The Trauma of Form: Death Drive as Affect in À la recherche du temps perdu

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbie McLaughlan
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Artistic Creation ◽  
The Uncanny

This chapter brings contemporary Deleuzian understandings of affect into dialogue with those found in Freud. Arguing that Freud’s theorising of affect in many ways underpins the psychoanalytic project, the chapter suggests that, when seen through a Freudian lens, the sensory “planes of immanence” or perpetual becomings celebrated in contemporary affect theory resemble the repetition compulsion of trauma. The death drive is made explicit when we are confronted with the molecular, atomised or becoming and is manifested in the act of artistic creation. Following Derrida’s reading of Freud in The Postcard, the chapter formulates a psychoanalytic theory of the uncanny and traumatic affects of writing in relation to Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, a text that makes manifest thanatos as a source of affect.

The Speculative Turn

2019 ◽  
pp. 68-98
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Rottenberg
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
History Of Psychoanalysis ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
History Of

This chapter argues that Sigmund Freud’s 1920 text Beyond the Pleasure Principle marks a watershed in the history of psychoanalysis. Freud not only speculates in this text, he also speculates in a way that is far-reaching and far-ranging: his speculation takes him back to the origin of consciousness and the beginning of life. But what does it mean, this chapter asks, for Freud’s speculation to culminate in the hypothesis of a death or destructive drive? Indeed, what does it mean for Freud’s hypothesis of the repetition compulsion and the death drive to breathe new life into psychoanalytic theory? It is here, this chapter argues, that we must take Freud’s speculative play seriously and rethink not only psychoanalysis’s relation to philosophy (i.e., speculation) but also its relation to Plato. For Plato, more than any other philosopher in Freud’s work, plays a vital—literally a life-and-death—role in Freud’s theory of the drives.

scholarly journals The Uncanny in the Themes of Evil, Transgression and the Double in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"

LETRAS ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Esteban Barboza Núñez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Human Component

El propósito de este artículo consiste en explorar los mecanismos y representaciones de lo siniestro en "La hija de Rappacci" de Nathaniel Hawthome como expresión del mal dentro de los límites del género gótico del siglo XIX; como expresión del tema del doble en tres personajes humanos y en uno no humano que aparecen en el cuento; y como expresión de trasgresión en el personaje principal, Giovanni Guasconte. El concepto de lo siniestro que se usará será el de la teoría psicoanalítica, siguiendo especialmente los aportes de Sigmund Freud y Jacques Lacan. The purpose of this artide is to explore the mechanisms and representations of the uncanny in Nathaniel Hawthome's "Rappaccini's Daughter" as an expression of evil within nineteenth century Gothic boundaries; as an expression of the theme of the double in three human characters and in one non-human component of Rappaccini's garden; and as an expression of transgression in Giovanni Guasconte, the main character. The concept of the uncanny to be used will be that of psychoanalytic theory, especially reliant on the contributions on the topic by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

scholarly journals Repression and Realism in Postwar  American Literature 1945-1955

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Erin Mercer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Philip Roth ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
Cultural Conformity

<p>This thesis focuses on the uncanny in literature produced in America during the first decade following World War II. The period between 1945 and 1955 was marked by repressive socio-political forces such as McCarthyism and cultural conformity which complicated the representation of what Philip Roth refers to as "demonic reality." I explore the ways in which the avoidance and minimisation of the unpleasant created a highly circumscribed version of postwar American life while also generating a sense of objectless anxiety. According to the theories of Sigmund Freud, repression inevitably stages a return registered as the "uncanny." Animism, magic, the omnipotence of thoughts, the castration complex, death, the double, madness, involuntary repetition compulsion, live burial and haunting are all deemed capable of provoking a particular anxiety connected to what lies beneath the surface of accepted reality. Although it is common to argue that fantasy genres such as science fiction and gothic represent the return of what is repressed, this thesis explores several realist novels displaying uncanny characteristics. The realist novels included here are uncanny not only because they depict weird automaton-like characters, haunting, and castration anxieties, thus exhibiting a conscious use of Freudian theory, but because the texts themselves act as the return of the repressed. Norman Mailer referred to this unsettling phenomenon when he described writing as the "spooky" art; spooky because although a writer might sit down to consciously write a particular story, another unwilled story might very well appear.</p>

Terrore, affascinazione, incertezza: una lettura del saggio di Freud Das Unheimliche

2009 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Luigi Antonello Armando
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
Internal Space ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Law

- Freud begun writing Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny, 1919) while he was writing Totem and Taboo, and concluded it interrupting his writing of Jenzeit der Lustprinzip (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920). Das Unheimliche is seen as a chapter of a larger work, whose other chapters are the two over mentioned works and those on Leonardo (1910) and on Michleangelo (1914). Das Unheimliche is considered the expression of Freud's attempt to overcome an obstacle which prevented him to formulate the law of repetition compulsion: the obstacle rising from his experience of the works of art of Italian Renaissance and of their opening the internal space of uncertainty. It is maintained that the contemporary significance of Freud's work lies in the result of that attempt.KEY WORDS: uncanny, terror, art, new, uncertainty

