CV
Liran Razinsky is an associate professor in the program for Hermeneutics and Cultural Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel, working on Psychoanalysis, French and Comparative Literature (20th and 21st century), Critical Theory and Critique of digital technology. He has published Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death (Cambridge University Press, 2013), a critique of the psychoanalytic approach to death, co-edited Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on The Kindly Ones (Rodopi, 2012), and edited a special issue of Yale French Studies, Writing and Life, Literature and History: On Jorge Semprun.
He has written papers on Bataille, Jonathan Littell, Maupassant, Albert Cohen, Leiris, Khoury, Semprun, Freud and Psychoanalytic Theory, and on topics such as autobiography and self-representation, death, holocaust literature, digital memory.
His current project, The Human Being in the Age of Data, investigates how human subjectivity changes with the rise of data-led algorithmic understanding of individuals, and how algorithmic knowledge interacts with human-centered worlds of meaning. This project has won a 4 years grant from the Israel Science Foundation.
Another research project (currently on hold) is “Fantasies of Self-Representation: From Classical Autobiography to the Digital Age.” It focuses the stakes involved with representing oneself, both in autobiography and in more everyday self representation. Several papers issuing from that project have been published.
Fields of Research
Critical research of Algorithms and Data
Autobiography and self-representation (relationship between authors and their texts)
French and comparative literature (mostly 20th and 21st century)
Critical Theory
Holocaust Literature
Death
Psychoanalysis, Freud
Research
Critical research of Algorithms and Data
Autobiography and self-representation (relationship between authors and their texts)
French and comparative literature (mostly 20th and 21st century)
Critical Theory
Holocaust Literature
Death
Psychoanalysis, Freud
Courses
Subjectivity and Data: Algorithms, big data and humans
Theory and Criticism from Psychoanalysis to Post-humanism
Society of Algorithms and Data Subjects: Algoveillance, Data Sublime, and emerging AI Challenges
Interpreting the Now - Understanding Present Times
The Self-Representing Subject: The Dynamics of Self-representation
The Modern Subject and Questions of Identity in Modern Literature
Death and Existential Concerns in Psychoanalytic Theory
Through a Child’s Eyes: Representations of Childhood in Literature
“The Mind as a Text: Lacan and Derrida (A reading Seminar)”
“Saying the Unsayable: Holocaust, Writing, Testimony”,
Ph.D. Workshop: Writing a research oporposal
Ph.D. Workshop: Publishing your first research paper
Publications
https://cris.biu.ac.il/en/persons/liran-razinsky
Many downloadable PDF verison of the following papers can be found here:
https://biu.academia.edu/LiranRazinsky
Selected Publications (updated: January 2024)
Curious and not sure what to read? Check out perhaps “Everything: Totality and Self-Representation,” “Publish and Perish: Freud’s Claim to Literary Fame,” or “The Never-Ending Book: On ‘the dream of every writer’ in Jorge Semprun”.
Books
Razinsky, Liran, Freud, Psychoanalysis and Death (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 303 pages. Paperback edition: December 2014.
Edited Books and Special issues
Barjonet, Aurélie and Liran Razinsky (Eds.), Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on The Kindly Ones (Rodopi, 2012).
Razinsky, Liran (Ed.) Writing and Life, Literature and History: On Jorge Semprun. Special issue of Yale French Studies, 129, (2016).
Recent Articles and Chapters
Critique of Algorithms and Data:
Razinsky, Liran, “Better than they know themselves? Algorithms and subjectivity,” Subjectivity, 2023.
Digital Memory and Self-Representation:
Razinsky, Liran, “The Dream of Absolute Memory: On Digital Self-Representation.” LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory 31:2 (2020): 182-201.
Razinsky, Liran, “Everything: Totality and Self-Representation, from Past to Present.” SubStance: A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism 46.3 (2017): 150-172.
Razinsky, Liran, “Littérature et données.” Compar(a)isons (Special issue: “La non-fiction, un genre mondial ?”) (2021), pp: 181-196.
Self-Representation (Literature)
Razinsky, Liran, “Psychoanalysis and Autobiography: Leiris, Freud and the Obstacle to Self-Knowledge.” Journal of Modern Literature 44.1 (2020): 129-147.
Razinsky, Liran, “Publish and Perish: Freud’s Claim to Literary Fame,” Journal of Modern Literature 39.4 (2016): 1-18.
For that category, see also in the current list, “Everything: Totality and Self-Representation,” “The Dream of Absolute Memory,” “The Never-Ending Book: On ‘the dream of every writer’ in Jorge Semprun” and “Littérature et données”
Literature (general)
Razinsky, Liran and Amos Goldberg: “Scheherazade in Palestine: Nation and Narration in Elias Khoury’s Gate of the Sun (Bab AlShams)”. Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 47.1 (2020): 51-74.
