Renata Salecl & Harcourt Discuss Lacan's 1958 Seminar 🧠

Bernard E. Harcourt interviews Renata Salecl on Jacques Lacan's 1958 seminar, “The Dream by the Butcher’s Beautiful Wife” from *The Formations of the Unconscious,* in preparation for their seminar, Marx 4/13, on Marx’s *Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844* and Lacan @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13/

For an introduction to Marx 4/13: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/25/bernard-e-harcourt-on-marxs-paris-manuscripts-of-1844-jacques-lacan-and-renata-salecl-introduction-to-marx-4-13/

To read Renata Salecl's long-form essay for Marx 4/13:
https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/23/renata-salecl-catastrophe-apathy-and-sublimation-how-people-in-the-us-are-dreaming-about-the-end-of-the-world/

The video recording of the seminar Marx 4/13 with Renata Salecl will be here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13/

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/
Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

***

When Marx’s Paris manuscripts on political economy and on Hegelian philosophy were posthumously published in 1932, in German, under the title Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, the publication produced shock waves in the intellectual world and in Marxist circles.

Their publication rejuvenated the reception of Marx’s writings. It opened new interpretations of his work. It gave birth to an entire field of philosophical investigation on alienation. And it gave rise to contentious debates over the value of the youthful, philosophical writings of Marx, as opposed to the more mature, scientific, economic writings.

At Marx 4/13, we return to the question of alienation in conversation with a brilliant philosopher in the psychoanalytic tradition, Renata Salecl, who joins us in New York from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Renata Salecl will discuss forms of social and political alienation that are currently being experienced and spreading widely across the West today. Renata Salecl proposes that we reread Marx’s theory of alienation from the Paris manuscripts in conversation with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic writings, more specifically, paired with Lacan’s lecture “The Dream by the Butcher’s Beautiful Wife,” from a seminar he delivered on April 9, 1958, at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris.

In this pre-seminar interview, Renata Salecl explains the concepts and ideas that ground Lacan's 1958 seminar in order to help understand Lacan in preparation for the seminar Marx 4/13.

Welcome to Marx 4/13!

Readings for Marx 4/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13-readings-marxs-economic-and-philosophical-manuscripts-of-1844-and-jacques-lacan/