Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis
Encyclopedia
Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis ( or ), also known as the Ljubljana Lacanian School is a popular name for a post-structuralist and Lacanian school of thought centred around the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis based in Ljubljana
, Slovenia
. Prominent members of the school include Slavoj Žižek
, Rastko Močnik
, Mladen Dolar
, Alenka Zupančič
, Miran Božovič
and Eva Bahovec. Other scholars associated with the school include philosophers Zdravko Kobe, Rado Riha
, Jelica Šumič Riha
, and sociologist Renata Salecl
.
, in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
. Founding members of the school included Slavoj Žižek
, Mladen Dolar
and Rastko Močnik
. Their main aim was to bring together the philosophy of German idealism
, Marxism
and psychoanalytic theories as a means of analysis of contemporary social, cultural and political phenomena. The school rose to prominence in the international academic environment in the 1990s.
The group was formed around a young generation of Marxist students at the University of Ljubljana
, in Socialist Slovenia
. Contrary to their older colleagues, affiliated with the Praxis school
, these young students rejected Marxist humanism
and turned towards the "antihumanism
" of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
and, to a lesser extent, to the Frankfurt School
.
The main goal of the Ljubljana School was to re-interpret Marxism by emphasizing the rootedness of Karl Marx
's thought in the tradition of German idealism
. They favoured an anti-historicist interpretation of Hegel's philosophy, with an emphasis on his epistemology and dialectic philosophy. Most of the members of the Ljubljana school have been indebted to the Slovenian Marxist Božidar Debenjak
, professor of philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, renowned for his attentive reading of German idealism, who introduced the Frankfurt School in Slovenia.
A specific feature of the Ljubljana School was to connect the Marxist and Hegelian traditions with Lacanian psychoanalysis and with Structuralism
. The combined reading of Lacan, German idealism (especially Hegel), Marx, the Frankfurt school and authors from the structuralist tradition, especially Claude Lévi-Strauss
, has since been the distinctive feature of the Ljubljana School.
, civic nationalists
, conservatives, liberals, social democrats up to radical Marxists, Lacanians and followers of the Frankfurt school
. By the early 1980s, the tensions within the editorial board reached their height, causing the more conservative and non-Marxist contributors to publicly petition the authorities of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia
to be allowed to establish their own journal. Their demands were accepted in 1981, where a new alternative journal, the Nova revija
, was founded. From then on, the followers of the Ljubljana School gradually took over the journal Problemi, transforming it into the main platform of their intellectual activities.
In 1985, the journal Problemi launched the Analecta book series, publishing more than 60 monographs since, mostly translations of classical and contemporary philosophers (e.g. Spinoza, Hume
, Hegel, Kant
, Derrida, Lyotard and Badiou), as well as Slovene authors. In the late 1980s, the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis was founded as the central coordinating body of publishing and editorial activities of the group. The current president of the society is Slavoj Žižek
.
Nevertheless, the academic activity has mostly been taking place within the University of Ljubljana
and the various institutes and departments associated to it (such as the Faculty of Arts and the Institute for Sociology) and the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...
, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
. Prominent members of the school include Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, Rastko Močnik
Rastko Mocnik
Rastko Močnik is a Slovenian sociologist, literary theorist, translator and political activist. Together with Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis....
, Mladen Dolar
Mladen Dolar
Mladen Dolar is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist, film critic and expert in psychoanalysis.Dolar was born in Maribor as the son of the literary critic Jaro Dolar. In 1978 he graduated in Philosophy and French language at the University of Ljubljana, where he graduated under the...
, Alenka Zupančič
Alenka Zupancic
Alenka Zupančič is a Slovenian philosopher whose work focuses on psychoanalysis and continental philosophy.Born in Ljubljana, Zupančič graduated at the University of Ljubljana in 1990. She is currently a full-time researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and...
, Miran Božovič
Miran Božovic
Miran Božovič is a Slovenian philosopher, associated with the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.He holds a degree in comparative literature and philosophy from the University of Ljubljana, and a PhD in philosophy. He teaches early modern philosophy at the Faculty of Arts of the University of...
and Eva Bahovec. Other scholars associated with the school include philosophers Zdravko Kobe, Rado Riha
Rado Riha
Rado Riha is a Slovenian philosopher. He is a senior research fellow and currently the head of the , Centre for Scientific Research at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and coordinator of the philosophy module at the post-graduate study programme of the University of Nova Gorica.Born in...
, Jelica Šumič Riha
Jelica Šumič Riha
Jelica Šumič Riha is a Slovenian philosopher, political theorist, and translator, associated with the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis.- Biography :She studied philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, graduating in 1983...
, and sociologist Renata Salecl
Renata Salecl
Renata Salecl is a Slovenian philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana...
.
