The Structures of Love: Art and Politics Beyond the Transference

260 Pages·2012·6.48 MB·English

by  Penney

(cid:43)(cid:34)(cid:46)(cid:38)(cid:52)(cid:1)(cid:49)(cid:38)(cid:47)(cid:47)(cid:38)(cid:58)
The Structures of Love
(cid:34)(cid:51)(cid:53)(cid:1)(cid:34)(cid:47)(cid:37)(cid:1)(cid:49)(cid:48)(cid:45)(cid:42)(cid:53)(cid:42)(cid:36)(cid:52)(cid:1)(cid:35)(cid:38)(cid:58)(cid:48)(cid:47)(cid:37)(cid:1)(cid:53)(cid:41)(cid:38)(cid:1)(cid:53)(cid:51)(cid:34)(cid:47)(cid:52)(cid:39)(cid:38)(cid:51)(cid:38)(cid:47)(cid:36)(cid:38)
The Structures of Love
SUNY series, Insinuations:
Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature
——————
Charles Shepherdson, editor
The Structures of Love
Art and Politics
beyond the Transference
James Penney
Cover photograph courtesy of David G. Mills.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2012 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Meehan
Marketing by Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Penney, James, 1971–
The structures of love : art and politics beyond the transference /
James Penney.
p. cm. — (SUNY series, insinuations: philosophy, psychoanalysis, literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3973-0 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Psychoanalysis—Philosophy. 2. Love. I. Title.
BF175.P4157 2012
150.19'5—dc22 2011009759
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Preface xi
I The Refusal of Love 1
Love in the Social 1
The Technique of Love 11
Resisting the Transference 19
Woman and the Riff‑Raff 28
The Fall of the Other 33
From Partial Love to Anxiety 40
II Socrates, Analyst 53
An Original Transference 53
Of Love Spheres and Stranded Vessels 56
A Pregnant Beauty 64
The Part of Love 73
Love, Ménage à Trois 79
III Like a Pack of Rats 91
Will the Real Frantz Fanon Please Stand Up? 91
A Gift of Quinine 98
The Metropolitan View 110
A Pack of Rats 116
vi Contents
IV Loving the Terrorist 127
Massacre and Subjectivation 127
A Century of Violence 135
A Begging Bowl Made of Flesh 143
Of Grey Hair and Treachery 151
V For the Love of Cinema 159
Imaginary Signifiers? 159
Species of Identification 165
Beyond the Phenomenon of Cinema 173
Proustian Obsession and the Failure of Spectatorship 181
VI Naked Love 193
Bodies of Theory 193
Painting in Nature 195
Nude and Naked 201
Tableau and Screen 205
Shameful Nudes 211
The Object of Art 221
Notes 229
Index 243
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Graph of desire; translated and adapted from
Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire, livre XVI.
D’un autre à l’autre, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller
(Paris: Seuil, 2006), 87. 9
Figure 1.2 Classical inverted vase experiment. 36
Figure 1.3 Lacan’s apparatus; Guillaume Paumier,
Madeleine Price Ball, and Mariana Ruiz
Villareal (Wikimedia, free licence). 37
Figure 5.1 Chantal Akerman, La Captive, opening sequence
(©2000 Gemini Films and ©2004 Kimstim, Inc.). 183
Figure 5.2 Chantal Akerman, La Captive (2000), closing
sequence (©2000 Gemini Films and
©2004 Kimstim, Inc.). 187
Figure 6.1 The field of vision; adapted from Jacques Lacan,
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,
ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (New York: Norton,
1998), 91, 106. 207
Figure 6.2 Lucian Freud, Hotel Bedroom (1954); courtesy
of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Lucian Freud. 213
Figure 6.3 Lucian Freud, Naked Girl Asleep II (1968);
courtesy of the Lucian Freud Archive and
Lucian Freud. 217
vii

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of chapter 3 was published as “Passing into the
Universal: Fanon, Sartre and the Colonial Dialectic,” Paragraph:
Journal of Modern Critical Theory 27, no. 3 (2004): 49–67; reprinted
with permission of Edinburgh University Press. An earlier version of
chapter 4 was published as “Genet among the Palestinians: Sex, Betrayal,
and the Incomparable Real,” in Comparatively Queer: Interrogating
Identities across Time and Cultures, ed. Jarrod Hayes, Margaret R.
Higonnet, and William J. Spurlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2010), 193–213. An earlier version of chapter 5 was published as “The
Failure of Spectatorship,” Communication Theory 17, no. 1 (February
2007): 43–60; reprinted with permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Diagrams from Lacan’s seminar are from The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan, translated by Alan Sheridan.
Copyright © 1973 by Editions du Seuil. English translation copyright
© 1977 by Alan Sheridan. Used by permission of W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc.
A Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada provided the resources necessary to complete
this project. Special thanks to Beaverbrook Art Gallery and Lucian
Freud for permission to feature reproductions of his stunning work.
My research assistants Susanna Ashley and Jacob Potempski provided
invaluable help. Trent University students too numerous to name
expressed views that contributed to my thinking about the transference
and forced me to invent new ways of talking about psychoanalysis and
Lacan. Finally: hello Ian and Violet! And thanks, Dave, who likely
wouldn’t want me to go on.
ix