

RU351 JULIE RESHE, TODD MCGOWAN & SIMONE A. MEDINA POLO ON DEATH & LOVE, PSYCHOANALYTIC & PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
Jun 12, 2025
05:35
Welcome to Rendering Unconscious – the Gradiva award-winning podcast about psychoanalysis & culture, with me, Dr Vanessa Sinclair. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com
RU351: JULIE RESHE, TODD MCGOWAN & SIMONE A. MEDINA POLO ON DEATH & LOVE: PSYCHOANALYTIC & PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES https://renderingunconscious.substack.com/p/ru351-julie-reshe-todd-mcgowan-and
Rendering Unconscious episode 351.
I sat down with Julie Reshe, Todd McGowan, and Simone A. Medina Polo to talk about their new book Death and Love: Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Perspectives (2025): https://www.routledge.com/Death-and-Love-Psychoanalytic-and-Philosophical-Perspectives/Reshe-McGowan/p/book/9781032663425
This episode centers on a new edited volume exploring the intersections of death and love, edited by Julie Reshe and Todd McGowan, to which Simone A. Medina Polo contributed. The book is dedicated to Mari Ruti, who passed away before completing her contribution. Key chapters include Lacanian perspectives, existentialist and theological analyses, and a tribute to Sabina Spielrein. Contributors explore the death drive and its implications, delving into the philosophical and psychoanalytic nuances of love and death. The conversation also touches on the challenges and significance of Spielrein's work and its impact on contemporary psychoanalysis.
Julie Reshe is a leading researcher in psychoanalysis and professor of philosophy at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS) where she directs the Institute of Psychoanalysis. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Alenka Zupančič at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She works at the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, and her research topics include sexuality, emotions and cognition, childhood, and trauma studies. Be sure to check out her book Negative Psychoanalysis for the Living Dead: Philosophical Pessimism and the Death Drive (2023). https://www.juliereshe.com
You can support her work and gain access to the book chapters at her Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/juliereshe/posts
Follow Julie at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julie.reshe/
Todd McGowan teaches theory and film at the University of Vermont. His books include The Impossible David Lynch (2007), Emancipation after Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (2019), Embracing Alienation: Why We Shouldn’t Try to Find Ourselves (2024), and Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity (2025). https://vermont.academia.edu/ToddMcGowan
Simone A. Medina Polo (she/her) is a philosopher and PhD candidate at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies (GCAS) for Philosophy and Psychoanalysis. Follow her at Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pseudo_antigone/
Thank you for listening to the Rendering Unconscious Podcast and for reading the Rendering Unconscious anthologies. And thank you so much for supporting this work by being a paid subscriber at the Substack. It makes my work possible. If you are so far a free subscriber, thanks to you too. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to gain access to all the material on the site, including all future and archival podcast episodes. https://renderingunconscious.substack.com
If you would like information about entering into psychoanalytic treatment with me, joining the group I run for those who have relocated to another country, or have other questions, please feel free to contact me via vs [at] drvanessasinclair.net
https://www.drvanessasinclair.net/contact/
Thank you.