JULIA Informed by a provocative exhibition at JULIA KRISTEVA the Louvre, The Severed Head unpacks artistic representations of severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Survey- KRISTEVA THE SEVERED HEAD ing paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Ju- author image: © agence opale/j. foley opale/j. © agence image: author lia Kristeva turns her famed critical eye to a C A P I T A L V I S I O N S study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical theme in her work— the power of horror—and the potential for the face to provide an experience of the sacred. Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of thought, seeking a keener un- THE derstanding of the violence and desire that praise for drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, Julia Kristeva is professor of linguistics at THE SEVERED HEAD SEVERED such a potent object. Her study stretches all the Université de Paris VII and author of the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with humans’ many acclaimed works and novels, includ- “Julia Kristeva was invited to curate an exhibit at the Louvre—an exhibit with a point of early decoration and worship of skulls, and ing This Incredible Need to Believe, Melanie Klein, view. A smart idea. The result: this extraordinary reflection on the severed head, follows with the Medusa myth; the man- Hannah Arendt, Possessions, Time and Sense, New Medusa, John the Baptist, Judith and Holofernes especially, and the guillotine. The powers dylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the Maladies of the Soul, Strangers to Ourselves, and of horror that engage Kristeva in this book ultimately lead us beyond abjection to a HEAD face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. She is meditation on representation and the sacred. It is an original and powerful narrative.” the biblical story of John the Baptist and the recipient of the Hannah Arendt Prize Peter Brooks, professor of comparative literature, Princeton University, his counterpart, Salome; tales of the guil- for Political Thought and the Holberg In- author of Enigmas of Identity lotine; modern murder mysteries; and even ternational Memorial Prize. the rhetoric surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva in- Jody Gladding is a poet who has translated EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES : A SERIES IN SOCIAL THOUGHT AND CULTURAL CRITICISM terprets these “capital visions” through the more than twenty works from French. lens of psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their manifestation and sacred experience and very much af- firming the possibility of the sacred, even in jacket image andrea solario, an era of “faceless” interaction. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. TÊTE DE SAINT JEAN - BAPTISTE , paris, musée du louvre COLUMBIA book & jacket design chang jae lee COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK CUP . COLUMBIA . EDU THE SEVERED HEAD EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES A SERIES IN SOCIAL THOUGHT AND CULTURAL CRITICISM EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVES A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism Lawrence D. Kritzman, Editor European Perspectives presents outstanding books by leading European thinkers. With both classic and contemporary works, the series aims to shape the major intellec tual controversies of our day and to facilitate the tasks of historical understanding. For a complete list of books in the series, see pages 163–65. THE SEVERED HEAD C A P I T A L V I S I O N S Julia Kristeva Translated by Jody Gladding COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © 2012 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kristeva, Julia, 1941– [Visions capitales. English] The severed head: capital visions / Julia Kristeva; translated by Jody Gladding. p. cm.— (European perspectives) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-15720-9 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Head in art. 2. Beheading in art. 3. Art, European—Themes, motives. I. Title. II. Series. N8217.H5K7413 2011 704.9 42—dc23' 2011020717 Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for Web sites that may have expired or changed since the book was prepared. TO MY MOTHER Are we inevitably slaves to the image? Not for certain, answer the philosophers, uncertain by profession. The image is potentially a space of freedom: it annihilates the constraint of the object-model and replaces it with the fl ight of thought, the wandering of the imagina- tion. I would add, and this is my particular bias, that the image may be our only remain- ing link to the sacred: to the terror that death and sacrifi ce provoke, to the serenity that follows from the pact of identifi cation between sacrifi ced and sacrifi cing, and to the joy of representation indissociable from sacrifi ce, its only possible course. The following pages will try to show that certain images and certain facial expressions can still offer an experience of the sacred to the humans that we are, ever more absorbed in technology. What images? What expressions? What sacred? The stories behind the severed heads in question here are cruel. Through them, a humanity possessed by the urge for death and terrorized by murder acknowledges that it has, in fact, arrived at a fragile and overwhelming discovery: the only resurrection pos- sible may be . representation. The decapitations on display are proof of it. I invite you to make your way from their violence to their refi nement, so that at the end of the journey you can conclude for yourself that, with or without decapitation, all vision is nothing other than capital transubstantiation. CONTENTS Foreword Françoise Viatte xi Alibi? Régis Michel xv 1. On Drawing; or, The Speed of Thought 1 2. The Skull: Cult and Art 9 3. Who Is Medusa? 28 4. The True Image: A Holy Face 37 5. A Digression: Economy, Figure, Face 47 6. The Ideal Figure; or, A Prophesy in Actuality: Saint John the Baptist 65 7. Beheadings 74 8. From the Guillotine to the Abolition of Capital Punishment 91 9. Powers of Horror 103 10. The Face and the Experience of Limits 121 Index 151 ix FOREWORD FRANÇOISE VIATTE Exhibitions let us see some portion of the work done in a museum. Nonetheless, they don’t represent the essence of it and in any case only show us the results, however provisional, of prior research. But these events seem to receive more attention that any other activ- ity, no doubt because of their brevity—a few weeks, their selective nature—a small space with rare works, and especially because of the engagement they presuppose. An exhibition is meant to be captivat- ing or at least convincing and arresting. An exhibition is valued for its critical quality and the depths of its interrogation. It prompts different reactions than visits to the permanent collections do. Also, public opinion is easier to gauge because it is solicited directly by the comparison offered. In short, any exhibition is a biased view . The fol- lowing work, which the department commissioned ten years ago, deliberately poses this question of subjective discourse on art, mix- ing genres and periods but concentrating especially on drawing and engraving. Biased views are conceived, as Régis Michel reminds us, as xi spaces of interpretive freedom. They are not a rupture but an opening, and they claim the right of difference. The audience they attract is aware of their singularity and especially the nature of the view they offer. These exhibitions are not in opposition to the ones the depart- ment organizes side by side with them. They share the same rigor and the same excitement. By giving those we invite carte blanche, these exhibitions allow them to adapt their commentaries to the works they discover with us. A museum, especially a very large one, can allow for a treasure hunt. With its infi nite possibilities, drawing lends itself to this better that any other genre. Julia Kristeva’s work is so well known, in France as abroad, that there is no need to introduce it. Beyond the refl ections it offers on language and literature, psychoanalysis and anthropology, this work centers largely on art and images, even Kristeva’s fi ction. That is the case with her latest novel, Possessions . Julia Kristeva’s approach is not a matter of historical inquiry, but of profound meditation, and its nature is perfectly summarized by the title of the fi rst work in which art analysis unfolds: Powers of Horror . This biased view , the fi fth in this series of exhibitions, owes much to that experience of the image, which, for Kristeva, always falls into the category of the tragic. The theme she has chosen attests to this. It has drawn upon—thanks to an inquiry conducted over nearly two years, in which the Department of Graphic Arts was very much involved—a selection of works of all kinds treating a single theme: decapitation. As cruel as it is current, it perfectly crystallizes the interpreter’s investigations, and her per- suasive argument, which leads to the question of representations— sacred, secular—of the human face, wins support through the breadth of its sources and the power of its ideas. This is the fi rst time a woman is involved in this series of exhibi- tions, and it is very much a woman’s voice that we hear in the follow- ing pages.