DOCSLIB.ORG

Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: Depression in the Work of Five Contemporary North American Women Writers

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: Depression in the Work of Five Contemporary North American Women Writers Beyond mourning and melancholia: depression in the work of five contemporary North American women writers. HODGSON-BLACKBURN, Jacqueline. Available from Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/19804/ This document is the author deposited version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. Published version HODGSON-BLACKBURN, Jacqueline. (1999). Beyond mourning and melancholia: depression in the work of five contemporary North American women writers. Doctoral, Sheffield Hallam University (United Kingdom).. Copyright and re-use policy See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive http://shura.shu.ac.uk REFERENCE ProQuest Number: 10697106 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10697106 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: Depression in the Work of Five Contemporary North American Women Writers Jacqueline Hodgson-Blackburn A thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 1999 hallam u n : ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to all those who have supported me during this project at Sheffield Hallam University. I would also like to thank Sheffield Hallam University for granting me a bursary. I am particularly grateful to Dr Jill LeBihan for her continued support and critical guidance during the course of this thesis. Her careful proof reading of the final draft of this thesis was much appreciated. I would also like to extend my thanks to Professor Sara Mills who carefully read my thesis and subsequently offered help and advice. Many people deserve thanks for their emotional, intellectual and financial support. My heartfelt thanks go to my parents and James Blackburn who continued to provide the above qualities in abundance throughout this project. I owe many thanks to Leigh Nicholson for her helpful and insightful comments on my work as well as her friendship and support through some difficult times. Finally, I would like to thank Julie Stanwell for her good humour, friendship and conversations, in person and by telephone, which have sustained me throughout this thesis. ABSTRACT Jacqueline Hodgson-Blackburn Submitted for the Degree of PhD. June 1999 Beyond Mourning and Melancholia: Depression in the Work of Five Contemporary North American Women Writers This dissertation is an investigation into the representation of mourning and melancholia in the work of Elizabeth Smart, Evelyn Lau, Siri Hustvedt, Sarah Sheard and Kathryn Harrison. The thesis addresses women’s historic exclusion from the discourse of melancholia from a feminist perspective. It will consider the political and theoretical implications of women’s absence from this discursive field by focusing on the cultural legacy of their devalorised status. Freud’s essay, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’, first published in 1917, is cited as an important conceptual model exercising considerable influence over subsequent theoreticians working within this area. My thesis builds on Freud’s attempt to establish a clear-cut binary division between the twinned states of mourning and melancholia. The thesis reveals how Freud’s construction of melancholia as a pathological condition, shadowing the normative state of mourning, has been linked with psychoanalytic constructions of femininity by leading feminist theorists such as Irigaray, Silverman and Kristeva. The first chapter provides an overview of melancholia as a gendered discourse privileging male practitioners; the subsequent chapters provide symptomatic readings of five novels written by five contemporary North American women. The psychoanalytic interpretation of these readings, ranging from blocked or postponed mourning to the ideological loss of a father through incest, illustrate the close epistemological relationship between the construction of femininity and melancholia within Western historical and philosophical traditions. This thesis is not concerned with merely re-interpreting Western cultural prejudices related to the discourse of melancholia from a late twentieth century postfeminist perspective. Instead, the thesis demonstrates how contemporary women writers are engaged in a revisionary approach to the representation of loss within their work, by insistently inscribing their active, desiring bodies on the discourses of heterosexual femininity and melancholia. By refusing to disappear from the margins of the melancholic text, I show how the resisting melancholic daughter produces a counter-discourse that destroys the conventional dynamics of the family romance within Western literary traditions. The ‘writing cure’ replaces the ‘talking cure’ in this context. By removing the patriarchal figurehead from the text, and the psychoanalytic confessional discourse surrounding it, women writers challenge misogynist constructions of femininity within contemporary literature. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii CHAPTER ONE 1 (i) Melancholic Discourse 1 (ii) Therapeutic Narratives 8 (iii) Mourning The Past 22 (iv) Melancholy Narratives 33 CHAPTER TWO 57 (i) Introduction 57 (ii) ‘Beautiful Losers’: Women’s Literary Status Within Melancholic Discourse 58 (iii) Delusion and Impoverishment 63 (iv) Undying Love 68 (v) Down and Out in New York City 71 (vi) Angel At My Table 80 (vii) Conclusion 94 CHAPTER THREE 101 (i) Introduction 101 (ii) Serial Lovers 102 (iii) Mourning and Melancholia: The Theoretical Context 106 (iv) Romancing the Other 120 (v) Resisting The Talking Cure 132 (vi) Conclusion 143 CHAPTER FOUR 154 (i) Introduction 154 (ii) Blindfold - Or Blind Alley? 