Fall 2020 Seminar: Repetition and Negation

Fall 2020 Seminar: Repetition and Negation

Repetition and Negation (Part I)

  • Fall 2020 Seminar
  • Starting Date: Sat., Sept. 26, 2020
  • Time: 10:00am-12:30pm
  • Place: Euclid
  • Frequency: 2nd and 3rd Sat. of every month
  • Instructor: R.T.Groome
  • Distance Participation by Skype

The PLACE seminar, Constructing Oedipus, has proceeded without interruption for the last seven years. A publication is scheduled for 2021 which introduces the Oedipus Complex within the Freudian tradition, then shows how Lacan proposes to resolve the aporias of the complex within a topology of the subject.  Our seminar has focussed on one core problem - the dilemma first situated by Freud of St. Christopher - that sets up any consequential construction-interpretation of the Oedipus. Our 2020-21 seminar proposes to bring together the loose ends in the achievement of both a geometrical-optical and topo-logical construction.

Statement of the Problem

Briefly, if St. Christopher is standing on the earth, but baby Jesus is sitting on his shoulders holding the world, then where exactly is St. Christopher standing?

Translated into the Oedipus: If the child has a relation to the mother, but only through the mother’s breast which is at the same time taken by the brother, then where exactly is this relation of the child to the mother?

We open up this semester, by showing how the problem of identification is complex: that is to say, the problem of identity must be constructed on the basis of difference, not the same (thus, anti-leibnizian), i.e., the Mother is divided from her breast by the child just as the child is divided from the Mother by the brother (of course, this doesn't mean someone has to have a brother, but that this sibling-function is inherent to the family. See Augustine's Confessions)

Diachronic Repetition:

Synchronic Repetition:

This 4 part relation between two divided entities, poses a problem of a difference of identity or Freudian Repetition. We show how to read this structure in the Freudian literature on repetition (see below).

In a second moment, in a reflexive time of understanding, the presentation of identity-difference-repetition is reformulated by Freud in terms of affirmation (Bejahung) and various modes of negation: Verdrängung, Verwerfung, Verneinung. (See the reading list below)

In a third time to conclude, we show how Lacan would resolve the aporias left open by Freud’s Oedipus Complex in two different ways:

a) by reformulating Freudian Repetition into a logic of alienation/separation presented in a topo-logical problem of singularity - or ‘point de capiton’. (see Lacanian reading list below);

b) by reformulating Freudian Repetition into a optics-geometrical problem where the 4-part relation is presented in an anharmonic ratio of a projective space and the Kleinian 4-group (see Lacanian reading list below).

Conjoining (a) and (b), we generalize the classical method of Venn diagrams in the plane into projective Venn Diagrams.

Towards this aim, a method of diagramming will be presented that formalizes Venn diagrams within a Propositional Logic and Boolean Algebra. To establish this formalization, it is requisite to concentrate specifically on determining the space of Negation/Affirmation with regard to the Repetition of Difference in Identity (We have included a reference in the reading list below to Frege’s Begriffsschrift to landmark a reading of the logical problem of Negation, Concept, Object, and Quantification that is contemporaneous with Freud.)

Towards the 2021 Winter-Spring Semester Part II, we will return to extend our algebraic writing of diagrams to a Projective Logic and Topological Algebra. Though the 2020 Summer Immersion concluded with the problem of the construction of an Interior Topological Algebra, it is foreseen to return to this problem frequently, since our goal is to show how, once an adequate writing of Freudian Repetition is achieved, a generalized theory of projective Venn diagrams leads quite naturally into a theory of knots and Lacan’s Borromean formalization of the Oedipus Complex.

The seminar requires no previous background in mathematics-logic or psychoanalysis, just a certain perseverance in developing a constructive reading of both. For in the end, without this constructive reading, we are, at best, left with the vagaries of a philosophical account of repetition in the manner of Deleuze (see below).

Texts

The following texts will be referred to and used during the Fall 2020 seminar. Though reading these texts are not necessary, the argument of the seminar will be greatly facilitated in developing a reading of all of them. 

The Complete Oeuvres of Freud is available in German and English online at the Library of PLACE at: https://www.topoi.net/publications  .

The Complete Oeuvres of Lacan, in French, is available on request to the PLACE secretary. Those requesting an English translation of Lacan’s Écrits, please contact the secretary.

Freud

On Repetition

1) Interpretation of Dreams, Chpt. 7 - Psychology of the Dream Process; “Father can’t you see I am burning?”, 1900.

2) Rememoration, Repetition, and Elaboration, 1914.

On Negation

3) Denegation, 1925.

Lacan

On Negation

1) A Spoken Commentary on Freud’s ‘Verneinung’ by Jean Hyppolite, 1954.

2) Introduction to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s Verneinung, 1954.

3) Response to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud’s Verneinung, 1954.

On Repetition

4) Seminar IV- The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis: Part I - The

  Unconscious and Repetition, 1964

On The Caption-Point

5) Seminar III - Les Psychoses: Chpts.  XXI- Le point de caption, XXII, Tu est celui qui me suivras

On Klein 4-group: Mobius Venn Diagram of Repetition

6) Logic of the Fantasy, Feb. 15 & 22

On the Anharmonic Ratio of Projective Space

7) Logic of the Fantasy, March 1, 8, &15.

Frege

1) Quantification: Begriffsschrift. (1879)

2) Function and Concept

3) Concept and Object

4) Negation

Deleuze

1) Difference and Repetition - Introduction, 1968