%0 Journal Article
%T Understanding the Body¡¯s Critique: Repeating to Repair
%A Karin Nisenbaum
%J Perspectives : International Postgraduate Journal of Philosophy
%D 2008
%I 
%X In the following paper I look at the body as a site where individual and communal normative structures come into view. Drawing from the work of Sigmund Freud and Paul Ricoeur, and through an analysis of the compulsion to repeat, I offer an understanding of psychoanalysis as a practice whereby we decipher the body¡¯s call to configure our individual lives more humanly. This involves the interruption of the compulsion to repeat and the transition from an instinctual and organic development, towards an ¡®Erotic life.¡¯ I also broaden the scope of the analysis and investigate the kinds of communal structures or bonds that the psychoanalytic concept of an ¡®Erotic drive¡¯ calls for. To this end, I introduce Walter Benjamin¡¯s studies on the relation between different temporal and political structures.
%K embodiment
%K transference
%K compulsion to repeat
%K erotic drive
%K messianic temporality
%U http://www.ucd.ie/philosophy/perspectives/resources/nisenbaum_understanding_bodys_critique.pdf