Sunday, October 6, 2013
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Science and the Real
Psychoanalytical Notebooks 27
New Issue, Out Now
Order it online at
Guest editor: Miquel Bassols
CONTENTS
Jacques-Alain Miller – “Psychoanalysis, its place
among the sciences”
Miquel Bassols – “There is no science of the real”
Eric Laurent – “The illusion of scientism, the
anguish of scientists”
Marco Focchi – “Number in science and in psychoanalysis”
Pierre Skriabine – “Science, the subject and
psychoanalysis”
Philippe La Sagna et al. – “Science and the name of the father”
Esthela Solano-Suarez – “The clinic in the time of
the real”
Francois Ansermet – “Trace and object, between neurosciences and psychoanalysis”
Guy Briole – “Error and misunderstanding”
Alfredo Zenoni – “A post-scientific real”
Jacques-Alain Miller – “Spare parts”
Pierre Naveau – “Jealousy and the hidden gaze”
Veronique Voruz – “Reading Catherine M. on jealousy”
Bogdan Wolf – “Intricacies of the gaze”
Betty Bertrand-Godfrey – “Jealousy as a name of the
father?”
Laure Naveau – “The other man of his life “
Holly Pester – “I have spoilt a better name than my
own…”
New NSA Revelations
[...]
Jeremy Scahill, a
contributor to The Nation magazine and the New York Times best-selling author
of "Dirty Wars," said he will be working with Glenn Greenwald, the
Rio-based journalist who has written stories about U.S. surveillance programs
based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"The connections
between war and surveillance are clear. I don't want to give too much away but
Glenn and I are working on a project right now that has at its center how the
National Security Agency plays a significant, central role in the U.S.
assassination program," said Scahill, speaking to moviegoers in Rio de
Janeiro, where the documentary based on his book made its Latin American debut
at the Rio Film Festival.
"There are so many
stories that are yet to be published that we hope will produce `actionable
intelligence,' or information that ordinary citizens across the world can use
to try to fight for change, to try to confront those in power," said
Scahill.
"Dirty Wars" the
film, directed by Richard Rowley, traces Scahill's investigations into the
Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC. The movie, which won a prize for
cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, follows Scahill as he hopscotches
around the globe, from Afghanistan to Yemen to Somalia, talking to the families
of people killed in the U.S. strikes.
Neither Scahill nor
Greenwald, who also appeared at the film festival's question and answer panel,
provided many details about their joint project.
Greenwald has been making
waves since the first in a series of stories on the NSA spying program appeared
in Britain's Guardian newspaper in June. Last week, Brazilian President Dilma
Rousseff postponed a scheduled state dinner with Obama after television reports
to which Greenwald had contributed revealed that American spy programs had
aggressively targeted the Brazilian government and private citizens.
[...]
Monday, September 23, 2013
Sophie Fiennes: “Film-goers are bored with being talked down to”
by Elizabeth
Day
The Observer
[...]
Sophie Fiennes doesn't
like to make things easy for herself. The acclaimed documentary-maker's latest
project is a two-hour philosophical disquisition on the nature of ideology,
presented by the Slovenian psychoanalytic thinker, Slavoj Žižek.
[...]
"I like
to give myself a set of components or ingredients, like for cooking,"
Fiennes says when I ask her if she's got a screw loose. "So I don't quite
know how it's going to turn out."
A typical
scene from The
Pervert's Guide to Ideology, Fiennes's second collaboration with Žižek,
features the charismatic thinker expounding forcefully on the Lacanian notion
of "the big Other", with reference to popular movies ranging from The
Sound of Music to Full Metal Jacket. In a visually playful twist, Fiennes
shows Žižek speaking from replica sets, as though he is speaking from within
the films themselves – and, by extension, from within our own memories. The
result is like the most exhilarating university lecture you've ever seen.
"I
believe that people are all open to exploring the very edge of their
thinking," says Fiennes, 46, when we meet in the members' cafe at Tate
Modern, overlooking an impressive sweep of London skyline.
This is
Fiennes's seventh documentary, following on from award-winning works such as Over Your Cities, Grass Will Grow, a film project with the artist Anselm
Kiefer, and a biopic of the choreographer Michael Clark.
But in an
age when the box office relies on computer-generated cartoon characters for its
profits, is it a gamble to produce such unabashedly intellectual work?
"People
are bored with being talked down to," Fiennes replies.
Fiennes and
Žižek previously worked together on The Pervert's Guide to Cinema in 2006 (the pervert of the
title refers to the idea of perverting our preconceptions, rather than anything
more X-rated), which explored the philosopher's ideas on fantasy, sexuality and
subjectivity in film.
They have
since developed a close working relationship – Fiennes goes away and
"reads all the books", then asks Žižek to elaborate on the ideas she finds
most interesting while the camera is rolling. There is no script – sometimes
Žižek can speak for 17 minutes in full flow – which means the post-production
can be lengthy. Fiennes spent the best part of a year editing The
Pervert's Guide to Ideology.
Žižek, she
insists, has "an amazing sense of humour", at one point even agreeing
to be filmed while sitting on a lavatory.
Fiennes, who
is the sister of actors Ralph and Joseph, says her siblings are "very involved… it's great that
we all share the same interests". Her younger brother, Magnus, composed
the score for the film and the creative impulse appears to have been passed
down to Fiennes's three-year-old son, Horace, who has already developed a taste
for jazz.
Working with
Žižek has changed the way Fiennes watches films for pleasure but, she admits,
"at the moment, I'm just watching musicals with my son like High
Society and Oklahoma!."
[...]
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)