Eroticism Part II

Writing about web page http://feminism.eserver.org/gender/sex-work/pornography-and-damage.txt

Three pertinent quotes from Damian Byers, (Originally from Arena Magazine No.3 February-March 1993):

The consumer of pornography intends a relation to another, not to an image of another. For the consumer, the image is not a thing in isolation; it stands between, mediates, offers a way of entering upon a person.

The capacity for care is not itself fixed. Rather, it can grow or diminish. The damage inflicted on the consumer of pornography lies in the fact that the consumer fails to respond to the demand for care that accompanies the other’s disclosure. The other’s disclosure challenges us to respond. Disclosure does not happen all at once; with trepidation it happens bit by bit, asking whether or not the other actually cares, whether they still care, whether they will go on caring irrespective of what is disclosed.

The consumer of pornography seeks disclosure without care. This kind of relation is intolerable for most people when disclosing themselves, and they turn away when care fails. Knowing this, the consumer of pornography establishes the relation to the other not in the immediacy of the one to one, but mediated via the image. Controlled by the image, denied the ability to speak to show more than is confined by the limit of the image, the one being disclosed is denied her humanity, her infinity. The consumer of pornography seeks intimate relation but rejects the opportunity this offers or demands. His or her capacity to care is diminished.

Byers argues that pornography undermines the creation of valid relationships by placing the image as a mediating force between subject and subject. Whilst seeing the validity of Byers’ argument, his initial claim in the first quote that the reader of pornography primarily attempts to reach a ‘person’ is fundamentally untrue.

Contemporary pornography operates in a converse fashion: it is an escape from interpersonal relationships, not a perverse way of reaching them. The emphasis in pornography is on body parts and scenarios, not people or women. As Byers’ recognises, the individuality of the models is relentlessly undermined: in the familiar positions, make-up, stories, the specific women are gradually effaced, and this effacement/defacement constitutes pornography’s representational violence.

Byers’ seeming assumption that the actual visuality of pornography is unimportant to the reader or viewer is likewise naive. Visuality is a fundamental aspect of psychical fantasy, and the image can stand in for the relation in many aspects of psychic life. Pornography’s use of repetitive images and scenarios is in no way dismissible by simply stating, as Byers does, that it ‘gets in the way’ of a real relation.

: 24 Jun 2006 12:21 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Fragmented Bodies: Some Preliminary Thoughts

The risk of fragmentation underlies psychoanalytic accounts of the body, whether it is through the ever-absent Phallus, or in recent feminist constructions, through the breast. The ‘body in pieces’ is not simply an aspect of Lacanian theory, it is a structuring principle in the psychoanalytic discipline as a whole. The centrality of narcissism and the mirror stage ensure that, even at their most coherent, psychoanalytic bodies are always other to themselves.

What can we make of our own bodies in the light of The Three Essays on Sexuality? Here Freud posited that the infant’s body was marked into erotogenic zones, each supported by its own drive. The drive leaned on the bodily function appropriate to each part. This early stage was of course followed by a later genital stage which affirmed the primacy of the sexual organs, but although this is easily perceived in the boy, how the young girl can participate in this genital stage is not so clear: the little girl literally cannot see herself in the same way, neither are her genitals named in the same way as a little boy’s. It is this which theoretically seems to necessitate the female castration complex. This is an unsatisfactory answer to a genuine problem.

Perhaps the issue should not be so much ‘I want what he has’ (Laplanche’s ‘il a cela, and moi je n’ai pas’) but, ‘I want to see what I have’. The question of perception has been discussed at length by Laplanche in ‘La Castration’, but still, the emphasis is still placed on what the girl hasn’t got – still harking upon this mythical absence.

This question of perception is of course central to the mirror-stage (the construction of a coherent bodily image) but can also become a fragmentary force at the moment when it affirms the whole. This is a potentially helpful Lacanian paradox. This pull between whole and part is never overcome: the fact that many men affirm their masculine identity through fetishizing one part of their own body is a case in point.

As I have suggested by my inclusion of a painting by Henri Matisse at the top of this entry, it is through other disciplines such as Art that the idea of bodily fluidity, integrity even, can be found.

