The milieu of buried stimuli: Relational theory and literary studies

Abstract

In this series of reflections on the ways in which psychoanalytic theory has influenced his teaching, the author focuses on a change that began to take place around the time of his encounter with relational psychoanalytical theory. At the heart of that change was a shift in the direction of processual thinking and emotional presence, guided by several contemporary theorists but most importantly by Christopher Bollas. By showing how that shift altered his approach to Alain Resnais's Night and Fog and the works of Herman Melville, and how it led to the development of a course called “Race and Relationality,” the author suggests that relational theory, broadly conceived, can make it possible for literary critics to stay in touch with the bit-by-bit process of experiencing texts. In the midst of that process, we are in a state of consciousness that is much different from the state in which we analytically sort and interpret, and in that dim, intermixing milieu, we can come to know things that we would not otherwise have known.