190071 SE Education - Alterity - Cultur(alism) (2022W)

The old fight between theories of Idealism and Materialism found a theoretical bridge and political praxis in what Freud called Psychoanalysis, or else, the talking cure: Emancipation and 'self-overcoming' of psyche and body was for him only possible by 'becoming conscious' of one’s own unconscious stumbling stones and repetitively endangering behaviours. To date, Freud has a badreputation not only in contemporary studies of Psychology, but also amongst consumer-oriented health services, privatized medical care and a culture of pharmaceutical or esoteric self-care. However, noother theoretical approach has brought together questions of sexuality, subjectivity and structural impediments as psychoanalysis has done, which - what needs mention - was primarily invented as atherapeutical praxis and not as a theory for the humanities only. Moreover, in everyday parlance, psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry are many times confused or even collapsed into eachother.In this class, we aim to get an overview over what we mean by a praxis and theory of psychoanalysis and how it differs from psychiatry. We will also think psychoanalysis together with an understanding of racialization and race as a social matrix governing the body and psyche alike.Psychoanalysis is, after all, the theory and understanding of Othering, Otherness and Difference. Together, we will read Sigmund and Anna Freud as well as Melanie Klein as starting points. From there on we will move to post-colonial and Critical Race theorists, predominantly Frantz Fanon’s work, who have engaged with psychoanalytical readings of their worlds, plagued and ridden with racializations and internalized self-hatred. The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to a reading of racialization as a process of subjectivation in our contemporary world as well as to give them the tools to understand debates around racial trauma, transgenerational transference, and basic concepts such as affect, drive, and the unconscious.