Patrick Ffrench – författare

This book maps French intellectual history in the twentieth century through an interpretative engagement with the thought and legacy of Georges Bataille. It highlights the influence of Bataille and the movement of the concept of sacrifice through his work and in its wake.

Psychopathologies of the Living makes the work of the French psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida (1934–2002) available in English for the first time.Patrick ffrench and Nigel Saint present key essays selected from Fédida’s extensive oeuvre. The book directs attention to two salient dimensions of Fédida’s writing: his attention to the pathologies of the body, considered as both a psychic and somatic entity, and his insistence on the relevance of psychoanalytic thought to the sciences of life. The chapters included in this collection detail Fédida’s creative use of aesthetic sources in his psychoanalytic work, his distinctive and creative manipulation and revision of central psychoanalytic concepts and his precise attention to the texts of Freud, Ferenczi and Winnicott, among others. This selection of Fédida’s essays also shows his avoidance of thematisation or explicit theorisation; for Fédida the theory of psychoanalysis must arise out of the specific interplay of language and the ‘space of the session’.Psychopathologies of the Living will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training and to academics and scholars of philosophy, aesthetics and literary studies.

Psychopathologies of the Living makes the work of the French psychoanalyst Pierre Fédida (1934–2002) available in English for the first time.Patrick ffrench and Nigel Saint present key essays selected from Fédida’s extensive oeuvre. The book directs attention to two salient dimensions of Fédida’s writing: his attention to the pathologies of the body, considered as both a psychic and somatic entity, and his insistence on the relevance of psychoanalytic thought to the sciences of life. The chapters included in this collection detail Fédida’s creative use of aesthetic sources in his psychoanalytic work, his distinctive and creative manipulation and revision of central psychoanalytic concepts and his precise attention to the texts of Freud, Ferenczi and Winnicott, among others. This selection of Fédida’s essays also shows his avoidance of thematisation or explicit theorisation; for Fédida the theory of psychoanalysis must arise out of the specific interplay of language and the ‘space of the session’.Psychopathologies of the Living will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in practice and in training and to academics and scholars of philosophy, aesthetics and literary studies.

Suspicious of what he called the spectator’s “sticky” adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a hypnotic trance, the philosopher warned, an audience can become susceptible to ideology and “myth”. In this book, Patrick Ffrench explains that although Barthes was wary of film, he engaged deeply with it. Barthes’ thought was, Ffrench argues, punctuated by the experience of watching films – and likewise his philosophy of photography, culture, semiotics, ethics and theatricality have been immensely important in film theory.Focusing particularly on the essays ‘The Third Meaning’ and ‘On Leaving the Cinema’ and the acclaimed book Camera Lucida, Ffrench examines Barthes’ writing and traces a persistent interest in films and directors, from Fellini and Antonioni, to Eisenstein, the Marx Brothers and Hitchcock. Ffrench explains that although Barthes found pleasure in “leaving the cinema” – disconnecting from its dangerous allure by a literal exit or by forcefully breaking the trance – he found value in returning to the screen anew. Barthes delved beneath the pull of progressing narrative and the moving image by becoming attentive to space and material aesthetics. This book presents an invaluable reassessment of one of the most original and subtle thinkers of the twentieth-century: a figure indebted to the movies.

Suspicious of what he called the spectator’s “sticky” adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a hypnotic trance, the philosopher warned, an audience can become susceptible to ideology and “myth”. In this book, Patrick Ffrench explains that although Barthes was wary of film, he engaged deeply with it. Barthes’ thought was, Ffrench argues, punctuated by the experience of watching films – and likewise his philosophy of photography, culture, semiotics, ethics and theatricality have been immensely important in film theory.Focusing particularly on the essays ‘The Third Meaning’ and ‘On Leaving the Cinema’ and the acclaimed book Camera Lucida, Ffrench examines Barthes’ writing and traces a persistent interest in films and directors, from Fellini and Antonioni, to Eisenstein, the Marx Brothers and Hitchcock. Ffrench explains that although Barthes found pleasure in “leaving the cinema” – disconnecting from its dangerous allure by a literal exit or by forcefully breaking the trance – he found value in returning to the screen anew. Barthes delved beneath the pull of progressing narrative and the moving image by becoming attentive to space and material aesthetics. This book presents an invaluable reassessment of one of the most original and subtle thinkers of the twentieth-century: a figure indebted to the movies.