Peter Rollins - The Archive

How (Not) to Speak of God | Deconstruction Vs. Denomination by Peter Rollins

From Enemy to Neighbor by Peter Rollins

As Claude Lévi-Strauss famously demonstrated in his seminal essay ‘Do Duel Organizations Exist?’, one of the issues that faces a society involves the fact that different groups map social conflict in radically different ways. It’s not the case that opposing political groups agree about the basic issues that face the world they inhabit, then line up on different sides; rather they inhabit different worlds. Worlds that are incommensurable in regards to the other.

The result is constant misunderstanding and misrecognition that generates little more than a cottage industry of Youtube videos where different representatives of a group claim to ‘own’ the other.

One of the areas where there is a fundamental disconnect relates to questions concerned with racism.

In this pop-up seminar, I want to introduce a basic matrix that might help us begin to understand why the political discourse around race is so divisive. I’ll be concentrating on the two forms that racism takes - Supremacy and Orientalism - showing how these both feed on each other and how they misunderstand each other. In doing so, I’ll attempt to show how their relationship mimics the complex relationship that exists between Sadism and Masochism.

In this talk from Revolution I explore the dangers - and possibilities - located within the new Purity Culture.

Coffee and Concepts is an online interactive event that takes place on the first Saturday of every month. Each session begins with the introduction of a philosophical concept that is then dissected and discussed. These morning events (depending on where in the world you are) are designed to help kick your day off with an important idea picked specifically to offer insight into how we might live well. A concept that will also connect with the work and world of pyrotheology.

This C&C explores the meaning of Enjoyment in psychoanalysis.

If you'd like to join me for this year's Atheism for Lent (starts 17th Feb) visit peterrollins.com

The Anthropologist Lévi-Strauss famously analyzed a situation in which two groups within the same tribal community drew a map of their village in radically different ways. Their understanding of the objective village layout being directly connected to their social standing.

Instead of taking a relativistic stance - with the village layout being seen as purely subjective - or taking the position that an objective mapping was possible - viewing one of the maps as more accurate, or reconciling them in a more exhaustive drawing - Lévi-Strauss argued that this phenomenon hinted at an unsymbolized antagonism in the community. One that prevented the social organization from achieving some kind of some simple, symmetrical, non-antagonistic equilibrium. However, for Lévi-Strauss, it was precisely this antagonism that simultaneously produced and maintained the very system that it distorted and threatened.

In this pop-up seminar I use Lévi-Strauss’ reflections - employed by Lacan and, more recently, Žižek - as a jumping off point for examining the current unrest in America.

In the seminar I look specifically at the political significance of taking seriously the radically different ways in which social antagonism is mapped out by members of society. Along the way, I draw out the meaning of the Real as a political category, describe how ideology functions and outline a way in which the present social antagonism might be mobilized.

Recommended Reading

- 'Do Dual Organizations Exist' By Lévi-Strauss (Vol 1, Structural Anthropology)

- 'The Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion' By Slavoj Žižek (online)

It’s very easy for us to question the possibility of experiencing a lasting happiness.

Can we really find it?

Is it something that we can hold onto for prolonged periods of time?

The answer is likely ‘yes’. Indeed there are many who have dedicated their entire lives to cultivating it, even creating retreats and seminars designed to help others realize it.

However, in psychoanalysis there is a price to pay for happiness: the fundamental compromise of your desire. The more that happiness pervades ones life, the more that individual becomes estranged from their unspeakable passion.

In this way, people like Žižek refer to happiness as the category of the fool. It is the pursuit undertaken by one who would rather avoid confronting the contradictions and antagonisms that lie within them. Contenting themselves instead with a peace that is opposed to chaos, rather than a peace that is hard won via tarrying with the chaos.

In this seminar I explore the chasm that lies between happiness and desire via reference to an ancient Jewish parable and the Lacanian notion of the barred subject.

The is an except from part three of a ten part reading group I ran on the book Capitalism and Desire by Todd McGowan. In this clip I outline the main themes from the third chapter of the text. You can find the whole course on my Patreon.

What Does the Miser Lose | Weil and the Non-Existent Reality of God by Peter Rollins