Rendering Unconscious

On this episode of Rendering Unconscious, I speak with Dr. Walter A. Davis, Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University. He is an actor and playwright, as well as psychoanalyst and theoretician. His many books include Art and Politics: Psychoanalysis, Ideology, Theatre. Pluto Press, London, 2007; Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche Since 9-11. Pluto Press, London, 2006; Get the Guests: Psychoanalysis, Modern American Drama, and the Audience. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1993; and Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. He describes his current work in this way: "My work, which is of a broadly interdisciplinary nature, has two unifying purposes: (1) a critique of the assumptions and concepts that underlie the humanistic traditions and (2) the construction of a radically new foundation for humanistic inquiry. That foundation is existentially grounded in what Paul Ricoeur calls "the subjectivity of the subject." It is thus