Circumcision on the Couch

de Jordan Osserman, Esther Rashkin, Mari Ruti, Peter L. Rudnytsky

"Male circumcision is a powerful site through which questions of gender, race, religion, sexuality and psyche have been negotiated throughout human history. In recent years, a global movement of 'intactivists' have fuelled heated debate internationally around their demand to keep penises 'intact'. While most contemporary work on the subject has preoccupied itself with whether circumcision is 'right' or 'wrong', 'safe' or 'harmful', this study proceeds from the premise that, whatever its medical consequences, the significance of male circumcision lies in realms beyond the purely organic. How can psychoanalysis help us shed light on the ideologies, discourses and fantasies surrounding the practice and the impassioned stances for and against it? And how might the history of circumcision, in turn, allow us to re-assess and clarify how we understand the 'split' (or 'snipped') subject of psychoanalysis?."--