A Psychoanalytic Engagement with the Arts: Culture and Kulturarbeit

A Psychoanalytic Engagement with the Arts applies Freud’s anthropological writing and theories to contemporary works of fiction and poetry.

Giuseppina Antinucci offers close readings of the works of contemporary literary figures Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Amelia Rosselli and Jhuma Lahiri, from a psychoanalytic standpoint. Through these close readings, Antinucci uses the interweaving of the characters’ psychology with the demand of their social context to interrogate the factors that impact on their capacity and condition for survival. Throughout, she applies the Freudian concept of Kulturarbeit - the quota of psychic work pertaining to the symbolic order - and considers contemporary human experiences of migration and border-crossing, reparation, trauma and critical race theory from a psychoanalytic perspective. Adopting Winnicottian, Lacanian and Freudian methodologies, Antinucci adeptly illustrates the impact of psychoanalysis on art and vice versa, offering a novel way to approach contemporary issues of the psyche and human experience.

Using a psychoanalytic engagement of contemporary fiction to address the complexity of human existence, this volume will be of interest to psychoanalysts, as well as researchers and students interested in the intersection between psychoanalysis and the creative arts.