Aaron Schuster<\/p>\n
Independent Researcher<\/p>\n
18 March 2025, 17h00 (Lisbon Time \u2014 GMT+0)<\/p>\n
Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o (Room C201.J \u2013 Department of Philosophy)<\/strong><\/p>\n School of Arts and Humanities \u2013 University of Lisbon<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n In one of his diary entries, Franz Kafka writes of \u201cthe borderland between loneliness and community.\u201d I will argue that this borderland is precisely the domain of psychoanalysis, and that Kafka\u2019s line provides a compelling formulation of what is at stake in the psychoanalytic view of the human being. Humans are creatures of the border, caught between sheer isolation and worldlessness, on the one hand, and their belonging to the community and insertion into the socio-symbolic order, on the other. Symptoms should be conceived as \u201csolutions\u201d that a person (unconsciously) invents for problems that the wider community cannot solve. They save the person from total isolation\u2014from helplessly drowning in their problems\u2014while at the same disconnecting them from the codes and frameworks that organize shared social life. This talk will explore how this borderland forces a reconsideration of freedom. The opposition between autonomy and heteronomy is complicated by voluntary servitude, defined as a willing of unfreedom or an autonomous affirmation of heteronomy. In opposition to this, I will propose an \u201cinvoluntary insubordination,\u201d a heteronomous autonomy or \u201cfreedom from behind,\u201d as the form of freedom theorized by psychoanalysis and portrayed in Kafka\u2019s fiction. Therein lies the warped or ironical optimism of both Freud and Kafka, whose lesson ought to be renewed today: however much the human being willingly accedes to its domination, there insists a certain measure of \u201cunwanted freedom\u201d that testifies to the impossibility of the individual\u2019s smooth integration into society. Symptoms are political insofar as they are not simply disorders (sicknesses) but articulate tensions, gaps, and fault lines in the social order, and express a strange and idiosyncratic freedom.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This activity is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UID\/00310\/2025, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa Aaron Schuster Independent Researcher Involuntary Insubordination and the Borderland between Loneliness and Community: Kafka and Psychoanalysis 18 March 2025, 17h00 (Lisbon Time \u2014 GMT+0) Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o (Room C201.J \u2013 Department of Philosophy) School of Arts and Humanities \u2013 University of Lisbon Abstract In one of his diary entries, Franz Kafka writes of \u201cthe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3479,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3133\/revisions\/3479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/praxis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n(https:\/\/doi.org\/10.54499\/UID\/00310\/2025)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"