Reclaiming Psychology Through an Alternative

The homelessness of critique

Abstract

The article examines how the Alternative Lecture Series has emerged as a concrete practice and a space for both critique and hope among psychology students at the University of Copenhagen. Drawing on experiences from recent years of student critique concerning an increasingly narrow disciplinary focus within the psychology program, we show that our initiatives for dialogue within institutional structures have been repeatedly met with symbolic participation, misrecognition, and rejection. Inspired by the hysterical position in academic discourse (Byrckel, 2015) and Sedgwick’s (2023) distinction between paranoid and reparative reading, we analyze how critique can lose its direction when driven solely by exposure. We argue that the Alternative Lecture Series functions as a concrete utopia (Nissen, 2014) and a counter-hegemonic practice (Mørck et al., 2024), providing students with the opportunity to both raise questions and collaboratively create alternatives rather than merely standing in opposition. The lecture series thus constitutes not only a critique of hegemonic disciplinary practices but also a hopeful, collective attempt to re-anchor psychology in diversity, curiosity, and care – offering critique a (provisional) home.