158 (iii) The Melancholy Fetish 161 (iv) Conclusion: The Unbearable Nothingness of Being 173 CHAPTER FIVE 185 (i) Introduction 185 (ii) Death Letters 187 (iii) The Swing Era 194 (iv) Death Throes 208 (v) Conclusion 211 CHAPTER SIX 217 (i) Introduction 217 (ii) Daddy’s Girl 222 (iii) My Heart Belongs to Daddy 229 (iv) Kiss and Tell 233 (v) Conclusion 244 CHAPTER SEVEN 253 (i) Conclusion 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 (i) PRIMARY REFERENCES 265 (ii) SECONDARY REFERENCES 265 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: BEYOND MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA (i) Melancholic Discourse Compensating for loss may be one of our most familiar psychological experiences, colouring every aspect of our relation to the world outside us, but it is also a profoundly defamiliarising affair, installing surrogate others to fill the void where we imagine the love-object to have been. (Diana Fuss, 1995:1) The realization that the one is pleased by the other’s grief over him: the recognition not of the hate but of the love felt by the object for the subject: the acceptance ultimately of the narcissistic bliss at having received the object’s love despite dangerous transgressions - this is what melancholics expect from psychoanalysis (Abraham & Torok, 1994: 37) Sethe’s is the face that left me Sethe sees me see her and I see the smile her smiling face is the place for me it is the face I lost she is my face smiling at me doing it at last a hot thing now we can join a hot thing (Toni Morrison, 1988: 213) This thesis is an investigation into the cultural construction of the depressed or melancholic woman in the work of five contemporary North American women writers. The five writers to be considered are Elizabeth Smart, Evelyn Lau, Sarah Sheard, Siri Hustvedt and Kathryn Harrison. The primary objective of this thesis is to establish a theoretical model that explains the cultural production of femininity and melancholia within the patriarchal symbolic order. Following on from this analysis, there will be an examination of the epistemological similarities between the construction of femininity and melancholia within western culture. The cultural legacy of this artificially engineered relationship between femininity and melancholia, figured as pathological mourning in the West, will be scrutinised in order to reveal the difficulties experienced by women who attempt to achieve positive representations of loss within dominant discursive and cultural practices. The 1 secondary objective is to challenge the gendered assumptions imbricated in melancholic discursive practices.1 This study will then reconsider why melancholic discourse privileges masculine expressions of loss at the expense of the feminine. Psychoanalytic and feminist discourse theory will be used in conjunction to investigate the politically and psychologically contentious category of female melancholia.2 The research methodologies, referred to above, will be utilised to explore the origins of melancholia as a fundamentally gendered discourse within western signifying practices. Moreover, this theoretical approach will be integrated into the textual analyses that follow to assess whether melancholia is a structural problem located within the female subject’s psychological processes, or whether it is generated by the discursive pressures that marginalise women within a phallocratic, patriarchal
Load more

Recommended publications
  • When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane Jonte-Pace Santa Clara University, [email protected]
    Santa Clara University Scholar Commons Religious Studies College of Arts & Sciences 2010 When Throne and Altar are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane Jonte-Pace Santa Clara University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.scu.edu/rel_stud Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Jonte-Pace, Diane. "When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity." Disciplining Freud on Religion: Perspectives from the Humanities and Social Sciences. Ed. Gregory Kaplan and William Barclay Parsons. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2010. 59-83. Copyright © 2010 Rowman & Littlefield. All rights reserved. Please contact the publisher for permission to copy, distribute or reprint. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHAPTER TWO When Throne and Altar Are in Danger: Freud, Mourning, and Religion in Modernity Diane ]onte--Pace Psychoanalysis and Religion: Asking Questions about Life, Theory, and Culture What can be said about the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and religion?1 I've found it useful to address this question from three perspec, tives: life, theory, and culture. These are inevitably intertwined, but can be separated, at least heuristically. The "life" perspective focuses on the founder of psychoanalysis, examining Freud's Jewish background, the significance of his Catholic nanny, the meaning of his beloved collection of antiquities (the gods and goddesses of the past), the impact of Viennese anti,Semitism, and the sources of his personal rejection of religious belief.