Razinsky, Liran, “Première rencontre avec la mort; Beauvoir, Leiris, Freud et Benjamin.” Psychiatrie Française (Special issue: “Souvenirs et reviviscences”) 48 (2018): 31-49.
Hebrew version:
Razinsky, Liran, “A First Encounter with Death,” Dapim LeMehkar Hasifrut 20 (Special issue: Children in Literature and Children Literature (2017): 28-47 [Hebrew].
Razinsky, Liran, “‘No longer a minister. Shall I be a worm?’: Grandeur, Renunciation, and Self-destruction in Albert Cohen’s Solal,” Dalhousie French Studies 106 (2015): 35-45.
Razinsky, Liran, “‘Rien qu’un spectateur’ : Image de soi, corporalité et sentiment d’existence dans Le Horla.” Studi Francesi 180 (2016): 435-446
Razinsky, Liran, “Writing and Torture in Elias Khoury’s Yalo.” In Culture and Cultural Critique. Edited by Dov Schwartz, Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2017, 63-78.
Razinsky, Liran, “Bourreau et victime : Torture et écriture dans Yalo de Elias Khoury.” CRIN (Cahiers de Recherche des Instituts Néerlandais de Langue et de Littérature Française, 58, 2013: 115-125.
Psychoanalysis and Freud
Razinsky, Liran, “On the Need for Openness to the Humanities in Psychoanalysis.” Psychoanalytic Psychology (Special issue: “Psychoanalysis and the Humanities”), 33(1) (2016): S56-S74.
Razinsky, Liran, “Freud on War and Death,” in Freud, Einstein and the Next War [ איינשטיין ופרויד, והמלחמה הבאה]. Ofer Ashkenazi, David Bar-gal, Eran Rolnik (Eds.). Jerusalem: Carmel, 2018, 123-158.
Razinsky, Liran, “On Time, Transience and Literary Creation: Freud and Rilke a Century Ago,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.4 (2015): 464-479.
Hebrew version: Razinsky, Liran, “On the Passage of Time: Freud, Rilke and Weltschmerz. ” Mikan 19 (2019): 242-258. [in Hebrew]
Razinsky, Liran, “Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism: A Response to Dr. Jon Mills’s ‘Challenging Relational Psychoanalysis: A Critique of Postmodernism and Analyst Selfdisclosure’” Psychoanalytic Perspectives 14:3 (2017): 356-363.
Razinsky, Liran, “A Psychoanalytic Struggle with the Concept of Death: A new reading of Freud’s ‘Thoughts for the times on war and death’”. Psychoanalytic Review, 94(3), 2007, 355-88
Razinsky, Liran, “On the Strange Case of the Attitude of Psychoanalysis towards Death”. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 43(1), 2007: 149-164.[a review article]
Razinsky, Liran, “Driving Death Away: Death and Freud’s Theory of the Death Drive”. Psychoanalytic Review. 97, 2010:393-424.
Razinsky, Liran, “Against Death's Representability: Freud and the Question of Death’s Psychic Presence”. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 65, 2012: 332-357.
Razinsky, Liran, “How to look death in the eyes rather than shunning it: Freud and Bataille”. SubStance. A Review of Theory and Literary Criticism, 38(2), 2009:63-88.
Razinsky, Liran, “‘Un juif tout à fait athée’ … mais juif. Freud, Judaïsme et la question de la mort”. Perspectives, 12, 2005, 255-272.
For that category, look also at: “Publish and Perish: Freud’s Claim to Literary Fame,” “A First Encounter with Death,” “Première rencontre avec la mort; Beauvoir, Leiris, Freud et Benjamin” and “Psychoanalysis and Autobiography: Leiris, Freud and the Obstacle to Self-Knowledge.”
Holocaust literature
Razinsky, Liran, “La mort qu’il faut, la vie qu’on peut: Semprun and Writing after Death.” French Forum 44.1 (2019): 179-194.
Razinsky, Liran, “Editor’s preface: Writing and Life, Literature and History: On Jorge Semprun.” Yale French Studies, 129 (2016): 1-29.
[This paper is a helpful general introduction to the work of Semprun]
Razinsky, Liran, “The Never-Ending Book: On ‘the dream of every writer’ in Jorge Semprun”. Yale French Studies , 129 (2016): 150-169.
Razinsky, Liran, “Not the Witness We Wished For: Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) as a Juncture of Excess and Testimony”. Modern Language Quarterly (MLQ), 71(2), 2010:175-196.
