Event overview
The Department of English and Comparative Literature presents The Private Life: Josh Cohen in discussion with Jonathan Derbyshire on the psychic, cultural and political dimensions of private life.
In his latest book, The Private Life, Josh Cohen draws on his experience of psychoanalysis, literature and life to explore a conception of private life as the presence in us of someone else, an uncanny stranger both unrecognisable and eerily familiar, who can be neither owned nor controlled. The book is a devastating critique of the ‘unholy alliance of voyeurism and exhibitionism’ that defines our time. It draws on a dizzying array of characters and concerns, from John Milton and Henry James to Katie Price and Snoopy, from philosophy and the Bible to pornography and late-night TV, to weave a richly personal tapestry of ideas and experience. In a culture that floods our lives with light, it asks, how is it that we remain so helplessly in the dark?
Josh Cohen is Professor of Modern Literary Theory at Goldsmiths University of London and a psychoanalyst in private practice. He is the author of numerous books and articles on modern literature, aesthetic theory and psychoanalysis, including Interrupting Auschwitz: Art, Religion, Philosophy and How to Read Freud.
Jonathan Derbyshire is Managing Editor of Prospect Magazine. Previously he was culture editor of the New Statesman and a freelance literary journalist. His essays and reviews have appeared in many newspapers and magazines, including the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Guardian, the New York Sun, Prospect and the Times Literary Supplement. He is the editor of Time Out: 1,000 Books to Change Your Life (2007) and co-editor, with Jessica Cargill Thompson, of London Calling: High Art and Low Life in the Capital Since 1968 (2008). In a previous life, Jonathan was an academic and taught in several English universities. He is currently writing a book about the welfare state.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Feb 2014 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
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