Analytics of Affectability: Around the Problem of the Phenomenological Unconscious

Abstract

The problem of the relationship between consciousness and unconsciousness has proved to be not only a neuralgic point in the interdisciplinary debates throughout the 20th century, but one which maintains its notable place in the present day. Taking the long and complex history of the encounters between Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and Edmund Husserl's mature phenomenology as a theoretical background, the present paper offers a novel approach towards the consciousness/unconsciousness problem, situated within the peculiar sphere shaped by the dialogue between Freudian and Husserlian notions. What we offer is a preliminary sketch for an analytics of affectability that opens a path toward reexamining some key psychoanalytical concepts such as unconscious, repression and memory which can be a valuable contribution to the development of phenomenological conceptualizations of different forms of traumatic experience.