Max Kade German Culture and Media Center, 3401 Walnut St., Room 329, A Wing
Graduate Student / Faculty Colloquium Series
THE DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
presents The Student / Faculty Colloquium Series with Caroline Whitbeck and Grit Schwarzkopf
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
in the Max Kade German Culture and Media Center
3401 Walnut St., Room 329, A Wing (entrance next to Starbucks)
Psychoanalysis as a Palinodic Strain
Caroline Whitbeck, University of Pennsylvania
Freud’s psychoanalytic project hinges on repetition, whether seen in traumatic fixation or even the analytic sessions themselves. This thoroughgoing “compulsion to repeat,” evident in pathology and remedy alike, itself became a concern for Freud, as seen in such works as Beyond the Pleasure Principle, “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through,” and even “The Uncanny.” I suggest that the question of repetition in Freud is further illuminated by understanding his engagement with repetition as, effectively, “palinodic.” By “palinodic,” I am claiming for the psychoanalytic project a kinship with the palinode of Stesichorus, an ancient Greek lyric poet. The palinode of Stesichorus recanted a story, presumably in the Homeric line, of Helen of Troy, submitting her to its twinned mo(ve)ments of revocation and repetition, much as Freud’s grandson playing fort/da with the spool. A “palinodic” understanding of repetition in Freud suggests how his project may at once promise and deny the possibility of “working through.”
Presentation in English
~AND~
Überlegungen zu Goethes "Erlkönig"
und was damit zusammenhängt, mit Blick auf Hegel
Grit Schwarzkopf, Universität Heidelberg
Nach Hegel ist einer der Gegenstände der Ballade "neben Schwermut, Trauer, Freudigkeit" eine "schauerliche, die Brust mit Angst beengende, die Stimme erstickende Empfindung". Mit anderen Worten, die Ballade ist für Hegel ein, vielleicht sogar das ausgezeichnete, literarische Medium der Angst (Ästhetik II:475). Als Musterbeispiel wird Goethes "Erlkönig" ins Spiel gebracht (Ästhetik I: 283). In meinen Ausführungen werde ich Hegels Überlegungen nachgehen und eine Analyse von Goethes "Erlkönig" liefern, die eine Antwort auf diese
Frage aus der Dichtung selbst entwickelt.
Presentation in German