Lacan, Althusser and the ‘Very Pretty Dream’ of Interdisciplinarity

This talk will discuss how a shared critique of interdisciplinarity and the “conjectural sciences” shaped the alliance between French psychoanalysts and Marxists in the run-up to May ’68, from its formation to its dissolution.

Kobe Keymeulen is a philosopher interested in the tension between the history of ideas and “anti-historicist” theoretical problems.

Keymeulen largely specializes in continental philosophy from late modernity to the present (Kant, Hegel, Adorno, Lacan, Althusser, Badiou, Foucault,…).  Following his doctoral dissertation, Drawing the Line – Contemporary Continental Philosophy and the Concern of (Inter)Disciplinarity (2025), he continues to pursue the tricky conceptualization of what “a discipline” is (a science or an art, contra Science or Art) according to these theoretical frameworks.

At Princeton, he is working as a Fulbright Scholar on a project investigating the ongoing relationship between American literary theory and contemporary continental philosophy. His main focus is the influence of an ontological or materialist turn in 21st-century philosophies on approaches to critical theory in the United States, pursuing shared points of reference (drawn from Marxism, psychoanalysis, et al) and methodological differences.