Announcements by Ruth Lijtmaer (USA)
Presentations:
Beyond Apologies and Forgiveness: What Comes Next?
(2021, October 15). In panel: “The Implicated Subject in Community Psychoanalysis: Social Dreaming, Psychic Citizenship, and Negotiating Reparations.” Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, online.
Lijtmaer suggests that apologies, when appropriately constructed, reduce the victim’s motivation to blame, punish, or retaliate against the transgressor. Such an action is more positive if the perpetrator shows signs of remorse and offers emotional recompense, material reparation, or both. Acknowledgment by the perpetrator that he/she has indeed harmed the victim is important for the latter’s recovery from trauma. This recognition may allow the victim to forgive. However, the idea of the implicated subject (Rothberg, 2019) helps us see something more. How can confronting our own and others’ implication in difficult histories lead to new forms of international dialogue and long-distance solidarity? How to hold implicated subjects accountable for what they do, morally and politically?
Mi nombre es Nadie. No sé quién soy realmente. Trauma de la inmigración del siglo XXI [“My Name is Nobody. I Do not Know What is My True Self”: Trauma of Immigrants in the 21st Century]
(2021, December 18). IARPP-Spain, online.
In this presentation, Lijtmaer examines how migration in the twenty-first century takes place under extreme conditions, more dangerous that in the past. Filled with loneliness, fear and despair, it reminds us of Homer’s verses in which Ulysses says to Polyphemus, “My name is nobody.” The migrations of this new millennium require invisibility in order to survive – without identity and without social integration, and with these demands’ consequent risks to mental health.
Publication:
“Black Mozart” and the Sound of Race: Discrimination Then and Now
(2021, October 30). The Psychoanalyst Activist [e-journal].
Lijtmaer discusses Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges (Joseph de Bologne, 1745 –1799), African-French composer, violinist, conductor and champion fencer who, being a contemporary of Mozart, was called “Black Mozart.” She cites this case as an example of how discrimination rendered a highly accomplished black man invisible. Lijtmaer suggests that because of Saint-Georges’ race, his music has suffered two centuries of neglect. Even though he was an aberration, a Black master composer held in high esteem in France, still he was discriminated. More recently, since the Black Lives Matter movement, representation in the classical music world has begun changing, a hopeful sign. If “Black Mozart” were alive today, he might receive the appreciation and renown he well deserved.
Ruth Lijtmaer, Ph.D
Ridgewood, New Jersey
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