The Feminine and the Maternal in the Matrixial Transference

Specialist Seminar

The Feminine and the Maternal in the Matrixial Transference, through Psychoanalysis and Art.

This seminar will appeal to those working in cultural, psychoanalytic, religious, aesthetic, art, philosophical or feminist theories broadly familiar with the dilemmas posed by post-Lacanian theories of subjectivity.

From the phallic point of view, the elimination of the archaic m/Other is the sacrifice necessary for heroic male sexuality to become productive. Such a Hero-Genius-Artist corresponds to the Canon that Griselda Pollock (1999) proposes to differentiate in her reading of art history. Anyone, male or female, who takes upon him or herself this hero configuration becomes by definition a man who eliminates the archaic Woman-m/Other. The price to be paid for this is very high if you are a female artist whose sexuality fits badly into Oedipal father–son circulation. (Ettinger: 2004)

Lacan warned that whosoever dares deal with the matter of the pre-natal could not be called psychoanalyst and would have to be excommunicated – because for Lacan, the field of psychoanalysis itself depends on the foreclosure of procreation. Against this position, the concept of the matrix moves the womb from nature to culture, making it the basis for another dimension of sense, for another sense, and for a supplementary feminine difference that is the human potentiality for a shareability and a co-poïesis where no ‘hero’ can become creative alone. (Ettinger 2004)

Bracha Ettinger, “Weaving a Woman Artist With-in the Matrixial Encounter-Event,”Theory, Culture and Society, (2004) vol. 21, no.1, pp.69-94.

To make art and with it to think theory ‘after Auschwitz’ is to struggle with the complexities of trauma’s wounding and its repression, with its oblivion and its unconscious memory. Thinking through the feminine in terms of psychoanalysis and from this specific art practice is taking up the challenge to acknowledge the phantasies that fuel the social structure and energize political violence and violation. Pollock, ‘Sacred Cows: Wandering in Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Anthropology’, in Griselda Pollock and Victoria Turvey Sauron (eds.) The Sacred and the Feminine:imagination and sexual difference ( London, I. B.Tauris, 2007).

Professor Bracha Ettinger: Born in Tel Aviv and based mainly in Paris (and of Israeli and British nationality), Bracha L. Ettinger is an artist (painter) and a groundbreaking theoretician working at the intersection of feminine sexuality, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, a senior clinical psychologist, and a practicing psychoanalyst.  Her artistic practice and her articulation, since 1985, of what has become known as the matrixial theory have transformed contemporary debates in contemporary art and cultural studies. She is the Marcel Duchamp Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art at the Media & Communications Division, European Graduate School (EGS), Saas-Fee. http://www.metramorphosis.org.uk

Professor Griselda Pollock: Professor of the Social and Critical Histories of Art; Director of CentreCATH at Leeds; Co-Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies; Executive Member of Centre for Jewish Studies; Executive Member of Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. Griselda Pollock is an art historian who explores the complex relationship between art history and feminist, cultural, aesthetic, political and psychoanalytic theory. She has written extensively on Bracha Ettinger’s challenging and independent theorizations of subjectivity. Her research areas include women’s cinema 1940-9; contemporary visual arts by women; film studies and feminist studies in the visual arts; trauma, history and memory after the Holocaust; Jewish Art and Modernity. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/fine_art/people/staff/gfsp.html

Venue: Trinity College, Walton Theatre, Arts Building (enter through Nassau St. Entrance). .

Date: Time: 1:30 -4:00: Cost: €25.