Sublimation

Summary

Dominique Pagani takes the concept of sublimation from Freud. He sees in it the conversion of a drive into a cultural form: the drive to eat becomes a meal, sexual potency becomes love, and culture thus rests on nature without being produced by it1. He connects the concept to the formula according to which the animal part remains and anthropology is grafted onto it2. His main example is the sense of smell: repressed because of its role in eros, it is converted into the art of cosmetics and perfume3. Perfume draws its energy from the libidinal element and its form from millennia of sublimation4. He also applies the concept to art: Botticelli sublimates the horror of the birth of Venus, and mud becomes gold5, while in Proust the little phrase raises sufferings above positive life. Regarding sound ghettos, he describes the libido as a reserve of aggressiveness that must be sublimated, and he considers that the ghetto deprives young people of this potential for sublimation6.

1. 1#12 From Kafka to Proust, the dialectical passage from the intermezzo to the perpetuated edge7 Apr 2022 · 2:05:12
2. 2Michel Clouscard and the betrayal of May 687 Feb 2025 · 1:02:26
3. 3Birth and carnage: the Massacre of the Innocents22 Dec 2023 · 32:17
4. 4Flagrante Delights27 May 2025 · 1:23:07
5. 5#2 Benefits and harms of amnesia…23 Oct 2020 · 36:24
6. 6#4 Sound ghettos3 Dec 2020 · 26:39

Summary produced automatically from 10 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.