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 So darf ich alle herzlichst begrüßen, sowohl im Raum hier im dreidimensionalen als auch im digitalen Raum.

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 Alle, die sich per Zoom eingeschaltet, zugeschaltet haben, dabei sind und begrüße Sie bzw. uns alle zum Hauptteil der 5. Linzer Forschungstage.

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 Hauptteil deswegen, weil am Vormittag eben schon ein Pre-Kongress stattgefunden hat.

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 Und für alle, die da nicht dabei waren, stelle ich mich nochmal vor.

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 Mein Name ist Thomas Steffenson. Ich begleite uns durch den heutigen Nachmittag.

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 Lassen Sie mich kurz noch ein paar Worte zum Ablauf sagen und ein paar zusätzliche Bemerkungen anbringen.

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 Wir werden den heutigen Nachmittag in zwei Tranchen sozusagen erleben können.

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 In der ersten Tranche stand am Programm Alice Lagays Vortrag über Future Traumas and the Politics of What Remains.

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 Da gibt es nicht eine Programmveränderung, aber eine leichte Modifikation, die notwendig geworden ist.

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 Liebe Kollegin Lagay hatte leider ganz aktuell einen familiären Notfall.

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 Und es war daher wirklich nicht möglich, jetzt zu uns zu kommen.

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 Ganz, ganz großen Dank an Elisabeth Schäfer,

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 die da nicht zugelassen hat, dass da so eine große Lücke entsteht,

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 sondern sie hat ein Gespräch mit Alice Lagay zu diesem Thema geführt,

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 hat es aufgenommen auch und hat sich bereit erklärt, das einzuspielen.

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 Es wird in etwa auch die Länge des geplanten Vortrags haben.

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 Wir werden nachher die Möglichkeit haben, Elisabeth Schäfer vielleicht auch noch ein paar Fragen dazu zu stellen.

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 Elisabeth Schäfer vielleicht auch noch ein paar Fragen dazu zu stellen.

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 Es wird der Vortrag von Agnes Steffenson folgen über Hospicing Modernity und wir werden dann eine kleine Pause machen und um 16 Uhr fortsetzen mit Bettina Zehners Vortrag

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 Ist das noch normal oder ist das schon Gewalt?

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 Und werden zum Schluss Gerhard Burda hören, über die Zeit heilt alle Wunden.

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 Um 18 Uhr nach dem Kongress gibt es dann für alle Mitglieder des Vereins für kritische Psychotherapiewissenschaft VKP ein Abendessen.

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 Dieser Verein hat ja unsere Tagung hier mitorganisiert, die sich dem Thema eben widmet, Future Trauma, Psychotherapie zwischen Fragilität und Widerstand.

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 Was die Vorträge selber anbelangt, vielleicht noch eine kurze Bemerkung.

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 Wir haben uns entschieden in der Fachzeitschrift des Vereins für kritische Psychotherapiewissenschaft,

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 die sich inklusive Zukunft benennt,

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 die jeweiligen Forschungstage, die bis jetzt stattgefunden haben, nachzuarbeiten und sie auch publikatorisch erscheinen zu lassen.

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 2022, 2023 sind soeben erschienen, zu unserer sehr großen Freude.

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 Und die anderen werden...

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 Danke an alle, die da extrem intensive Arbeit mitgeleistet haben,

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 neben der anderen Arbeit, die wir alle leisten müssen.

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 Das war eigentlich ganz großartig.

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 Dementsprechend werden in weiterer Folge dann auch die anderen Kongresse

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 und eben auch dieser dann publikatorisch verewigt sozusagen

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 und für Sie auch zur Verfügung stehen, dann Open Access natürlich.

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 Gut, so dann lassen Sie uns beginnen.

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 Professorin Dr. Alice Lagay ist Chair of Arts, Culture and Society an der Fakultät für Kunstwissenschaften der Universität Groningen.

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 Als eine der führenden Protagonistinnen auf dem Gebiet der Performancephilosophie

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 ist sie Mitbegründerin des Internationalen Performance Philosophy Network

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 und Mitherausgeberin der gleichnamigen Buchreihe bei Roman and Littlefield International.

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 Sie ist die Vorlieberin der gleichnamigen Buchreihe bei Roman & Littlefield International.

