Abstract
In Julia Kristeva’s 2015 novel The Enchanted Clock, the protagonist argues that the social contract is in dire need of repair. Though it was meant to “bring happiness on earth”, it has been “programmed from the start to become a universal timepiece”, occluding human vulnerability and the singular multiverse of inner experience (231-232). Seeking to explore the possibility of an alternative community, Kristeva employs this character to reclaim the empathetic power of imagination, which she places at the heart of fiction, psychoanalysis and maternal subjectivity. My aim in this paper is to show how she succeeds in fleshing out what in Passions of Our Time she calls a “corpus mysticum of singularities” (224). Drawing on her analysis of reliance or maternal eroticism as well as on Gaston Bachelard’s theorization of an other-directed imaginary, I demonstrate that this community held together by “[b]odies in proximity” is not based solely on faith in the universal value of rights and laws, but also on an ethos that links motherhood and psychoanalysis, the ethos of tactfulness (Enchanted Clock 167). Connecting this term to Kristeva’s earlier discussion on a herethics of motherhood, I emphasize the significance of a “vigilant transference” that holds and supports others without binding them (Passions 223). In a world where the suffering of distant others is either rationalized or spectacularized, it is important, I argue, not to take our gaze away, to hold while beholding others’ pain, allowing this pain to take hold of us.
Presenters
Maria MargaroniAssociate Professor, English Studies, University of Cyprus, Lefkosia, Cyprus
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Beyond Borders: The Role of the Humanities in Reimagining Communities
KEYWORDS
KRISTEVA, BACHELARD, IMAGINATION, EMPATHY, MATERNAL SUBJECTIVITY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, RELIANCE
