Psyche

psyché

Worked through in 9 videos · 14 passages.

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Summary

Dominique Pagani presents the psyche as a fundamental category of Michel Clouscard. It belongs neither to the psychologist nor to the psychoanalyst, but to the order of feeling1. He defines it as the interiority of the soul and the heart, which he distinguishes from thought, since thought already belongs to the understanding2. Under this term Clouscard gathers everyday lived experience, the concrete and what is now vaguely called "affect", that is, what seems furthest from production even though it is its product3 4. Modes of production thus generate forms of the psyche: the epic or courtly love, the Corneillian or Racinian hero5. The psyche takes shape slowly, from the early Middle Ages to the bourgeois world, which carries it across a threshold; Rousseau holds both praxis and psyche together6 7. Clouscard seeks to reconcile the two. In the session on Hölderlin, Dominique Pagani describes the psyche as the dotted line that ensures continuity between a vanished collective and one yet to come8. According to him, claiming the psyche also means rehabilitating a certain romanticism against Sollers's libertinism9.

Summary produced automatically from 14 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.

Talks · 7 Feb 2025Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 68

17:33A term in which Clouscard concentrates everyday life, the concrete and interiority, now vaguely called "affect."

Talks · 27 Mar 2023Praxis and psyche

3:15The interiority of soul and heart, distinct from thought, which already belongs to the understanding.
19:06Passion and eros, which become ennobled in civil society, belong to the psyche.

Talks · 19 Mar 2022Hölderlin, poetry and politics

1:13:07Clouscard seeks to reconcile praxis and psyche, the soul.
1:17:34The psyche is the dotted line that ensures continuity between the vanished collective and the one that must return: fidelity to mnesic traces.

Series · 14 Jul 2021Everything's allowed, but nothing is possible! Michel Clouscard, May 68, French theory and capitalism

26:19Clouscard's term for everyday lived experience, interiority, affect—what seems furthest from the production of which it is the product.

Cycle 5.1 · 2 Nov 2018#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)

48:19A Clouscardian concept: changes in praxis have effects on interiority.
49:55When genres fuse with romanticism, the psyche takes a hit: there is a hecatomb of madness.

Cycle 5.1 · 15 Oct 2018#5.0 Presentation of the 2018-2019 workshop

8:05Productive forces and relations of production must be related to the psyche.

Series · 5 Jul 2018Being and Code

37:12Produced by the slow evolution from the early Middle Ages to the bourgeois world, in the self-engendering of praxis and psyche.
1:37:37Inherent to man, it crosses a threshold with the bourgeoisie; Rousseau holds both praxis and psyche.

Talks · 19 Jun 2016At the bistro (part 2)

30:08Claiming the psyche is to rehabilitate a certain romanticism against Sollers's libertinism.

Series · 26 Sept 2014#4 Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: on the thought of M. Clouscard

11:03A fundamental category in Clouscard: neither that of the psychologist nor that of the psychoanalyst, but the order of feeling.
16:28Modes of production produce the forms of the psyche: epic or courtly love, Cornelian or Racinian hero.