I am a psychotherapist in private practice and an independent researcher working on the interstice of philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. Address: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles’ Antigone and As... more This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles’ Antigone and Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly . Both pieces, the author believes, revolve around the problem of mourning. More specifically, the modern film and the ancient play both deal with the concern for a subject’s honour and standing after death (Elly and Polyneices respectively). By contrasting these two works, the author considers the differences between ancient and modern/postmodern tragedy as elaborated by Jacques Lacan. The latter’s reflections on the relation between tragedy and psychoanalysis will form an integral part of the paper’s focus. Moreover, Žižek’s re-appropriation of Lacan’s work on Paul Claudel as well as Patrick Guyomard’s critical work on Lacan’s reading of Antigone will pave the way towards a deepened original engagement with Farhadi’s film. What can this film, read in light of psychoanalytic theory as well as contemporary philosophy, tell us about our late modern predicament? M...
This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles' Antigone and As... more This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles' Antigone and Asghar Farhadi's About Elly. Both pieces, the author believes, revolve around the problem of mourning. More specifically, the modern film and the ancient play both deal with the concern for a subject's honour and standing after death (Elly and Polyneices respectively). By contrasting these two works, the author considers the differences between ancient and modern/postmodern tragedy as elaborated by Jacques Lacan. The latter's reflections on the relation between tragedy and psychoanalysis will form an integral part of the paper's focus. Moreover, Žižek's re-appropriation of Lacan's work on Paul Claudel as well as Patrick Guyomard's critical work on Lacan's reading of Antigone will pave the way towards a deepened original engagement with Farhadi's film. What can this film, read in light of psychoanalytic theory as well as contemporary philosophy, tell us about our late modern predicament? More specifically, what light can About Elly shed on the decline of the "master signifier", the heightening of the injunction to enjoy, the waning of the sense of shame as well as the increased difficulty to mourn in late modernity? Finally, the paper will consider what Farhadi's film and Sophocles' play can teach us about the desire that drives psychoanalysis.
Sergio Benvenuto’s What are Perversions? Provides at once a psychoanalytic exploration of the dyn... more Sergio Benvenuto’s What are Perversions? Provides at once a psychoanalytic exploration of the dynamics and aetiology of perversion as well as an ethical treatise on the centrality of caritas in human life. These two aspects of this great work are, however, not separate. For Benvenuto, the ability to love and care for the actual people that populate our lives is the central building block of a healthy life. The subject who is incapable of love becomes, instead, hampered and persecuted by the terrifying vicissitudes of perversion marked by a desperate attempt to transform pain into voluptuous bliss. The narcissistic wound of exclusion throws this subject into the erotic flames of exhibitionism, fetishism, sadism, masochism and voyeurism. These are, at once and paradoxically, analgesics to pain and, ultimately, relics of its inevitable triumph. The ethical and metapsychological position Benvenuto develops in this work is arguably founded on two central Freudian precepts. The first has ...
This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles’ Antigone and As... more This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles’ Antigone and Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly . Both pieces, the author believes, revolve around the problem of mourning. More specifically, the modern film and the ancient play both deal with the concern for a subject’s honour and standing after death (Elly and Polyneices respectively). By contrasting these two works, the author considers the differences between ancient and modern/postmodern tragedy as elaborated by Jacques Lacan. The latter’s reflections on the relation between tragedy and psychoanalysis will form an integral part of the paper’s focus. Moreover, Žižek’s re-appropriation of Lacan’s work on Paul Claudel as well as Patrick Guyomard’s critical work on Lacan’s reading of Antigone will pave the way towards a deepened original engagement with Farhadi’s film. What can this film, read in light of psychoanalytic theory as well as contemporary philosophy, tell us about our late modern predicament? M...
This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles' Antigone and As... more This paper attempts a psychoanalytically informed comparative study of Sophocles' Antigone and Asghar Farhadi's About Elly. Both pieces, the author believes, revolve around the problem of mourning. More specifically, the modern film and the ancient play both deal with the concern for a subject's honour and standing after death (Elly and Polyneices respectively). By contrasting these two works, the author considers the differences between ancient and modern/postmodern tragedy as elaborated by Jacques Lacan. The latter's reflections on the relation between tragedy and psychoanalysis will form an integral part of the paper's focus. Moreover, Žižek's re-appropriation of Lacan's work on Paul Claudel as well as Patrick Guyomard's critical work on Lacan's reading of Antigone will pave the way towards a deepened original engagement with Farhadi's film. What can this film, read in light of psychoanalytic theory as well as contemporary philosophy, tell us about our late modern predicament? More specifically, what light can About Elly shed on the decline of the "master signifier", the heightening of the injunction to enjoy, the waning of the sense of shame as well as the increased difficulty to mourn in late modernity? Finally, the paper will consider what Farhadi's film and Sophocles' play can teach us about the desire that drives psychoanalysis.
Sergio Benvenuto’s What are Perversions? Provides at once a psychoanalytic exploration of the dyn... more Sergio Benvenuto’s What are Perversions? Provides at once a psychoanalytic exploration of the dynamics and aetiology of perversion as well as an ethical treatise on the centrality of caritas in human life. These two aspects of this great work are, however, not separate. For Benvenuto, the ability to love and care for the actual people that populate our lives is the central building block of a healthy life. The subject who is incapable of love becomes, instead, hampered and persecuted by the terrifying vicissitudes of perversion marked by a desperate attempt to transform pain into voluptuous bliss. The narcissistic wound of exclusion throws this subject into the erotic flames of exhibitionism, fetishism, sadism, masochism and voyeurism. These are, at once and paradoxically, analgesics to pain and, ultimately, relics of its inevitable triumph. The ethical and metapsychological position Benvenuto develops in this work is arguably founded on two central Freudian precepts. The first has ...
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