    [Show full text]
  • No Need for Penis-Envy
    FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND BUSINESS STUDIES Department of Humanities No Need for Penis-Envy A Feminist Psychoanalytic Reading of The Bell Jar Kajsa Erikson 2021 Student thesis, Bachelor degree, 15 HE English English 61-90 15HE Supervisor: Iulian Cananau Examiner: Maria Mårdberg Abstract This essay analyzes Esther Greenwood’s identity crisis, mental illness, and recovery in Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar (1963) from a feminist psychoanalytic perspective. The purpose is to understand the cultural and psychological mechanisms behind the main character’s situation. Esther is a talented and hardworking student who dreams of a literary career in 1950’s America. At the age of nineteen, events and realizations launch Esther into an identity crisis that leads to severe depression. Why she falls ill, and the nature of her illness and recovery, are up for interpretation. The thesis of this essay is that Esther Greenwood’s identity crisis, mental illness, and recovery can be explained using a feminist interpretation of Freud’s theories of hysteria and melancholia, and the development of the differences between the sexes, which includes the Freudian concepts of castration, bisexuality, and the Oedipus complex. Keywords: The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, psychoanalysis, feminism, Oedipus complex, bisexuality, castration, hysteria, melancholia Table of Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 2. Theory and Method: Feminist Psychoanalytic Criticism ..................... 3 2.1 The
    [Show full text]
  • Mania: a Scarcely Visited Neighborhood
    Revista Ágora - Estudos em Teoria Psicanalítica ARTIGO MANIA: UM BAIRRO POUCO VISITADO JULIO VERTZMAN 1; Orcid:- https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5495-3737 NELSON ERNESTO COELHO JUNIOR. 2; Orcid: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0707-7356 1Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Programa de RESUMO: Procuramos traçar um panorama amplo sobre as diversidades Pós-Graduação em conceitual e de referentes sobre o que preferimos denominar de “estados Teoria Psicanalítica e do Programa de maníacos”. Partimos da proposta freudiana de que a mania seria a expressão de Mestrado Profissional triunfo sobre o mesmo complexo da melancolia, para problematizá-la. em atenção Psicossocial, Psiquiatra Sugerimos que a mania não pode ser inteiramente recoberta pela lógica do IPUB-UFRJ, Rio de melancólica e que muitos aspectos deste quadro vêm sendo negligenciados pela Janeiro/RJ, Brasil psicanálise. Examinamos autores tão heterogêneos quanto aqueles 2Universidade de São provenientes da escola lacaniana e Melanie Klein, para formular a hipótese de Paulo (USP), Instituto de Psicologia, São que há pelo menos duas visadas sobre a mania que precisam ser melhor Paulo/SP, Brasil. articuladas. Palavras-chave: mania, melancolia, clínica contemporânea. Abstract: Mania: a scarcely visited neighborhood. We seek to draw a broad picture of conceptual and referential diversities about what we prefer to call “manic states”. We start with the Freudian proposal that mania would be the expression of triumph over the same complex of melancholia as to problematize it. We suggest that mania cannot be entirely covered by melancholic logic and that many aspects of this picture have been neglected by psychoanalysis. We examine authors as diverse as those from the Lacanian school and Melanie Klein, to formulate the hypothesis that there are at least two views on mania that need to be better articulated.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia  David L
    Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 10(4):667–700, 2000 A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia David L. Eng, Ph.D. Shinhee Han, C.S.W. As Freud’s privileged theory of unresolved grief, melancholia presents a compelling framework to conceptualize registers of loss and depression attendant to both psychic and material processes of Asian American immigration, assimilation, and racialization. Freud initially formulates melancholia as a pathological form of individual mourning for lost objects, places, or ideals. However, we propose a concept of melancholia as a depathologized structure of everyday group experience for Asian Americans. We analyze a number of Asian American cultural productions (literature and film) as well as two case