The Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) organized the twenty fifth lecture of the Distinguished Lecture Series, “ The Real and the Contemporary Forms of Its Disavowal” by Prof. Alenka Zupančič, Professor of Philosophy and Psychoanalysis at The European Graduate School and a Research Councillor at the Institute of Philosophy, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy of Sciences,3 0th September, 2022, 7:30-8:30 PM IST on Zoom. Supported by the Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC), Ministry of Education, Government of India, the talk was organized as part of the ongoing academic collaboration with the Department of English and American Studies, University of Würzburg, Germany, and promises to be one in a line of successively pertinent lectures.
The talk was conducted by Ms. Zahra Rizvi and Ms. Suman Bhagchandani, Ph.D. scholars, Department of English, JMI, and was enthusiastically attended by a large crowd of scholars, students, and faculty from all over the world and across various time-zones.
Prof. Simi Malhotra, H.o.D., Department of English, JMI, Indian PI, delivered the welcome address, greeting the invited speaker, faculty, scholars, and students. She, then, introduced the esteemed speaker, Prof. Alenka Zupančič, who was greeted by a round of applause.
Through her lecture, Prof Alenka Zupančič sought to explain the contemporary tendency of subjects to be caught in a crazy cheerful mode of existence even when a sense of crisis and traumatic change looms large. To come to this explanation, she first recorded a shift that has occurred in recent times to the Freudian concept of disavowal. For instance, in the recent popular representation of the apocalypse, such as the movie Don’t Look Up, the apocalypse is perceived as if it belongs to some other temporality. Prof Zupančič argued that this is a case of fetishistic disavowal. By putting Maurice Blanchot’s thoughts on the apocalypse in conversation with those of Karl Jaspers’, she formulated a new configuration of choice.
In conclusion, Prof Zupančič argued that we need to move from the struggle mode of coping one day at a time to a passionate common struggle for our future lives.
This was followed by an engaging, in-depth Q/A session coordinated by Ms. Sakshi Dogra, Ph.D. Scholar, Department of English, JMI. The event was brought to an end with a Vote of Thanks by Ms. Aparna Pathak.
To ensure a wide range of viewership and participation, the event was also live streamed on YouTube, and was attended by over a hundred participants.
