陳福仁(國立中山大學外文系) [email protected] 游素玲(國立成功大學外文系) [email protected] 12/10/2002 族裔美國文學和後精神分析學:性別/種族(II-I)
Inspired by the Greek Oedipal myths, the Oedipus complex is defined by Freud as an unconscious set of loving and hostile desires which the subject experiences in relation to its parents: the positive Oedipus complex involves the infant’s incestuous desire for the parent of the opposite sex and the negative Oedipus complex concerns the infant’s desire for the parent of the same sex. In Freud’s account, the Oedipus complex emerges in the third year of life and then declines in the fifth year, when the child renounces sexual desire for its parents and identifies with the rival. Thus, the Oedipus complex serves to the child’s psychic growth and consolidates its ego and superego. Freud argues that all psychopathological structures could be traced to a malfunction in the Oedipus complex. Yet, it is quite clear that this Oedipus model is not only uniquely Western but also has a socioeconomic dimension in Western individualism and capitalism. Further, the Oedipal forms of life, though historically and culturally conditioned in the late nineteen century, cannot be a “universal” complex even within a single Western culture, much less across many non-Western cultures where the sibling, rather than the mother, can also become an intrinsic object of erotic attachment and the mother’s brother, rather than the father, is to be feared and loved.
Nowadays the Oedipus complex cannot even describe the subjective formation of children who grow up in a place like orphanages, daycare centers, or the families with a single parent as well as gay couples where a traditional “father” or “mother” is not present or unclear. In addition, the Oedipus complex cannot work in a cross-culture context such
as the second-generation ethnic American immigrants who are raised in between the “mother” culture and the “father” land. Critiquing the limitation and inadequacy of the Oedipus complex, scholars either focus on the internal dynamics of the Oedipus narrative itself or point out its lack of cultural universality. Some manifest Freud’s distortion or misreading of the Oedipus myth, trying to stretch out the core of the Oedipus story to the moment of his death or the pre-history before his birth, or reformulate versions of
‘Multiple Oedipus.” Some offer anthropological studies to demonstrate how the Oedipus myth is limited to Western culture and argue for other more appropriate myths like “Token
and Taboo” or “Narcissus.”
Taken from the work of Charles Darwin, a myth concerning the origin of culture and the moral law, Freud’s account in Totem and Taboo mainly highlights the institution of
totemism and the principles of incest and exogamy. The two myths-- Totem and Taboo
and the Oedipal Narrative-- both center on murder and incest (the father is killed and the
murder of the father allows access to the sexual object). Unlike the Oedipal Narrative in
which murder leads to an incestuous object, Totem and Taboo, however, indicates that
murder puts an end to incest and establishes the order of law. In the aspect of structural and temporal operation, the second myth exhibits a more possible logic that the murder of the father not only establishes the law of symbolic exchange, but is attended by primordial guilt— as if the father somehow remained after his death to haunt those who come after him. In the case of the second myth, the paternal function seems better established to be more omnipotent and universal. The erection of the paternal law as a universal and
normative principle in both myths ignores the role of the mother and associates the mother with regressive and “bad” feelings. In order to reassert the maternal operation, feminist scholars (e.g. Melanie Klein, Jessica Benjamin, and Nancy Chodorow ) reformulate the Oedipal narrative, focusing on the mother and the breast, and shifting the core of the narrative to the pre-oedipal and early oedipal stages. For instance, Nancy Chodorow, in her reading of Klein and Winnicott, emphasized the pre-oedipal mother-child relationship as important to subject-formation. In her book The Reproduction of Mothering:
Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Chodorow shows how the institution of
motherhood based on childcare provided by women sustains the central problematics of separation and differentiation for daughters. Because of being mothered by someone of the same gender, girls, Chodorow argues, develop both more fluid or permeable ego boundaries than boys do and a sense of self that is continuous with others. The need for connection to others in turn underlies the desire for the mother. Chodorow's theory has proved stimulating to feminist literary critics who have, through application of her ideas, been able to trace the structures of female subjectivity and the importance of the
mother-daughter relationship in women's writing. Chodorow's theory of the reproduction of mothering, however, has been criticized from several angles. Her assumption of the homogeneity of women's identities has been challenged, for she displays no awareness of class, racial, ethnic, and other differences.
