Sitegeist is a space for thinking and questioning philosophy and psychoanalysis, which aims at a change in Geist–spirit, mind, intellect, wit, genius and morale. Emerging from the Site for Contemporary Psychoanalysis, with its commitment to exploring the extended field of psychoanalytic thinking and engaging with the traditions of European thought, Sitegeist seeks to contribute to a renewal of psychoanalysis, which by engaging with both the theoretical and the clinical, might provide a usable discourse on the subject.
The current psychoanalytic scene displays every sign of crisis: whilst psychoanalysis itself has probably never had more impact, both as a therapeutic intervention and as a cultural vade mecum, its own concepts and self-understanding have been subject to rigorous criticism from within and without. In many cases this has led to outright rejection as newer therapies have made extravagant claims for efficacy and insight. In a parallel way, the explosion of philosophical production after the middle of the twentieth century and the caravan of isms inaugurated by the structuralist revolution in France have left the theory of the subject in a state of radical uncertainty. Yet, such crises, which themselves reflect a period of astonishing change in the possibilities of being human and in the understanding of what it is to be human at all, have every potential for productive and creative responses learning from the traditions that have become unstable and yet moving beyond them.
To facilitate such creative responses, Sitegeist will provide an intellectual space where the plurality of traditions of thinking about the subject can engage in a productive colloquy. Once, the institutional loci for such an encounter might have been the university or the lay intelligentsia informed by the emergence of new disciplines, but these have suffered the closure and routinisation associated with professionalisation and the enforcement of canonical understandings of thought: a ceaseless production of party lines or disciplinary stasis. Avoiding this professional territorialisation, the journal will be committed to the encouragement, exploration and light-handed orchestration of the polyphony of current thinking about the subject and its vicissitudes.