Adam Lipszyc
(Polish Academy of Sciences)
Abstract:
The paper focuses on the exceptional analysis of cruelty, submission and desire – as well as the paradoxes of identity and identification – in Xavier Dolan’s 2013 psycho-thriller Tom at the Farm based on the play by Michel Marc Bouchard. Taking Freud’s, Lacan’s, Deleuze’s and Chasseguet-Smirgel’s insights into the nature of masochism as my frame of reference, I will try to show Dolan’s radical and highly original meditation on the role of cruelty in our desperate search for our identity and for the object of our desire. I will pay particular attention to the breathtaking cinematography of the film, including the characteristic shots of the backs of the protagonists heads, which I will read in the light of the rival philosophies of the face offered by Levinas and Deleuze.
Bio:
Adam Lipszyc is the head of the Center for Psychoanalytic Thought based in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He teaches in the Graduate School for Social Research and at the Franz Kafka University of Muri. In his work, he focuses on the philosophical implications of psychoanalysis, philosophy of literature, as well as on the 20th century Jewish thought. Most recently, he published (in Polish) a volume of essays on literature and psychoanalysis (Paper Nose of Literature, 2024). With Agata Bielińska, he co-edited a volume Space in Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysis in Space (Routledge, 2024). He is the editor in chief of the academic journal „wunderBlock: Psychoanaliza i Filozofia” (wunderBlock: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy).