The “universal” myth of the Oedipus complex does not go off stage after the father and the mother in return are put in the spotlight. Lacan’s and the Lacanian critique point to the absence of an adequate account of the symbolic in Freud’s account. Before we move to Lacan’s or the Lacanian critique of the Oedipus complex, we need to understand that Lacan’s thought is perennially open to revision and the Lacanian scholars do not consent to a single reading of Lacan’s work. In my view, Lacan’s and the Lacanian critiques of the Oedipus complex suggest a movement in structural terms from
Throughout his fifty-year career, Lacan not only reads and rereads Freud but also rereads himself. As early as in the 1930s, Lacan claimed that the father is essential to the
social integration and stability of the child. Lacan later offered an alternative explanation of the origin of the subjective psyche in terms of the weaning complex, asserting that “the structure of the human family has foundations far removed from male physical supremacy” and identifying “maternal authority” as one to which the superego is first formed in response. Again, Lacan revised his theory and no longer perceived separation from the mother as setting all individuals in the direction of their destinations. In the early 1950s, Lacan argued that it is now “the imago of the counterpart” that introduces “the I to socially elaborated situations.” The specular image to Lacan is the “imago of one’s own body;” that is, it is by identifying with the specular image that the infant first begins to construct his or her ego in the mirror stage. Though Lacan insisted that the figure in the glass is no other than the counterpart of the self, his followers had elaborated on this specular image. First, feminist Elizabeth Grosz argues for the “(m)other/mirror” stage in which not only the mirror is the mother of the ego, but the mother is in the mirror.
Second, if the specular image is neither the maternal imago nor the paternal imago, the encounter with the specular image as the self, for some scholars, becomes a version of narcissism; in this case, the classical myth of Narcissus seems better adapted than that of Oedipus to depict subjective development. Gay activists even associate homosexuality with narcissism, arguing the origin of the human sexual desire is always already
homosexual. Third, the relation to the specular image is defined as primary identification with the (br)other. According to Juliet MacCannell, the identification with the fraternal image features a postpatriarchal, postoedipal world in which the traditional world of the oedipal father or mother is replaced by the regime of the bonded brothers. Yet, facing the tyrannical father, the possible worse successor, brothers, daughters are brought out in the foreground by scholars (e.g. Julia Kristeva) in the mainly male drama in which the daughter turns into one who instead masters and murders the father and establishes a sisterhood against the dyad of brothers.
In the early 1960s, Lacan reformulated the Oedipus complex in terms of symbolic mediation; that is, identification is linked to neither biological or visual processes, neither people nor images, but to the structure of the signifier. Lacan redefined primary
identification as a linguistic operation and the subject is constituted as an effect of the signifier. More specifically, it is the phallus or the Name-of-the-Father as the fundamental signifier that confers identity on the subject and signifies the Oedipal prohibition. In spite of Lacan’s insistence upon the distinction between the phallus and the penis, feminists claim that the privileged position Lacan accords to the phallus just repeats the patriarchal gesture. Though Lacan retains the term phallus throughout his career, he becomes less and less convinced that the symbolic father could be established in any pure or unequivocal way. He argues that we can “no longer rely on the Father’s guarantee.” Some new items began to emerge in about the 1960s— jouissance, the object
petit a, and the Real. Lacan pushed his conception of the Oedipus complex one step
further to the domain of the real: a final revision of the paternal metaphor reveals that the object a can function in the place of the phallus. Lacan posits the object a as the empty
gravitational center around which not only subjective structure but also human civilization comes into existence. Lacan’s conception of the Oedipus complex shifts the focus of the myth from: the family members (the father or the mother or the sibling) >> the specular image >> the signifier >> the object a
How can such a “universal” complex be employed to examine the “particular” ethnic American identity? Lacan regards the Oedipus complex as both universality and contingent since it is “uniquely and purely symbolic.” Lacan conceives the universality of the Oedipus complex not anthropologically in terms of the incest taboo, but
symbolically, in terms of a signifying structure that predetermines an alienated symbolic identity for every subject. In other words, symbolic alienation is not only cultural but also universal. Since every culture depends on language (either in written or spoken form) and everybody is caught in a network of signifiers, though the Symbolic or signification could be diverse and varies from culture to culture, symbolic alienation is inevitable. We are in a sense linguistically castrated, deprived of mastery. We are never fully in control of language, because words carry more associations than human intentionality can manage. Sometimes Lacan refers to this condition of subjectivity as symbolic alienation and
sometimes he calls it castration. So far, Lacan’s formulation of the Oedipus complex is located in his concept of the Symbolic register. Next to the symbolic mediation, Lacan theorizes the Oedipus complex in terms of outside of the symbolic, the object a in the Real
register. Everybody is caught in a network of signifiers, a network that mortifies all bodies, though in various ways, by precluding access to either one’s own jouissance or any knowledge of the body outside of symbolic structure. Language is the agent of the cut that produces subject and object through the same action. The object a is produced by
cutting away something from the subject. It is defined as the remainder left behind by the introduction of the Symbolic in the Real, and also as cause of desire that brings desire into existence. Instead of language as the core of identity, it is the object a that renders
constitutive the core of subjectivity.