: 17 Jun 2006 20:32 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Primal Seduction: Negation and Psychosis

Notes From: Dominique Scarfone: '"It was not my Mother": From Seduction to Negation', in New Formations 48

Scarfone discusses the differing forms of transmission passed from parent to child, and commences with a discussion of Freudian negation. Negation relates back to the operation of introjection and expulsion. Freud relies on the assumption that reality can be easily perceived, and says that, 'it is evident that the pre–condition for the setting up of reality–testing is that objects shall have been lost which once brought real satisfaction'. Internally, we can only recreate outward stimuli with 'noise' and distortions. Loss is therefore the pre–requisite for reality.

For Scarfone, the loss is already to be found within the lost object itself: the noise is inherent in the message of the other, and the loss emanates from the enigmatic nature of the message.

The reality to be tested is the reality of the other

A reality shared by the other, and the 'other thing' in the other. The implanting of the message causes a breach in the body–ego, and establishes an internal frontier: 'the source object of the drive'.

Primal seduction causes a 'withdrawal', followed by repression proper: these expulsions lean on bodily functions. The source object of the drive is what is beyond and other in the 'mother', what makes her 'psychically real':

The negativity of this primal presence [is the] first experience of the negation of which Freud speaks.

Negation can be redefined then not only as a defense, but as the essential nature of psychic processes, representing the loss at the heart of the object, its 'primordial hollow'. Negation allows a possible freedom for the infant–translator. An inhibition is transmitted with the message, a compromise, or a form of binding:

For the adult of the compromised messages must also be the adult who allows a compromise–formation: It is necessary to realise that his own repression has two sides: the repressive side responsible for the enigma which is enigmatic for the adult himself, and the translating side which also translates for the infant.

In psychotic intromission there is no compromise. It is the prohibition of translation which engenders violence, rather than the message itself: the violence is within the mode of transmission. A void is created which can then only be filled with delusions, and this violence masks a fault in the transmitting parent itself. As the translating mechanism of the child is undermined, the body–ego cannot retract properly as it has to counter–invest in barriers against excitation from the outside world:

[the subject] lacks any recesses in which to think secretly

The subject may also project its own permanent observation of the threatening other into a paranoid position. Normally the hollowed message of the parent would lead to the intromission of a 'hollowed out' superego, but in psychosis this is filled in:

it would always be alien, and always present [...] It is the loss of the hollow which leads to the loss of reality in psychosis.

: 14 May 2006 19:19 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Primal Seduction: Breast Feeding

Notes From: Jacqueline Lanouziere 'Breast Feeding as Original Seduction and Primal Scene of Seduction' (New Formations 48)

Lanouziere explores the scene of breast feeding, 'a child is being suckled', as operating as both a direct and indirect seduction, constructing a two–phased primal scene. The first idea of direct seduction refers to the enigmatic signification which is transmitted to the infant, via the mother's breast. For Lanouziere, the breast is necessarily enigmatic for the mother: breasts do, after all, emerge suddenly and so remain a sexual enigma. Lanouziere uses this fact to argue that the breast can become associated with the penis, and that the breast feeding mother can be the originary phallic mother, or combined parent. Both parents can therefore be related to oral gratification. This leads onto the imagined scene of parental copulation – the indirect scene of seduction, and the traditional Freudian primal scene. The second primal scene can only emerge in the context of the breast–feeding situation.

Lanouziere goes onto discuss 'The Tempest' by Giorgione in this context, claiming that the painting depicts both direct and indirect seduction. The watching male figure represents the imagined father of the second primal scene also figured by the lightening and serpent. The positioning of mother and child pre–figures their imminent separation, and the stormy scene emphasises the violence in the primary relation between mother and child. The second primal scene is related to spectatorship. The male figure is the third term of their separation. In the postscript, Lanouziere claims that the painting sublimates the primal scene of breast feeding.

: 14 May 2006 18:58 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A Brief Interlude

Here are my five top tips for music to chill out to when you are returning home from campus (especially on trains – which I am a reluctant expert on):

• Roots Manuva Awfully Deep
  Probably my favourite of his albums to date, coheres better than Run Come Save Me, but has the same dubby funkiness.


• Tom Middleton The Trip
  Mash up of eighties music you would never have admitted to enjoying, house beats, and some good soul.


• Bjork Debut
  I realise I am showing my age here, but I bought this album as soon as it came out in the very early 90s. I was relentlessly teased by my grunge– loving school mates, but the fact that Bjork is still around and 'The Levellers' are not proves that I was great and they were very wrong. This, unsurprisingly, is her first album and the least challenging: has quite cheesy synths and disco beats, combined of course with her amazing voice. Contains classics such as 'Big Time Sensuality' and 'Violently Happy'.


