Mladen Dolar

University of Ljubljana

Mladen Dolar is Professor and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana. His principal areas of research are psychoanalysis, modern French philosophy, German idealism and art theory. He has lectured extensively at the universities in USA and across Europe, he is the author of over hundred and fifty papers in scholarly journals and collected volumes. Apart from fourteen books in Slovene his book publications include most notably A Voice and Nothing More (MIT 2006, translated into ten languages) and Opera’s Second Death (with Slavoj Žižek, Routledge 2001, also translated into several languages). His new book The Riskiest Moment is forthcoming with Duke University Press. He is one of the founders of the ‘Ljubljana Lacanian School’.

Speaking at the conference

Friday, 23 September, 11am, Kosovel Hall

The Master is Undead

It was during his one and only visit to Slovenia, at easter 1898, that Freud by coincidence met Dr. Karl Lueger, the antisemitic burgomaster of Vienna (who would later become Hitler’s role model). The important historical implication of this anecdote is that psychoanalysis, at its inception, had to inherently confront the new phenomenon of populist leaders, emerging after the demise of traditional authorities, the counterfeit master figures supplanting the traditional ones. Hundred years on fake masters proliferate, all the more pernicious for being fake. The paper will explore how these figures could emerge out of the spirit of what Lacan called the university discourse, the discourse supposedly based on knowledge, reason and universality. It will look at Lacan’s occasional gloomy predictions about the upsurge of segregation. It will finally consider some reasons for the present crisis of psychoanalysis.

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