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 Sie hat zu einer Vielzahl von Themen geschrieben, Vorträge gehalten und Konferenzen organisiert,

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 darunter Medienphilosophie, europäische Philosophie des 20. Jahrhunderts, negative Performance,

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 die sich mit Stille, Passivität, Nichthandeln, Destruktivität, Scheitern, Sein lassen, Indifferenz und dem Unmöglichen befasst.

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 Und ich bin jetzt schon sehr neugierig auf, was uns hier erwartet,

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 auch wenn es ein bisschen anders als das Erwartete war.

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 Ich glaube, es wird sehr spannend für uns alle und wir widmen uns jetzt dieser Aufzeichnung, dieses Gesprächs, bitte. PTV department last year in February. And maybe you can tell us later on more about this coining

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 or introduction of this concept. It actually became very important for me and my colleagues

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 at the department in Linz because it enabled us to understand our present time in a much more profound and differentiated way.

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 It was precisely for this reason that we decided to dedicate the Linz Research Days to this concept.

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 And I want to thank you for your willingness to put on your thinking cap, as you called it, together with me here in this video

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 call to explore the philosophical implications of future trauma. So I come to my first question,

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 which is rather a classical one. The concept of future trauma challenges the classical psychoanalytic understanding of trauma

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 as something that becomes meaningful only retroactively.

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 So how do you understand the political and philosophical implications

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 of anticipating trauma rather than interpreting it after the fact?

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 Thank you. First of all, thank you so much,

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 Elizabeth, for inviting me back, as it were, to come and talk to you. And I'm really sad that I can't be with you in person, but I also am delighted that it's possible for us to talk in this way um and in a way um in a way it's sort of it's just as good

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 or even better because we can keep things sort of a little bit improvised and a little bit sort of

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 on the spur of the moment um and when you said thinking cap i i although i had written i'll put my thinking cap on.

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 Actually, I want to just make a little addition to that because what is emerging in recent work of mine, which is always collaborative work, by the way, and this particular collaboration is a collaboration with the artist Petia Ivanova who I've recently been been writing alongside and with and we are talking about not just thinking but sense thinking

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 and I think that the that it's very relevant to this topic as well um and so when you ask about future trauma um how it sort of came

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 about i'd like to maybe just tell you a little story about how it came about um which is partly

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 anecdotal something that happened to me but it's also related to this notion of sense thinking so the thing that happened was that I

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 I went to visit uh I went to visit I went back to my one of my home places um to visit some family

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 there was a family event and I and and you know I usually go to family events but anyway

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 I don't go very often I but but there was this event and so I I and I went and I usually go to family events but anyway I don't go very often but but there

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 was this event and so I and I went and I spent a couple of days in my home village um and then uh

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 and when I came back for some reason that I can't quite uh in this particular instance, on this particular occasion, I found myself floored with with it.

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 I mean, I had a kind of I had a kind of nervous collapse after having visited my family.

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 It wasn't just family, it was also friends that I hadn't seen for a long time.

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 Anyway, I came back and I was floored by a sense of grief.

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 And it was very extreme. It was an extreme state of being that made me begin to think

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 about grief. Because the thing about this particular occasion was that there was nothing explicit to

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 grieve about I was not you know I couldn't put my finger on what it was that I was grieving

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 and yet the feeling was absolutely un un I mean it was just evident that that's what it was so I

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 I began to get interested um in the notion of and, and that's on a very personal level, but the, but in, in, in,

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 in parallel to this, I've noticed in,

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 in the realms of that I sort of work around in artistic research and in

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 philosophy, increasingly, there's this notion of, of, of grief work.

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 And, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm lucky and privileged in the sense that I've

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 never I've never explicitly had to deal with with too much grief but suddenly it became a topic that

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 I wanted to understand more about so I ended up I ended up signing up for a uh a grief training course that went for three months.

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 And during this course, I learned about different ways into

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 or different so-called portals of grief.

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 The coach and the psychotherapist who was running this therapy course

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 or this grief training was somebody called Francis Weller.

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 And I want to talk a little bit about him later. But first of all, to get back to your question. it touches a nerve and describes something about the contemporary age that is very specific to the

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 age that we're living, you know, and it's well known, especially in psychoanalysis, that trauma

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 generally or is considered to sort of occur retroactively, as you said. So it's not necessarily in the moment of the event,

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 but in the aftermath, in its repetition,

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 the traumatic pattern kind of emerges.

