The Body of Romance : Citation and Mourning in Written on the Body

En:

Aesthethika. Revista internacional de estudio e investigación interdisciplinaria sobre subjetividad, política y arte, vol. 2 no. 1‚

Editor:

Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología. Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas. Departamento de Etica, Política y Tecnología

Fecha:

2005

Tipo de documento: 

artículo

Idioma:

eng

Temas:

Psicoanálisis - Cuerpo - Romance

Descripción: 

The highly codified expectations of the romance genre, the discursive limits of interpellations of the body, as well as, the role of our citational legacy in the formation of embodied subjectivity, engage Winterson in Written on the Body. By means of a highly theatrical performance that relies heavily on a deliberately excessive use of citation for its effect, Winterson’s novel renders visible the role of language and narrative in the construction of the desiring body. Freudian and Lacanian understandings of the relationship between the desiring body and loss can assist our understanding of the ways in which the desiring body is constituted in a melancholic narrative ; this, in turn, enables a recognition of the necessity to repeat, and the possibilities inherent in the compulsive repetition. Winterson’s narrative cannot fail but to repeat, but in doing so, it also enacts a breakdown through its inscription of melancholic excess—an excess which returns a difference. Hence, While Written on the Body installs a received and, hence, citational thematic of seduction and loss, both the narrator and the text wish to escape the seductions of this legacy. Winterson’s novel provides a moment of breakdown, a glimpse of a limited recovery, by revealing that the real melancholia inscribed in narrative is not the romantic compulsion to repeat but that occasioned by our desire to narrate ‘the same story every time.’ In Written on the Body, Winterson returns a repetition with a difference and thereby signals provisional possibilities in the ongoing construction of the body of desire.

Identificador(es):

http://www.aesthethika.org/IMG/pdf/Gustarv2n1.pdf
ISSN 2344-9241