Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy

The syllabus includes key concepts and developments in structuralism and psychoanalysis, their place in contemporary French philosophy and in the wider context of contemporary philosophy.

Main topics:

The first topic includes life and work of Sigmund Freud and his importance for the development of structuralism and psychoanalysis, of contemporary French philosophy and the humanities in general.

The second topic includes structural linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure, Emile Benveniste, etc.) and its importance for the development of structuralism, psychoanalysis and contemporary French philosophy.

The third topic includes structural anthropology and the importance of Claude Lévi-Strauss for the development of structuralism, psychoanalysis and contemporary French philosophy.

The fourth topic includes Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis, his 'return to Freud', Althusserian reading of Marx, Freud and Lacan, and the analysis of key psychoanalytic concepts (desire, love, the subject of the unconscious, the symbolic, phatasm, drive, repetition, trauma, the real, transference, the subject supposed to know, the Other, etc.).

The fifth topic concentrates on Michel Foucault, his archaeology of knowledge (history of madness, birth of the clinic, etc.), genealogy, history of sexuality, and his key concepts (history, discontinuity, event, knowledge, game of truth, power, subjectivation, gaze, space, body, discipline, biopolitics, pastoral power, sexuality, care of self, life, etc.).

The sixth topic concentrates on Jacques Derrida, his critique of Western metaphysics and 'deconstruction', his importance for the emergence of 'poststructuralism', his critique of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Rousseau, etc., and his key concepts (phonocentrism, logocentrism, phallocentrism, grammatology, difference, writing, presence, signature, autobiography and thanatology, Heidegger's 'question of spirit', spectres, monolingualism of the other, etc.).

The seventh topic concentrates on Gilles Deleuze, his renovation of history of philosophy, his philosophical monographs on Spinoza, Nietzsche, etc., his key concepts (image of thought, logic of sense, difference, repetition, desubjectivation, multiplicity, becoming, event, line of flight, fold, life, etc.) and his collaboration with Félix Guattari.

Special emphasis is put on contemporary theoretical debates and their importance for everyday life.