?Psychoanalysis and Art

This course will examine what psychoanalysis understands about Art. We will ask whether art expresses inner unconscious desires or imagines scenarios as a means to criticize disciplining cultural practices. Is art an escape from repression or is it a presentation of distress? We will read Freud’s analyses of art and culture (Jensen’s “Gradiva,” Michelangelo’s Moses), as well as some writings by Lacan, Kristeva, Irigaray, and Cixous. We will also ask whether art can escape the trap, as Deleuze and Guattari claim, of Freud’s Oedipal analysis, and provide the mode by which one can overcome psychoanalytic trouble.