The Speculations conference was a major international event reflecting on psychoanalytic practices and cultural discourses. It brought together some of the leading figures in postmodern philosophy. The contributions came under three headings:
CARNALITY AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCES
explores the life of the flesh and how the erotic fares in speculative
analysis.
Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen (Seattle)
Alibis of the Subject
Sarah Kofman (Paris)
"It's only the first step that costs"
Alphonso Lingis (Pennsylvania)
These Alien Bodies that are our Own
POLITICS AND ITS PLAYERS
fields the rules, tactics, and institutionalisation of psychoanalysis
and asks what are the stakes within larger political arenas.
Cornelius Castoriadis (Paris)
Psychoanalysis and Autonomy
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Pittsburgh)
Psychoanalysis in Leftfield and Field-Working
James Hillman (Connecticut)
'Anthropos phusei politikon zoon' ('Man is by nature a political
animal '- Aristotle), or Patient as Citizen
TRAGEDY, THEATRE, AND THERAPY
speaks of our passions and sufferings and their enactment through the
passage of analysis and other cultural rites.
David Farrell Krell (Chicago)
Immanent Death, Imminent Death - Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle
and Heidegger's Being and Time
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (Strasbourg)
Que veut dire "Katharsis"? / What is "Katharsis"?
Nicholas Rand (Wisconsin) and Maria Torok (Paris)
Freud's "Uncanny" and the Return of the Secret - The
Sandman looks at Sigmund Freud
William Richardson (Boston)
The Word of Silence
Charles Scott (Tennessee)
In Freud's Wake - Care and Nurture without Repression?
A book based on the conference has now been published: Speculations
After Freud: Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Culture edited by Sonu
Shamdasani and Michael Münchow (Routledge 1994).