histories of university students involving intergenerational conflicts and lost ideals of whiteness, Asianness, home, and language. Exploring these analyses against Klein’s notions of lost objects, we propose a more refined theory of good and bad racialized objects. This theory raises the psychic and political difficulties of reinstatement and the mediation of the depressive position for Asian Americans. In addition, this theory suggests that processes of immigration, assimilation, and racialization are neither pathological nor permanent but involve the fluid negotiation between mourning and melancholia. Throughout this essay, we consider methods by which a more speculative approach to psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice might offer a deeper understanding of Asian American mental health issues. David L. Eng, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he is also an affiliate faculty member of the Asian American Studies Program. He is author of the forthcoming Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Duke University Press) as well as the Coeditor (with Alice Y.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading the New Ruins: Loss, Mourning, and Melancholy in Dissident Gardens’
    Article How to Cite: Rowcroft, A., 2017. ‘Reading the New Ruins: Loss, Mourning, and Melancholy in Dissident Gardens’. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings 5(3): 4, pp. 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.39 Published: 08 December 2017 Peer Review: This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings, which is a journal of the Open Library of Humanities. Copyright: © 2017 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distri- bution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Open Access: C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings is a peer-reviewed open access journal. Digital Preservation: The Open Library of Humanities and all its journals are digitally preserved in the CLOCKSS scholarly archive service. The Open Library of Humanities is an open access non-profit publisher of scholarly articles and monographs. Rowcroft, A., 2017. ‘Reading the New Ruins: Loss, Mourning, and Melancholy in Dissident Gardens’. C21 Literature: Journal of 21st-century Writings 5(3): 4, pp. 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/c21.39 ARTICLE ‘Reading the New Ruins: Loss, Mourning, and Melancholy in Dissident Gardens’ Andrew Rowcroft University of Lincoln, GB [email protected] This article argues Jonathan Lethem’s Dissident Gardens (2013) possesses the workings of a critical apprehension set against the more violent ends and commemorative strictures of mourning, loss, and despair.
    [Show full text]
  • Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood INTRODUCTION
    (1960). Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 15:9-52 Grief and Mourning in Infancy and Early Childhood John Bowlby, M.D. INTRODUCTION In a previous paper, that on "Separation Anxiety" (1960), I sketched briefly the sequence of responses to be observed when young children are removed from their mothers and placed with strangers. After delineating the three phases—Protest, Despair, Detachment3—I pointed out that "the phase of Protest raises the problem of separation anxiety; Despair that of grief and mourning; Detachment that of defense. The thesis to be advanced is that the three responses—separation anxiety, grief and mourning, and defense—are phases of a single process and that when treated as such each illumines the other two." The hypothesis advanced there to account for separation anxiety was a corollary of the one advanced in an earlier paper to account for the child's tie to his mother (Bowlby, 1958b). In that paper it was suggested that the child's tie is best conceived as the outcome of a number of instinctual response systems, mostly nonoral in character, which are a part of the inherited behavior repertoire of man; when they are activated and the mother figure is available, attachment behavior results. In the paper on separation anxiety I suggested that, when they are activated and the mother figure is temporarily unavailable, separation anxiety and protest behavior follow. In this and the succeeding papers I shall advance the view that grief and mourning occur in infancy whenever the responses ————————————— 1 Part of an earlier draft of this paper was read before the British Psycho-Analytical Society in October, 1959.
