CBEES Advanced Seminar with Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Reconstitution (IGRec), Berlin, Germany.

Speaker: Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Reconstitution (IGRec), Berlin, Germany.

Discussant: Marcia Cavalcante, Professor of Philosophy at the School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University.

Chair: Irina Sandomirskaja, Professor of Cultural Studies, Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University.

Abstract: In this talk I will reflect on the relation between psychoanalysis and extractivism, interpreted in a variety of ways. First, I will consider the hypothesis that the question of energy is not raised in its full (ontological, philosophical) scope due to resistances and repressions that are as much psychological as they are politico-economic. Second, I will offer a speculative extension of Freudian psychoanalysis to the extractive-destructive relation to the earth. Finally, I will problematize the specifically analytic bent of psychoanalysis in light of an extractive relation to the unconscious. 

Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. His writings span the fields of ecological theory, phenomenology, and political thought. He is the author of numerous scientific articles and monographs, including Plant-Thinking (2013), The Philosopher’s Plant (2014), Dust (2016), Energy Dreams (2017), Heidegger (2018), Political Categories (2019), Pyropolitics (2015, 2020), Dump Philosophy (2020); Hegel's Energy (2021), Green Mass (2021), Philosophy for Passengers (2022), The Phoenix Complex (2023), Time Is a Plant (2023), and, with Edward S. Casey, Plants in Place (2024). For more information, consult his website michaelmarder.org.