** Call for Papers: please post (apologies for cross postings) **
The online journal Invisible Culture
<http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_culture/ivchome.html>
is seeking papers for an upcoming issue on the theme of The Symptom.
Jacques Lacan famously described the ego as the symptom of man. In
psychoanalytical theory, the subject is the symptomatic psychical effect of
the tension between binary oppositions, such as desire and jouissance, lack
and plenitude, soma and psyche, self and other, man and woman, gay and
straight, black and white, actual and virtual, animal and human. In a
general way, the symptom is a formation whereby the repressed seeks to
return in the present; as Freud observes, "... a thing which has not been
understood inevitably reappears; like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until
the mystery has been solved and the spell broken."
This CFP enlists papers that engage with, question and interrogate the full
range of definitions and cultural/social manifestations of the symptom (and
its subject), and also those that identify or posit new ones, from
historicist and psychoanalytic perspectives. For both psychoanalysts and
historicists, the symptom demands interpretation, which entails an
interrogation of the disparity between a symptom's manifest (visible)
content and its latent (invisible) content. How does the symptom speak and
what does it want to communicate? What motivates its production, and what
is its function? How does the symptom articulate the impasse - or the
difficulties - that inhere in binary relationships? Given that a symptom
cannot be erased, but only replaced by another symptom, can we speak of bad
or negative symptoms, and good or positive symptoms, or posit that some
symptoms are more ethical and life-enhancing than others? Indeed, is it
possible to choose our own symptoms?
We welcome papers that address via theoretical elaboration or case study
(cultural or visual analysis), the manifestation of the symptom in terms of
its formation, repetition, interpretation, elaboration, wish-fulfillment,
compromise or transformation. Possible avenues for the exploration of the
symptom include, but are not limited to: gender, racial, ethnic and sexual
difference; bodily, linguistic, psychical, literary symptoms; symptom and
experience; Sinthome and Lacan; symptom and identity; intersubjectivity and
the symptom; medical discourse and the symptom; symptom and the economy of
recognition; symptom and performance.
The deadline for receipt of submissions of 2,500 to 6,000 words in length is
February 1, 2006. Please email inquiries to Michael Williams
([log in to unmask]) or Linda Edwards ([log in to unmask]).
Submissions can be made electronically in Microsoft Word as an attachment to
either address, or as hard copies to: Invisible Culture, Attn: Michael
Williams and Linda Edwards, 424 Morey Hall, University of Rochester,
Rochester NY, 14627.
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