Overdetermination

Summary

By overdetermination, Dominique Pagani means a determination that comes from a cause of a higher order than the immediate and apparent causes1. In the 2020 sessions on amnesia, he applies it to memory: each memory rests on a matrix memory, an original one, which does not pass away and carries on in the present, like Proust's sobs2. One must therefore go beyond immediate determinations. He finds it again in Dostoevsky, where each urgency is doubled by a more urgent and unknown one3, and in the disproportionate place that the war of Orsenna holds in poetry and folklore compared with the facts. In 2021, discussing Nerval, he shows how a name is overdetermined, Nerva, the black valley: "behind one drawer, there are fifty"4. On Antigone, he links it to mise en abyme: the same opposition recurs across different determinations, and the task is to find the one that overdetermines the others5. In his view, the oppositions between Hölderlin and Hegel are thus variations on a single theme.

1. 1#3 Benefits and harms of amnesia…6 Nov 2020 · 1:26:40
2. 2#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…13 Nov 2020 · 58:24
3. 3#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…13 Nov 2020 · 1:34:29
4. 4#4 Nomad and sedentary: the case of Nerval4 Oct 2021 · 55:45
5. 5#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…24 Nov 2021 · 41:09

Summary produced automatically from 9 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.