Georgiou, Diana. 2019. Erotic Responsiveness: An Ethics of Auto/biographical Art-Writing. Doc- toral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26848/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] Erotic Responsiveness: An Ethics of Auto/Biographical Art-Writing Diana Georgiou Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement of the Ph.D. in Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London 2018 I, Diana Georgiou, declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. ii Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between auto/biographical art-writing and subjectivity by analysing the work of contemporary writers and poets. I frame art- writing as a psychophysical process that generates an erotic response to artwork. Through this framing, I develop an ethics of auto/biographical art-writing drawing from models of subjectivity that follow a relational ontology. I turn to feminist theories of affect and psychoanalysis as critical methodologies to invent an exploration of subjectivity catalyzed by the process of auto/biographical art- writing. For affect theory, I am mainly informed by philosopher and social- political theorist Teresa Brennan’s conceptualisation of affect as the physical transmission of energy between individuals and groups. The main psychoanalytic framework I employ draws from psychoanalyst, artist and theorist Bracha L. Ettinger’s conceptualisation of a Matrixial psychoanalysis that highlights the ‘nonconscious’ dimension of affect and aesthetics, amongst other important psychoanalytic developments. For the term ‘auto/biography’ I turn to feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, who proposes that the individual is essentially relational, co-affected and achieves temporary unity through hearing their life- story narrated by an other person. For the purposes of this research, auto/biographical narratives illustrate the singularity and uniqueness of the encounter between the artwork and the storyteller. I argue that personal memory and nonconscious activity create the conditions for an erotic response to an artwork’s ethical demand for what Teresa Brennan calls ‘living attention.’ That is, the dynamic exchange of affects and energy whose economy is primarily nonconscious, life-driven (Eros), and imprints subjectivity at the start of psychic life (pre-natal). By combining the theoretical advances of these three authors, I formulate a distinct model of relating to aesthetic experience and ensuing auto/biographical art-writing which I term erotic responsiveness. Following an analysis of writing by authors who employ auto/biographical methodologies to convey their aesthetic experiences, this research develops a broader framework for contemporary critical thinking about personal narratives, their uses in art-writing, and how they inform subjectivity. iii Acknowledgments This research would not have been possible without the living and loving attention I have received from my local sisterhood. A locality split between the UK, Cyprus and occasionally Italy, and a sisterhood which is primarily affective and emotional, providing the necessary structural support that any serious research requires: laughter, tears, stories of love and loss, creativity, Mediterranean cuisine, long nights dancing to counteract the longer nights working, stories, again. Inara Jaunzeme has made the precarious condition of existence known as London-life, less burdensome and more jouissant. Dragomir Krastev ensured that my theoretical ruminations are gastronomically inflected and scientifically rejected. I have felt less of an exile in Cyprus thanks to the hospitality (meant in its fullest ancient Greek philosophical sense) of Tasia Zachariadou, Christina Anniva, Christiana Artemiou and Tania Biberian. The team at CUNTemporary has given me more reasons to live than I can possibly handle. I have had the pleasure of wit(h)nessing over 400 artists since our first event in December 2012 – artists that ensure that gender and sexuality remain wonderfully perverse, diabolically creative, profoundly traumatic and often untheorizable. Artists that have helped me think with art in ways that exceed my understanding of representation, affect and theory. In the early days, Petra Kubisova has been largely responsible for dismantling my resistance to the maternal. Encountering her artwork was proof of the unsuitability of existing theories to approach artworks that raise questions of female embodiment, maternal agency and expanded photography. After a cocktail consisting of punctums and traces, loss and mourning, oblivion and forgetfulness, I came to terms with Bracha L. Ettinger’s Matrixial universe. Matrixial conversations with Tina Kinsella were short encounters that endured the test of both memory and time. The Now You Can Go group unexpectedly influenced the direction of this research. The network that was created around the radical figure of Carla Lonzi produced sustained dialogue on what I consider to be a crucial feminist issue, namely, theorizing embodiment and embodying theory. Lucia Farinati, Sara Paiola and the oratorical force of Laura Leuzzi have proven that Italian Feminism is a methodology for life more than it is iv an academic field. Adriana Cavarero’s intellectual offspring, Lorenzo Bernini and Olivia Guaraldo, for sustaining and disrupting the possibilities of a queer-inflected sexual difference. My supervisors Astrid Schmetterling and Lynn Turner who endured my passions and incoherencies with me. My partner in queer-feminist crimes Giulia Casalini for putting the performative in curating, and for performing everything possible, to make sure we continue curating the impossible. This journey has also been marked by the death of my surrogate mother and aunty Aglaitsa Louca and continues to be haunted by the living, and occasionally loving, ghost of my mother Elżbieta Barbara Maria Kiełczewska. Events that have reframed my understanding of loss and mourning in ways that can only be grasped psychophysically. Their traces are also found in the assertions that make up this thesis. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................... iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................... vi LIST OF VISUALS .............................................................................................. viii INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 PART ONE: PSYCHOANALYSIS, SUBJECTIVITY & ART-WRITING..... 23 Chapter One - Interweaving Concepts: Preliminary structures for an analysis of auto/biographical art-writing and subjectivity ....................................................... 24 Auto/biography ................................................................................................. 27 Living Attention: Psychophysical Creative Organisation ................................. 36 Brennan’s Hypotheses ...................................................................................... 48 If Brennan’s hypotheses encountered art-writing what would they do? ........... 54 “Art-Writing is in the situation of a fulcrum” ................................................... 61 Chapter Two - Incestuous Mothers: Subjectivity and Desire through the Maternal Relation ................................................................................................................... 70 Embodiment and the Exchange of Gazes ......................................................... 73 The Matrixial Gaze: Vision as Non-verbal Intensity ........................................ 77 The Matrixial Nonconscious: Affect as Non-verbal Intensity ......................... 90 Attentive Love in Utero: Beyond the Foundational Fantasy ........................... 96 Chapter Three - The Physicality of Ideas: Writing and Embodiment ................ 104 Fleshy Memories: The Physical Logic of Communication ............................. 105 Sublimation: A Matter of Life and Death ...................................................... 111 Erotic Responsiveness .................................................................................... 124 vi PART TWO: WRITING WITH ART ............................................................... 131 Writing with Art: Subjectivity & Encounter .................................................... 132 Radically Other but Ontologically the Same? ................................................. 139 What is the Ontology of Becoming? ................................................................ 143 “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon”: Writing for the Other ..... 146 Life’s Work: An Ethics of Storytelling ........................................................... 153 From the Politics of Self-determination to the Politics of “Deculturalization” 161 Writing the Self: A Creative and Political Act ...............................................