Meaghan Emery

Bourdieu's Uneasy Psychoanalysis

As is known, psychoanalysis, developed in Vienna around the time of the Belle Epoque (1870-1914), would be a form of Eurocentrism universalizing the European psychic structure and its sexual obsessions, further contributing to psychoanalysiss crisis. Nonetheless, it seems to be playing an increasingly important role, no less ambiguous, in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. In fact, psychoanalysis has always had a place in his texts, despite an initial degree of hostility or serious reservations on Bourdieus part. His reservations, however, have evolved over time, become nuanced and modified, to ultimately assign psychoanalysis a tentative but increasingly distinct profile as a problematic discipline. At times psychoanalysis is viewed as a rival to Bourdieus sociology, from which the latter must absolutely be differentiated. At others it is seen as a kind of domain (or field) susceptible to annexation through the sociological treatment of certain of its concepts-that is, when a possible fusion with sociology, based on an equal footing and a clearly defined division of labor, appears hopeless. As is also known, since its foundation, sociology has offered its own answers to the questions philosophy has been asking from the very beginning, an observation that Bourdieu would certainly be the last to deny. But in the case of psychoanalysis, as Alain Juranville notes in his remarkable Lacan et la philosophie (1984):

Europe, Immigration and the Sarkozian Concept of Fraternité

In Nicolas Sarkozy’s embrace of ‘French national identity’ during his presidential campaign, one could sense the lepéniste nature of his campaign. Sarkozy’s cultural platform, specifying France’s Christian roots and the national language as vital to the country’s national and democratic heritage, has likewise betrayed his definitions of ‘Europeanness’ and ‘Frenchness’ as essentialist. Given his political success, the hardening of France’s universalist values has therefore become palpable, specifically the concept of fraternité (‘brotherhood’ or ‘solidarity’). The following analysis will examine how, during Sarkozy’s tenure as Interior Minister and now as President, the original concept of fraternité has been displaced in favour of a cultural predisposition to democracy — a shift that, along with France’s new immigration policy and longstanding opposition to Turkey’s candidacy for membership of the EU, coincides with a resurgence of Islamophobia.