    [Show full text]
  • Mourning and Melancholia Revisited: Correspondences Between Principles of Freudian Metapsychology and Empirical Findings in Neuropsychiatry Robin L
    Mourning and melancholia revisited: Correspondences between principles of Freudian metapsychology and empirical findings in neuropsychiatry Robin L. Carhart-Harris, University of Bristol Helen Mayberg, Emory University Andrea L. Malizia, University of Bristol David Nutt, University of Bristol Journal Title: Annals of General Psychiatry Volume: Volume 7, Number 1 Publisher: BioMed Central | 2008-07-24, Pages 9-9 Type of Work: Article | Final Publisher PDF Publisher DOI: 10.1186/1744-859X-7-9 Permanent URL: https://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/rx8jn Final published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-9 Copyright information: © 2008 Carhart-Harris et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Accessed September 26, 2021 8:33 PM EDT Annals of General Psychiatry BioMed Central Review Open Access Mourning and melancholia revisited: correspondences between principles of Freudian metapsychology and empirical findings in neuropsychiatry Robin L Carhart-Harris*1, Helen S Mayberg2, Andrea L Malizia1 and David Nutt1 Address: 1Psychopharmacology Unit, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK and 2Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA Email: Robin L Carhart-Harris* - [email protected]; Helen S Mayberg - [email protected]; Andrea L Malizia - [email protected]; David Nutt - [email protected] * Corresponding author Published: 24 July 2008 Received: 2 February 2008 Accepted: 24 July 2008 Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7:9 doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-9 This article is available from: http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/7/1/9 © 2008 Carhart-Harris et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
    [Show full text]
  • View / Open Hayes Oregon 0171A 12498.Pdf
    TO WRITE THE BODY: LOST TIME AND THE WORK OF MELANCHOLY by SHANNON HAYES A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of Philosophy and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy June 2019 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Shannon Hayes Title: To Write the Body: Lost Time and the Work of Melancholy This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of Philosophy by: Alejandro Vallega Chairperson Rocío Zambrana Core Member Ted Toadvine Core Member Jeffrey Librett Institutional Representative and Janet Woodruff-Borden Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded June 2019. ii © 2019 Shannon Hayes This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (United States) License. iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Shannon Hayes Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy June 2019 Title: To Write the Body: Lost Time and the Work of Melancholy In this dissertation I develop a philosophical account of melancholy as a productive, creative, and politically significant affect. Despite the longstanding association of melancholy with the creativity and productivity of poets, artists, and philosophers, melancholy is judged to be a nonpolitical mood associated with stagnancy, paralysis, and a willful alienation. If Marxist critical theory still holds true today and it remains the case we are already dismembered and distanced in our worldly relations, then melancholy is a mood that unmasks our present situation. In the fatigue and weariness of the melancholic body, there is an insight into the decay and fragmentation that characterizes social existence.
    [Show full text]
  • A Freudian Analysis of David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway
    In Dreams: A Freudian Analysis of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Ethan Finley, B.A. Graduate Program in Comparative Studies The Ohio State University 2013 Thesis Committee Eugene Holland, Advisor Dana Renga Sean O’Sullivan Copyright by Ethan Andrew Finley 2013 Abstract The film art of David Lynch is undoubtedly some of the most bizarre, mysterious, and difficult being made by an American filmmaker. As such numerous interpretations and theoretical lenses can and have been applied to Lynch’s work in an effort to decode, unlock, or make clear and sensible what is otherwise an enigmatic body of work. The project of this essay then, is to bring bear upon Lynch’s work, a theoretical lens and concomitant reading that is both fruitful and largely ignored in scholarship on Lynch’s films. The theoretical lens in mind is that of Freud’s psychoanalysis, in particular his theory of dreams, and to lesser extent, his theory of mourning and melancholia. The objects of study will be two films of David Lynch that lend themselves to interpretation as film representations of dreams. The films in question are Mulholland Dr. (2001) and Lost Highway (1997). ii Vita 2001……………………………………….........................Margaretta High School 2008………………………………………….......................B.A. Philosophy, The Ohio State University 2012 to 2013…...................................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department Comparative Studies, The Ohio State University Fields of Study Major Field: Comparative Studies iii List of Figures Figure 1. Story Timeline ................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Sex and Gender Through an Analytic Eye: Butler on Freud and Gender Identity
