How to Research Like a Dog: Kafka's New Science - Book Launch Event

Join us at the Freud Museum London for the launch of Aaron Schuster’s new and provocative book that proposes an innovative and surprising inspiration for philosophy today. Schuster will be joined by psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips for an engaging conversation about Schuster’s book, exploring subjects ranging across psychoanalysis, philosophy and literature. 

About the book: 

Written toward the end of Kafka's life, “Investigations of a Dog” (Forschungen eines Hundes, 1922) is one of the lesser-known and most enigmatic works in the author's oeuvre. Kafka's tale of philosophical adventure is that of a lone, maladjusted dog who challenges the dogmatism of established science and pioneers an original research program in pursuit of the mysteries of his self and his world. In How to Research Like a Dog, Aaron Schuster uses the canine as a guide dog to rediscover Kafka's fictional universe, while taking up the cause of this ingenious, possessed, melancholy, comical, and revolutionary thinker.  Neither an exercise in literary criticism nor a traditional philosophical commentary, this charming and idiosyncratic book aligns itself with the research program of Kafka's dog. It constructs an “impossible” system based on the fourfold division of nourishment, music, incantation, and freedom—or, stated a bit differently: enjoyment, art, institutions, and freedom. From Plato to Flaubert, Lispector, and Lacan, Schuster puts the dog in dialogue with psychoanalytic theory, the history of philosophy, and modern literature. Imagining the “Unknown University” that Kafka's new science calls for, the book enlists new comrades in the dog's struggle. 

_______________________________________________________________________ 

Speakers: 

Aaron Schuster is a philosopher and writer, who lives in Amsterdam. He is the author of How to Research Like a Dog: Kafka's New Science (MIT, 2024), The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (MIT, 2016), and co-author of Sovereignty, Inc.: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment (University of Chicago, 2020). He is the editor of e-flux Notes. 

Adam Phillips is a practicing psychoanalyst, formerly Principal Child Psychotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital, London. He is General Editor of the Penguin Modern Classics Freud translations and the author of numerous works of psychoanalysis and literary criticism, including most recently The Cure for Psychoanalysis and On Giving Up. 

_______________________________________________________________________ 

Tickets: £25 

Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming. 

A limited number of £10 bursary tickets are available for those under financial hardship. Priority will be given to UK unemployed and PIP/ESA claimants. Please email perry@freud.org.uk to apply for a bursary. 

The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible. 

The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum. Unfortunately the Freud Museum does not have step-free access at this time. Advance booking is highly recommended as capacity is limited.