There are words whose future has rendered them more reliable than the present in which they were spoken. Whatever may actually have been said at the time, these words have become legendary, forever inscribed in the tumultuous history of psychoanalysis. This sentence and the circumstance in which it was uttered prompted the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to set down a narrative and a critical commentary, brimming over with doctrinal consequences, in his text ‘La chose freudienne’ (Écrits).

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, one of the most revered and influential art critics of the last half century and a key reference on the work of artists such as Gerhard Richter, Marcel Broodthaers, Nancy Spero or Gabriel Orozco, spoke to Electra about the ever-mounting problems of separating critical practices and artistic production today.

Alberto Savinio was a writer, painter, essayist, musician, composer and much more. He is often simply referred to as Giorgio de Chirico’s brother. Yet it is about him that Andrea Cortellessa, a leading Italian critic and professor of Contemporary Italian Literature at the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, and one of the founders of the digital magazine Antinomie, writes here.

Today there is a widespread dissemination of psychological vocabulary and a general psychological orientation in the way we look at others, at politicians, and at social phenomena: the psychologisation of society has become a governing principle of the world we inhabit. One of the most visible consequences is an increase in medical and pharmacological therapies used to treat the many symptoms of discontent that emerge as collective manifestations. Social psychology draws on a sociology of emotions that has gained traction in recent years, turning feelings such as resentment, fear, anger, and the pleasure of destruction into objects of analysis. At the same time, the re-emergence in international politics of figures that can be placed within the typology of the authoritarian personality and the tyrant has made psychological diagnosis once again relevant. As a result, the disciplines concerned with the psyche have recently found a particularly fertile ground for their expansion.

Commenting on one of Nietzsche’s aphorisms on collective madness, French author and essayist Christian Salmon maintains that it remains pertinent to our understanding of contemporary political phenomena, while also identifying in it an affinity with Hermann Broch’s theory of mass madness, conceived in terms of a theory of history.

Author Marie Darrieussecq is a leading figure in contemporary French fiction, with a significant international reputation. Her career, which now spans several dozen titles across a range of genres, began with the novel Truismes (1996), an unusually successful bestseller due to the way it appealed to readers from completely different cultural backgrounds. The English translation is entitled Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust and Transformation. It recounts the strange metamorphosis of its narrator, who gradually transforms into a sow. Even at that early stage, the author was already showing how literary experience could verge on an experience of limits. Literary writing and the various forms of autobiography recur as essential themes in many of her books, including Sleepless, her most recent work to be translated into English.

This portfolio, compiled for Electra by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (AMVK), is highly representative of her work. As she explains in the introduction, it explores the fundamental and thought-provoking relationship between eroticism and technology, viewed from a female perspective. This relationship is inseparable from the critical and innovative reflection through which the Belgian artist has explored art, science, politics, society, imagery and communication. All these concerns run through AMVK’s extensive body of work, informed by powerful and original thought and expressed through painting, drawing, collage, installation, digital art, video art and music. Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven has enjoyed a long and distinguished career, recognised by numerous prestigious awards and honours. Her work is characterised by a constant attention to the world around her, combined with a vibrant and restless cultural memory.

This essay, written for Electra, explores the friendship between the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and the anti-fascist activist Pietro Nenni, leader of the Italian Socialist Party. This relationship began in their youth and, despite everything that later set them against one another, played a significant role in both their lives. A narrative of a turbulent and dangerous time, in which life and death were at stake every day, it portrays the people and events that shaped the tragic history of the 20th century. The author is the Italian journalist Andrea Prada Bianchi, who resides in New York and has contributed to such publications as The Guardian, Le Monde, Foreign Policy and Jeune Afrique.

Geographer Michel Lussault, a professor at the University of Lyon, discusses in this article a phenomenon that has been central to his research, namely the urbanisation of the planet since the mid-20th century, in order to demonstrate that our habitats are unsustainable from an economic, social and ecological perspective.

In the 1980s, when I was a boy, the future seemed like an appealing place. I wanted to grow up and get there, to witness all its marvels: metallic clothes, flying skateboards robot assistants that would make our lives easier. Who knew, perhaps we would be using teleportation. The year 2000!