Re:TheAshLad - Sandbooks

prelinguistic presymbolic sense of self in which the mother of. the.
Imaginary (feminine) and feelings associated with her are central and.
compelling rather than peripheral and debased. These 'feelings' (bodily
drives. rhythms pulsions pleasures bliss) are never lost and their
memory is held. precariously in check by the patriarchal symbolic.
They can be seen to rise to. the surface through cultural forms in
different ways. For instance they have. been retrieved in readings of
artistic work where their resisting quality may. be. 'accidental' e.g. in
readings of the th century photographs of Julia. Margaret Cameron (see
Mavor ) or the abstract works of Helen Frankenthaler. (Pollock ).
Feminist cultural theorists have exposed the way in which. these.
memories remain to 'trouble' patriarchy revealing how cultural
practices and. stories (films rituals fairy tales myths) replay the moment
of patriarchal. culture's formation in which the possibilities of
'difference' are continually. abjected and repressed (Kristeva Creed
Warner ).. Kristeva believes that the subject can gain access more
readily to the. semiotic. chora through creative musical poetic practices
or even just through vibrant. use of colour (Kristeva ). She sees these
possibilities as already having. their origins in the semiotic chora
recalling a more fluid plural and less. fixed perception of meaning and
self which reactivates feelings lost in the. patriarchal 'rational'.
However Kristeva also makes it clear that the. 'feminine' semiotic
chora is not something outside or beyond language. She. states 'if the
feminine exists it only exists in the order of significance or. signifying
process and it is only in relation to meaning and signification.
positioned as their excess or transgressive other that it exists speaks.
thinks. (itself) and writes (itself) for both sexes'. Thus it is 'different or
other in. relation to language and meaning but nevertheless only
thinkable within the. symbolic' ().. presymbolic within symbolic
framework. However as Kaplan notes 'the childadult never forgets the
world of the. Imaginary and heshe continues to desire unconsciously
the illusionary. oneness with the mother heshe experienced' (). It is this
proposition. that the child clings to those heady pleasures of the 'bliss'
of preOedipal. fusion with the mother that has been central to the
development of a theory of. visual culture. Lacan believed that the child
never forgets its illusionary. oneness with the mother or the 'jouissance'
that this moment entailed a. moment. before the intervention of paternal
law which requires both the control of. 'self' and the
denigrationabjection of the feminine (mother) and the pleasures.
associated with her emotions feelings love.. Briefly Lacan's reworking
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