Psychoanalysis and Structure. A Talk with A. Kiarina Kordela | Program in Experimental Critical Theory

Advanced Registration

Advanced registration is required by Friday, February 20, 2026. The Zoom meeting link will be sent end of day on February 20.

REGISTER TO ATTEND HERE

About the Talk

Based on the introduction to Epistemontology, its third chapter, “Psychoanalysis and Structuralism,” shows the necessary interconnection between capitalist economy and psychoanalytic thought. It does so by reading together (a) Spinozian monism—as the first philosophical system that conceived of being (substance) in structural terms; (b) Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism—as the groundwork for a secular epistemontological theory; (c) Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis—as instrumental in the formulation of properly structuralist thought; and (d) Deleuze’s account of structuralism—as presented in his “How Do We Recognize Structuralism?” (1967/1973). While Laplanche and Pontalis serve as background for teasing out the structuralist epistemology of psychoanalysis, I set Deleuze in dialogue with Alexandre Kojève in order to reveal Deleuze’s theoretical trajectory as an attempt to preempt possible objections (of Hegelian origin) to all three: Spinoza, structuralism, and psychoanalysis.

Readings to be discussed are listed below and are available on the ECT site:

• A. Kiarina Kordela, “Psychoanalysis and Structuralism” from Epistemontology in Spinoza-Marx-Freud-Lacan: The (Bio)Power of Structure (Routledge, 2018)
• Jean Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality” (1964)

About the Speaker

A. Kiarina Kordela is Professor of German Studies and founding Director of the Crit­ical Theory Program at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. She has pub­lished in fields that range from intellectual history, philosophy, critical and political theory to literary, film, and cultural analysis. She is the author of numerous articles, as well as of Epistemontology in Spinoza, Freud, Marx, Lacan (Routledge, 2018), Being, Time, Bios: Capitalism and Ontology (SUNY Press, 2013), and Surplus (SUNY Press, 2007), and the co-editor of two volumes on Spinoza’s Authority (Bloomsbury, 2018) and one on Freedom and Confinement in Modernity: Kafka’s Cages (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011).

About the Program in Experimental Critical Theory

The focus of the 2025-2026 Experimental Critical Theory seminar (COM LIT250), taught by Professor Eleanor Kaufman, is “Structure.”