Aaron Schuster

Vita

Aaron Schuster received his BA from Amherst College (USA), where he specialized in legal theory, and MA and PhD in Philosophy from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). His doctoral dissertation, The Trouble With Pleasure: Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, examined the concept of pleasure in the history of philosophy, concluding with Freud and Lacan. He was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie in 2005-2006, and has taught at PARTS (Performing Arts Research Training Studios) in Brussels and the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. In addition to lectures and publications focusing on 20th century continental philosophy, he has written on contemporary art and culture for Cabinet, Metropolis M, Frieze, Mousse, De Witte Raaf, and others, and has collaborated as a writer with artists on a number of projects, including a performance piece with Mario Garcia Torres, an opera libretto with Loris Gréaud and Raimundas Malasauskas, a science fiction film with Alexis Destoop, and a comedy show with Nicolas Matranga. He is currently preparing a book on Deleuze and psychoanalysis (MIT Press, forthcoming 2012), and a study of the history of levitation in twentieth century thought and culture.

ICI-Project

Is Life a Disease? Research in Patho-Philosophy
The aim of the research project is to re-examine key aspects of subjectivity (freedom, embodiment, desire, etc.) from the standpoint of mental illness, starting from the Romantic idea that the human being is a sick animal, through 19th and 20th century philosophy (Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche to Freud, Lacan and Deleuze), post-WWI literature (Mann, Svevo, Cendrars), and concluding with 21st century psychiatry and evolutionary theory. The project will treat tension as a synonym for the energy of the drives. More specifically, I am interested in how tension has been conceived by in a double manner: either as a noxious excess that must be contained or metabolized, or as a boundless, self-affirming fount of creativity and vital power. On the one hand, the human psyche is exceedingly fragile, threatened from within by the possibility of breakdown or traumatic overload. But viewed from another perspective, this constitutive mal-adaptiveness also lies at the origin of the human being’s incredible plasticity and dynamism. Multistability can be used as a conceptual figure for thinking together, without a simple unifying synthesis, these oppositional determinations.

Current Activities and Publications

"The Philosophy of Complaint," lecture at Caribic Residency, Lisbon, Nov. 12, 2011.

"On Television," chaired panel at Frieze Art Fair, London. October 16, 2011.

"Zelo težko je početi nič" (It is very difficult to do nothing), interview on laziness with Maša Ogrizek, Dnevnik/Objektiv (October 1, 2011).

"Presenting W.R. Bion's A Memoir of the Future," Format P, no. 4 (Warsaw: Fundacja Bęc Zmiana, 2011).

“The Atopia of Philosophy” in Where Do We Migrate To?, ed. Niels Van Tomme (Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, UMBC, 2011).

“Indifference and Repetition,” lecture at the Human Animal conference, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. May 28, 2011.

“On the Idea of a Clinical Anthropology”, lecture at Bathhouse Readings conference, New Literary Observer, Moscow. April 1, 2011.

"The Man Who Made Artworks in His Head," Metropolis M no. 1 (February-March 2011).

"Bachelors, Snakes, and Squiggles," in Options With Nostrils, ed. Alexis Vaillant (Rotterdam/Berlin: Piet Zwart Institute and Sternberg Press, 2011).

"The Cinematic Spasm," Cabinet Magazine no. 40 (Winter 2010-2011).

“The Politics of Pleasure,” lecture at Morality conference, Witte de With, Rotterdam. November 20, 2010.

“Kairos,” science fiction film script (35 min.), directed by Alexis Destoop. Premier Buda Art Center, Kortrijk. November 19, 2010.

“Se plaindre est une très important forme de plaisir” (Complaining is a very important form of pleasure), BigMinis Fetishes of Crisis (New York/Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010).

"Гуманизм другой обезьяны" (Humanism of the Other Monkey), dialogue with Oxana Timofeeva in Moscow Art Magazine no. 77/78 (2010).

"Against Revisionism: Lionel Trilling on the Fate of Pleasure," lecture at The Freudian Left Reconsidered conference, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht. October 8, 2010.

"Comedy and Philosophy," workshop at Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem. October 5-6 2010.

"The Cosmonaut of the Erotic Future: A History of Levitation," in Emergency Exit: Agnieszka Kurant/Aleksandra Wasilkowska, catalogue for Polish Pavilion XXII Venice Architecture Biennale (New York/Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2010).