"On the Perverse Mode of Art’s Functioning” by Alexander Smulansky, transl. Ignas Gutauskas
A conversation between the psychoanalyst and philosopher Alexander Smulansky, and the co-founder of the project TZVETNIK Natalya Serkova. Topics such as the inadequacy of direct action, the deferral of satisfaction, and the enunciation in the artistic realm were discussed.
The Anatomy of Impasse — thoughts by Alexander Smulansky, transl. Ignas Gutauskas
These reflections trace the subtle ways in which contemporary intellectual spaces often trade rigorous inquiry for the comfort of repetitive ritual and shared silence. They observe a landscape where the sharp demands of theory are increasingly smoothed over by seductive but hollow substitutes. Ultimately, what emerges is a portrait of a field where the loss of conceptual rigor is replaced by a pervasive atmosphere of moralizing humility.
"On the Right and Left Discourses, the Anthropocene, and the Feminist Agenda" by A. Smulansky, transl. Ignas Gutauskas
The intrigue lies in the fact that the language which Heidegger counted on as a means of returning the lost way of thinking about being can easily turn into something monstrous and stubbornly pursuing the subject, and, ironically, this is precisely what we are witnessing. This language is not only already at work; it also occupies a niche where it turns out to be the only option. At first glance, it is represented by raw but simultaneously schematic relations, in which the statement not only requires an object in a certain way, but also strives for a state in which this language underlies what we call “fantasm” today.
"Pity and Resentment in Obsessional Neurosis” by Andrey Denisyuk, transl. Ignas Gutauskas
It's been a while since a serious theoretic effort has been dedicated to the study of obsessional neurosis. Yet, it is precisely the obsession that shapes contemporary subjectivity in a way that it provides it with a dimension of historicity. To understand what is going on with the subject today implies analyzing the relations of neurotic with his own neurosis. Denisuyk's article follows this trajectory.
"The Child and the Woman's Enjoyment" by Alexander Smulansky, transl. Ignas Gutauskas
No matter how often various psy-theories, including psychoanalysis, stress the importance of the mother, something is constantly avoided here. Namely, a crucial observation that it is not the maternal but something exclusively feminine in the figure of the mother that fundemantally marks the subject's ogranization. The female phantasm whose frame is not only umlimited to, but does not necessarily include any references to the child — confronts the child with the very concept of desire.
"Expanding Male Phantasm. How Freud’s Desire Turned Into Psychoanalysis" by Alexander Smulansky, transl. Eugenia Konoreva
Alexander Smulansky relates the emergence of psychoanalytic discipline with Freud’s desire directed to a particular object that appeared in his office. This object is the speech of the hysteric who was finally invited to talk and to do it freely. Listening to that speech, Freud discovered that the hysteric’s difficulties does not concern only her personal problems but are rather addressed to the function of desire per se.