Razinsky, Liran, “History, Excess and Testimony in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones).” French Forum, 33(3), 2009, 69-87.
Razinsky, Liran, “We are All the Same: Max Aue, Interpreter of Evil”. Yale French Studies, 121, 2012: 140-154.
Razinsky, Liran, “Introduction” In Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on The Kindly Ones. Edited by Liran Razinsky and Aurélie Barjonet (Rodopi, 2012), pp. 7-16.
Razinsky, Liran, “The Similarity of All Perpetrators in Les Bienveillantes.” In Writing the Holocaust Today: Critical Perspectives on The Kindly Ones. Edited by Liran Razinsky and Aurélie Barjonet (Rodopi, 2012), pp. 47-60.
Theory and political issues
Razinsky, Liran, “The State of Israel vs. the Humanities,” Theory and Criticism, (תיאוריה וביקורת) 42, 2014, 237-255 [essay in Hebrew]
Recent Invited talks
“Subjectivity in The Age of Data: Algorithms, Big Data and Humans”. The Psychoanalytic Studies Program, Emory University. March 16, 2022.
“Subjectivity in The Age of Data: Big Data and Self understanding.” Lecture at colloquium of the Program for Psychoanalysis, Tel Aviv University. December 13, 2021.
“Freud and The Discovery of the Unconscious.” Lecture in the lecture series “Discoveries” of the Israeli Academy of Science. May 6, 2020. [Cancelled due to Covid]
“פסיכואנליזה ואוטוביוגרפיה: מישל לריס, פרויד, והמחסום בפני ידיעה עצמית”. Lecture at the Tel Aviv institute of Psychoanalysis, December 25, 2019.
“The Digital Archive of the Self: Self-Representation in a Changing World.” Lecture in the colloquium of the Porter School of Culture, Tel Aviv University, May 7 2018.
“Everything about oneself: Totality and autobiography.” Lecture at the Dept. of French, Yale University. April 11, 2017.
“Everything about oneself: Totality and autobiography.” Lecture at the Dept. of Romance Studies, Cornell University. April 13, 2017.
“Psychic Life and Fear of Death: A Reexamination of Freud’s Position”(“Seelenleben und Todesangst: Eine Überprüfung der Position Freuds”). Presentation at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Salon, October 21, 2015
“Psychic Life and Fear of Death: A Reexamination of Freud’s Position” (“Seelenleben und Todesangst: Eine Überprüfung der Position Freuds”). Presentation at the Wiener Psychoanalytische Akademie, Vienna, October 23, 2015
“Silencing Death - A Theoretical Perspective.” Presentation at the Clinical Symposium at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy & Psychoanalysis, NYU, March 7, 2014.
Media
I am currently only accepting students who are interested in research on Data and Algorithms or research in Critical Theory. Studies in Autobiography or French Literature will be considered occasionally
Current PhD. students
Omri Blum (Power and the formation of the Subject: Rethinking the Superego and Resistance
Assaf Hazan (The Analogue-Digital issue: A reading of the Macy conferences)
Sharon Guberg (The Body as an hermeneutic tool in art therapy)
Merav Shalom Zehavi (Autistic Self Writing)
Yoram Biton (Construction of adolescence in post modern times)
Yaarit Shalem (Algorithms, Smart cities and their inhabitants)
Past PhD.Students
Orit Dudai (Cinema and psychoanalysis: On Primary mental states)
Uri Harpaz (The poetic and the traumatic: Marguerite Duras and the Freudian repetition compulsion)
Danny Admasu (Blackness in Israel: Ethiopian Jews and the Perception of Black in Zionist History, Historiography and Culture 1855 -2022)
Zohar Kaufman (Virtue ethics in Psychoanalysis)
Miri Rozovsky (Fictional writing as self reading) (With Prof. Tamar Kron)
Dov Blum (The game paradigm: Theoretical expressions of power, identity and freedom in the therapeutic game field) (with Prof Moshe Zuckerman)
Nurit Inbar (A Double View of Illness: Combining Theory and Autobiography in Illness Writing )
Efrat Kreisberg Asiag (The technical externalization of memory in the digital media)
Bosmat Klein (The house as internal world: Psychic space and Architectural space)
Assaf Uzan (Empathy in Hanoch Levin’s plays)
Yonat Dror (The Holocaust Discourse in Israel in the 21st Century: Individual, Collective and Cosmopolitan Memory))
Past Post-doc Students
Yoav Ronel (Idleness, Literature, and the Image of History)
Past MA Students
Inbal Hameiri (The personal and the general: Personal diaries as a test case)
Last Updated Date : 31/01/2024
