Defining interactionality with the help of a combination of concepts from philosophy and psychoanalysis this paper analyzes the ways in which contemporary Irish authors focus on relationality. As they notice how sensual impressions, emotions and forces in the unconscious interweave they illustrate that human beings are not individuals but essentially relational beings who connect with the different layers in their self and in others, or fail to do so. Reading texts by Anne Enright, Lucy Caldwell, Doireann ní Griofa, Kerri Ni Dochartaigh and David Park will show how their literary forms offer original ways to counteract the old dualisms ( mind-body, subject-object, matter-form) to combine such poles chiastically as in Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh” and  W. Desmond’s “in-between”. While Freud’s drives are prominent everywhere, Lacan’s uncanny object allows protagonists to move from a routine to a “real self”, while Winnicott’s good-enough mother and his transitional object as well as Agamben’s “phantasm” enable them to find a new balance.

Hedwig Schwall is Professor Emerita with formal duties at KU Leuven. She publishes on Irish literature, psychoanalysis and art, and serves on the editorial board of the series Art and Religion. In 2019 she edited The Danger and the Glory, an anthology of 60 contributions from Irish writers about the art of writing; its second instalment was About Europe in Ireland | Kaleidoscope II, the third will focus on ‘Faith, spirituality and art: new perspectives for the twenty-first century?’. She was director of the Leuven Centre for Irish Studies from its foundation (2010) to 2021. She has been a founding member of RISE, the Review of Irish Studies in Europe and is on the advisory board of the IUR, Nordic Irish Studies, Estudios irlandeses, Studi irlandesi, Brazilian Journal for Irish Studies, etc. She is also series editor of Irish Studies in Europe and has published widely on Irish fiction and other genres. She is now preparing a book on parent-child relations in contemporary Irish fiction. She runs the EFACIS Book club and is co-organizer of the international EFACIS PhD seminar.

This event will be hybrid: in-person and online via Teams.