Unconscious Dominions
Comparing Histories of Psychoanalysis, Empire & Citizenship
UW Madison, October 7 - 8, 2005
2005 CONFERENCE
The first conference of the Research Circle will be based on the theme “Unconscious Dominions: Comparing Histories of Psychoanalysis, Empire and Citizenship,” and will bring together invited participants from the United States, Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, and Australia, as well as faculty and graduate students from the University of Wisconsin, to discuss between eight and ten pre-circulated papers over two days.
The conference will be linked to activities at the University of Wisconsin Humanities Center through programs such as the Humanities Forums on Contemporary Issues and the Humanities Without Boundaries lecture series.
In the pre-circulated papers, scholars will engage with the following themes:
- Psychoanalysis, religion, and the origins of ethnopsychiatry.
- The gendered subject of colonial psychoanalysis.
- The modal personality of the oppressed.
- The construction of the psychoanalyzable native subject/citizen.
- The fate of emancipatory visions under colonialism.
More specifically, the conference will problematize the relationship between psychoanalysis and colonialism by exploring the uses of psychoanalysis for empire as well as the “liberatory” potential of psychoanalytic discourse for the colonized.
For more information about the conference, pleae contact Lucienne Loh at lloh@wisc.edu.