The Telemachus complex : parents and children after the decline of the father

Recalcati, Massimo (author.). Kilgarriff, Alice, (translator.).

Summary: Fatherhood today is in crisis. Fathers have gone missing, or have become their children's playmates, and the symbolic authority of the father has lost its power. What remains of the father today in the wake of this decline, and what should the relation between children and parents now be? In addressing these questions, Massimo Recalcati draws inspiration from the story of Telemachus in Homer's Odyssey. The Telemachus complex is the reverse of the Oedipus complex. Recalcati argues that children are possessed not just with a desire to annihilate their father, as their key rival in the contest to win the mother's love, but also with a longing for a father-figure, as someone who brings meaning, structure and order to their lives and who imbues them with a sense of the future. This fresh and insightful account of the changing relations between parents and children in the era of the decline of the father will be of great interest to a wide general readership.

Record details

ISBN: 9781509531721
ISBN: 1509531726
Physical Description: print
vi, 165 pages ; 21 cm
Edition: English edition.
Publisher: Cambridge, UK ; Polity Press, [2019]
Copyright: ©2019

Content descriptions

General Note:	"First published in Italian as Il Complesso di Telemaco © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano, 2013"--Title page verso.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references.
Formatted Contents Note:	Introduction. 1 The law of the word and the new hell : Praying is no longer like breathing -- Aphonia and the father's amnesia -- The hell of Salò -- The law of the word -- How do we transmit the word of the law? -- We are a scream in the night -- Escape from freedom -- The fantasy of freedom as a hypermodern fantasy -- Mass freedom -- Dying to work. 2 The confusion between generations : The parents' task -- The law and the laws -- Adulterations -- Transgression or an appeal to the law? -- A new discontent of youth -- The trauma of the non-existence of the sexual relationship -- Femicidal violence -- The technological object and depression in young people -- Evaporation and invention. 3 From Oedipus to Telemachus : Four kinds of child -- The child-as-Oedipus -- The anti-Oedipal child -- The child-as-Narcissus -- The child-as-Telemachus. 4 What does it mean to be a rightful heir? : Inheritance as reclamation -- An excess of memory -- The anti-melancholy of Jesus and Nietzsche -- Negation of the symbolic debt -- Telemachus is the rightful heir -- What does inheritance mean? -- Recognition of the symbolic debt -- The symbolic difference between generations -- Act, faith and promise. Epilogue: reading pain on the leaves. Notes.