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 And so in a way, this means that trauma is always somehow virtual.

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 There's always something virtual about it.

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 And through the grief training, I learned that, you know, working or trauma work, yeah, trauma work to sort of as a spin off,

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 trauma work tends to expose the patterns that we've developed for coping right so anyone who's sort

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 of anyone who survived a traumatic experience in other words you know i mean in different ways

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 obviously and in different degrees but basically anyone who's alive has sort of found a way of

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 dealing and coping with with with trauma um and so we're already very resilient um but there's this sense that

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 sense there's this sense that is specific to the current age that we are anticipating a trauma to

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 come that we're sort of in a limbo waiting for for and there are little you know

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 there are little instances of it that it's almost like there are there are little rehearsals of it

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 you get the repetition of trauma retroactively but you get the you get the repetition you get

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 the rehearsal of a trauma before you know like every time you see your your aging parents it's a slight repetition of the grief that

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 is yet to come you can't anticipate the grief and yet you somehow you somehow you somehow do and

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 you're somehow already in a kind of preparation so every time a tree dies you know every time a

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 species disappears but also in a way not to be, every time winter comes, you know, it's a sort of a rehearsal and anticipation, but also the foundation, the practicing ground for this resilience as well.

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 So for me, what I've learned through the grief work is that there is no there is no joy without grief um and but we are in this particular age

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 where we where we sort of we sort of know but we sort of don't know what we kind of have this

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 in germany you know this anticipation this sense that the that

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 the future is going to be challenging um but we can't and we can in fact put our finger on all

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 sorts of things but but we don't quite know how we're going to deal with it and yet and yet we

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 know we must you know so there's, there's that aspect of it.

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 The other thing that I just wanted to say with regard to future grief or future, future trauma. I mean, it's the same thing again, in a way,

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 you know, we're all, everyone who's alive today, it can be,

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 can call themselves a late comer. We're, we're, we're late to the party.

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 And, and, and, and we are and we know ourselves to be the inheritors of something, the origin of which we were not privy to.

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 So we inherit the good, the bad and the ugly.

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 We inherit the ancestral trauma, but also the ancestral coping mechanisms. So how to be resilient,

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 how to deal, how to carry on anyway, you know, how to cope. We have all sorts of wonderful skills,

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 you know, because we have, in a way, we are the survivors against the odds in all sorts of

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 different ways and everybody individually

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 in their own particular way but you know it's so unlikely that we should have that we should be

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 here that that we can count ourselves as sort of you know as already having been the grammar is

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 important here resilient um but also what i've learned, is that in understanding what you have inherited, the good, the bad and the ugly.

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 It is part of a kind of hygiene work in order to be a good ancestor.

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 So we have to acknowledge the fact, and this was, although it's so obvious, it was actually a new thought to me.

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 although it's so obvious, it was actually a new thought to me. And the fact that it was a new thought to me kind of shocked me and made me

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 humble and almost ashamed because I realized I'd never really thought about

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 myself as being an ancestor for the future, you know,

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 and it's not necessarily only biological progeniture, right?

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 It's I consider myself to be a sort of yeah to have received the the trauma

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 of of my spiritual uh mentors and my intellectual uh teachers you know from i don't know from

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 including nature as in a way uh and so and so in a way to think of ourselves as being ancestors for the people and

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 the and the beings and the plants to come is an interesting shift of mindset that does things

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 it does things to it does things to the way you think about yourself and also collectivity which is another theme that I'm sure we'll get to.

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 Yeah, thank you very much and thank you very much also for sharing this personal

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 story. I think this is also, I like this kind of grounding philosophy also in a singular experience which we make in life.

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 So philosophy is not, for me at least, and I guess also for you, is nothing which only stays in the bookshelf, like behind me,

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 but is something which is grounded in our everyday life, in our experience.

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 And also thank you for drawing our attention to this,

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 I don't know how to name it.

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 Is it a task?

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 Is it a, at least it is a challenge to be a ancestor for the future others?

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 challenge to be a ancestor for the future others so i think this is um for me also in an important figure because um it describes one's own existence and relation to others

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 but these others are maybe others which we do not personally maybe meet in the future,

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 but they may learn about us in some way or other.

