Proposal for Panel

19th Century American Literature and the
Psychoanalytic Subject
 
For The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture
and Society (APCS) Annual Conference on November 4-6,
2005 at Rutgers University

Plenary Speakers: Willy Apollon and Eric Santner

19th Century American Literature and the
Psychoanalytic Subject

Robert Ficociello, SUNY Albany, Panel Chair
 
In 1925 Freud wrote of his 1909 visit to America: "In
Europe I felt as though I were despised; but over
there I found myself received by the foremost men as
an equal. As I stepped on to the platform at Worcester
to deliver my Five Lectures on psychoanalysis it
seemed like the realization of some incredible
day-dream: psychoanalysis was no longer a product of a
delusion, it had become a valuable part of reality."

Freud's "delusion" has not only become a reality--his
psychoanalytic discourse emerged fervently in America
after the turn of the century and contributed
significantly to the Modern aesthetic around the
glove. However, what does psychoanalytic discourse,
Freudian or even Lacanian, have to tell us about
earlier American literature and the ways in which the
structure of the subject is revealed in pre-Modern
texts? And how, in turn, do these texts invite and
respond to such a reading? Central questions will
address not merely the tension between Enlightenment
traditions of the individual and the nationalistic
totality in the post-Revolutionary and post-Civil War
periods, but also the very conception of what
"American" as a community means in a culture that
itself incorporates so many rifts and splits.

Papers are sought for a panel dealing with conceptions
of subjectivity and the self in 19th Century American
literature.

Graduate students are welcome to submit.
Please email a short biography and a 300 word abstract
to Robert Ficociello, rf0093_at_albany.edu

"Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory is too good." -- Nietzsche

                
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Received on Fri Jul 29 2005 - 08:37:50 EDT