Call for papers: Psychoanalysis in Transition: New Queer Approaches in 21st-Century France
Northeast Modern Language Association Convention
2026-03-05 to 2026-03-08
Gannon University
Erie, Pennsylvania. USA
Since the 1970s, LGBTQ+ Francophone authors and scholars have produced an expansive critique of psychoanalytic practices and thought. Despite their differing views, Guy Hocquenghem, Michel Foucault, Monique Wittig, Didier Eribon, Sam Bourcier, and Paul B. Preciado have all underscored the normative tendencies of psychoanalysis (particularly in its structuralist Lacanian tradition) and its complicity in enforcing the regime of sexual difference. “We urgently need clinical practice to transition,” Preciado urged the École de la cause freudienne in 2019. “This cannot happen without a revolutionary mutation in psychoanalysis, and a critical challenge of its patriarchal-colonial presuppositions.”
Around that time, a loose coalition of French psychoanalysts advocating for queer, feminist, and postcolonial approaches emerged. Fabrice Bourlez, for example, proposes reconciling psychoanalysis and queer theory through the concept of the “minor clinic,” which he argues is better suited to plural, non-normative subjectivities. Similarly, Thamy Ayouch advocates for the “hybridization” of psychoanalysis through queer, postcolonial, and decolonial discourses to move away from the medicalization of minor subjectivities. Laurie Laufer draws on second-wave feminism, Foucauldian critique, and LGBTQ+ activism to promote an “emancipation of psychoanalysis” through the politicisation of its praxis.
Can this new paradigm effectively combat queerphobic and transphobic tendencies within the French psychoanalytic establishment? Can psychoanalysis truly “transition,” or should queer thought, as Eribon suggests, “turn its back on psychoanalysis.”
This panel welcomes papers that explore emerging queer and intersectional approaches to psychoanalysis in France, from theoretical, literary, clinical and activist perspectives.
We welcome papers related, but not limited, to the following topics:
– Queer legacies of 1970s critiques of structuralist psychoanalysis
– Psychoanalysis and debates around same-sex unions and non-normative kinship in 21st-century France
– Transphobia and psychoanalysis: (de)pathologising discourses and practices
– Queer, feminist and decolonial approaches to psychoanalysis today
– Queer transatlantic dialogues between France and the U.S.
– The future of psychoanalysis in France
– How queer/trans Francophone authors use, reject or rework psychoanalytic theories
Please submit a title, abstract (200-250 words) and a short biography through the NeMLA portal by Sept 30th 2025. Papers may be presented in English or French.
For any questions, feel free to email Benoit Loiseau : bl4115@nyu.edu
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