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 And we have no chance, if I understand you correctly, to kind of correct our, yeah, um, um, yeah, the, the traces we, we left in the world. So it's like,

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 you know, it's a bit like the, um, like a, a kind of inscribing yourself into the world

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 to others, which we never met, meet. And, um, there is a kind of it also for me and this figure of thought which you

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 which you bring into our conversation also kind of makes me a bit hesitated so

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 how to act then how to inscribe myself into this world um in a responsible way or in a joyful way

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 or in a um yeah maybe sometimes even irresponsible way because we we do things like that as human

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 beings so um but this kind of moment of hesitation may be also fruitful because it's this little gap where we hesitate and when we start to think how then, how to inscribe yourself into the world and how to become this ancestor of future others.

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 You know, Donna Haraway has this idea of tentacular thinking.

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 And I love the image because that's what we're talking about. The more you practice, and I think this notion of practice, of rehearsal, of not knowing exactly what it is that we're rehearsing,

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 but stretching out our tentacles to feel both into the past, but also into the future

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 does two things. I mean, it does lots of things, but it does, on the one hand, it complexifies

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 the idea of you as a singular individual, because it implies that we are already always sort of connected and that that connectivity is partly something that is

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 despite ourselves as well right so we can't completely control it this idea of the totally

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 sovereign autonomous human being is you know reveals itself to be not only an illusion but

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 perhaps also completely misleading in the sense that you're right, I cannot

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 completely control how I am perceived or what happens with my leftovers, the multiple,

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 and the chaotic, right, but at the same time, just the simple sort of imaginary exercise of of of yeah of imagining myself as this tentacular being

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 that stretches into the past and into the future simultaneously as well that complexifies the idea

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 of linear time um it just does something to the way in which you begin to sense you know and and the grief work is important

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 because what is revealed in grief work is that it's not something that you do or you get over

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 and once and for all and then it's done it's a continuous practice um and it's a continuous necessity to name and to find descriptions for what it is that you are grieving,

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 but also to introduce rituals in the sense of, you know, in the sense of places that you can go to,

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 both physically and metaphorically and ritualistically, but also collectively.

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 Because this is another thing that I've learned is that we want

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 to keep our grief for ourselves in a way sometimes we don't want to mention it because there's

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 something of a profanation that happens in the naming of your grief and you would like to keep

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 it sacred it's all true but you cannot achieve the grief work on your own. It really takes, it really does take a community, and it builds community, community builds around rituals of grief in ways that can be very, very surprising.

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 but very, very, you know, holding and therefore, you know, reparative in a way. So I feel like this tentacular thinking is also something that by definition implies and constitutes at the same time a collective

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 and also perhaps reimagines what we mean by by by collective

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 um so that's something that i feel is really worth uh exploring yeah yeah so it comes to my mind um listening to you maybe because you know as philosophers we always try to kind of

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 kind of understand contemporary times um our existence our coexistence and as coming from

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 parts from the philosopher Jacques Derrida but also also from Jean-Luc Nocy. I tend to understand

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 existence always as an already shared existence, so as co-existence. And I was wondering if you,

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 and also while thinking about grief and listening to you, the latest books of Hélène Cixous come to my mind.

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 Some of her notebooks entitled in the English translation

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 with the notion of loss.

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 So it came to my mind if as human beings,

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 we might be a community of loss in these times,

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 because I would say that given all the crises,

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 you can name it like ecological, political, ethical, and so on,

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 crises we are experiencing, maybe time or the time,

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 our experience of our future times as humankind closes a bit, which is maybe for the first time in humanity, maybe not, I can only speculate,

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 but simply given the ecological crisis we live in,

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 I would say it draws at least our attention to the question,

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 is there a continuing future for human beings on this planet or not.

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 And so for me, sometimes this question is not an abstract question,

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 but it directly comes to the heart of my work because sometimes I ask myself for how many years

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 are there human beings to read your texts

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 which is essentially for me because what I do in my life is producing texts. So many other things, friendships and connections and love and, you know.

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 But yeah, but writing for me personally is very important because this is kind of also the chronistic way of witnessing what I'm doing in my life.

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 And who will witness my witnessing, you know?

