Dreaming Woman: Argentine Modernity and the Psychoanalytic Diaspora by Rachel E. Greenspan Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ranjana Khanna, Supervisor ___________________________ Rey Chow ___________________________ Antonio Viego ___________________________ Federico Finchelstein Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 ABSTRACT Dreaming Woman: Argentine Modernity and the Psychoanalytic Diaspora by Rachel E. Greenspan Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Ranjana Khanna, Supervisor ___________________________ Rey Chow ___________________________ Antonio Viego ___________________________ Federico Finchelstein An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2017 Copyright by Rachel E. Greenspan 2017 Abstract Dreaming Woman decenters Europeanist histories of psychoanalysis by examining the ways in which forced migration has shaped psychoanalytic theories of sexual difference and evolving modes of feminist practice in Latin America. Home to more psychoanalysts per capita than any other country, Argentina emerged as a site of political asylum during WWII and of exilic dissemination during periods of military dictatorship. Taking Argentina as an exemplary case of psychoanalytic entrenchment that disrupts neat oppositions between Europe and its others, Dreaming Woman reframes the psychoanalytic archive on sexual difference as a discourse on migration. Tracing the coincident rise of psychoanalysis and authoritarianism in Argentina, I examine the role of migrant women, and of discourses on Woman, in establishing new relationships between psychoanalysis and politics. Through a multimedia archive that includes literature, autobiography, pop culture artifacts, transnational correspondences, clinical case studies, theoretical essays, and artwork, Dreaming Woman approaches psychoanalysis as a heterogeneous set of clinical and cultural practices through which Argentines have articulated distinctive feminist and anti-imperialist projects throughout the twentieth century. These archival materials share a concern for female sexuality as a national problem—that is, a problem tied to national identity and a problem for the nation-state to solve. They also show the transformative impact of clinical encounters with female sexuality, maternal grief, and iv torture on modern theories of the subject. In view of contemporary anxieties surrounding global migration, the case of Argentina shows that psychoanalysis has always been a political practice forged through exile, one that offers an indispensable conceptual framework for addressing the persistent psychic traces of displacement. v Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. viii Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................................... x Introduction: Psychoanalysis in the Feminine .......................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Postal Legacies: Ocampo, Tagore, Lacan ............................................................. 20 Transnational Ministrations of Love ................................................................................. 20 Psychoanalysis and the Love Letter .................................................................................. 29 The Guest and the Alien Flower ........................................................................................ 39 Napoleon, when he was still Buonaparte ......................................................................... 58 No Legacy Without Transference ...................................................................................... 77 Chapter 2. Dreaming Woman: Image, Place, and the Aesthetics of Exile .......................... 83 Figure and Ground ............................................................................................................... 89 The Seeing Cure .................................................................................................................. 116 Chapter 3. From Figure to Flesh: Psychosomatic Medicine and the Maternal Body ..... 128 The Rejecting Mother, the Agential Body ....................................................................... 140 Reproduction and Occupation ......................................................................................... 155 Chapter 4. Psychoanalytic Praxis: Reparative Politics and the Socialization of Loss .... 179 To Question the Weltanschauung .................................................................................... 179 Reparation and the Common Object ............................................................................... 192 Solidarity, Group Analysis and the Socialization of Loss ............................................ 217 vi Antipsychiatry and/or Psychoanalytic Praxis ................................................................ 231 Chapter 5. Strange Things Happen Here: Torture, (Anti-)humanism, and the Disappeared Woman ................................................................................................................ 247 Strange Things Happen Here ........................................................................................... 247 “It’s hard to untie this knot.” ............................................................................................ 257 Tortured Intimacies, Sadean Ethics ................................................................................. 271 Exemplarity and Occlusion: Naming Argentina ........................................................... 287 Conclusions. Postscript: The Autographic Supplement ...................................................... 299 Kiki ....................................................................................................................................... 299 The Textual Mirror ............................................................................................................. 305 The Supplement .................................................................................................................. 320 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................... 328 Biography ................................................................................................................................... 339 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Tagore, “Prabahini,” from the original manuscript of Purabi, composed on December 11, 1924. ...................................................................................................................... 47 Figure 2: Personal photograph of Tagore (left) with Ocampo (right) at her family estate in San Isidro. ................................................................................................................................ 48 Figure 3: Envelope for a letter from Rabindranath Tagore to Victoria Ocampo, sent from India to Argentina, opened by censor. ..................................................................................... 55 Figure 4: Envelope for a letter from Rabindranath Tagore to Victoria Ocampo, sent from India to Argentina, opened by censor. ..................................................................................... 56 Figure 5: A letter from Bengal, India to Buenos Aires, Argentina dated March 18, 1942. Sent by Tagore’s son, Rathindranath, after his father’s death. ............................................. 56 Figure 6: Envelope for a letter from Rabindranath Tagore to Victoria Ocampo, sent from India to Argentina, passed by censor and redirected to her apartment at Viamonte 5118. ........................................................................................................................................................ 57 Figure 7: Grete Stern and Richard Rest, “Sueños de indecision” (1950) ............................. 95 Figure 8: Grete Stern, “Los sueños de ambición” (1950) ..................................................... 103 Figure 9: Grete Stern, “Sueño de frutos” (1951) .................................................................... 110 Figure 10: Grete Stern, “Sueño cósmico” (1949) ................................................................... 111 Figure 11: Grete Stern, Cuerpos celestes (1949) ....................................................................... 115 Figure 12: Grete Stern, “Los sueños de inhibiciones” (1950) .............................................. 116 Figure 13: Nicola Costantino, Los sueños de Nicola (2012) .................................................... 116 Figure 14: Nicola Costantino, Eva. Los sueños (2013) ............................................................ 119 Figure 15: C. G. jung, untitled painting in The Red Book (2009) .......................................... 120 Figure 16: Photograph of Fidel Castro (left),