Freud’s initial account of the “Oedipus complex” appears deficient since it depends on the presence of the male person and the entire theory of the Oedipus complex
presupposes a traditional, patriarchal, Victorian family, and cannot be extended to other social arrangements. Also the emphasis on the signifier of the Phallus implies an association with the male genital on the one hand and a univocal model of desire on the other. The shift to the object a as the core of subjective constitution, however, suggests
multiple and heterogeneous possibilities for desire that has no relation with personal identification. These progressive theories of the Oedipus complex indicate a movement
from: personal identification >> impersonal identification
As the theory of the Oedipus complex is ultimately oriented toward the object a that
designates neither a person nor a thing, identity is explicable in terms of neither nature nor nurture, since the unconscious cannot be considered biological— it is not part of my body and it is not exactly culturally constructed either. Identity should be grasped as an index of how both biology and culture fail to determine subjectivity and desire. As the new Lacanian scholars rarely explore the issue of identity in the American multiethnic context, and yet the way we talk about identity will profoundly affect greatly our identity and ethnic experiences. Thus, I aim to theorize a methodological alternative that allows us to examine subjectivity outside the sterile constructivism-essentialism debate and offer an ethnically contextualized stage of the Oedipus complex. In a revised scenario of the Oedipus complex, the child is introduced by a caregiver (not limited to any gender or race) to the Symbolic. The caregiver’s job is to turn the child from personal identification (mother-child-father) to the fourth item, the Signifier that does not need to coincide with the paternal or maternal signifier, or to be embodied by a specific authoritative figure (e.g., president, policeman, white male, or father). The child, however, should recognize that the caregiver always desires for herself or himself other than the child. Next, with this caregiver’s concession to the signifier, the signifier’s function should be replaced again by a new item, as the child further experiences the lack of the Symbolic, an inadequacy of signifiers to access the cause of desire, the object a, around which the child’s subjectivity is finally constituted. The child finally realizes that a harmonious union with the other (the caregiver) in the domestic setting is an imaginary complementarity; in addition, the child knows that the Other in the societal milieu is insufficient and the “Phallus” can be never definitely connected with a biological person or a thing (e.g., King, wealth, or blood) signified. The chain’s disruption characterizes the cause of desire, the object a and thereby constituting the core of identity.
This new version, on the one hand, depersonalizes the Oedipus complex, and, on the other, moves our identity politics beyond the imaginary identification and proliferation of signifying norms. It provides a ground from which to begin thoroughly deinvidualizing our understanding of identification and identity outside of biology and nature. Identity is not grounded in nature, and it is not purely rhetorical. Though the subject’s relation to the Other provides the basis for his or her relations— social, legal, sexual, ethical, with other people, symbolic identification produces only the subject of the signifier. Identity may be in language, but it is not purely linguistic. It is the subject’s relation with the object a--a loss of mastery or an excess of signification--that constitutes the core of identity. Identity is actually motivated by something that cannot be totally visualized, imagined, performed, and assumed.