• Massive Attack Blue Lines
  A reminder that a 'best of' is just not good enough when it comes to Massive Attack.


• Finally, any psychedelic trance (perhaps Alien Project or Infected Mushroom). I do not know whether I am alone at Warwick in my love of psytrance, but to the uninitiated, it has a rolling, hypnotic, almost heart–beat like bass line, and is crammed full of weird noises and bizzarre samples. Not to be confused with the infinitely rubbish Judge Jules school of trance popular a few years ago.

: 10 May 2006 12:06 |  Tags: Music |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

No Name and Identification

The Victorian novel can provide more fluid ways of conceptualising the relationship between inheritance and identification. Some brief thoughts about No Name by Wilkie Collins:

• the father's historical narrative provides the prototype for the strategies of the novel as a whole
• the relationship between the father and daughter is characterised by 'l'emprise'. It is initially Magdalen herself who seems to hold the balance of power, and it is only when the father's pre–history intrudes into the family that he assumes 'Paternal authority'. The paternal mastery comes too late.
• Magdalen assumes the 'skin' of the father's repudiated first wife, and articulates a sexualised mode of authority over her father.
• When Magdalen is accidentally disinherited (because of her father's failure to make a new will following his secret marriage to her mother), her identifications are split: she is possessed by the paternal 'Purpose' engendered by her father's failure, and she is traversed by the absent–presence of the American wife. Her sister (who is the obvious replacement for her mother) operates as a stimulating force for the 'good'. These peripheral female figures hint at the primacy accorded to female agency in the text, despite the predominance of Magdalen's paternal identification.
• Through the act of inheritance a whole series of identifications are engendered which relate to the deceased, but also to the family constellation as a whole: to a series of familial fantasies. Are there more than two subjects involved in inheritance?
• Toubiana's argument against these points would probably be that the novel simply demonstrates the truth of his statement that following the 'union' between mother–infant, a whole series of secondary identifications take place. But, if that is the case, could we really conceive of an inheritance that wasn't formed within the context of secondary identifications?
• After all, even within the 'primary stage', the mother would have a whole series of her own secondary identifications in place, and if we follow Laplanche, these would be unconsciously transmitted to the infant in the earliest stages of life.

References:
Wilkie Collins, No Name, ed. by Virginia Blain (Oxford: OUP, 1986)
John Fletcher, 'Introduction', Essays in Otherness (London and New York: Routledge, 1999)
Eric Toubiana, L'Heritage sa Psychopathologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988)

: 09 May 2006 12:09 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Infantile Identifications

This morning, following on from my reading of Eric Toubiana I am thinking more about the infantile identifications which could provide a prototype for inheritance.

Toubiana identifies the relationship between mother and child as the first siting of 'L'emprise'. The mother is the magnificent creature who enunciates her influence. Toubiana cites Robert Dorey who says that 'the mother is the child's first seductress' (32). This is not a sexual seduction: it is comprised of the nurturance and care the mother gives the child and the identifications which produce this initial 'union'. Interestingly, this suggests that this union is created, rather than arising 'naturally' after birth. This is a useful nuance, as it avoids the essentialising of the relationship between mother/child which we find so often in psychoanalytic theories. There is obviously much in common with Jean Laplanche's theory of general seduction, which posits that the child is initially open to the 'other' and only subsequently becomes a closed–off, self–contained, being.

The following paragraph of Toubiana's text is difficult to render satisfactorily in English: but, to the best of my understanding, he speaks about the infant's move into fantasizing processes, which emerge as a compensation due to the time lag between the demand for attention and the satisfaction of the demand. The child imagines that the mother is a part of herself, rather than an Other (33).

This initial 'fusional' couple subsequently become disengaged through a secondary series of identifications, 'marked by alterity' (33).

So, how can we relate this back to inheritance?

If the secondary series of identifications does not take place satisfactorily, then the subject's ability to form object–relations will be severely compromised. They will always replay the situation of 'l'emprise' and the problematisation of the situation between self and other. According to Toubiana, if this occurs in the inheritee then the compromised object–relation will be perpetuated in the inheritor, as it was the initial basis for their relationship.

But, as pure speculation, is it not possible that the two sides of the relationship are not symmetrical? i.e. if the inheritee is incapable of forming adequate object relations, does this mean that the inheritor will simply mirror this? Surely for this to be the case both subject and object would have to be determined by their relation to 'l'emprise', like the mother and child.