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 So, and this affects my daily work as a philosopher. So sometimes, and so after

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 listening to you, I thought, are we a community of loss or yeah there is this it reminds me of this if of this

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 notion that is that is also often referred to in in in in the context of this you know

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 multiple crises period that we're living in um the notion of unworlding, or the fact that we might be,

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 that we, that we, that our experience is one of the world, you know, yeah, maybe being lost,

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 or ourselves being lost in the world, and, but for me, you know, as a, a as a as a sort of existentialist not just influenced but sort of

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 like extent you know I've always from the from the from from since childhood basically I've always

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 I've always looked upon the world as something that I feel in my gut as something deeply strange you know and and something absolutely you know sort of sort of wonderful

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 and incomprehensible at the same time just as on a on a phenomenological level as a phenomenon this

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 sort of this sort of alienness um but but that and that i have found you know I've I used to feel kind of sick about it but

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 actually I've become more familiar with it and I've I've actually I kind of rely on it in a way

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 this sense of of of unworlding in a way as a sort of orientation as perhaps also as a sort of orientation, as perhaps also as a kind of original wound, in a sense.

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 And when I say wound, then I'm automatically also evoking, you know, writers like Gloria Anzadua,

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 you know, in the Borderland Theory, who talks about that that that we need to learn to sort of to

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 to stay with the wound not try and cover it up but but allow uh it to become uh something out of which

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 the new grows right so not to seek to to to cover it up but to up, but to sort of almost celebrate it or bear with it, whatever the wound is, as a sort of orientation out of which a new kind of community is built.

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 So, you know, crisis, yes, but there's no evidence that the world before was any better, at least not for everybody. So, so that implies that the coming world can be better, at least for some I never, I never, I don't feel that.

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 On the contrary, I feel like it's a fantastic privilege in a way to be on this cusp of something shifting,

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 maybe breaking, but having to re-find itself

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 and reinvent itself, hopefully,

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 in a way that is closer to sense thinking

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 and more attuned to the seasons and more attuned to the seasons

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 and more attuned to the land

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 and more attuned to the grief,

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 which is the condition for joy,

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 more in that sense.

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 And maybe, I don't know

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 whether we've already covered everything,

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 but this notion of of fragility being actually the the the the source of resilience, you know, or the or the the the to to be in vulnerability is is is another orientational

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 a very orientational um reference for me there's a quote that I'd quote I thought I might like to

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 read um which has been inspiring for me over the last few months um especially and it's written it was written on

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 the eve of the election uh the u.s election in november 2024 so on the eve uh of the results

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 and it was written by francis weller who is the grief coach that i've referred to and he he is

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 also the author of a book that I found very helpful which is called

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 The Wild Edge of Sorrow I mean it's a sort of almost a kind of popular therapy book um not

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 necessarily a very academic book but but it's been really helpful to me in so in so many ways

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 anyway on his in his newsletter if I may read the quote, because I think it might

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 take us somewhere. In his newsletter, Francis wrote the following. He says,

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 we have entered a prolonged season of descent, taking us down into the unknown.

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 In the imagery of myth and fairy tales, we have left the ordinary world and have entered the underworld, a sightless terrain that is shadowy and strange.

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 I have come to call this time of descent the long dark.

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 It may be decades or more likely a few generations before we see the farther shore of this crisis, if we make it.

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 I say this not with a note of despair or with an attitude of hopelessness,

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 but instead recognising and valuing the necessary work that takes place in the dark.

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 Certain things can happen only in this grotto of darkness.

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 Think of the wild network of roots and microbes,

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 of mycelium and minerals making possible

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 all that we see in the day world,

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 or the extensive networks within our own bodies,

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 bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen and thought

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 to our corporeal lives, all of it happening in the darkness. The requirements for this time

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 are not the familiar ones of achievement and growth, clarity and power. No, this season is asking for a new rhythm, one that is attuned to humility

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 and listening, to stillness and rest. I hope each of you finds little pockets of refuge

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 that support your intimacy with soul. Now this is a piece of text that I returned to a lot in recent months because it brings into play exactly what I'm saying, which is or what I'm feeling, what I'm sense thinking, which is that, you know.

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 down and where and and we can go down infinitely and we can go down beautifully and that's where we meet and that's where we and that's where we you know entangle ourselves and that's where we

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 recharge and that's where we we we find surprise because not only do the mushrooms spring up in surprising places, right?

