Analysing the Cultural Unconscious - by Lilian Munk Rösing & Henrik Jøker Bjerre & Brian Benjamin Hansen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

What are we doing when taking psychoanalysis from the couch to the analysis of society, culture, and arts? How is it possible to do so? How is it possible to move from singular experiences to universal structures detected in culture and society? Could psychoanalysis applied to art works become more sensitive to their aesthetics form?

Psychoanalysis is often disclaimed as non-scientific, since its main object - the unconscious - has no positive existence. This book, however, proposes psychoanalysis to be a "science of the signifier". It takes as its object the signifier - the signifying part of the sign - insisting that it always says more (or less) than intended, because its very materiality carries unintended messages. By defining the object of psychoanalysis as the signifier, this volume argues that we can speak of psychoanalysis as a science, even if it is closer to semiotics than biology.

Analysing the Cultural Unconscious builds on this idea by arguing that the analysis of the signifier is the way to understand not only the individual unconscious, but also the cultural one. Replacing a person's monologue on the couch with ideology criticism or a piece of art, applied psychoanalysis allows us to analyse culture and the arts in a new way, uncovering the cultural unconscious.

Review Quotes

The problem of applied psychoanalysis has historically been unsolvable. But now, the appearance of Analysing the Cultural Unconscious provides a whole new way of thinking about moving from a psychoanalysis focused on the individual to cultural psychoanalysis. Assembling a wide array of top psychoanalytic theorists, this collection opens up a previously unexplored path to thinking psychoanalytically about culture.
Todd McGowan, Professor, University of Vermont, United States

Tremendously smart, topical and diverse in its address, this collection really does 'work' the signifier as it promises. These superb essays remind one (not that it is possible to forget) that psychoanalysis is always speaking - out of turn, out of time, but never untimely.
Sigi Jöttkandt, Senior Lecturer in English, University of New South Wales, Australia

About the Author

Lilian Munk Rösing is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. She has published four books (three in Danish, one in English) and a large number of articles combining psychoanalysis with literary and cultural criticism. Latest publication: Pixar with Lacan: The Hysteric's Guide to Animation (2016).