Historical background
The school was founded in the late 1970s by young Slovenian followers of the theories of the French psychoanalyst Jacques LacanJacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, in what was then the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. Founding members of the school included Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, Mladen Dolar
Mladen Dolar
Mladen Dolar is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist, film critic and expert in psychoanalysis.Dolar was born in Maribor as the son of the literary critic Jaro Dolar. In 1978 he graduated in Philosophy and French language at the University of Ljubljana, where he graduated under the...
and Rastko Močnik
Rastko Mocnik
Rastko Močnik is a Slovenian sociologist, literary theorist, translator and political activist. Together with Slavoj Žižek and Mladen Dolar, he is considered one of the co-founders of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis....
. Their main aim was to bring together the philosophy of German idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
, Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
and psychoanalytic theories as a means of analysis of contemporary social, cultural and political phenomena. The school rose to prominence in the international academic environment in the 1990s.
The group was formed around a young generation of Marxist students at the University of Ljubljana
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...
, in Socialist Slovenia
Socialist Republic of Slovenia
The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until 1990...
. Contrary to their older colleagues, affiliated with the Praxis school
Praxis School
The Praxis school was a Marxist humanist philosophical movement. It originated in Zagreb and Belgrade in the SFR Yugoslavia, during the 1960s.Prominent figures among the school's founders include Gajo Petrović and Milan Kangrga of Zagreb and Mihailo Marković of Belgrade...
, these young students rejected Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism
Marxist humanism is a branch of Marxism that primarily focuses on Marx's earlier writings, especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in which Marx espoused his theory of alienation, as opposed to his later works, which are considered to be concerned more with his structural...
and turned towards the "antihumanism
Antihumanism
Antihumanism is a term referring to a number of perspectives that are opposed to the project of philosophical anthropology...
" of the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
and, to a lesser extent, to the Frankfurt School
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
.
The main goal of the Ljubljana School was to re-interpret Marxism by emphasizing the rootedness of Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
's thought in the tradition of German idealism
German idealism
German idealism was a philosophical movement that emerged in Germany in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It developed out of the work of Immanuel Kant in the 1780s and 1790s, and was closely linked both with romanticism and the revolutionary politics of the Enlightenment...
. They favoured an anti-historicist interpretation of Hegel's philosophy, with an emphasis on his epistemology and dialectic philosophy. Most of the members of the Ljubljana school have been indebted to the Slovenian Marxist Božidar Debenjak
Božidar Debenjak
Božidar Debenjak is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, social theorist and translator.He was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, then part of Yugoslavia...
, professor of philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, renowned for his attentive reading of German idealism, who introduced the Frankfurt School in Slovenia.
A specific feature of the Ljubljana School was to connect the Marxist and Hegelian traditions with Lacanian psychoanalysis and with Structuralism
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
. The combined reading of Lacan, German idealism (especially Hegel), Marx, the Frankfurt school and authors from the structuralist tradition, especially Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
, has since been the distinctive feature of the Ljubljana School.
Theoretical work
The Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis focuses on the following areas:- readings of modern and classical philosophy (especially German idealism) through the theory of Jacques Lacan;
- elaboration of Lacanian theories of ideology and power (both of the Communist regime in the 1980s and the liberal democracy after 1990);
- Lacanian analysis of culture and art, with a special emphasis on cinema.
Institutional frame
The school first emerged in the late 1970s as a distinct intellectual group within the alternative journal Problemi. Since the mid 1960s, this journal served as the only alternative media in Slovenia where critical and dissenting opinions against the mainstream Titoist ideology could be heard. The journal thus hosted an extremely wide range of contributors, from apolitical modernist literatesModernist literature
Modernist literature is sub-genre of Modernism, a predominantly European movement beginning in the early 20th century that was characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional aesthetic forms...
, civic nationalists
Civic nationalism
Liberal Nationalism is a kind of nationalism identified by political philosophers who believe in a non-xenophobic form of nationalism compatible with liberal values of freedom, tolerance, equality, and individual rights. Ernest Renan and John Stuart Mill are often thought to be early liberal...
, conservatives, liberals, social democrats up to radical Marxists, Lacanians and followers of the Frankfurt school
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
. By the early 1980s, the tensions within the editorial board reached their height, causing the more conservative and non-Marxist contributors to publicly petition the authorities of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia
Socialist Republic of Slovenia
The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was a socialist state that was a constituent country of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1943 until 1990...
to be allowed to establish their own journal. Their demands were accepted in 1981, where a new alternative journal, the Nova revija
Nova revija
Nova revija is a Slovenian publishing house and cultural institute that developed from the literary journal with the same name.- The magazine :...
, was founded. From then on, the followers of the Ljubljana School gradually took over the journal Problemi, transforming it into the main platform of their intellectual activities.
In 1985, the journal Problemi launched the Analecta book series, publishing more than 60 monographs since, mostly translations of classical and contemporary philosophers (e.g. Spinoza, Hume
David Hume
David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
, Hegel, Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
, Derrida, Lyotard and Badiou), as well as Slovene authors. In the late 1980s, the Society for Theoretical Psychoanalysis was founded as the central coordinating body of publishing and editorial activities of the group. The current president of the society is Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
.
Nevertheless, the academic activity has mostly been taking place within the University of Ljubljana
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...
and the various institutes and departments associated to it (such as the Faculty of Arts and the Institute for Sociology) and the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.