Bild: Boris Lurie, „NEIN“, 1990
The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan expanded on Freud’s concept of castration: not as a missing organ, but as a lack within the subject—as the realization of not being whole, not being invulnerable. But how does one deal with the rejection of the “desire to be everything” (Georges Bataille)? Unfortunately, only with difficulty: repression, denial, and rejection—these are the forms that the psychological mechanism of negation can take. Today’s political discourse—whether as an activist echo chamber, a parallel society of elites, or a (sub)cultural filter bubble—also illustrates what it means to say “no” to a collectively recognized reality.
It is not just since October 7, 2023, that we in Germany have been experiencing a peculiar mix of repression, denial, and rejection when it comes to negating realities recognized by the international community. Drawing on Boris Lurie’s NO!art, this lecture will explore how this mechanism—which perhaps shies away from acknowledging, and in any case from identifying with, the subject’s vulnerability—can be confronted politically and aesthetically.
Lecture and discussion with Nadine Hartmann and Sami Khatib
Saturday, July 18, 11 a.m.–12 p.m.
Lichtbrücke, 1st floor