Too muchness, the surplus of immanence, manatheism

Dolar, Mladen (author)

This paper tries to provide some clues and red threads through the magisterial work of Eric Santner. The first part takes the point of departure in his book on Schreber (My Own Private Germany) and tries to lay down a basic narrative that subtends most of Santner’s work and can be encapsulated by “the secret history of modernity.” This narrative is briefly spelled out through the relationship of Schreber the father (the “surplus father” as the continuation of the enlightenment), Doctor Flechsig (the seminal representative of the modern university discourse), and Schreber the son, the embodiment of the symptom of the progress of modernity. The second part of the paper scrutinizes three interrelated concepts proposed by Santner, too muchness, the surplus of immanence, and manatheism, which provide conceptual tools to address the break of modernity. The three concepts are brought into relation with the historical placement of psychoanalysis in modernity, the dialectic of “what remains” and the emergence of the new, and finally with the nature of the exception pertaining to the notion of the surplus. The last part, “the punning of reason,” examines Santner’s frequent use of puns (“puncepts”) as a conceptual strategy to deal with the paradoxes of universality. Punning is taken not as an addition or embellishment but as a poignant way to propose a new status of universality, related to what Lacan named lalangue. The three different perspectives try to show the different ways by which Santner’s work addresses the core conundrums of modernity.

• Language: English
• Keywords: philosophy, psychoanalysis, imanence, manatheism, sovereignity, punning, modernity, Schreber, surplus enjoyment, puncept
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2024
• Number of pages: Str. 9-20
• Numbering: Vol. 29, no. 3
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-163826
• UDC: 159.964.26:321.011
• ISSN on article: 0969-725X
• DOI: 10.1080/0969725X.2024.2360324
• COBISS.SI-ID: 211008259
• Publication date in RUL: 11.10.2024

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Angelaki : journal of the theoretical humanities
• Shortened title: Angelaki
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 0969-725X
• COBISS.SI-ID: 3590957

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: filozofija, psihoanaliza, imanenca, manateizem, suverenost, besedna igra, Eric Santner