PLACE 2014 NEW YEARS BULLETIN

============================================================ 1)GENERAL ASSEMBLY: 11:00AM, SAT., JANUARY 11TH, SANTA MONICA. OPEN TO 2013 ADHERENTS OF PLACE: WILL ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF ECONOMY, PROFESSION, AND PSYCHOANALYSIS; THE STRUCTURE AND THEORY OF MONEY;THE NEW CRYPTO-CURRENCIES – BIT.COIN; GRANTS, AND SCHOLARSHIPS. 2)INSCRIPTION DEADLINE FOR 2014: JANUARY 15TH (SEE PLACE WEBSITE FOR FORMS AND INFORMATION/OR EMAIL SECRETARY AT: PLACE@TOPOI.NET). 3)CARTEL VECTORIZATION BEGINS THE THE 16TH (NOTIFICATION WILL BE SENT OUT ON THE 16TH) 4) COURSE OEDIPUS CONSTRUCTED PART II – COURSE DESCRIPTION Winter-Spring Semester 2014: Course Announcement Oedipus Constructed – Part II/11:00 am , Saturday 25, 2014 in Santa Monica.  R.T.Groome/instructor ==================

Constructing The Oedipus Complex Part II: Comedy or Tragedy?

Does Woody Allen have an intuitive psychoanalytic talent that even the most technically trained analysts fail to achieve? Has today the Oedipus tragedy become a form of comedy? Does something suffer when we can only laugh at tragedies?  Our seminar responds to these questions in de-sedimenting Oedipus from its interpretative and comic accounts. Beginning in the Fall of 2013, in Oedipus Part I we sought to bring out the paradoxes and aporias of Freud's Oedipus Complex. Left within the post- and neo-freudian tradition, the Oedipus Complex takes on various variations that all have one trait in common: theories and interpretations remain within the limits of representation. We have called this representational Oedipus of the tradition, the Dummy Oedipus, and opposed it to an Oedipus for Anti-Dummies that begins to constructs its structure beyond the limits and aporias of representation. In order to situate the problem, we call it the Saint Christopher problem: if St. Christopher carries the world on his shoulder, where is he to stand? Similarly, if the function of the Oedipus Complex is to determine the sexual identity of the infant, then it begs the question to describe the Oedipus as the relation between a boy or girl, a mother, and a father.  Caught in a representational analysis of the Oedipus the tragic aspect escapes to become nothing more than a comedy of pipi-caca, envies of penis, incest, and menaces of castration.  No doubt, it will not be long before, if we are already not there, future analysts will only be able to laugh at what a previous generation of analysts had considered as a paradigm of human tragedy.  Woody Allen had already seen it coming: Oedipus for Dummies is truly laughable. To get serious, requires a shift of focus and point of application. It requires not confusing the tragic function of the Oedipus with the pathos of its dramatic acting out – tragedy is not a mere literary genre contained by a stage. More generally, Oedipus today requires a deconstruction of the representational suppositions that determine the staging of a psychoanalytic theory and practice. Said otherwise, a theory of the Oedipus that would be able to resolve the tragic aporias and paradoxes beyond laughter, requires switching from a theory of the (mis)identifications of the ego  to a theory of the subject and its position in the unconscious. Without this twist in the return to Freud, psychoanalytic theory does not go beyond he misidentifications of the ego first brought forward in the phenomenology of Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic. To situate what is at stake, Lacan stressed that the subject was not representable, or if it was, it was only for another signifier. Thus, the infamous axiom: the signifier represents a subject for another signifier – not another subject. Far from being a merely linguistic focus, what is brought out in such a statement is the commencement of a theory of the drives: once representation is put into question, the problem remains as to what kind of place the subject, the unconscious, and the drives may have, if they are not once again assimilated to the regional representations and interpretations of the sciences and humanities. Indeed, left at this habitual level it is only comedy that succeeds in rendering such knowledge true. Lacan's point of entry is important since it will cause us to return to Freud's Three Essays on Sexuality, five years before the Oedipus will become a workable theory. In this article Freud begins to construct a theory of sexuality, not in the everyday representations of feminine sexuality as a passive drive and masculine sexuality as active drive, but as a polypomorphous sexuality of the middle voice– in the grammatical sense of the term. What is important to note here that the Freudian reference to the drive is first and foremost a grammatical distinction.  At least this is what we aim to show beginning in Part II of Oedipus Constructed.  We will introduce the constructive dimension of Oedipus, first in reference to grammar, then proceed to construct the place for the subject of the unconscious and the drives in a topology.  The problem is to get beyond the representational scenes and dramatic acting out in the passage to a construction. The reading for this course requires the following texts be read before the beginning date on Jan. 25th: 1) Three Essays on Sexuality, S. Freud, 1905. (The complete works of Freud are available on request digitally and in hardcopy on request at the PLACE Library). 2) The Active and Middle Voice in the Verb, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Émile Benveniste. 1950, Vol. 2 (Translation by Elizabeth Meek, 1971, may contain a translation of the article/ Danielle and Aria have also offered to translate the article if not). Other important works and references of Beveniste that will help in following the course are: 3)"Catégories de pensée et catégories de langue." Les Etudes philosophiques 4 (1958): 419-429. •    "Categories of Thought and Language." Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1971. 55-64. 4) "'Structure' en linguistique." Sens et usages du terme 'structure' dans les sciences humaines et sociales. Ed. R. Bastide. The Hague: Mouton, 1962. 31-39. •      "Structure in Linguistics." Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary     Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1971. 79-83. 5) "De la Subjectivité dans le langage." Journal de Psychologie (1958): . •    "Subjectivity in Language." Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables: U of Miami P, 1971. 223-230. At the Spring Break in April, we will return to a Logical construction of the problems found therein. Summer Immersion will begin the topological constructions. Any questions with regard to the contents or form of the course may directed to R.T.Groome at res1d6qq@verzion.net. Any questions with regard to enrollment, transfer credits, etc. should contact Nina Kurt at: PLACE@topoi.net. --