It is usual to structure the French postwar philosophy into three periods: the first period, starting before the end of WW II, in the 1940s until nearly the end of the 50s, was dominated by German philosophy’s influence upon the French thinkers. Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl and Heidegger remained primary reference points in academic circles. Humanists like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Camus shaped the broader philosophical discussion, and following their lead, figures like George Politzer, Simone de Beauvoir, Henri Lefebvre, Frantz Fanon and Roger Garaudy shared a common emphasis on the experiential dimensions of human alienation, oppression and struggle. Their central theme was the experience of man in a world ravaged by war and imperialism. Along with this tendency, the French Marxist theory also tended to embrace a version of the humanist priorities against the Stalinist doctrine of the Communist party’s total domination.

In the mid-60s, this humanist period ended, and what replaced it was another orientation whose premise was no longer the presumption of man’s originary freedom and the uncompromising insistence on the primacy of engagement and responsibility, but rather, the underlying causes that constitute the social constraints operative in a complex economy, or the epistemological constraints operative in intricate fields of scientific inquiry. These were conceptualized as underlying structures and were applied across a variety of disciplines. Concepts about man replaced the concrete, individual man and his lived experience, and focused instead on the subject, “A cold and concerted destruction of the subject, a lively distaste for notions of origin, of lost origin, of recovered origin…” (Foucault)

The fundamental building blocks of this ‘scientific turn’ arose from the works of Ferdinand Saussure, Nikoli Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson in linguistics; Jean Cavaillès and Albert Lautman in the foundation of mathematics; Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem and Alexandre Koyré in the logic of scientific discovery, and Georges Dumézil, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Fernand Braudel in anthropology.

The third and last period is the period whose intent was partially to continue the consequences of structural commitments to their ends (for example the application of structuralism to surrealistic art and to architecture) and partially to show the inconsistency/impossibility of some of the premises adopted by the structuralist orientation. This period developed from a declining role of linguistics and the role which Hegel had previously occupied within French thought. It included such diverse thinkers as Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, Jacques-Alain Miller, Jean-Claude Milner, Etienne Balibar, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Alain Badiou, to name a few, as well as institutional intellectuals such as the Bourbaki group and the group of writers gathered around the journal called Cahiers pour l’Analyse. The purpose of this study will then be to examine the following.

This course will give a further development of last year’s course and make a point of relating each author’s work to the way in which Lacan made use of or developed it further.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand the details and implications of this very important period of intellectual history.
2. Relate this history to Lacan’s evolution, both theoretical and technical.
3. Consider the further developments in intellectual trends and forces in both North America and Europe.
4. Attempt to further delineate groups of activities in current society; political from ideological, from activist, from scientific, and their multiple uses and effects.

Judith Hamilton, MD (Ret’d), FRCPC Psych

Psychoanalyst. She teaches in the Extension Program of the TPS. She is a co-founder of Lacan Toronto. Member TPS&I.

Reza Naderi, PhD

Reza Naderi, PhD is a computer scientist and an author and researcher in the areas of logic, mathematical philosophy, and theories of the subject. He is the author of Badiou, Infinity, and Subjectivity (Rowman & Littlefield).

Carlos Rivas, PhD, RP

Studied psychology, philosophy, and social sciences in Venezuela. He trained in Gestalt Therapy, Hypnotherapy, Motivational Interviewing, Focusing, and EMDR, and in 2005 was the recipient of the Venezuelan National Award for Research in Psychotherapy. He has a private practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Member of Lacan Toronto; Guest of the TPS.

Alireza Taheri, PhD, RP

Alireza Taheri, PhD, RP is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist based in Toronto, Canada. He is a faculty member of Persepolis Psychoanalytic and the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He is the author of Hegelian-Lacanian Variations on Late Modernity: Spectre of Madness (Routledge) where he develops a novel dialectical theory based on Hegel, Lacan, and Žižek. He wrote his dissertation for the University of Cambridge on Nietzsche, Freud, and Lacan. He also holds an MA in philosophy from Essex and an MSc in psychoanalytic thought from University College London. He has done psychoanalytic work in London (UK). He works in private practice in Toronto. Member TPS&I.