The Still Arrow

Three Attempts to Annul Time

Elvio Fachinelli, Lorenzo Chiesa

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Hardback

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English

Seagull Books London Ltd
10 December 2021

Philosophy of mind; Social, group or collective psychology

Series: The Italian List

Elvio Fachinelli was a leading Italian psychoanalyst of the 1960s–80s whose clinical, theoretical, and radical work resonated well beyond his discipline. In The Still Arrow, Fachinelli launched an interdisciplinary investigation ranging from anthropology to politics and the history of religions to the critique of ideology. From a psychoanalytic standpoint, individual obsessional neurosis is firmly connected to a process of repudiation of death. But Fachinelli argued that similar elaborations on time are also present at the group level, in disparate social and historical contexts, for instance, in the archaic transformation of the dead into ancestors and in what he named “the fascist phenomenon.”

Originally written in Italian in 1979, this book displays Fachinelli’s eclectic methodology, which came to serve as a precursor to Slavoj Žižek’s work. Fachinelli differs from Freud’s attempt in Totem and Taboo to equate individual psycho-libidinal predicaments with those of whole societies, and he points out an unbridgeable difference between the two. At the same time, for Fachinelli, that difference always remains one of degree, not of principle. He explores many questions about time, such as history’s status not only as the sum of all possible histories but also of impossible ones.

This first English translation of Fachinelli’s work, The Still Arrow introduces a major critical European voice to the larger readership.

By: Elvio Fachinelli
Translated by: Lorenzo Chiesa
Imprint: Seagull Books London Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 18mm
Weight: 313g
ISBN: 9780857428516
ISBN 10: 0857428519
Series: The Italian List
Pages: 158
Publication Date: 10 December 2021
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Elvio Fachinelli (1928-1989) was a leading Italian psychoanalyst. He published several books and was extremely active as a social and political commentator. Lorenzo Chiesa is lecturer in philosophy at Newcastle University and professor at the European Graduate School.

Reviews for The Still Arrow: Three Attempts to Annul Time

Fachinelli (1928-89) was a prominent Italian psychoanalyst, and wrote this landmark study of obsessional neurosis in Italian. First published in 1979 and here translated for the first time into English, the book was inspired by a single case in which an obsessional man was observed to attempt, through his practice of tackling daily activities, to nullify time by doing them in reverse order. . . . The book rethinks Freudianism and should interest scholars of the European history of ideas, psychoanalysis, and religion as well as practitioners who seek fresh approaches to conceptualizing the difficult cases of obsessional patients. * Choice *