At this year’s EASA conference Karmen Sterk and me are hosting a workshop on Psychoanalysis in Social Anthropology.

The workshop focuses on relations between anthropology and psychoanalysis concerning (1) the ethnographer’s subjectivity, (2) psychoanalytic concepts as tools for the interpretation of data, (3) anthropology and psychoanalysis as two diverse interpretative practices of the same subject matter.

Concerning the first aspect, we would like to discuss approaches toward the ethnographer’s subjectivity that are inspired by psychoanalysis. The ethnographer’s subjectivity is the fundamental mean of the production of data about the field. How could psychoanalysis encourage the reflection of the ethnographer’s own perceptions of and experiences in the field? How far can fieldwork techniques be inspired and shaped by psychoanalytic techniques? How is the attitude of psychoanalysis to be made productive for ethnography? In psychoanalytic terms: how to use transference and counter-transference as approaches towards the field?

Concerning the second aspect, we would like to discuss the use of psychoanalytic concepts as tools of explanation and interpretation of fieldwork data. To give some examples from Lacanian psychoanalysis: how are concepts like the objet petit a or jouissance used in anthropological research? Of what worth are Lacan’s distinctions between the dimensions of the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary or the four discourses in order to explain cultural phenomena?

Concerning the third aspect, we would like to discuss observable reality as the field of symbolicaly mediated representations. As such, the observed reality becomes unrecognisable without a certain paradigm, which, in its own accord, inscribes it with knowledge. In his manner, facts come to existence only when taking place and forming relations in structured totality, which is a result of some interpretative practice. Can differences between anthropology and psychoanalysis be merely different interpretative practices, which, in retrospect, ascribe different statuses to the same ideas?

To propose a paper.