Politics of the Psyche in Postwar France

Why and how did the psyche become so closely intertwined with politics in postwar France? What does it mean to consider the psyche as an object of critique and how does it shift in relation to sex, class, and race? The goal of this course is to explore different articulations of the psychic and the political in postwar French and francophone philosophy, literature, and film. We will expand beyond the psychoanalytic understanding of the psyche and attend to the ways in which it was criticized, transformed, and reimagined by movements such as antipsychiatry, feminism, Marxism, poststructuralism, and queer theory. By doing so, we will also discuss a constellation of concepts such as alienation, desire, ideology, subjectivity, and neurodiversity. We will pay attention to the form and content of the works studied, but also to their cultural, social, and political contexts. Key historical themes of French and francophone history that we will discuss include decolonization, deinstitutionalization, May 68, the sexual revolution, and the rise of women’s and gay rights.