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 But the reparative stance, to quote Eve Sedgwick,

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 which is another text I often refer to,

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 the reparative stance, as opposed to the paranoid,

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 genuinely is open to the possibility of an unexpected twist in the story

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 whereas the paranoid always already knows what's going to happen and is already prepared

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 and it's certainly not going to be uh surprised right so so this so my, and that is in a way how I understand the notion of future trauma,

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 as in the work now to rehearse the trauma to come is not in the sense of a paranoia,

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 but rather in the sense of doing the groundwork,

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 but also the underground work

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 in order to live to be surprised.

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 Yeah, thank you.

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 I think this was really beautifully put,

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 and you also, I think, yeah,

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 this was a beautiful process to also already answer my questions, which there was no need to ask them. answer a question which we in the preparation of our conference um also with our together with our

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 students tried to try it to to to um to work on um what um the question what is needed from us to to do now so what does it mean to be prepared for future traumas and this was beautiful

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 to to to to hear you um emphasizing not being paranoid prepared in any ways and being in a way safe or kind of pretending to be safe because also

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 the paranoid is not safe and doesn't feel safe on the contrary I would say but you shaped out our

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 I would say, but you shaped out our ability to rehearse and therefore be prepared for the new. text by Freud on grief and melancholia, where Freud already said that the distinction or the difference between grieving and melancholia is that in grief, we can, in in a way to put it very simple we can um let the lost object go we can

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 go and um we gain the ability to open up new perspectives to have a new object in that um in that um kind of yeah in order for the object to be to be

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 allowed to go yeah first of all has to be it has to be named and visited and revisited right yeah

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 yeah and and melancholia or depression occur when the body does not know where to go with its grief right

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 because it can't say it or it can't visit it or it can't objectify it so it's really important

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 to objectify in order to in order to in order to to contemplate and to and to you know look at it in all its in all its phenomenal wondrousness right the thing

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 that is that is to be let go of and that can be a very whole soulful i don't like the word healing

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 but it can be a very soulful yes and and soul enhancing experience and and and for me it does sound maybe anachronistic but I'm thinking

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 very much about your your question of the future witness and I think we do need to return to a to

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 a notion of soul because the soul is not limited in time and so the soul in the plural you know is always there to be with to

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 be a good witness for and and i think that i think maybe maybe it is time to revisit that notion

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 yeah that for me is also connected to to a practice of, yeah, of a practice of, yeah, maybe rehearsing future trauma.

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 And of course, it also comes from theatre, right? You know, we all know that rehearsals are necessary, but the performance is always going to be different right the actual you

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 know the actual night of the performance will magic happens right and that's another thing that

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 that I think Frances Weller touches on but it's become a very important sort of theme a kind of workshop theme for me is that we yeah that we revisit soul but that we

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 remember how to practice magic you know that those those are those are really important

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 uh elements of a of a complex toolkit that we can and and we must develop together.

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 Thank you, Alice. And it was, yeah, I think you mentioned it twice

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 in order to achieve joy or experience joy.

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 Grief is necessary.

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 And during our conversation i i can truly say i experienced

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 joy and um thank you so much also for for this thought that in that in in in times of crisis

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 we can go down and we have to go down and we have to do as you said the underground work

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 um and um yeah the way you put it um for me it's this work seems to be also a work of beauty um

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 because it is a collective work.

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 Very personally speaking, this work,

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 this concept of future drama also brought the two of us together again in this weird academic world where we meet a lot of people

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 and we lose some of them during time and then um yeah and then

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 there is the magic of some thoughts or questions which which connects us again and for me this

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 that we meet again unfortunately not personally but here in this in this online conversation um has the power of of

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 something of this underground work um it's all connected you know it's all connected and i just

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 wanted to just add one tiny little twist again which is that because we talk about the the going

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 down going going into the underground and

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 of course we we we in a way we mean it metaphorically um perhaps but but there's something

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 very physiological about and and i you know i learned this from my actually from my mother-in-law, Peggy, who is a gestalt therapist.

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 And she taught me to notice that when you pay attention to gravity, schwerkraft, it pulls you down.

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 But in attending to the gravity, like all animals like your cat your dog my horse they know

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 that attending to the ground beneath your feet is what automatically

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 elevates your posture yeah yeah so the only way the way down is also the way up. And that's really, really important to understand.

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 It's not a metaphor.

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 It's physical.

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 Yeah.

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 It's time to go.

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 It's time to go.

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 So I stopped the recording.

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 And thank you so much for this conversation, Alice.

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 Thank you, Elizabeth.

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 I hope it's not too hard to cut.