2008/09/25 Eupen
Fetish
Provocative
Yesterday I invited a Lacan expert to speak to my students about Freud, Lacan and maybe a little bit about Žižek as well.
I believe he did a good job explaining the basics of psychotherapy and the basics of the philosophy of Lacan.
Afterwards a student said to me: “Very interesting, but also very unscientific.”
Freud can still be very provocative, especially when it comes to sexuality. It is not easy to take sexuality not personally. This was my first thought.
But there is also the traditional mistake: the expectation that a certain system explains everything. Even a system with flaws can be worth studying.
And what’s the advantage of studying literature in a scientific way? What does it actually mean?
Science can become a fetish as well.
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25 comments 
Maybe Freud nor Lacan are very scientific, but the treatement I received based on their teachings was to me very helpfull. Isn't that what matters.
Yes, and insights do not cure neither, although helpful - I will always stay a polymorph pervert, I am afraid, - but it is great to read (about) Freud and Lacan, even as a layman.
Arnon
Congratulations with the translation of the Aylum Seeker in Ivrit.Will this book be present at your sisters household? Or will it be banned?
Is there one of her children that looks after you and that one day might turn up at your doorstep, saying ; I want to do just like you.
Jan
If you are a pervert, I want to be one too.Personal
It's a challenge not to take anything to personal, not only sexuality.Taking things not too personal is already personal.
@Mieke
Not bad this one (in Flemish)
http://tinyurl.com/3z9v84
(your neurotic wannabe courteous pervert)
Not bad this one (in Flemish)
http://tinyurl.com/3z9v84
(your neurotic wannabe courteous pervert)
Appreciation
Any thing or system, personal, impersonal, scientific, sexual, religious, political, historicist, whatever, that gives The Kids an angle through which to appreciate and develop an affection for a text is all right in my book. Nabokov be damned!To Arnon Grunberg
Was Johan Schokker the expert?Eupen
This post is rather off-topic but I was wondering when and where the reading in Eupen will take place. Or is it for a select audience only?Saint
I believe it's invitation only, but please contact the publisher or my assistant Johannes:johannes@arnongrunberg.com
Science is a method and its foundation is the faith in rationality.
Saint Léger
I've read in the Eindhovens Dagblad this phone number: 0031(0)40-2903190.It seems you can contact this number to reserve a place for a bus trip to the presentation.
It's organised by a bookseller in Eindhoven. I don't know if it's fully booked yet.
Pjötr
Yes.Saint Léger / Eupen
Doomen Plantage Books & More in Eindhoven offers a trip to the presentation of Onze oom, 'In de voetsporen van Arnon Grunberg (en Simenon)!' It includes some sightseeing and the book!, all for 31 euro. I was told so by my brother who will participate.Eupen seems a very odd place to present a book. Or is this a charitable act to give Eupen some claim to fame?
Carlos
I thought Eupen extremely well chosen. It's abroad and still it isn't to us Flemish and for the Dutch it's just at the other side of the frontier.Mieke
Eupen isn't Flemish at all. It's a German bit of Belgium, or a Belgian bit of Germany, however one chooses to see it. My memory of the place is of a dull and overly orderly small town. I remember seeing German shepherd dogs in cages (Zwinger) there. I haven't seen that anywhere else in Belgium.unscientific
“Very interesting, but also very unscientific.”Lol, hahahaha.
Carlos
I think you've misread my words. I'll rephrase them for you. It feels like abraod to us Flemish but it isn't.Mieke
You wrote: "It's abroad and still it isn't to us Flemish and for the Dutch it's just at the other side of the frontier."Ah you meant: "To we Flemings, Eupen isn't abroad, and for the Dutch it's just over the border."
Or do I still not get it?
I'm still not quite sure why this blog is in English. It's obvious most commenters (and Arnon Grunberg himself) would be far more comfortable and expressive in Dutch.
Carlos
Good point concerning the language and I still have to meet the first Belgian citizen who likes to visit Eupen, there was, is and always will be nothing.Strasse
Grunberg was there.Mieke
He was also in Iraq and Afghanistan....Kilroy was here !
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