To Be Continued?...
Philosophy and Psychoanalysis Today

Part III
15–16 April 2025

Live Session (Zoom)

Boštjan Nedoh
Marisa Žele
Holden M. Rasmussen
Amanda Holmes
Aleš Bunta
Alenka Zupančič
Alejandro Cerda-Rueda
Arka Chattopadhyay
Lorenzo Chiesa
Mladen Dolar
Justin Clemens
Alexi Kukuljevic
Peter Klepec
Stephen Overy
Tadej Troha
Sigi Jöttkandt
Richard Boothby


Part II

16–18 April 2024

Holden M. Rasmussen
Marisa Žele
Aleš Mendiževec
Voranc Kumar
Alejandro Cerda-Rueda
Arka Chattopadhyay
Boštjan Nedoh
Tadej Troha
Adrian Johnston
Mladen Dolar
Henrik Jøker Bjerre
Aleš Bunta
Adam Potts
Alenka Zupančič
Lorenzo Chiesa
Joan Copjec
Emily Laurent-Monaghan
Moritz Herrmann
Arsalan Reihanzadeh
Paris Lavidis
Nadia Bou Ali
Peter Klepec
Mohamed Tal
Frank Ruda
Ray Brassier


Part I
15–17 November 2023

Holden M. Rasmussen
Emily Laurent-Monaghan
Moritz Herrmann
Paris Lavidis
Vesna Liponik
Arsalan Reihanzadeh
Adrian Johnston
Jelica Šumič Riha
Tadej Troha
Boštjan Nedoh
Marisa Žele
Aleš Bunta
Peter Klepec
Alenka Zupančič
Lorenzo Chiesa


To Be Continued? ... 
Info
  • We can certainly say that the dialogue between philosophy and psychoanalysis, however prolix, has so far proved very difficult, ever since the latter’s inception. Is there such thing as a philosophy-psychoanalysis relationship? Or has it always been only empty speech? In that case, should it be continued?
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Alexi Kukuljevic 
(Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien)



The Abyss of the Comic


The Marquis de Sade’s libertine fiction is the consummate perversion of the genre of comedy. If comedy as a convention generally leads its characters from misery to joy, in Sade misery and joy become indissociably linked, the effect of his libertine’s unflagging pursuit of desire defined not by its relation to an object but by its own insatiability. Divorcing pleasure from the form of the pleasurable, their ‘Stakh(Cas)anovism,’ to borrow Hénaff’s apt pun, installs the libertine within an inconsistent universe where the pursuit of jouissance turns desire into a destructive imperative. The happy end of libertinage is not at all happy. Libertinage is an illogical pursuit in which the semblance of logic is preserved through the disavowal of illness. Turning desire into a joyless pursuit, Sade’s fiction, as Lacan stresses, definitively lacks ‘a sense of comedy.’ Yet, the blackness of its humor (Breton), ‘bizarre’ and ‘ferocious’ as noted by Blanchot, registers the fact that Sade, a ‘humorous master,’ is ‘not the dupe of his fantasy’ as Lacan writes. Shedding the form of comedy, Sade’s work is nonetheless violently comical. Its unsurpassable violence opens up the gates of hell within, but this new form of horror is not without hilarity. If we apprehend the difference between comedy and the comic, we touch upon what Lacan once termed ‘the abyss of the comic.’