Unbinding critics: psychoanalysis and aesthetic thinking

Abstract

This paper intends to discuss the relationship between psychoanalysis and aesthetic thinking under the prism of the “unbinding” theory – earlier conceived by the psychoanalyst Andre Green –, linking it to some theories proposed by Hal Foster, art historian and art critic, where we can find the lacanian “real” as the linking concept. One could say, in this linkage made here, that both authors are dealing, in a very particular way, with a question that refers to the theory of the real (as it was conceived by Jacques Lacan), even in the case of Green it is not referred directly; Green’s theory, however, seems to discuss some kind of a regredience that could be linked to the death drive. Accessing the psychoanalytical dispositive, and using it as it is appropriated to the (art) object to be interpreted, Foster, for example, advances in both the field of aesthetic reflection and in the more specific field of psychoanalysis. It should be noted that Foster’s reflection refers strictly to the post-pop images, observed mainly in the 1990’s photography. Thus, I think that this intersection between aesthetics and psychoanalysis might allow us to shed some light on a new art reading possibility towards a “non-applied” psychoanalytical paradigm, which, in my opinion, seems to be an appropriate way to understand some of the contemporary art production.