Thinking the future: history and unconscious

What is the status of the future, and how do the human sciences view it? How do individual and collective subjects apprehend their future, from the weight of the past, i.e. what is yet to come? How do they integrate the unpredictable into their practice, by extrapolating from what they've already learned? How, if they don't know it, can they deny it? If the creator of psychoanalysis wrote an "Avenir d'une illusion" (Future of an Illusion), it's not just about religion, but also, as it explicitly states, politics. It states that illusion has a bright future, supported as it is by the unconscious.

Such a theme extends the questions of catastrophe and awakening, of the "new" and innovation, in the order of the social and the psychic, by centering them on the dimension of anticipation. How is the future conceivable for the subject of history and the production of discourse? From utopia to dystopia, attempts have been made to shape the future, from the best to the worst. How can we think about the relationship between psychoanalysis and the theory of emancipation? This raises the question of the subject in its relationship to historical action, between reality and fantasy, a question that is chronically topical.

In partnership with François Bafoil's Sciences Po/CNRS seminar on denial in socio-political discourse.

Practical information

This seminar takes place once or twice a month on Mondays from 5pm to 7pm at Maison Suger, 16 rue Suger Paris 6.