Conference in English by the Sigmund Freud Museum
in cooperation with the International Research Group Geographies of Psychoanalysis
In memoriam Felix de Mendelssohn (1944 – 2016)
Sigmund Freud Museum
Berggasse 19
Wien
21 – 22 October 2016
Welcome by Monika Pessler – Introduction and Moderation by Lorena Preta
Friday, 21 October 2016, 8 p.m.
Keynote Lecture
Paolo Fabbri
Yes, We Zombies Can
The imagination of the global mediascape is occupied by a figure: the not dead. A viral monster at the intersection of various mythologies and beliefs on changing limits between life and death. The strange collective behavior of zombies and their mutant physical and mental properties are among the multiple signs of the present angst on future of humankind.
About the Conference
The Sigmund Freud Museum’s 2016 autumn conference is devoted to the theme of “new subjectivity”. In a world which is dominated by new ways of communication, by technology that subverts the perception of the body, by the new organisations of the family and groups and by global violence, we are witnessing an overflowing of the subject. The cult of the body and of youth, the desire to procreate also without the shared will of the couple, the lack of a collective conscience, etc. tell us about a “dislocated” subject.
The conference which opens with the keynote lecture “Yes, we zombies can” by the Italian semiologist Paolo Fabbri, discusses two aspects of this dislocation of the subject: 1) an “embodied dislocation”, in which the subject, identified with the physical body, reacts by altering this location and technically modifying its appearance or functions, and 2) “disembodied dislocation”, where the subject relocates to a non-physical world of chatrooms, avatars and self-representations within a virtual, globalised reality.
Geographies of Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis has been expanding in countries very distant from the historical psychoanalytical culture. The answers to our new realities created by globalization, technological progess and new forms of communication are different from country to country, thus, psychoanalysis has to provide different answers. It is no longer only a question of dialogue with other disciplines, but one of establishing a comparison between different anthropological positions. We have to understand whether psychoanalytical concepts are universal and if its therapeutical methodology is effective in different countries worldwide.
The work of the International Research Group ‘Geographies of Psychoanalysis’, which started a few years ago by a number of the Italian Psychoanalytical Society journal ‘Psiche’ (n.1/2008) under the direction of Lorena Preta, brings together the different experiences of psychoanalysts living and working in a variety of realities and cultures.
