996025 Psychoanalysis/ Sexuality: New Methodological Challenges (BS) (WiSe 2017/2018)

Major topics of historical research look different when we explore them from the perspective of the history of sexuality. Yet for a long time, for scholars working on the history of sexuality and/or historicizing the very idea of “sexuality,” and for scholars aiming to integrate the history of sexuality into larger political topics, the work of Michel Foucault had displaced that of Sigmund Freud. But we are now living through a moment of renewed interest in the potential usefulness of Freud and of post-Freudian thinkers for making sense of historical developments. Using the (partially entangled) examples of colonialism, the Holocaust, and the resurgence of religion in the postmodern world, this Methods Class will work with three kinds of texts – primary sources, secondary scholarship, and psychoanalytic-theoretical writings – to help students understand the latest trends and their possibilities.

Tuesday January 9 6 pm Lecture:
How Psychoanalysis Got Sexually Conservative: The “Jewish Science” Crosses the Atlantic

Wednesday January 10
Session 1 10:30-12 Psychoanalysis 1
Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death” (1915) [10 pages]
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1930), Part V (pp. 68-74 only)

Kurt Eissler, “Perverted Psychiatry?” American Journal of Psychiatry 123/11 (May 1967): 1352-1358

Teresa de Lauretis, “Death @ Work” and “The Queer Space of the Drive,” in Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature, and Film (2008), pp. 1-19 and 58-87

Session 2 1:30-3 Colonialism
Frantz Fanon, “On Violence” (pp. 1-22 only) and “Colonial War and Mental Disorders… Series A” (pp. 181-199 only), The Wretched of the Earth (1963)
Ann Laura Stoler, “Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power” (1991), in Joan W. Scott, ed., Feminism and History, pp. 209-266
Jordanna Bailkin, “The Boot and the Spleen: When Was Murder Possible in British India?” in
Comparative Studies in Society and History 48, no. 2 (April 2006), pp. 462-493

Judith Surkis, “Introduction,” Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria 1830-1930 (2018) [47 pages]

Session 3 3:30-5 Holocaust
Alon Confino, “Why Did the Nazis Burn the Hebrew Bible? Nazi Germany, Representations of the Past, and the Holocaust,” Journal of Modern History 84, no. 2 (June 2012), pp. 369-400
Anna Hajkova, “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto,” Signs 38/3 (Spring 2013), pp. 503-533
Pascale Bos, “Her Flesh is Branded: ‘For Officers Only,’” in Hilary Earl and Karl Schleunes, eds., Lessons and Legacies XI (2014), pp. 59-85

Thursday January 11
Session 4 10:30-12 Psychoanalysis 2
Theodor Adorno, “Sexual Taboos and Law Today” (1963), in Critical Models, pp. 71-88
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, “We use the term Libido…,” Anti-Oedipus (1972), pp. 291-293 only
Fritz Morgenthaler, “The Position of the Perversions in Metapsychology and Technique” (1974), in Homosexuality, Heterosexuality, Perversion
Robert J. Stoller, “Sexual Excitement,” Archives of General Psychiatry 33 (August 1976): 899-909

Session 5 1:30-3 Religious Politics
Humanae Vitae (1968) [11 pages]
Marcia Inhorn, “Globalization and Gametes: reproductive ‘tourism,’ Islamic bioethics, and Middle Eastern modernity,” Anthropology & Medicine 18, no. 1 (April 2011): 87–103
Camille Robcis, “Liberté, Égalité, Hétérosexualité: Race and Reproduction in the French Gay Marriage Debates,” Constellations 22/3 (2015): 447-461
David Paternotte et al., “The Sin of Turning Away from Reality: An Interview with Father Krzysztof Charamsa,” Religion and Gender 6/2 (2016): 226–246

Elżbieta Korolczuk and Agnieszka Graff, “Facing an Illiberal Future,” Global Dialogue 7/4 (December 2017) [3 pages]

Session 6 3:30-5 Student presentations