Thinking and Dreaming

The seminar will be devoted to exploring the complex connection between thinking and dreaming. 

Our entry point view into the problem of this connection lies in bringing together two key texts: 1) René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) and the thinking “I” as representing the modern model of thought, as conscious and certain, and 2) Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) as representing the entrance of the unconscious into our understanding of the human psyche, that is no longer a merely thinking and conscious entity but also operates on the basis of its hidden, unconscious depths. After Freud, it is no longer possible to consider thinking without the unconscious, and the thinking “I” is impossible without its breaches and inner splits. Freud describes various ways in which these breached are revealed, however, in the seminar we will consider only one of them: The dream.

Following a detailed discussion of Freud’s theory of the dream (that will take up the first part of the seminar), we will move into the discussion of the influence and ‘after effect’ of these ideas on the twentieth century, especially in the work of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. 

We will focus on Benjamin’s essay on Surrealism (1929), where the historical-revolutionary forces of the dream are central. Another important text is Benjamin’s Arcades Project (1927-1940) and his discussion of the concept of montage that Benjamin develops in relation to Freud's idea of dream montage. The Parisian passages themselves (the central image of Benjamin’s book) is a figure of thought that has been conceived by Benjamin as a threshold to a historical unconscious. Last but not least, Benjamin's accounts of his own dreams and his notes about them will be considered, especially the dream notation he sent to Gretel Adorno from his captivity in the Nièvre (1939). 
Derrida is one of the philosophers whose thinking has been most strongly influenced by the theory of psychoanalysis. Not only has he written a great deal about psychoanalysis (beginning with the early essay Freud et la scène de l'écriture), but his writing is also powerfully affected by the momentum of signifiers (for example in Fors. Les mots anglais de l'homme aux loups; but also in La carte postale and in Glas). We will discuss these texts in addition to his speech at the awarding of the Frankfurt Adorno Prize (2001) which will be the starting point of our discussion of his relation to Benjamin, Freud and the relation between dreaming and thinking.