The aim of this one-day workshop is to explore the intersection between phenomenology and psychoanalysis via the theme of nostalgia. While there has been a modest but steady pool of research on nostalgia from a phenomenological perspective, the relationship between psychoanalysis—especially within the context of Freud—and nostalgia remains more ambiguous. In the work of Freud himself, the term “nostalgia” appears only once and even then, only in passing in The Interpretation of Dreams. The passing mention to nostalgia is all the more striking given Freud’s concern with the archaeology of meaning, the function of fixation, and the different modalities of memory conceived in his work.  This workshop proceeds from the point of view that the theme of nostalgia provides an opportunity for dialogue between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. In particular, the workshop posits that nostalgia can provide a space of possible encounter between phenomenology and psychoanalysis across several key themes and questions. This workshop invites contributors to reflect on the place of nostalgia between phenomenology and psychoanalysis across a series of themes and critical questions:

 

1. Temporality: what is the temporality of nostalgia?
2. Affectivity: what is the affective status of nostalgia and how can we think of the emotion outside of the binary between disease and well-being? What role do other emotions such as anxiety, melancholia, and shame play in the formation of nostalgia as a mood? What exactly is the affective tonality of nostalgia and what role can Freud’s notion of the uncanny play here?
3. Subjectivity: what role does nostalgia play in generating an impression of unity (or otherwise disclosing the fragmented foundations upon which subjectivity is grounded)?
4. Unconsciousness: what role do unconscious mechanisms play in nostalgic desire?
5. Intentionality: what is it that we are nostalgic for?

 

PROGRAM

(For abstracts and biographies, please click on the titles).

 

9:00 am – 9:20 am

Registration

 

9:30 am – 9:45 am

Introduction

Dylan Trigg, Leyla Sophie Gleissner

 

9:45 am – 10:30 am

Phenomenological Forays into Nostalgia – with a Few Intercultural Side Glances

Georg Stenger

 

10:30 am – 11:15 am

Melancholy and Sexual Theory: Identification and Drive in Freud's Later Work

Philippe van Haute

 

11:15 am – 11:30 am

Break

 

11:30 am – 12:15 am

Troubling Nostalgia: Theorizing through Migration

Manu Sharma

 

12:15 am – 1:00 pm

Hoisted at the Hinge of Times – in Exile Between Melancholia and Nostalgia

Dorothée Legrand

 

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm

Break

 

2:00 pm – 2:45 pm

Going Back to Normal – Nostalgia, a (Bad) Habit?

Maren Wehrle

 

2:45 pm – 3:30 pm

Losing the Body-as-Home? Nostalgia, Embodiment and the Phenomenology of Illness

Luna Dolezal, Cathrin Fischer

 

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm

Break

 

3:45 pm – 4:30 pm

Nostalgia Between Narcissism and Melancholia

Delia Popa

 

4:30 pm – 5:15 pm

Refusing to Mourn: Reflections on the Relation Between Nostalgia and Grief

Line Ryberg Ingerslev

 

5:15 pm – 5:30 pm

Closing Remarks

Dylan Trigg, Leyla Sophie Gleissner

 

The workshop is supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), City of Vienna, University of Vienna, and the Sigmund Freud Museum. It is part of the project A Phenomenology of Nostalgia - FWF project number P33428.

 

Please indicate in the message field of the registration if you are only participating in the morning, afternoon, or in both parts of the event.