Title: Corporeal Aesth/ethics : The Body in Bracha L. Ettinger's Theory and Art Author: Anna Kisiel Citation style: Kisiel Anna. (2019). Corporeal Aesth/ethics : The Body in Bracha L. Ettinger's Theory and Art. Praca doktorska. Katowice : Uniwersytet Śląski FACULTY OF PHILOLOGY UNIVERSITY OF SILESIA IN KATOWICE Anna Kisiel CORPOREAL AESTH/ETHICS THE BODY IN BRACHA L. ETTINGER’S THEORY AND ART Dissertation written under the supervision of prof. zw. em. dr hab. Wojciech Kalaga Sosnowiec 2019 WYDZIAŁ FILOLOGICZNY UNIWERSYTET ŚLĄSKI W KATOWICACH Anna Kisiel KORPORALNA EST/ETYKA CIAŁO W TEORII I SZTUCE BRACHY L. ETTINGER Praca doktorska napisana pod kierunkiem prof. zw. em. dr. hab. Wojciecha Kalagi Sosnowiec 2019 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 5 Part 1. WITH-IN(TER) THE MATRIXIAL REALM Chapter 1. THE MATRIX: CONTEXTS – TROPES – IMPLICATIONS 16 1. Remnants of the Other 16 2. Not Only the Phallus 18 3. Trans-subjective Matrixial Ethics 34 4. Almost-boundless Canvas Space 45 5. Towards the Aesth/ethics 54 Chapter 2. HUMAN(E) ORIGINS: THE FEMALE BODY AS AN ETHICAL SITE 56 1. Bodies and (proto-)Ethics 56 2. A Prototype for Connectedness 57 3. Knowledge in / of the Humanising Specificity 70 4. Aesth/ethical Encounter 80 5. Human(e) Origins 89 Chapter 3. THE PERPLEXING FEMININE: GENDER(LESSNESS) OF THE ETTINGERIAN BODY 92 1. About / for / of Women 92 2. Femininity and Universality 94 3. Fe-male Privilege 102 4. Ettingerian Mythos 108 5. A Gendered Family Album 116 6. Perplexing Gender(lessness) 125 4 Part 2. ENCOUNTERS IN COM-PASSION Chapter 4. THROUGH / WITH / IN THE BODY: THEOLOGICAL RESONANCES OF THE MATRIXIAL SPECIFICITY 128 1. Theological Resonances 128 2. From Word to Flesh 130 3. Com-passionate Covenants 142 4. Revelation, Messianism, and the Artistic Encounter 155 5. Through / with / in the Body 164 Chapter 5. IN-APPROPRIATE(D): ART, HUMANISM, AND THE BODY AFTER AUSCHWITZ 167 1. In-appropriate(d) Bodies and Art 167 2. Feminine Experiences of the Shoah 169 3. Facing the Bare Life 179 4. Responding to the Mizocz Women 189 5. Living after Auschwitz 195 CONCLUSION 197 BIBLIOGRAPHY 204 APPENDIX 220 SUMMARY 250 STRESZCZENIE 253 INTRODUCTION This thesis endeavours to trace the body in Bracha L. Ettinger’s oeuvre and to investigate the humanising potential of this rich category. Born in 1948 in Tel Aviv to the Holocaust survivors Bluma and Uziel Lichtenberg, Ettinger is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, visual artist, and theoretician of the matrix. In my thesis, I focus on her matrixial psychoanalysis and artistic practice in an attempt to take a closer look at corporeality – the notion which constantly resurfaces in these two areas but has never occupied a central position in Ettingerian criticism; as I believe, the status of the matrixial body needs to be studied, clarified, and foregrounded as it may be read as a primary ethical site in a psychoanalytical sense. The first pillar of this thesis is the work of Ettinger as a matrixial theorist. The underpinnings, assumptions, and major concepts of the matrixial theory are explored in detail in the first chapter, but let me briefly contextualise this system beforehand. The founding concept of Ettinger’s psychoanalysis is the matrix, a signifier of non- phallic and non-gendered difference inspired by the prenatal / pregnancy encounter- event in the womb. Instead of being grounded upon separation, cut, or loss, this type of difference embraces connectedness, shareability, and hospitality of an intimate encounter between several becoming-subjects; this does not, however, mean that it forms an opposition to phallic paradigms. Rather, the matrixial borderspace theorised by Ettinger functions as a supplement to Jacques Lacan’s and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Namely, while the matrix as a concept questions the phallus and castration as the only means of subjectivity formation, it does not challenge their significance in the postnatal period. In her proposition of a supplementary subjectivising realm, Ettinger scrutinises the postulates of Lacan with regard to their 6 possibly male-centred structure as well as re-reads Sigmund Freud (among others, she returns to Muttersleibphantasien, a term somewhat abandoned by Lacan); such analyses allow her to rethink the space for femininity at the threshold of phallus- oriented psychoanalysis. Calling for the co-existence instead of the rejection of paradigms, Ettinger expands the Symbolic order onto the logics of between / and and both / and alongside that of either / or. As a result, Ettinger questions the primacy of the binary stratification and singularity of the subject, and stresses the value of matrixial severality (which should not be mistaken with subjectless or meaning-less symbiosis or fusion). While Freudian-Lacanian psychoanalysis provides the major