: 09 May 2006 11:13 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Inheritance and the Other

L'Heritage sa Psychopathologie Eric Toubiana

In this text, written under the direction of Jean Laplanche, Toubiana gives an account of the specific pathologies engendered by inheritance. He situates his discussion in relation to legal discourse (drawing heavily on the French Civil Code) in addition to more familiar literary narratives such as Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and King Lear. Unsurprisingly, Freudian tropes such as the Oedipus Complex and mourning are accorded a key status.

In the opening paragraphs, Toubiana eloquently describes the act of inheritance as a 'photograph' in which conflicts and desires are fixed within a familial 'scene' (1).

Inheritance is more than a theatrical backdrop, however, a bequest creates a shadow: the lurking 'undead' presence of the deceased. What is particularly provocative about Toubiana's analysis is his relentless emphasis on the relationship between self and other. In his (rather too lengthy) analysis of Julius Caesar he focuses on the concept of 'L'Emprise', or influence. My English translation does not quite express the nuances of 'l'emprise', which implies not only an influence on people but also a 'hold'. Toubiana explores the continuation of Caesar's influence from the grave: the all–powerful father who will not enunciate his own death, and therefore haunts his symbolic 'sons' (specifically Brutus) as a 'vampire'. The murder of Julius becomes then, not just a political act of retribution against a would–be dictator, but the murder of the father which Freud claimed was the basis for society (see, 'Totem and Taboo'). Behind the political discourse, Toubiana identifies the 'mise–en–scene' of the sexual drives: sexual domination is the hidden aspect of 'l'emprise'.

With this premise, Toubiana moves onto a rereading of Oedipus, focusing on the transgenerational transmission of affect. He reminds us that Laos was himself a sexual transgressor – the rapist of Chrysippos, whose 'l'emprise' was overtly sexual in nature. Ironically, in solving the riddle of the Sphinx, Oedipus demonstrates knowledge that his father lacked, pertaining to the irresolvable difference between generations – 'Oedipus is a stranger to the Oedipus Complex!' (43). The collapsing of boundaries between parent and child, shown in the relationship between Oedipus and Jocasta, is a repetition of Laos' rape of the young boy. Laos is subsequently sacrificed by his son, just as Caesar is sacrificed by Brutus et al.

In Toubiana's analysis of King Lear the Oedipal myth is also used as a way of reinterpreting the drama. He claims that Cordelia enunciates a post-Oedipal logic because of her refusal to pander to her father's demand for love. Goneril and Regan are trapped within an Oedipal and a pre–Oedipal scenario in which they are forced to become both wives and mothers to their father. The fairy–tale resonances also increase the sense of familial transgression, the shadow of incest. Lear himself, just like Laos, negates the inevitable difference in generations, the 'laws of nature'.

While Toubiana's readings of the two Shakespeare plays contain provocative observations, they suffer from their 'structural' emphasis. His analysis of mourning is slightly less problematic as it deals directly with the theory. Engaging with Freud's 'Mourning and Melancholia', Toubiana suggests that the 'incorporation' of the object into the ego occurs in the early moments of ego–formation, specifically in the development of the 'super–ego'. The work of mourning is therefore a repetition. The French Civil Code states that in 'La Saisine' (the legal process which delimits inheritance) 'le mort saisit le vif', or 'the deceased seizes the living'. Toubiana correlates this with the famous quote from 'Mourning and Melancholia': 'the shadow of the lost object fell upon the ego'. In Toubiana's construction, inheritance would engender an almost violent introjection or incorporation of the dead, where the agency seems to be located in the lost object rather than in the subject.

This problem of agency is difficult to resolve in relation to Freud's theories, in which the agency is located firmly in the ego: in melancholia, the ego identifies a part of itself with the lost object so that 'an object loss' becomes 'an ego loss', or a schism within the ego. It is only by recourse to Toubiana's own theory of vampiric influence that we can explain how the deceased could actively employ their agency after death. Toubiana claims that the encounter which initiated the relationship between the subject and the object will be internally replayed after the death of the object.

In line with Freud, I do feel that a distinction needs to be made between an agency which emerges from an Other who we encounter in the world, and an agency which is engendered through identification with the dead. The latter may of course have emerged from the Other, but has been internalized and metabolized in complex ways by the subject. Toubiana does not resolve the issue of how we can conceptualize the relationship between these agencies, although the points he makes are suggestive.

: 08 May 2006 13:19 |  Tags: Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem