The Riddle of the Sphinxter: Reading Laplanche

We will read together Jean Laplanche’s essay, “The Unfinished Copernican Revolution,” focusing on his notion of enigmatic messages emanating from the unconscious of another especially within the setting of parental caregiving. My guiding thought is that we need to understand the hermeneutic adventure they set off in the child as a series of “pulsive theorizations” that come to be organized around the openings of the body to the outside thereby rendering them “erogenous.”

Eric L. Santner is the Philip and Ida Romberg Distinguished Service Professor in Modern Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He works at the intersection of literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, political theory, and religious thought. His most recent book is Untying Things Together: Philosophy, Literature, and a Life in Theory.

Space is limited. Register by September 27 for access to readings and to reserve a seat and a box lunch.