On the conservatism of post-Jungian criticism: competing concepts of the symbol in Freud, Jung and Walter Benjamin

The renewed interest in analytical psychology by academics working in the humanities has led to the emergence of a post-Jungian field of cultural criticism, at the theoretical core of which stands Jung's theory of symbolism. This article examines the centrality of symbolism to both Freud and Jung's psychology and explains how the differing concepts of the symbol lead to their divergent theories of interpretation in psychology and art criticism. Acknowledging the advantages of Jung's more expansive account of the symbol, it argues that Walter Benjamin's critical engagement with Jung nonetheless provides a useful correction to the problematic conservatism inherent to his concept of the symbol and its contemporary application.

Being Taught by Biesta

What are we to do with the writing of Biesta? Raising the same question in relation to Jacques Rancière, in a 2010 study co-authored with Charles Bingham, Gert J. J. Biesta takes the writer of ‘a short, disparaging review of …The Ignorant Schoolmaster’ to task for “schooling” Rancière on the inadequacies of the book reviewed (Biesta & Bingham 2010, 145-148). Readers of Biesta cheering on from the sidelines at this point are placed in an uncomfortable double bind if they are to take this suggestion seriously when reviewing his own work. We are not, Biesta and Bingham (2010, 148) suggest, to police interpretations like a vigilant schoolmaster in possession of superior knowledge but rather ‘proceed as a child who looks forward to the sound of the bell’ and to ‘speak as if truant’.