The Enlightenment's Unconscious: Literature Beyond Ideology (feat. Nathan Gorelick)

For my latest episode, I'm joined by Nathan Gorelick to discuss his remarkable new book, The Unwritten Enlightenment: Literature between Ideology and the Unconscious. In this discussion we explore how eighteenth-century literature discloses a dimension of subjectivity that exceeds the political and philosophical categories of the Enlightenment, opening a space where the unconscious resists ideological closure. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis, Gorelick argues that the great literary works of the period are not simply reflections of Enlightenment thought but sites where its contradictions and limits become legible. Our discussion ranges across Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Rousseau's Emile's , de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, examining the relation between literature and the Borromean knot of the unconscious, ideology and the enlightenment. We also discuss the idea of the "literary absolute," and why literature offers a unique vantage point for understanding the relationship between ideology, desire, and the unconscious. Purchase The Unwritten Enlightenment with promo code NUP2024 for a 25% discount: https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780... Nathan Gorelick teaches in the Department of English and the First-Year Experience Program at Barnard College. His research focuses on the intersections of eighteenth-century literature, Enlightenment philosophy, psychoanalysis, and ideology critique. He is the author of The Unwritten Enlightenment: Literature between Ideology and the Unconscious (Northwestern University Press, 2024), which argues that eighteenth-century literature persistently subverts the dominant philosophical and political formations of its age. His current projects include Semiotics of Ruination, a study of literary and philosophical responses to catastrophe from colonialism to the present, and a long-term investigation into the relationship between psychedelic drugs and the Freudian tradition. Gorelick has also published widely on Continental philosophy, the Haitian Revolution, Islamophobia, ecological collapse, and psychoanalysis. He is editor of Provocations Journal, has completed the six-year Training Seminar in Lacanian Psychoanalysis with Gifric in Quebec City, and is a Candidate in the Licensed Psychoanalysis Certificate Program at the Pulsion Institute. He also serves on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association's Forum on Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature. ---- If you enjoyed this discussion, please support my work on Patreon   / emancipations