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Freud and the Fetishistic Phantasy: Magic, Desire, and Loss in Harry Potter
Program Code:
410
Date:
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Time:
10:30 AM to 10:50 AM
EST
SPEAKER
:
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about each speaker.
Sharon Power received Bachelor’s degrees in Biochemistry and Women’s Studies from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and is currently working on her Master’s degree in Women’s Studies at York University in Toronto. She is Toronto born and raised, and very glad to be back in her home town for her graduate work. Academically, Sharon’s focus is in the area of feminist science studies, but she also enjoys dabbling in psychoanalytic theory, molecular biology, queer theory, and anything else that strikes her fancy. Outside of Academia, she spends far too much time immersed in the delightful world of Harry Potter, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Description
By re-interpreting Freud's concepts of fetishism and phantasy as ways that subjects productively and creatively manage threatening loss, we can illuminate new ways of thinking about relationships between each other and the objects we value. In this presentation I explore two key relationships: that between Harry Potter characters and the magical objects they encounter, and that between us as fans and the texts/fandom. We can see how magical objects act as fetishes which help Harry cope with the loss of his parents, and that through him we as readers get to safely realize our own fetishistic phantasies of restoration and resurrection. We can also consider the relationship between Harry Potter fans and the texts or fandom as a fetishistic one which helps us manage the isolation inherent to the modern subject and which fosters connections amongst a community of fans united across a range of diverse identities.