20, 2010 - Rachel Zolf

April 9 & 10, 2010 - Roger Farr

April 16 & 17, 2010 - Jeff Derksen & Nancy Gillespie

June 12, 2010 - Meredith Quartermain (workshop only)

June 18 & 19, 2010 - Nicole Markotic

July 9 & 10, 2010 - Clint Burnham

July 16 & 17, 2010 - Louis Cabri