Connections and Conversation is a free monthly Zoom meeting, cultivating creativity and freedom of thought and feeling. We invite you to engage with our presenters and community as they share their interests and passions in conversation on current topics in psychoanalysis.

This free event that alternates times. The meeting often begins with a 45 minute presentation followed by 45 minutes of conversation. When an event is recorded you can access the recording at the vault.

This series is open to all.

In case of questions please contact: [email protected]

For a long time, I have been interested in the relations between individuals and collectives: the groups they are, and feel, part of; the groups they identify with, and in the act of identifying, becoming who they are. In other words, I’ve been interested in belonging: in how we are forced and-or choose belong, and in what the power-desire knots of belonging do to us. The paper I will be presenting is about my own difficult belonging with the warring collectives that lay claims to the territory I was born in, a territory known by the already revealing dual name: Israel-Palestine. The difficulty was there from the start, but it has been increasing. It has become a permanent identity crisis. The state of exception Walter Benjamin speaks of is now the rule. It is how I feel my very own self now. I believe that many of us are going through something similar in these times of wars of extinction in the Middle East and Europe, and arguably the entire planet: who do we belong with, which also means who we are. I hope my paper could serve as a springboard for us to to think together about the life and death paradoxes of belonging, and how we might address them going forward.