point of reference in the discussion of the matrixial theory, Ettinger is also indebted to other thinkers and areas. Her next crucial inspiration is derived from schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; although Ettinger’s approach is not anti-Oedipal, it is focused on such notions as becoming, affect, and connectedness, which instantly redirect us to Deleuze and Guattari’s propositions. Finally, Ettinger also turns to Emmanuel Lévinas’s ethics of the Other and Julia Kristeva’s conceptualisation of the chora. In addition, in the course of this dissertation I collate the matrixial domain with, among others, Grosz’s postulates of corporeal feminism, Judeo-Christian theology, and the Holocaust studies. All of these contexts make it possible to provide a more complete picture of Ettinger’s multi-layered – yet evanescent – notion of corporeality. Importantly, even though Ettinger’s focal point is the prenatal / pregnancy phase and thus – the female body, this theory should not be misidentified as exemplary of French cultural feminism. First of all, French cultural feminism’s treatment of the feminine corporeality is in proximity to essentialism; secondly, this current considers the potentiality to overthrow the discourses grounded upon the male body. Both of these aspects hint at possible aspirations towards a sui generis cult of femininity. 7 Ettinger, in contrast, endeavours to dissociate herself from essentialism, which is discussed in detail in this thesis. Also, as I have already mentioned, her aim is not to jettison the phallus-based systems. Even though femininity and the female body play a defining role in the matrixial theory, this realm does not exclude males; Griselda Pollock puts it bluntly: “This theory is not just about women for women, but for all of us, for we are all born of woman.”1 There is, however, one undebatable influence of French cultural feminism on Ettinger’s oeuvre; in her theoretical writings, she uses écriture féminine, a literary strategy devised by Hélène Cixous.2 In her reading of Ettinger’s theory, Pollock provocatively argues that it commits “blasphemy”3; what I would like to propose is a notion that supplements such a view on this system. When considering blasphemy, Pollock refers to two basic assumptions of the matrix: one on the prenatal period as a formative time-space for the becoming-subject, and the other on severality as a subjectivising quality that precedes separation. In psychoanalysis, as she notes, both thinking of the subject-before-birth and thinking of the subject indispensably linked with its intimate Others are impossible, or even “psychotic and perverse.”4 Feminism, in turn, is claimed to fear falling into essentialism or biological determinism whenever the issue of the female body is raised. Nevertheless, Ettinger’s intention is not to antagonise or disregard these two fields, but to contribute to and thus expand them. As I would like to add, different 1 Griselda Pollock, “Introduction. Femininity: Aporia or Sexual Difference?,” in: Bracha L. Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace, ed. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), p. 29. 2 See: Griselda Pollock, “Mother Trouble: The Maternal-feminine in Phallic and Feminist Theory in Relation to Bracha Ettinger’s Elaboration of Matrixial Ethics/Aesthetics,” Studies in the Maternal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2009), p. 13, http://www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk/back_issues/issue_one/GriseldaPollock.pdf (access: 29 November 2013). 3 Pollock, “Introduction,” p. 12. Pollock uses the notion of blasphemy after Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto. There, blasphemy is a creative act that has to be differentiated from apostasy. See: Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-feminism in the Late 20th Century,” in: International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, eds. Joel Weiss, Jason Nolan, Jeremy Hunsinger, and Peter Trifonas (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), p. 117. 4 Pollock, “Introduction,” p. 13. 8 difference is an Ettingerian notion that seems to embrace the essence of the relation of the matrixial theory to both areas delineated above. Different difference cannot be conceived of in terms of exclusion or opposition; rather, it constitutes a border-Other to the classical psychoanalytical theorisation of binary + / - difference. Similarly, Ettinger introduces the system that neither has to be rejected nor expects its predecessors to withdraw since it works within and near the borders of psychoanalytical paradigms. Moreover, even though the matrixial theory does not refrain from using the female-maternal flesh as a departure point for further investigations, it does not question feminism or women’s rights, again placing itself as different rather