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Dear readers, I am delighted to inform you that Calum Neill will join us for two events in Germany in the following weeks. Calum is an Associate Professor of Psychoanalysis & Cultural Theory at Napier University (Edinburgh, Scotland). He is the author of Jacques Lacan: The Basics (2023), Ethics and Psychology: Beyond Codes of Practice (2016), Without Ground: Lacan Ethics and the Assumption of Subjectivity (2014) and co-editor of the Palgrave Lacan Series and Reading Lacan’s Écrits Series.

Calum has agree to join me for an open workshop at the Ruhr-University Bochum on Lacan’s discourse theory. We will then head together to Berlin, where Calum will give a lecture at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) on the subject of gender. Both events are hybrid: all you need to do is register for free.

Here are the details for the events:

1. Workshop:

Stuck in a Revolving Door: Understanding Lacan’s…

I read my first novel by Damon Galgut last year, his Booker-winning The Promise (which I loved, and reviewed here). I just finished reading an earlier book, The Good Doctor, published in 2003. This was another excellent, psychologically astute novel, although it is missing the black humour that made The Promise a standout of 2021 for me.

The book is written from the first-person perspective of Frank, a doctor from a privileged background, in early middle age. Pragmatic, or simply disillusioned, he works under Dr Ngema in a small, dilapidated hospital in the South African homelands, which an author’s note states “were impoverished and underdeveloped areas of land set aside by the apartheid government for the ‘self-determination’ of its various black ‘nations'”. Dr Ngema is well-meaning and has her own ambitions, but her insecurities about her position, as a black woman hospital director in a country that has…

“Bach based his chorale Christum wir sollen loben schon – part of his cantata of the same name, BWV 121 – on a hymn by Martin Luther from 1524. This was in turn based on the Latin hymn A solis ortus cardine, by Caelius Sedulius from ca 450. For this recording soprano Viola Blache made a personal version, based on Bach, Luther and the original hymn. The decor is Vermeer’s Milkmaid who steps out of her frame after an age-long lockdown and seems almost to be singing to herself. The chorale text refers loosely to the painting. Recorded for the project All of Bach on 1 October 2020 at De Hallen Studio’s, Amsterdam (video production) and on 4 June 2021 at Philarmonie, Haarlem (music production). If you want to help…

What an amazing building! It presides over a corner of Shadwell Basin, surrounded by a high wall. I spotted it on a long weekend run, and went back later to sketch it.

What’s a Hydraulic Power Station? Well, in the late nineteenth century, London’s industry needed a way to exert mechanical force: to operate a printing press for example, or to raise heavy weights, for cranes and metal forming. Also, passenger lifts had been invented, and building engineers needed a way to exert force to operate the lift. One way would be to have a steam engine on site. This wasn’t always practical. Steam engines are noisy and dirty and you don’t want one next to your desirable residence, or even cluttering up your dockyard. So here’s the next idea: instead of lots of little steam…