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Hysteria and the scene of feminine representation. Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Brennan, Karen Morley. Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 08/10/2021 01:32:41 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185047 INFORMATION TO USERS The most advanced technology has been used to photograph and reproduce this manuscript from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are· in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality or this reproduction is dependent upon the quality or the copy submitted. 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Contact UMI directly to order. V·M·I University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, M148106-1346 USA 3131761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9025067 Hysteria and the scene of feminine representation Brennan, Karen Morley, Ph.D. The University of Arizona, 1990 Copyright ®1990 by Brennan, Karen Morley. All rights reserved. V·M·I 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 1 HYSTERIA AND THE SCENE OF FEMININE REPRESENTATION by Karen Morley Brennan copyright ~ Karen Morley Brennan 1990 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 1 9 9 0 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Final Examination Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by ____~_~~r __ e_n __ M __• __B_r_e_n_n __ a_n ______________________ __ entitled l'Iy'ste;t'ia a,nd the Scene o;f Feminine Representation and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Poctor o;E Philosophy --~--~~--~--~----~~------------------------------- Date Date Lynda Zwing Date I)~c-l. Patrick O'Donnell Date Date Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate's submission of the final copy of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation Dissertation Director Jerrold E. Hogle Date I I ,( STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available,to borrowers under the rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: !(~ ~ 6hV""Cvc, 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which some of these stories originally appeared: TELESCOPE for "Building a House," CALYX for "Polio," CHICAGO REVIEW for "cooking the Geography of Distance," and ROOM OF ONE'S OWN for "Motherhood, an Essay." "Floating" appears with the permission of PEN SYNDICATED FICTION PROJECT, and was originally published by THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES and read on National Public Radio's THE SOUND OF WRITING. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT • • • • • • • • • • . 6 I. SPECTACLE OF HYSTERIA: AN INTRODUCTION 7 Frame-ups • • • . 7 You Freud, me Jane 26 There is a Text in This Woman 43 II. PROJECTION/REFLECTION/ABJECTION IN FRIDA KAHLO'S PAINTINGS. • • • • • • 50 The Broken Column • • • • • • • • • • • •• 50 Projections, Mirrors, Doubles, Reversals 52 Madonna • • • • • • • • • • . • • • 76 III. AUTHOR(IZ)ING FEMININE DESIRE: ANAIS NIN AND THE EROTICS OF EROTICA • • 92 Slippery Transactions • • • • • • •• 92 Submerged Women and Writerly Orgasms • • • • 112 IV. THE GEOGRAPHY OF ENUNCIATION: HYSTERICAL PASTICHE IN KATHY ACKER • • • • • 138 Tangier • • • 139 Merida • • 153 New York • • • 172 The World • • • • 186 APPENDIX A: FLOATING, an epilogue • • • • • • • • • • 192 BUILDING A HOUSE . • • • • · • 193 POLIO • • • • • . • • • • • • 199 JACK ••••••••••••••• • • 208 COOKING THE GEOGRAPHY OF DISTANCE • • 213 MAJOR SURGERY • . • . .• • • . • 223 FLOATING . • • • • • •. • • • . · . • • 246 MOTHERHOOD, AN ESSAY . • • 253, APPENDIX B: Individual Chapter Notes • 269 REFERENCES • • • • • 284 6 ABSTRACT In the sense that women have been hystericized by male theories about femininity, Freudian psychoanalysis has functioned as an institution which seeks women's silence. Hysteria is the dis-ease of this silence; that is to say, it is a set of eloquent symptoms--a "writing" on the body --which signify women's oppression/repression. It is within this apparent contradiction that feminine representation takes place"· The figure for such representation is, therefore, hysteria: working "in the gaps," "between the lines," telling the story of patriarchy only to disrupt this story, Frida Kahlo, Anais Nin, and Kathy Acker create feminine fictions. Kahlo's autobiographical painting is inextricable from her obsession with husband Diego Rivera, just as Nin's erotica is inextricable from her relationship with Henry Miller. Likewise,' Acker's postmodern production is entangled in the androcentric agenda which attempts to recuperate patriarchy by appropriating the figure uf Woman. The "engine" of transference/counter-transference becomes the most viable description of the hysterical process these women employ to represent themselves. The epilogue contains original fictions which extend comment on both hysteria and feminine representation. 7 CHAPTER ONE THE SPECTACLE OF HYSTERIA: AN INTRODUCTION here the child is burning up, here bodies are falling. out of a blue sky they come twirling small pavilions of red, of white, they come leaping in nylon suits down drafts of air. manoeuvring, pumping, pulling all their strings, down the narrow valley they have come exactly to land. (& folding up their parachutes they are gone.) --Daphne Marlatt Frame-ups "I" is only a convenient term for somebody that has no real being. Lies may flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up in them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the wastepaper basket and forget all about it. --Virginia Woolf, ROOM OF ONE'S OWN Woolf's famous disclaimer in A Room of One's Own bears a striking resemblance to a much later statement made by Jacques Lacan. "'Truth,'" says Lacan ":'n "Intervention on Transference," "is the name of that ideal movement which discourse introduces into reality" (63). Both Woolf and Lacan recognize the shifty relationship between 'truth' and the subject ('I'), as well as the necessity of putting each of these terms under erasure, that is to say in inverted 8 commas. Hence, Woolf would seem to agree with Lacan that the subject is constituted in discourse--in lies--and Lacan would seem to share Woolf's perception that discourse does not so much provide a stable vehicle for truth, but rather conveys the possibility of "that ideal movement," which is inextricable from the movement of its own less-than-ideal operations. Furthermore, Woolf's and Lacan's observations about the nature of discourse and truth seem to be similarly entangled in the issue of feminine subjectivity/sexuality. A Room of One's Own was written in response to a request for Woolf's speculations about women and fiction. Her conclusion, offered at the beginning of the essay, that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (4), is what she proposes to explicate for the next 112 pages. As she puts it, Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind the statement you will find they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that--one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own 9 conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker." (4) For Woolf, the controversial nature of the subject--the question of women writing fiction--inevitably redounds to a question of sex, which is to say gender. It is within the controversy posed by a woman writing about women's fiction writing that Woolf situates her in-credible narrativ~ voice, a voice which claims to tell the truth at the same time that "lies may flow from [her] lips." Indeed, as a woman constituting herself in narrative, Woolf's narrative process throughout A Room of One's Own parodies the circuitous and unreliable narrative processes of Freud's hysterics, who are themselves--arguably--makers of fictions.

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