movement from essentialism to constructivism, Lacan’s concept of the real, the object a, or jouissance helps us think about identity outside of biology and nature and, more
importantly, outside the realm of persons and assumption of signifiers. Following the Hegelian conception of desire as one for recognition, for the other to ratify one’s existence by means of affirmation, cultural materialists offer mimetic account of identification and regard identity merely performative. The account of mimetic identification reduces identity to one shaped in the imaginary level in which white and nonwhite are artificially categorized in the American multiethnic context and identity is shaped by, in Charles Taylor’s words, “recognition or especially misrecognition” in terms of two opposite but complementary halves. All binary relations are imaginary in the sense that they are structured by relations of identification and opposition, one-to-one relations (White vs. Black; White vs. Yellow). To conceptualize identity in terms of exclusion and the regulation of inside/outside is simply to think identity imaginarily, to remain caught in binary categories. The mode of identity as performance at will (that is what Judith Bulter advocates) appears quite optimistic and encouraging at the first glance, but it leads to more serious outcomes. First, a free desire to perform any features and to assume signifiers suggests a subject completely conscious, rhetoricalized, and self-evident, which actually characterize one devoid of desire since desire is produced by an inevitable lack or excess of signification (Gish Jen’s Mona in the Promised Land, in which a Chinese-American girl decides to become a new Jew through mimetic identification and assumption of symbolic features, may indicate this mode of identification). This mode of identity suggests desire as one totally conscious and self-evident as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari maintain in Anti-Oedipus that “there is only desire and the social, and nothing
else.” Their denial of mediation of language and the surplus effect of symbolization collapse subjectivity back into the ego and reduce desire to need. Being American for ethnic minority is more than identification with the ideal ego (e.g., Caucasian Americans or other socially privileged groups) in terms of illusions of images like clothing, cosmetics, houses, or cars, and also more than a mere assumption of some signifiers like “freedom” or “individualism.” Not a product of that symbolic chain’s meaning but its disruption, its impossibility, being American for ethnic minority and Caucasian majority is an
identification with the impossible position that constitutes a sense of self oriented to one’s jouissance and fundamental fantasy.
To disarticulate identity from a conception of mimicry and performance help deal with racism in another way. Cultural materialists have advocated providing authentic
images of minorities and correcting misrepresentations to fight against sexism, racism, and
stereotypes. Racism or sexism, however, is not merely the consequence of hegemonic misnaming and mis-recognition as well as non-recognition, curable through political resignification or re-imaginarization. Racial and sexual antagonism are not only a
sociopolitical phenomenon, their theorization cannot remain restricted in the level of imaginary and symbolic analysis. It is one’s denial of the surplus effect of
symbolization as well as one’s exclusion of the jouissance that prompt one to substantialize subjective abjection (the object a) in terms of the other (e.g., the black) who is presumed to
have access to the excessive enjoyment that is, however, insufferable to the racist or sexist. Thus, in order to reduce racial and sexual antagonism, we should be directed toward
admitting desire that involves a sense of loss, a loss as a consequence of excess, thereby recognizing a loss of mastery that stems from an excess of signification and confronting the surplus enjoyment without personifying that abjection.
Lacan’s discourse of the Analyst can be seen not only an analytic treatment but also social, political, cultural operations to help determine a form of social tie in which
antagonism is reduced to the lowest level. The goal to bring out the subject (the patient or the general public or the particular group) as jouissance situates the psychoanalytic treatment as well as the social discursive as an analytic discourse, one Lacan represents with an algorithm that contains four algebraic symbols. Presented as "the thing" in the
early works of Lacan, objet petit a, as cause of desire, occupies the position of the agent
played in the analytic setting by the analyst (also anyone who is able to articulate in the socio-political context). In other words, the analyst embodies the object a, speaking to the analysand (the public), a barred subject or group. In this way, serving as the cause of the analysand's desire, the analyst aims to interpellate the analysand (the public) to
recognize and further identify with the excluded part of being--the object a or the
thing--that has been excluded from symbolization or suppressed by the Master signifier, S1. Therefore, in order to reassume his cause of desire, the analysand (the public) should
undertake a process of the dialectization of master signifiers. In the confession about anxiety, desire, frustration, and guilt accompanied with demands, slips of the tongue, unintended acts, and slurred speech, the analysand (the public) works to produce a new master signifier by laborious associations. Once caught up in a dead end--the master signifier--that closes the meaning of a signifier, the analysand (the public) through the dialectization of master signifiers is finally able to create a new metaphor, subjectify his cause of desire, and bring his master signifiers in relation with other signifiers. To the analysand (the public), the master signifier no longer embodies monolithic values or offers unequivocal identity or meaning.
