Conference Agenda

The work of Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) is notoriously inscrutable. Over the course of his long career the psychoanalyst wrote very little, most of which was collected under the title of Écrits in 1966, and much of this writing was intended to be resistant to straightforward understanding. But if Lacan didn’t publish much, he was, however, a prolific lecturer, giving weekly seminars for most of the year from 1950 until 1980, and it is through these seminars that he articulated many of his most foundational ideas. Among these, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis has been by far the most influential. Hosted from January to June 1964 by the École Normale Supérieure less than two months after Lacan was kicked out of the International Psychoanalytic Association, the seminar develops a number of concepts that have proven to be indispensable for disciplines across the humanities for over sixty years.

The Society of Music Theory’s Music and Psychoanalysis Special Interest Group invites those attending this year’s AMS/SMT joint conference in Minneapolis to attend our session on Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis on Friday, November 7^th at Lakeshore C from 12:30PM to 2PM. The session is intended to be conversational and pedagogical, with the aim of both introducing the text to those without extensive background in philosophy, psychoanalysis, or continental theory, and reimagining its utility for those with pre-existing theoretical commitments in psychoanalysis. We plan to discuss each of the four concepts (repetition, gaze, drive, the subject) alongside important aspects of their reception both in and outside of music studies, as well demonstrate them by way of musical examples.