Duane Rousselle

 ( Canadian Psychoanalysts ) 

Duane Rousselle (born April 28, 1982) is a Canadian sociological theorist, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and professor of sociology.

He works in several academic fields including social movement theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, cultural sociology, gender studies, Anarchism, and Continental philosophy. His work attempts to introduce an alternative to scholarly discourses that aim to produce consistent and coherent bodies of knowledge (e.g., "university discourse"). It also offers a counterpoint to what Jacques Lacan has called "capitalist discourse."

He helped to contribute to the emergence of a new field of scholarly investigation known as "post-anarchism." He founded and edits the journal Anarchist Developments in Cultural Studies. He is a noted Canadian public intellectual. He is often referred to as among the second generation of the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis alongside Todd McGowan. His work has been translated into multiple languages, including Russian, Arabic, Turkish, and Spanish.

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Biography Duane was born in Miramichi, New Brunswick to Catholicism parents. He attended the New Brunswick Community College and graduated with a diploma in Electronic Game Design. After participating in a hunger strike for admittance, he was accepted as a Sociology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. During this first year of his university education, he experienced devastating poverty, sleeping on park benches. He received numerous prestigious awards, including the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick silver medal for excellence in scholarship.

He went on to complete a master's degree in sociology from the University of New Brunswick before joining the PhD program in Cultural Studies from Trent University. During his time in Peterborough, he became a Freemasonry. He was awarded the Governor General of Canada Gold Medal for his research into clinical psychoanalysis and continental philosophy.

He studied also at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.

In 2016, Duane raised more than $100,000 to help rebuild a mosque that was attacked in a hate crime in Peterborough, Ontario. An attack backfires: how a mosque bombing brought Peterborough together. His efforts received international attention and he was invited for a private meeting with the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This was the subject of a documentary film by Matthew Hayes, The Masjid. Duane received several death threats at this time and went into hiding.

Duane converted to Islam in order to marry his former partner. This relationship was documented by Colin Boyd Shafer in his documentary photo exhibit Interlove Project.

In 2019, Duane moved to Mumbai. In 2020, he returned to Canada and accepted an appointment to teach at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Nipissing University. In 2021, he became engaged to the "negative psychoanalyst" Julie Reshe. Rousselle taught psychology and sociology at a university in Tyumen, Siberia, but fled to Kazakhstan with his fiancée and their daughter following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Duane is a Visiting associate professor of sociology at the University College of Dublin. He currently holds the position of Associate Dean of Research and Associate Professor at the Aga Khan University. In 2024, he established a psychoanalysis circle in Pakistan and became the inaugural president of the Pakistan Psychoanalytic Society.

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Thought

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Post-anarchism Duane was a leading proponent of "post-anarchism." He published numerous texts and edited the foundational book "Post-Anarchism: A Reader." He has argued that post-anarchism allowed anarchists to reflect upon their own presuppositions and to discover problems with theories of revolutionary and insurrection. He said that "what was so essential about post-anarchist theory was that it surprised anarchists. We became surprised by what it was that we have been saying for over 150 years."

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Particular affirmations One of Duane's key theories is that there has been a rise in the logic of "particular affirmations" of enjoyment after what Slavoj Žižek and others referred to as the decline of symbolic efficiency. These "particular affirmations" are capable of producing the same results as modern fascism without any need of prohibitions against particular segments of the population. This logic has developed out of close readings of the late teachings of Jacques Lacan and the seminars of Jacques-Alain Miller. His argument was central to a debate with the noted philosopher Slavoj Žižek.

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Dreams He said that the perpetuation of false negativities are actually fawnings/faux-negs of jouissance or enjoyment and that satisfactions are perpetuated through naive notions of cynicism, negativity, and criticality.

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Platform capitalism His work focuses on what he terms "feudal fixations" in contemporary capitalism. He described "plat-farm" capitalism as capitalism in a feudal mode, and said that "capitalism would be an advancement."

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Psychoanalytic sociology Duane said that psychoanalytic sociology is "not a sociology of psychoanalysis", it is "the psychoanalyst's sociology."

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Works

• Post-Anarchism: A Reader (Pluto Books)
• After Post-Anarchism (Repartee Books/LBC)
• Lacanian Realism: Political and Clinical Psychoanalysis (Bloomsbury Books)
• Jacques Lacan and American Sociology: Be Wary of the Image (Palgrave)
• Gender, Sexuality, and Subjectivity: A Lacanian Perspective on Identity, Language and Queer Theory (Routledge)
• Real Love: Essays on Psychoanalysis, Religion, and Society (Atropos)
• Post-anarchism and Psychoanalysis: Seminars on Politics and Society (Real Books)
• Negativity in Psychoanalysis: Theory and Clinic (Routledge)
• Psychoanalytic Sociology: A New Theory of the Social Bond (Bloomsbury)

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External links

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