Course 12: Desire and its Discontents
Course by Sami Khatib
14 - 19 August 2023

Course Level BA/MA
2.5 ECTS

Course Description
Drawing on psychoanalysis, feminism, affect and critical theory, the seminar discusses the political-philosophical stakes of desire. Ever since Kant’s Categorical imperative, desire and its limits have been at the center of the Western philosophical discourse. For Kojève (1937) it is desire (Hegel’s Begierde) that distinguishes us as human insofar as one’s desire is directed toward an other’s desire. Desire organizes intersubjective relations and exposes the communal bond to structural imbalance, which Freud theorized in terms of a discontent in culture and civilization (1930). If the work of culture hinges on the renunciation and sublimation of ‘asocial’ drives, desire is situated in the conflictual zone between the object of desire and the latter’s impossibility. In today’s capitalism, Lauren Berlant (2011) diagnosed a "cruel optimism" that sustains one’s attachment to conventional yet unattainable good-life fantasies (from the romantic couple to political systems and institutions). Such desire-sustained attachments weave the web of social relationality, pointing to a realm “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud, 1920) where drive and object-oriented desire are gradually detached.

Biography
Sami Khatib is a substituting professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) and a founding member of the Beirut Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR). His publications include a co-editorship of the volume “Critique: The Stakes of Form” (2020) and authorship of the book “‘Teleologie ohne Endzweck’: Walter Benjamins Ent-stellung des Messianischen” (2013). A selection of recent articles and papers can be found online at https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/SamiKhatib

Participation
15 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The conditions and registration fees
Enrollment fee 1 - 370 euros for self-paying students, with the offer of accommodation in student residences.
Enrollment fee 2 - 570 euros for institutionally sponsored students, with the offer of accommodation in student residences.

Special conditions apply for alumni of the Summer School as School.
Scholarships are available for students from Kosovo.
Payment must be made after successful application.

Late applications may be accepted until July 22, 2023.