~~~~~ CALL FOR PAPERS ~~~~~

Lacan Salon
Vancouver, BC
June 1-2, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Dr. Paul Verhaeghe

In 1953 Jacques Lacan delivered his “Rome Discourse,” formally known as “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis.” Marking Lacan’s break with the Société Psychoanalytique de Paris, and opposing the Psychoanalytic orthodoxy of that time, the Rome Discourse was a manifesto calling for a return to the essence of Freud’s teaching. The manifesto launched a new school of thought within the psychoanalytic field and beyond, centered on the effects of speech and language in the clinic and the effects of discourse in the social.

 Making use of the work of the founding figure of structural linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the structuralist anthropology of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lacan proposed a return to the primacy of speech and language as the fundamental and irreducible concern of psychoanalysis. In this fashion, he restated the importance of the Symbolic in the emergence of the subject’s truth as it becomes articulated in his or her own words. Sixty years after Lacan delivered his theory of the Symbolic, his influence is evident not only in the psychoanalytic field, but within a range of other academic and intellectual fields that are concerned with the slippery and elusive nature of subjective truth. This conference will explore the status of the Symbolic in contemporary discursive practices and ask, how have the terms comprising Symbolic transactions shifted? And, what are the possible consequences of this shift?

LaConference 2013 is a sequel to LaConference 2011, and is an initiative of the Vancouver based Lacan Salon, which provides a venue for broad discussion of themes in Lacanian psychoanalysis. We welcome proposals for papers to participate in a workshop. If accepted, a draft version of your paper will be due to the workshop facilitator by May 15, 2013. Workshop proposals are also welcome. Please submit 250 word abstracts, paper title, and contact information by February 15, 2013 to: 2013laconference@gmail.com

Possible topics to present:
• What is the role of the body in contemporary life?
• What are the possibilities for the subject in the face of the relentless injunction to enjoy today?
• What are the most promising approaches to understand the temporality and historicity of the subject?
• What are the issues that emerge from the modes of sexuation in contemporary life?• What role does the symptom play in contemporary culture?
• In what ways has the Symbolic shifted since Freud and Lacan?
• Are recent developments in neurology/neuroplasticity relevant to psychoanalysis?
• Is psychoanalytic theory congruent with radical politics?
• Are hysteria, perversion and psychosis paradigmatic of the Freudian/Lacanian subject?
• In the guise of a return to Freud, Lacan also revised Freud by drawing on the traditions of structuralist and formalist thought. What revisions inform your return to Lacan?
• What are the manifestations of the different names-of-the-father/“no”s-of-thefather in contemporary life?
• What is the status of full and empty speech in contemporary life?
• What are the possible relationships between psychoanalysis and feminism?

The conference will include a keynote address by Dr Paul Verhaeghe (University of Ghent). The conference will take place at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. Details of the conference schedule will be announced in late February.

Paul Verhaeghe, PhD, is senior professor at Ghent University and holds the chair of the department for psychoanalysis and counseling psychology. He teaches Clinical Psychodiagnostics, Psychoanalytic therapy and Gender studies. He is an analyst in private practice, member of the NLS and the WAP. He has published eight books (5 are translated in English) and more than hundred papers. His two most recent books bring a critique on contemporary psychotherapy (see “Chronicle of a death foretold”: the end of psychotherapy. Dublin, 2007. Crónica de una muerte anunciada”: El final de las psicoterapias )and on the link between contemporary society and the new disorders (see Identity in a time of loneliness. APW conference, Philadelphia, 2008. Identidad en los tiempos de la soledad).