Failures of Form: Ideology and the Death Drive in the Work of Adrian Stokes

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-201
Author(s):  
Kirsten Haywood
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Melanie Klein ◽  
Thought Process ◽  
Death Drive

On his return from Italy in 1929, the art writer Adrian Stokes went into psychoanalysis with Melanie Klein, to confront a depression ‘intent on frustrating and destroying him’. This paper looks at the strange, hybrid text that psychoanalysis gave rise to: an account of Hyde Park as the place where meaning itself was being generated, and destroyed. In particular, it looks at Stokes's preoccupation with waste and remainders, and the failed attempts of industrial capitalism's ‘mechanical restitutions’, to put them to rights. In giving an account of his own destructive thought process during these years, I propose that Stokes gives a vivid account of his socio-political moment, but also works through a particular debate that was emerging for the British Psychoanalytic Society during these years: a debate about whether the death drive or the ‘negative’ could be meaningful for psychoanalytic theory.

scholarly journals Dark glamour and desire: an exploratory look at psychoanalysis and the work of Alexander McQueen

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Kate Risley
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between psychoanalysis and fashion is relatively new; therefore, this study aimed to identify how psychoanalytic theory, specifically Freud’s The Uncanny and Lacan’s theories of desire relate to McQueen’s collections as well as themes of Goth and Fetish. This case study used a qualitative approach as its methodology and both content and semiotic analyses of visuals to examine study-related topics. Lacan’s theories of desire were applied to analyze the role of fetish, sexuality, femininity, jouissance, and women as objet a in the collection Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and portions of Horn of Plenty. Freud’s The Uncanny and Goth speak to feelings of fear and horror were therefore ideal for an analysis of Elizabeth Howe 1692 and Horn of Plenty. A deeper understanding of psychoanalysis and fashion was found by connecting the theories to the work of Alexander McQueen.

scholarly journals The uncanny and the ghostly nature of the world in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980)

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 77
Author(s):  
Gabriele Biotti
Keyword(s):  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The World ◽  
Relevant Role

<p class="Standard">This article analyzes Stanley Kubrick's film <em>The Shining</em> (1980) in its complex textuality, where ghosts, spectrality and repetition compulsion play a relevant role in defining the symbolic space of a contemporary gothic story about madness, fear, evil traces and perception. In a context where time is out of joint, and where evil laws try to frame human presences in a dimension of distress, spectral presences shape a ghostly world where fears and violence are defeated by a special mental strength, the 'shining'.</p>

scholarly journals Fictionalising the unspeakable: Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak (2015) as a trauma narrative

2021 ◽  
pp. 213-232
Author(s):  
Dina Pedro ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Violence ◽  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Trauma Narrative ◽  
Natural Catastrophes ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Bear Witness

Neo-Victorian narratives of trauma display a temporal duplicity in addressing nineteenthcentury traumas that still prevail at present, including natural catastrophes, wars, or more personal and insidious traumas, such as domestic violence and oppression, or child and sexual abuse. In this article, I argue that Guillermo del Toro’s neo-Victorian film Crimson Peak (2015) is constructed as a trauma narrative that exploits the trope of «the uncanny» (Freud 1919) and its main representations –i.e. the double, the return of the dead and repetition compulsion– to address the traumatic experience of gender violence and its impact on both Victorian and contemporary women. Furthermore, I contend that the film functions as a symbolical space where the audience can bear witness to and reflect on the multitemporal trauma of gender violence. That way, viewers can bear witness and develop empathy towards survivors of this traumatic experience.

Waldo's Beautiful Things: Possession and Possessing in Otto Preminger's Laura

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
William P MacNeil
Keyword(s):  
Death Drive ◽  
Repetition Compulsion ◽  
Objet Petit A ◽  
Feminine Sexuality ◽  
The Law ◽  
Police Detective ◽  
Psychic Condition

Despite its highly subjectivised title, Laura – Otto Preminger's dazzling 1944 noir classic – is, according to this article, a film not so much about persons as things. And what spectacularly beautiful things Laura proffers: exquisite objets d'art, chic fashion, striking design. All of which points to a certain psychic condition that underpins Laura: namely, fetishism. Of course, the fetish nonpareil in the film is Laura herself; she is the not so ‘obscure object of desire’ for all and sundry, possessing everyone in the film, and, in turn, being treated by those possessed, as a possession herself. Though the nature of these sorts of possessory regimes differs dramatically, being contingent upon the psychic profile of the possessor: love interest Shelby Carpenter, police detective Mark McPherson and wealthy mentor, Waldo Lydecker. This article will explore Laura's competing possessory regimes, utilising psychoanalytic concepts such as hysteria, repetition compulsion and the death drive, as well as fetishism and sado-masochism to unpack this vivid filmic representation of the ‘Law of Desire’ as a desire for what is, here, law's objet petit a – feminine sexuality itself.

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