The International Queer Jungian Initiative holds its next monthly gathering on Sunday July 26, from 4pm to 6:30pm (UK time), and this month’s discussion takes on a recently published paper by Avgi Saketopoulou on contemporary queer psychoanalytic thought.
The group will be studying Exigent Sadism: Austerity Logics and the Antireparative Turn by queer psychoanalyst Saketopoulou, which is available to read for free from Duke University Press until the end of July. The paper is a critique of repair as both a psychoanalytic and a political ideal. Saketopoulou’s central argument is that the demand for reparation and the expectation that the harmed party will help restore the aggressor’s sense of goodness functions as a form of austerity logic: a redistribution of burden onto those who are already carrying the most. Drawing on Klein’s concept of the depressive position, Laplanche’s account of the enigmatic signifier, and Bataille’s thinking on sovereignty and expenditure, she argues that reparative ideals can work to suppress the very rage and resistance that meaningful confrontation with harm requires.
In place of repair, Saketopoulou proposes exigent sadism. Exigent sadism names instead a willingness to hold firm in naming harm, to refuse the consolations of reconciliation when they come at the cost of one’s own truth, and to risk one’s attachments, relationships, and comforts in the service of that refusal. However, she is careful to distinguish this theoretical tool from cruelty or vengeance. She grounds her argument in Palestinian liberation, reading it as a paradigm case of a situation in which the demand for reparative behaviour functions as a further exercise of power over those already dispossessed.
The gathering will also engage counter-arguments to this position, drawing on a recent episode of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s podcast Psychoanalysis & You, in which psychoanalyst Sue Kolod offers a different perspective in conversation with Gail Saltz.
As with all monthly gatherings, the session opens with an hour-long social dreaming matrix, followed by a short break and then the discussion itself. No advance reading is required.
The group is open to anyone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ and has an interest in Jung. To join in time for this month’s gathering, email queerjungian@gmail.com by Friday July 24. Upcoming sessions are scheduled for August 23, September 27, October 25, and November 22.