Dr Ayca Cubukcu

This course is available on the MSc in City Design and Social Science, MSc in Culture and Society, MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics and MSc in Political Sociology. This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

This course has a limited number of places. Places are allocated based on a written statement.

For information on how to apply for a place on this course, including deadlines, please see Courses offered and related information.

This course examines the intersection of psychoanalytic thought and social theory, exploring how concepts from Freud and other psychoanalytic thinkers can illuminate not only individual subjectivity but also political, social, and cultural formations. Through engagement with Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Frantz Fanon, Juliett Mitchell, Edward Said and Judith Butler among other thinkers, the course analyses how psychoanalytic frameworks help us understand fascism, authoritarianism, war, identity formation, desire, and the psychosocial dimensions of colonialism, oppression, and resistance. Readings will span classical psychoanalytic texts, Frankfurt School critical theory, feminist psychoanalytic theory, and contemporary applications to questions of class, race, gender, sexuality, power and religion, equipping students to critically assess both the insights and limitations of psychoanalytic approaches to understanding social life.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

Abstract in Winter Term Week 8.

Abstract of 700 words (max) of the summative essay, to be submitted in WT.

• Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
• Sigmund Freud, Mass Psychology and Other Essays
• Sigmund Freud, On Murder, Mourning and Melancholia
• Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
• Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud
• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
• Edward Said, Freud and the Non-European
• Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection
• Juliett Mitchell, Psychoanalysis and Feminism: A Radical Reassessment of Psychoanalysis and Feminism
• Omnia El Shakry, The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt
• Ranjana Khanna, Dark Continents: Psychoanalysis and Colonialism
• Lara Sheehi and Stephen Sheehi, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine

Course participation (10%).

Essay (90%, 4000 words) in May.

The summative work for this seminar will be assessed based on course participation (10 %) and an essay of 4000 words (90%). Course participation is assessed throughout the Winter Term.
Attendance at all seminars and submission of all coursework is required.