    Illinois Wesleyan University Digital Commons @ IWU Honors Projects Philosophy 2000 Sex and Gender Through an Analytic Eye: Butler on Freud and Gender Identity Anna Gullickson '00 Illinois Wesleyan University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/phil_honproj Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Gullickson '00, Anna, "Sex and Gender Through an Analytic Eye: Butler on Freud and Gender Identity" (2000). Honors Projects. 7. https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/phil_honproj/7 This Article is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by Digital Commons @ IWU with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this material in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/ or on the work itself. This material has been accepted for inclusion by faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ©Copyright is owned by the author of this document. • SEX AND GENDER THROUGH AN ANALYTIC EYE: Butler on Freud and Gender Identity Anna Gullickson PHIL 381 Research Honors in Philosophy Illinois Wesleyan University Anna Gullickson 25 April 2000 SEX AND GENDER mROUGH AN ANALYTIC EYE: Butler on Freud and Gender Identity INTRODUCTION In her book. Gender Trouble, Judith Butler reinforces the conception held by many feminist philosophers that gender identity is not natural but rather culturally-constructed. Butler supports this conception ofgender mainly by reading (and misreading) Freud.
    [Show full text]
  • A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia
    A Dialogue on Racial Melancholia David L. Eng and Shinhee Han I wondered if whiteness were contagious. If it were, then surely I had caught it. I imagined this "condition"affected the way I walked, talked, dressed, danced, and at its most advanced stage, the way I looked at the world and at other people. DANZY SENNA, Caucasia THE "CONDITION"OF WHITENESS Configuring whiteness as contagion, Birdie Lee, the narrator of Danzy Senna’s Caucasia, connects assimilation to illness and disease. Separated from her African American activist father, Birdie Lee and her blue-blooded mother flee from the law in a racialized and radicalized 1970s Boston. Eventually, the two take up residence in New Hampshire, where Birdie passes as "Jesse"and for white.[1] This assimilation into the whiteness of New Hampshire plagues Birdie, who wonders if she "had actually become Jesse, and it was this girl, this Birdie Lee who haunted these streets, searching for ghosts, who was the lie." This vexing "condition"of whiteness not only alters the narrator’s physical world— the manner in which Birdie walks, talks, dresses, and dances. It also configures the sphere of the affective—the ways in which Birdie ultimately apprehends the world and its occupants around her. Physically and psychically haunted, Birdie/Jesse feels "contaminated."[2] This is the condition of racial melancholia. IN PLACE OF A DIALOGUE This essay is the result of a series of sustained dialogues on racial melancholia that we recorded in the autumn and winter of 1998. We—a Chinese American male professor in the humanities and a Korean American female psychotherapist—transcribed, rewrote, and edited these dialogues into their present form.
    [Show full text]
  • Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. the Standard Edition
    Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258 Mourning and Melancholia DREAMS having served us as the prototype in normal life of narcissistic mental disorders, we will now try to throw some light on the nature of melancholia by comparing it with the normal affect of mourning.1 This time, however, we must begin by making an admission, as a warning against any over-estimation of the value of our conclusions. Melancholia, whose definition fluctuates even in descriptive psychiatry, takes on various clinical forms the grouping together of which into a single unity does not seem to be established with certainty; and some of these forms suggest somatic rather than psychogenic affections. Our material, apart from such impressions as are open to every observer, is limited to a small number of cases whose psychogenic nature was indisputable. We shall, therefore, from the outset drop all claim to general validity for our conclusions, and we shall console ourselves by reflecting that, with the means of investigation at our disposal to-day, we could hardly discover anything that was not typical, if not of a whole class of disorders, at least of a small group of them. The correlation of melancholia and mourning seems justified by the general picture of the two conditions.2 Moreover, the exciting causes due to environmental influences are, so far as we can discern them at all, the same for both conditions.
    [Show full text]