Discussions on the conceptual value of the death drive (or death drives) and its pertinence with respect to the clinic of repetition and traumas have existed since its introduction by Freud in 1920. But even those among philosophers who are prone to liken Freud’s drive theory to either the Aristotelian metaphysics of the dunamis or to the metaphysics of Leibniz (Bernet 2011) have acknowledged that no philosophy has ever formulated anything like the Freudian hypothesis of a death drive.
What is the death drive? An internal capture of vital forces by a destructivity that is both immanent and subtle? Is this the final say of what Freud described at the end of Beyond the Pleasure Principle as the drive’s perspective? Or should we recognize that destructive forces are at work in clinical treatment, in our social and in our political life, regardless of the preservation of a “self”? The destructivity may be linked to pleasure, and even imply pleasure, but what these destructive forces (destructive of the self or of others) seek is not pleasure.
How can we interpret in the pages of BTPP the analyst’s continual twists and turns which at times reduce the plasticity of the drive to an inexorable destiny of returning to a deathly fixity, and, at others, claim that only the contingency of encounters and exchanges can slow down the self-destructive slope of the drives? How does this Freudian argument connect to the idea that sadism and masochism tell the story of the failings of such chance encounters, when the erotization of death drives avoid the risks of alterity while nonetheless escaping self-destruction?
We invite you to reread the whole text of BTPP, trying not to privilege an isolated theme (the emphasis on the wooden spool game to the detriment of other instances of repetition; the isolated reference to Schopenhauer forgetting to mention that Freud only quotes it to distinguish himself from it; the so-called biological speculation that is not followed by an investigation of its function, etc.) over the general argument. For more information, we refer you to the complete French version of this argument here.
Proposals should be sent tocolloquesipp2018@gmail.combefore November, 17th 2017. Abstracts mentioning your paper title as well as your name, and the name of your affiliated institution should be about one-page long (around 2250 signs). Notifications of acceptance will be sent in December.