Sublimation

What Dominique Pagani says

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 De Kafka à Proust, le passage dialectique de l’intermezzo au bord perpétué7 Apr 2022 · 2:05:12
2. 2[ENTRETIEN] DOMINIQUE PAGANI - Michel Clouscard et la trahison de mai 687 Feb 2025 · 1:02:26
3. 3Naissance et carnage - Le massacre des Innocents22 Dec 2023 · 32:17
4. 4Flagrandélices27 May 2025 · 1:23:07
5. 5#2 Bien-et Mé-faits de l'amnésie...23 Oct 2020 · 36:24
6. 6Musicosophie 4. Les ghettos sonores3 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.