“Psyche ist ausgedehnt: weiß nichts davon”. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy characterized this posthumous note as Sigmund Freud’s “most fascinating and perhaps most decisive statement”. „The psyche, in other words, is body, and this is precisely what escapes it, and its escape (we may suppose), or its process of escape, constitutes it as ‚psyche,’ in a dimension of not (being able/wanting)-to-know-itself.“

Relating to probably the most insistent tension in modern philosophy, the one between body and mind, Freud’s sentence „Psyche ist ausgedehnt“ is also highly relevant for the ICI and its current core project “Tension/Spannung”. Nancy’s meditation “Psyche ist ausgedehnt” from his book “Corpus” and other texts by Nancy (“Spanne” and “Freud – so to Speak”) formed the textual basis of an internal colloquium with Nancy on 13 Feb 2009, which was dedicated to the topic of tension in general and the tension between psyche and body in particular.

In English
With

Jean Luc Nancy

Organized by

ICI Berlin

The event, like all events at the ICI Berlin, is open to the public, free of charge. The audience is presumed to consent to a possible recording on the part of the ICI Berlin. If you would like to attend the event yet might require assistance, please contact Event Management.