Kyle Frackman: Associate Professor at Department of Central, Eastern & Northern European Studies, UBC Faculty of Arts

Associate Professor

Faculty of Arts

Research Classification

Cinema studies

Film, television and digital media

Literature and literary studies

Media, visual and digital culture

Research Interests

affect

Artistic and Literary Marginality

Artistic and Literary Movements, Schools and Styles

Artistic and Literary Theories

Arts and Cultural Traditions

Arts and Literary Policies

Arts and Technologies

Arts, Literature and Subjectivity

Cultural Industries

East Germany

film

Gender Studies

German studies

history of science

history of sexuality

Literary or Artistic Work Analysis

literature

Media

Media Types (Radio, Television, Written Press, etc.)

queer studies

Scandinavia

sexuality

sexuality studies

Social Determinants of Arts and Letters

media studies

Relevant Degree Programs

View all programs

Affiliations to Research Centres, Institutes & Clusters

Centre for European Studies

Language Sciences Institute

Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies

Public Humanities Hub

Research Options

I am available and interested in collaborations (e.g. clusters, grants).

I am interested in and conduct interdisciplinary research.

I am interested in working with undergraduate students on research projects.

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Recruitment

Looking to recruit:

Master's students

Doctoral students

Postdoctoral Fellows

Desired start dates: Any time / year round

Other options:

I support public scholarship, e.g. through the Public Scholars Initiative, and am available to supervise students and Postdocs interested in collaborating with external partners as part of their research.

I support experiential learning experiences, such as internships and work placements, for my graduate students and Postdocs.

I am open to hosting Visiting International Research Students (non-degree, up to 12 months).

I am interested in supervising students to conduct interdisciplinary research.

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Supervision Enquiry

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Graduate Student Supervision

Master's Student Supervision (2010 - 2021)

Of matter and meaning: quantum entanglement and biological phantasy in psychoanalysis (2019)

This thesis offers a posthumanist reading of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories on body-ego and its somatic relations to the environment in Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id), Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams), and Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and its Discontents). Agential Realism, a philosophy proposed by Karen Barad, builds on recent insights in quantum physics. Using Barad’s theory, I read bodies as “intra-actively” entangled with matter and meaning, so that the body-ego as “phenomenon” materializes from a co-constitutive subject position within relationships with others. Unlike interaction, where pre-existing entities meet, “intra-action” emphasizes the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. This approach allows re-centering the body in ego formation and the subject-object relations in psychoanalysis. Following Barad’s understanding that “knowing is a direct material engagement” (Meeting the Universe Halfway, 2007), this analysis offers novel paths to engage with Freud’s creative somatic materializations in the body. Posthumanist feminist philosophies are uniquely situated to elucidate the intra-activity of the unconscious as enlivened and productive. This “biological phantasy” (Wilson, Gut Feminism 2015) as both somatic and imaginary, constitutes a collective event through which body-ego emerges. Just as “matter feels, converses, suffers, desires, yearns and remembers” (Barad), this material reworking provides a novel understanding of the creative relation of the Freudian body-ego with cultural phenomena and collective states. The proposed theory offers new perspectives on psychoanalysis through a new materialist lens when navigating the willful aberrations of bodily unruliness.

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