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The Desire of Lacan
J
ACQUES-ALAIN MILLER

Femininity between Goodness and Act
S
LAVOJ ZIZEK

A Case of Borgian Psychosis
M
ARCO MAUAS

Lacan's Purloined Linguistics
A
DRIAN JOHNSTON

The Body's Organs and Cindy Sherman's Face
J
OAN COPJEC

Comme des Garçons
J
OSEFINA AYERZA

Stepping into History
P
EGGY PHELAN

Interview with
Philip-Lorca diCorcia


























        

Comme des Garcons

 

Josefina Ayerza

What is castration in this context? Contradictorily, what is the case with criminal fantasy when it comes to immolate woman? Offense somehow assigned to the signifier, "...a woman can but be excluded by the nature of things, which is the nature of words;"1 let's say that Willem de Kooning paints the ramble of her mutilation and Jacques Lacan will tell the story. De Kooning's series of paintings Woman 1, Woman 2... fairly depict the process by which Lacan's woman is systematically dismembered as she gets deprived of yet another part. So she reaches the point of annihilation. Formerly the love object - obscure cause of the desire - a lost object, she'll walk throughout seminar XX in a not-whole, non-existent apparel. Again she will at once be the symptom, and so will the analyst.

But what is it to be the symptom where it partakes of the cause of the desire? If symptom is the single way each one happens to enjoy his/her unconscious framework, symptom is as well what you structure your life around.

Should Greta Christina, Queen of Norway befit the personage, she may in turn evince the Spinozian rule in contemporary culture. An this is Slavoj Zizek's theory "You can get whatever you want but with the substance removed: coffee without caffeine, cigarettes without nicotine..." for the case, sex without penetration.

I may be a total freak, but I do have G-spot-type-orgasms, i.e., ejaculate, without being penetrated with anything at all…

Greta Christina, Queen of Norway

Mystic women happen to result from the exemplary representatives of the Other sex and its mysteries. "...no virile role is possible in the eyes of God, in front of God. And this is why mystic men cannot do other but become women or become kids."2 The special version illustrated by Lacan as "Other jouissance," should sustain the jouissance of the One that is God, to the point of her becoming One in that enjoyment.

They are One. Should this jouissance partake of perversion, Lacan points to Angelus Silesius confusing his contemplative eye with the eye of God, to Hadewijch d'Anvers and Teresa de Avila supposed to be coming...his question, what are they getting off on? Letter nine of Hadewijch describes her passion for God in mutual rejoicing.3

...mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, soul in soul, and one sweet divine nature flows through them both, and both are one through themselves, and will always remain.

Letter twenty is a very moving example of what she calls the twelve unspeakable hours of love.

The nature from which true love springs has twelve hours which drive love out of herself and bring her back in herself. And when love comes back in herself she brings with her all that makes the unspeakable hours drive her out of herself: a mind that seeks to know, a heart full of desire, and a soul full of love.

Between the enraptured angel and Teresa de Avila as carved by Bernini in white marble, mutual passion embraces an invisible Other, God. The purpose of the phallic spear, being not to pour something into the saint's body but rather to draw something out, it should create a hole therein. And a mark?

In his hands I saw a long golden spear and at the end of the golden tip I seemed to see a point of fire. With this he seemed to pierce my heart several times so that it penetrated to my entrails. When he drew it out, I thought he was drawing them out with it. The pain was so sharp that it made me utter several moans; and so excessive was the sweetness caused me by this intense pain that the soul won't be content with anything less than God. It is not bodily pain, but spiritual, though the body has a share in it - indeed a great share.

Woman, the analyst, the signifier - saints, angels...

In that she comes to be emptied, in that she enjoys/suffers the act of it, is Saint Teresa's jouissance to convey the flavor of what you do in analysis?

1. Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book XX: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge: Encore, chap. VI, NY: Norton, 1998. back up
2. Vuarnet, Jean-Nöel, Extases Féminines, Paris: Arthaud, 1980. back up
3. Wilson, Katharina, Medieval Women Writers, Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 1984. back up

 

Kara Walker, Consume, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 1998
             Cut, cut paper and adhesive on wall, 1998


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