Shame and Sexuality: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture

Shame and Sexuality? Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture is a collection of new writings that examine the interface between emotion and culture, using psychoanalysis and visual culture. The book was co-edited by Pajaczkowska and included a chapter by her. The book examines shame – understood by psychoanalysts as a structure relating intrapsychic and social relations – by exploring visual culture as one form of this interface. Pajaczkowska convened the seminars, discussions and conference that gave rise to this book, and co-wrote its introductory essay with Ivan Ward. Pajaczkowska’s chapter, 'The Garden of Eden: Sex, shame and knowledge’, claims that the innovation of post-Freudian psychoanalysis is the exploration of pre-Oedipal subjectivity. The originality of this book is that it takes a concept, currently overlooked in science and the arts, and brings to it the multi-disciplinary debates of both clinicians and cultural theorists. The book was reviewed in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (2009), the reviewer stating that it provided, ‘arrestingly vivid moments, fresh angles on old themes, and new lenses through which to see the hidden […] it will allow readers a deep and thorough grasp of the many dimensions of sexuality and the all-important affective phenomenon of shame.’ In January 2013, Pajaczkowska gave seminars based on the research for the book at the Sigmund Freud Museum (Vienna) and at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. She also presented a related research paper on tacit knowledge at the international conference ‘Is Dialogue Possible’ in London (2013)

The Sublime Now

The Sublime Now is a co-edited book with introductory essays and a sole-author chapter by Pajaczkowska. The book was initiated in response to the relativity of the concept of the postmodern arising from seminars and a Tate conference, ‘The Sublime Now’, Tate Britain, London, co-organised by Pajaczkowska (October 2007). The book explores the concept of the sublime as a secular trope of the religious, numinous or transcendent, from its origins in classical antiquity to its recent resurgence as a manifestation in current popular culture and art. The book is divided into five sections. The Cinematic Sublime and the Ecological Sublime are contextualised with essays by Pajaczkowska indicating the new directions given by this reactivation of the concept initiated by Longinus and developed by Kant. Pajaczkowska’s chapter, ‘Ravishing noir: The unconscious in Hollywood’s B movie sublime’, develops the research she undertook for Shame and Sexuality? Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture (2008). Challenging traditional interpretations of Hollywood film noir, with the new perspectives that derive from the Core Complex concept, Pajaczkowska repositions the meaning of noir cinematography in post-Holocaust culture. She argues that the role of the Sublime Now is to rethink the hierarchies of value, power and subjectivity. The book was discussed in the journal Visual Culture in Britain (Vol.11, Issue 2, 2010), the reviewer noting its ‘serious and timely ambition’. The re-activation of the concept of the sublime, beyond postmodernism, has been further developed into an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership with Tate Britain, and into an AHRC Research Development Grant (2013): Cultural Value. Pajaczkowska is co supervisor of the doctoral partnership and Principal Investigator of the Cultural Value research development project

Tension, Time and Tenderness: Indexical Traces of Touch in Textiles

Research developed ( 2006-10) as participation in the AHRC Centre CATH ( Culture, Art, Theory and History, at University of Leeds, on the presence of indexicality as a significant part of visual culture. Framed by the growth of digital and virtual cultures, the research seminars, lectures and colloquial brought together historians, theorists and practitioners to generate interdisciplinary dialogues on cultural change. Contributing to a research conference on the effects of film theory on cultural analysis over the past two decades, the paper was originally aimed at a readership of subject specialists, discussing differences in semiotic theory this, published output is an application of the research to the disciplines and practices of textiles as one example of manufacture, craft, applied arts and crafts in which the traces of the hand as agency is particularly significant. The theme of the indexical in a digital culture raises issues of the 'real' and the 'virtual'. This essay explores how the sense of touch, characteristic of materials such as textiles, differs from the sense of sight. Whilst touch is indexical, sight is virtual.The conference brought together film theorists Laura Mulvey, Paul Willemen, Elizabeth Cowie, artist Mary Kelly and others, from newer generations, to interrogate the effect of the new digital technologies on existing theorisation of the image. This essay emerged from reflections on the debates. The opposition between visual and phonological signification seemed less relevant than the divergent knowledge produced by embodied experience, such as touch and the conceptual knowledge produced by representation and signifying economies. The theory of semiotics is here allied to post Freudian psychoanalysis of pre Oedipal subjectivity in order to develop a new paradigm for thinking about the knowledge generated in artifacts and making. Reflections on the prehension of 'the hand' are followed through an exploration of the conceptual forms of 'tenere' to hold. It is concluded that the metaphors of holding, containment, reach and grasp are actively present in contemporary cultures. The contrast with digital economies serves to heighten awareness of this dialogical tension. The published essay in the book Digital and Other Virtualities ( 2010) ed Bryant.A & Pollock,G, aim at a specialist and more general readership to broaden and extend the reach of cultural analysis. The research into the co-ordination of hand and eye as a signifying and libidinal economy of knowledge through experience is currently being developed through collaborations with Natural Science on the Descent of Man and human origins. The presence of sexual selection in culture, as hypothesised by Darwin and elaborated by Freud, illuminates the primacy of corporeal experience as a precursor of knowledge, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically

Lion and The Unicorn

Exhibition 2-10 May 2011 to mark 60 years of RCA participation in post war UK design. Sponsored by Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition of 1851, Sandersins and Napier heritage Trust, RCA Gulbenkian Gallery Kensington Gore, Catalogue of exhibition boards by Claire Pajaczkowska and Henrietta Goodden and curatorial essay 1851-1951-2011 by Claure Pajaczkowska and Barry Curti

On Humming : Reflections on Marion Milner's Contribution to Psychoanalysis

This book chapter focuses on Marion Milner’s development of D. W. Winnicot’s theoretical perspective. Pajaczkowska discusses Marion Milner as a theorist of art and culture, and especially of liminal spaces of the 'unthought known' (Christopher Bollas). Though Winnicott's work, like that of Milner, is currently referenced by Adam Phillips, Richard Sennett and others writing on craftsmanship and tacit knowledge, Pajaczkowska proposes in this chapter that Milner's theory of symbolic function of mind has not yet been fully exploited as part of an analysis of art, artefact and culture. Tracing the history of the framing discipline, she suggests that the popularity of the Lacanian paradigm in the adoption of psychoanalytic concepts within the academy has resulted in the British tradition being overlooked. This essay explores key concepts associated with this tradition: the role of illusion in symbol formation and the origins of symbolism in the relational dimension. This chapter is one of a series of publications arising from Pajaczkowska's role as member of the management committee of THERIP (The Higher Education Network for Research and Information in Psychoanalysis), the international association and online centre for debates on and dissemination of psychoanalytic work on culture. As part of this research, Pajaczkowska has also published scholarly papers in Economy and Society (‘The killers’, special issue on guilt, forthcoming), is co-editor/author of the forthcoming The New Klein-Lacan Dialogues (London: Karnac Books, 2014), and presented a paper at the THERIP annual international conference, ‘Is Dialogue Possible?’ (2013). Pajaczkowska also taught on this theme at Shih Chien University, Taipei in December 2013

Digital afx: digital dressing and affective shifts in Sin City and 300

In Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, 2005) and 300 (Zack Snyder, 2006) extensive post-production work has created stylised colour palettes, manipulated areas of the image, and added or subtracted elements. Framing a discussion around the terms ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’, this paper argues that the digital technologies used in Sin City and 300 modify conventional interactions between representational and aesthetic dimensions. Brian Massumi suggests affective imagery can operate through two modes of engagement. One mode is embedded in a meaning system, linked to a speci?c emotion. The second is understood as an intensi?cation whereby a viewer reacts but that reaction is not yet gathered into an alignment with meaning. The term ‘digital afx’ is used to describe manipulations that produce imagery allowing these two modes of engagement to coexist. Digital afx are present when two competing aesthetic strategies remain equally visible within sequences of images. As a consequence the afx mingle with and shift the content of representation

The Thread and the Line

Discussion of the significance of the new Material Turn in Humanities and Social Sciences for the research methods of art and design practices. The paper was originally given to the Line Studies Research Group at RCA 2014 and is developed from the AHRC funded project Empathy By Design (2013-14) which documents the emotional impact of embodies relationship between maker and material. The essay discusses the mutuality of abstract concept and material embodied experience, beyond the phenomenological paradigms of the 19th and 20th century philosophies, into contemporary paradigms of subjectivity. With special interest in the textiles cultures of pre literate society this essay discusses the Kristevan concept of the dyadic nature of semiotic and symbolic textuality. The gendered dimension of soft and hard logic of knowledge are discussed