Anne Dufourmantelle. On Risking Life. 2011

http://www.egs.edu Anne Dufourmantelle, philosopher, psychoanalyst and author, talking about risking life in the context negativity and dialectics. In this lecture, Anne Dufourmantelle discusses negativity, anxiety, symptoms, testing, consciousness and the dialectic of master and slave in relationship to Hegel, Immanuel Levinas, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and René Descartes focusing on insurance, addiction, being lost, self-recognition and fear. Public open lecture for the students and faculty of the European Graduate School EGS Media and Communication Studies department program Saas-Fee Switzerland Europe. 2011. Anne Dufourmantelle.

Anne Dufourmantelle, Ph.D., is a French psychoanalyst, philosopher and author. Anne studied medicine and philosophy for two years in Paris and completed her doctorate (Ph.D) at Paris-IV university (Sorbonne). Her thesis was entitled : La vocation prophétique de la philosophie (The Prophetic Vocation of Philosophy) with studies on Soeren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emmanuel Levinas and Patocka. It was published some years later by les éditions du Cerf and received the Academie Française for philosophy. During Anne's studies at la Sorbonne, she had the opportunity to take one year off to study "humanities" at Brown university, with Georges Morgan. She translated Nelson Goodman's _Language of Art_, and and wrote an essay on "The Structure of Appearance," which would lead her, upon returning to France, to teach at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris La Villette (School of Architecture (UP6) of La Villette, for five years a seminar on Aesthetics and "thinking architecture". This experience also drove Anne to publish some dialogues between architects and philosophers, such as, for example, between Christian de Portzamparc and Philippe Sollers (2004) or between Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel (2000). Then Anne went on to direct a non-fiction collection as a publisher for Calmann-Levy on the field of philosophy. Anne studied with Jacques Derrida whom she had just met ("On Hospitality", Calmann-Levy, 1998 -- 17 translations), and also Vaclav Havel, Alain Didier-Weill, Alessandro Baricco, Julia Kristeva, Antonio Negri, George Steiner, Peter Sloterdijk, Frédéric Boyer, Belinda Cannone, etc... (more than 50 books published since). Then Anne left Calmann-Levy and continued with Stock (also in the Hachette group) the same type of collection, untitled "L'autre pensée", again in the field of philosophy, publishing thinkers like Slavoj Zizek, Noam Chomsky, Jacques Derrida again, Avital Ronell (2 books translated) -- Theodor Adorno, Rabaté, as well as some texts in psychoanalysis, literature studies, anthropology, sociology.

After earning her doctorate Anne began working as an analyst, member of the Cercle Freudien (Paris) and Après-Coup association (New-York) more or less in a Lacanian direction, but also with a strong link to the "English" Freudian school : Bion, Winicott, Klein, etc. After the publication of her thesis, Anne continued her writing in the psychoanalytic field. She published such books as: La sauvagerie maternelle ("The Savage Mother") or La femme et le Sacrifice, ("Women and Sacrifice) and others. Two books were an exception : Blind date, sex and philosophy and Une question d'enfant.