Steven Miller: Philosophy and the Clinic of the Death Drive Event

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

STEVEN MILLER: Philosophy and the Clinic of the Death Drive

Donnerstag, 27. Mai 2010, 19:00 Uhr
Sigmund Freud Museum, Berggasse 19 1090 Wien
Eintritt frei, Anmeldung erbeten: office@freud-museum.at, 01-319 15 96-11

Philosophy and the Clinic of the Death Drive

Because of its speculative method, Beyond the Pleasure Principle is known as Freud’s most overtly philosophical work. However, an attentive reading of the text shows that Freud’s intention was not philosophical at all. His goal was not to establish a method to judge the legitimacy of human knowledge, but rather to assert that psychoanalysis can and must begin in the clinic. The death drive names the point where both analysand and analyst encounter something that remains radically unrepresentable; something that the analysand is incapable of articulating either to him- or herself or to others. Nonetheless, many philosophers have taken an interest in Freud’s theory precisely because of its rejection of the philosophical standpoint. In this respect, the work of Jacques Derrida is an exception. Rather than merely appropriating psychoanalytic concepts for philosophy, he considers that psychoanalysis is unintelligible–if not historically meaningless–if it is extracted from the limits that it sets upon itself. This lecture presents the way in which Derrida’s reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle seeks to respect these limits to examine the consequences of this respect within Derrida’s approach to the politics of destruction.

Steven Miller lehrt im Sommersemester 2010 als Fulbright-Freud Visiting Lecturer of Psychoanalysis an der Universität Wien. Er ist Assistant Professor an der Fakultät für Englisch an der State University of New York in Buffalo.