The Aesthetic Clinic: Feminine Sublimation in Contemporary Writing, Psychoanalysis, and Art (Suny Series: Insinuations, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)

Examines experimental art and literature by women alongside psychoanalysis and philosophy to develop a new understanding of sublimation and aesthetic experience. In The Aesthetic Clinic, Fernanda Negrete brings together contemporary women writers and artists well known for their formal experimentation--Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Marguerite Duras, Roni Horn, and Clarice Lispector--to argue that the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire. To elaborate this ethics, Negrete looks to notions of sublimation and feminine sexuality developed by Freud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Nietzsche, and their reinvention with and after Jacques Lacan, including in the schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But she also highlights how psychoanalytic theory draws on writing and other creative practices to conceive of unconscious processes and the transformation sought through analysis. Thus, the "aesthetic clinic" of the book's title (a term Negrete adopts from Deleuze) is not an applied psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis. Rather, The Aesthetic Clinic privileges the call and constraints issued by each woman's individual work. Engaging an artwork here is less about retrieving a hidden meaning through interpretation than about receiving a precise transmission of sensation, a jouissance irreducible to meaning. Not only do art and literature serve an urgent clinical function in Negrete's reading but sublimation itself requires an embrace of femininity. At the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Fernanda Negrete is Assistant Professor of French and Executive Director of the Center for theStudy of Psychoanalysis and Culture Contents 6 List of Illustrations 8 Acknowledgments 10 Acquired Permissions 11 Introduction: On Freud’s Couch, Dreaming of Art 14 Enigma, Excess, and Envy 23 Dangers in Constructing a Clinical Aesthetics 25 A Girl’s Fates 28 Lack 30 Femininity versus Ego 32 A Girl’s Savoir, and Her Other Fates 33 Dora and the Motive of Symptoms 37 Dora and the Limits of Sex 40 Unruly Drive 42 Beyond the Limits of Culture 44 Feminine Sublimation 48 Part I The Transvaluation of Health 58 Chapter 1 Louise Bourgeois’ Art of Hysteria 60 1893, 1993, 2018 . . . à l’infini 60 How Do You Relate to a Hummingbird? 62 Vital Beheadings 65 Hysterics, Women, and Unintelligible Artists 70 Resurrections and Revelations 73 Hysterical Expression beyond the Moral World 78 Other Tableaux: “À Baudelaire” “À une passante” 82 Sublime Conversions 91 Lack and Ambivalence 94 From Hysteric Symptom to the Arch of the Drive 98 Object a: A Conversion of Values 102 Chapter 2 Transmuting Pain into Joy with Precious Liquids 106 Vestibule 108 The Inorganic Cause 117 Challenges of Extimate Knowledge 122 At the Threshold 127 Lying Down: From Partial Objects and Flows to Objet a 132 Rhythm 146 Chapter 3 Lygia Clark on the Space–Body Problem 152 What Can a Body Do? 160 O agora: Rethinking the Work beyond Interpretation 164 Topology and Psyche 167 “Connect-I-cut” 170 “A coisa decisiva” / “The Decisive Thing” 175 “Mute Thought” 181 Part II Love beyond Pleasure 188 Chapter 4 (Re)Visions of Love: Marguerite Duras 190 Saint Hommage, Sinthomage 194 The Royal Road to a Knowledge of the Unconscious 204 Losing the Name, Clearing the Stage 209 The Name of the Place 213 The Letters of the Landscape 218 Encore: To Love Is to See 220 Chapter 5 Developing Douleur exquise: Sophie Calle et al. 230 Uncanny Narcissism 238 Chronology Disrupted 244 Douleur without Borders 256 Sublimation with Symptom 261 Part III For an Uncanny Ethics of Care 268 Chapter 6 Water, Weather, Words: Le Temps with Roni Horn and Clarice Lispector 270 Water Contemplation 272 To Contemplate the Instant of the World 276 The Now-Instant 283 Rendre le Temps Sensible 284 To the Lighthouse 288 Weather-Appropriate Reading 290 In Vatnasafn/Library of Water with Água Viva 301 Anamorphic Mirrors 305 Works Cited 314 Index 326 Examines experimental art and literature by women alongside psychoanalysis and philosophy to develop a new understanding of sublimation and aesthetic experience. In The Aesthetic Clinic, Fernanda Negrete brings together contemporary women writers and artists well known for their formal experimentation--Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Marguerite Duras, Roni Horn, and Clarice Lispector--to argue that the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire. To elaborate this ethics, Negrete looks to notions of sublimation and feminine sexuality developed by Freud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Nietzsche, and their reinvention with and after Jacques Lacan, including in the schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But she also highlights how psychoanalytic theory draws on writing and other creative practices to conceive of unconscious processes and the transformation sought through analysis. Thus, the "aesthetic clinic" of the book's title (a term Negrete adopts from Deleuze) is not an applied psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis. Rather, The Aesthetic Clinic privileges the call and constraints issued by each woman's individual work. Engaging an artwork here is less about retrieving a hidden meaning through interpretation than about receiving a precise transmission of sensation, a jouissance irreducible to meaning. Not only do art and literature serve an urgent clinical function in Negrete's reading but sublimation itself requires an embrace of femininity. At the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Fernanda Negrete is Assistant Professor of French and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture "In The Aesthetic Clinic, Fernanda Negrete brings together contemporary women writers and artists well known for their formal experimentation--Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Marguerite Duras, Roni Horn, and Clarice Lispector--to argue that the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire. To elaborate this ethics, Negrete looks to notions of sublimation and feminine sexuality developed by Freud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Nietzsche, and their reinvention with and after Jacques Lacan, including in the schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But she also highlights how psychoanalytic theory draws on writing and other creative practices to conceive of unconscious processes and the transformation sought through analysis. Thus, the aesthetic clinic of the book's title (a term Negrete adopts from Deleuze) is not an applied psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis. Rather, The Aesthetic Clinic privileges the call and constraints issued by each woman's individual work. Engaging an artwork here is less about retrieving a hidden meaning through interpretation than about receiving a precise transmission of sensation, a jouissance irreducible to meaning. Not only do art and literature serve an urgent clinical function in Negrete's reading but sublimation itself requires an embrace of femininity." --Back cover "In The Aesthetic Clinic, Fernanda Negrete brings together contemporary women writers and artists well known for their formal experimentation--Louise Bourgeois, Sophie Calle, Lygia Clark, Marguerite Duras, Roni Horn, and Clarice Lispector--to argue that the aesthetic experiences afforded by their work are underwritten by a tenacious and uniquely feminine ethics of desire. To elaborate this ethics, Negrete looks to notions of sublimation and feminine sexuality developed by Freud, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Nietzsche, and their reinvention with and after Jacques Lacan, including in the schizoanalysis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. But she also highlights how psychoanalytic theory draws on writing and other creative practices to conceive of unconscious processes and the transformation sought through analysis. Thus, the aesthetic clinic of the book's title (a term Negrete adopts from Deleuze) is not an applied psychoanalysis or schizoanalysis. Rather, The Aesthetic Clinic privileges the call and constraints issued by each woman's individual work. Engaging an artwork here is less about retrieving a hidden meaning through interpretation than about receiving a precise transmission of sensation, a jouissance irreducible to meaning. Not only do art and literature serve an urgent clinical function in Negrete's reading but sublimation itself requires an embrace of femininity." --Amazon.com __Examines experimental art and literature by women alongside psychoanalysis and philosophy to develop a new understanding of sublimation and aesthetic experience.____The Aesthetic Clinic____The Aesthetic Clinic__