| Lutecium a non-school of Lacanian/Freudian Psychoanalysis San Francisco, California |
| Winter 2010 Immersion Film Event with Rebecca Bauknight, Ph.D., Eric Essman, M.A.. Diane Borden, Ph.D., Cynthia Sailers, M.A., M.F.A., Jacques Siboni, M.D.. and Mr. X (a "mystery" discussant) _____________________________________________________________ Presenting Jane Campion's "In the Cut" and Premiering a short film by Christina Corfield: "The Folly of the Wise" ______________________________________________________________ “Good Cop – Bad Cop, Good Sister – Bad Sister”: Jane Campion's "In the Cut" By Eric Essman, M.A. |
“The Other’s jouissance is not a sign of love” – Lacan, Seminar 20
Jane Campion’s filmography, including Sweetie, Angel at My Table, the Piano, Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, and Bright
Star, has presented the manifold of female subjectivity, power, and desire in a variety of political, colonial, cultural,
psychological, and social domains. The psychological thriller In the Cut (2003) is perhaps her most disturbing
presentation of abjection as a state of sexual and emotional being at the margins of the public world, a condition which
structurally appears to overlap the borders of the Lacanian registers, Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic. Is abjection,
defined as a depressed condition involving Imaginary identification with a debased part object, necessarily a
consequence of traumatic abuse? Is it a function of perverse (sado-masochistic) enjoyment? A chronic-shock syndrome
associated with traumatic witnessing (primal scene)? Is abjection a link to the incomprehensible Real of the body? How
is abjection related to the Symbolic instantiated by the Law, whose essence, according to Lacan, is “to divide up,
distribute, or reattribute everything that counts as enjoyment (jouissance)”? Does the character doubling or splitting
between sisters and police in the film represent the externalization of intolerably conflicted states or does it paradoxically
sustain a fantasy that the states or registers can eventually be confronted and integrated? Campion’s narrative, which
begins with a pursuit of academic knowledge of colloquial signifiers, culminates in a life-and-death struggle with the
paternal law as enacted in the psychotic Real.
Jane Campion’s filmography, including Sweetie, Angel at My Table, the Piano, Portrait of a Lady, Holy Smoke, and Bright
Star, has presented the manifold of female subjectivity, power, and desire in a variety of political, colonial, cultural,
psychological, and social domains. The psychological thriller In the Cut (2003) is perhaps her most disturbing
presentation of abjection as a state of sexual and emotional being at the margins of the public world, a condition which
structurally appears to overlap the borders of the Lacanian registers, Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic. Is abjection,
defined as a depressed condition involving Imaginary identification with a debased part object, necessarily a
consequence of traumatic abuse? Is it a function of perverse (sado-masochistic) enjoyment? A chronic-shock syndrome
associated with traumatic witnessing (primal scene)? Is abjection a link to the incomprehensible Real of the body? How
is abjection related to the Symbolic instantiated by the Law, whose essence, according to Lacan, is “to divide up,
distribute, or reattribute everything that counts as enjoyment (jouissance)”? Does the character doubling or splitting
between sisters and police in the film represent the externalization of intolerably conflicted states or does it paradoxically
sustain a fantasy that the states or registers can eventually be confronted and integrated? Campion’s narrative, which
begins with a pursuit of academic knowledge of colloquial signifiers, culminates in a life-and-death struggle with the
paternal law as enacted in the psychotic Real.
| ___________________________________________________________________ Saturday, March 20, 2010 12noon - 5pm Variety Club, Hobart Building, 582 Market St., San Francisco ___________________________________________________________________ |
Fee: $30 general admission / $20 students