The Ancient Unconscious: Did Oedipus Have an Oedipus Complex?

press release: In the field of classical studies, the psychoanalytical construction of the unconscious is rarely regarded as a fruitful methodological concept.  Commonly understood as a modern conceptual invention rather than the discovery of a psychical reality, the notion of the unconscious is often criticized as an anachronistic lens, on that subjects ancient experience to a modern conceptual scheme.  In thinking about the different manifestations of the unconscious in the myth of Oedipus, the speaker challenges this ambivalence about the psychoanalytical approach by offering an interpretation of the unconscious that explains why this concept is in fact inseparable from the study of the ancient text and more generally from the methodology of classical philology.  This lecture will cross disciplinary boundaries (classics, mythology, psychoanalytic theory, comparative literature) and encourage the audience to think broadly and transhistorically.

Prof. Lev Kenaan received her B.A. (Classics) from Tel Aviv University and her Ph.D. (Classics) from Yale; she is currently Chair of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of Haifa.  She is the author of Pandora's Senses: The Feminine Character of the Ancient Text (University of Wisconsin Studies in Classics Series, 2008), as well as numerous articles on dreams, myth, gender, feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory, and the ancient novel.