Speaking the unspeakable : religion, misogyny, and the uncanny mother in Freud's cultural texts / Diane Jonte-Pace.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jonte-Pace, Diane E. (Diane Elizabeth), 1951-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Psychoanalysis and religion.

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939.

Freud, Sigmund.

Feminist psychology.

Physical Description:

x, 190 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2001]

Summary:

In This Bold Rereading of Freud's Cultural Texts, Diane Jonte-Pace uncovers an undeveloped "counterthesis" that repeatedly interrupts or subverts his well-known Oedipal masterplot. The counterthesis is evident in three clusters of themes within Freud's work: maternity, mortality, and immortality; Judaism and anti-Semitism; and mourning and melancholia. Each of these clusters is associated with the "uncanny" and with death and loss. Appearing most frequently in Freud's images, metaphors, and illustrations, the counterthesis is no less present for being unspoken -- it is, indeed, "unspeakable."

The "uncanny mother" is a primary theme in Freud's texts involving dead mothers, mothers as instructors in death, and fantasies of immortality. In other texts, Jonte-Pace finds a story of Jews struggling with desires for assimilation to a dominant Gentile culture, for whom the dangers of assimilation are associated unconsciously with death and the uncanny mother. This counterthesis also surfaces in Freud's ability to mourn the social and religious losses accompanying modernity and his inability to mourn the loss of his own mother. This unfolding of Freud's counterthesis in its several guises points toward a theory of the cultural and unconscious sources of misogyny and anti-Semitism in "the unspeakable." Jonte-Pace's work opens exciting new vistas for the feminist analysis of Freud's intellectual legacy.

Contents:

Introduction. Misogyny and Religion under Analysis: Masterplot and Counterthesis in Tension 1

1. The Counterthesis in "The Dream Book" and "A Religious Experience": The Beginning and End of Interpretation 21

2. Death, Mothers, and the Afterlife: At Home in the Uncanny 45

3. Jewishness and the (Un)Canny: "Death and Us Jews" 74

4. The Sources of Anti-Semitism: Circumcision, Abjection, and the Uncanny Mother 99

5. Modernity, Melancholia, and the (In)Ability to Mourn: When Throne and Altar Are in Danger 117

Epilogue: Guessing at What Lies Beneath 140.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 169-181) and index.

ISBN:

0520226003

0520230760

OCLC:

46402248