SEX AND THE SOCIAL LIFE OF OBJECTS develops three interwoven dialogues across eight current projects from renowned and emerging voices engaging psychoanalytic theory:

1) A dialogue between French and American approaches to the question of the object, interrogating the relationship between negation and objects, desire and sociality by way of objects, and subtraction and reality.

2) A dialogue between civilizations and theoretical frameworks, through the cinema of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, through Shamanism and psychedelic tourism, and through decolonial theory and post-Lacanian psychoanalysis.

3) A dialogue between the psychoanalytic figures (femininity, the father, the matrixial), and the insistence of sexual violence, misogyny, and transphobia in the world.

The symposium welcomes keynote speakers Monique David-Ménard (11:00 am) and Joan Copjec (4:00 pm) as well a group of six advanced graduate students and alumni engaged with the Center throughout the years to explore its legacy and its significance for the present and future in academia and in the social.

9:15 am – Session 1: Sexual Violence

Ryan Hatch (Cal Poly)

Megan Hirner (University at Buffalo)

Melissa Wright (Barnard College)

2:15 pm – Post/Neo-Colonial Myths

Marta Aleksandrowicz (ICI Berlin)

Rachit Anand (University at Buffalo)

Nathan Gorelick (Barnard College)

More information about each session and a detailed schedule is available here.

To RSVP, please click here.

This event is organized by the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis & Culture and co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute and the Julian Park and Eugenio Donato Chairs.