Elegiac Poetry: A Pastoral Resource with Complicated Grief

This essay argues that elegiac poetry, the poetry of mourning, may be a resource for pastoral care with complicated grief. It builds on Freuds distinction between mourning (normal grief) and melancholia (complicated grief), particularly as appropriated by French literary critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva. It makes the case for elegy as a locus for externalizing a lost object which, in complicated grief, has been internalized as part of the bereaved persons self and which is not only grieved but also treated ambivalently if it is not hated. Drawing on the suffering God motif in Christian theologies of the cross, theological reflections supplement psychological arguments.     

Birth as Labor and Natality

Abstract

While the embodied subject has become a crucial site of theorization in both the study of religion and feminism, the maternal subject has not yet received consideration. As double, divided in bodies and psyches, subject to partial deaths, opaque to itself, continuous and bounded, of double ontological and legal status, perhaps complexly racialized, perhaps complexly sexed and gendered, the maternal subject defies a liberal anthropology. This paper turns to Hannah Arendt’s work and reception as an important path for consideration of the political import of maternality. Arendt perpetuates a strong private/public distinction and locates maternality in the realm of labor and decisively outside the polis. Birth and maternality as apolitical labor drew strong criticism from Arendt’s first generation of interpreters. Yet this also articulates “flesh-and-blood” aspects of maternality in ways that now deserve greater consideration. Arendt’s famous notion of natality as the source of human newness has been received with enthusiasm by many feminists. I show that Arendt, in part because of the theological heritage of her anthropology of the creature, adopts a problematically disembodied notion of birth, one that effaces the maternal subject in the production of the politics of citizens.     

Violence and the Sacred in the Fiction of Julia Kristeva

Abstract

This article examines the relatively neglected fiction of Julia Kristeva, especially her ‘gothic roman noir’ The Old Man and the Wolves, in relation to her theories of violence and abjection. It focuses on the various kinds of excitement and anxiety provoked by notions of border-crossing and metamorphosis in her fiction, and explores her critique of the banality of secular modernity and her nostalgic evocations of sacred space. I also discuss the paradox of her problematic use of detective fiction—a direct product of secular modernity—as a vehicle for this critique.     

Hidden Subjects: Rereading Eve and Mary

Abstract

Eve and Mary are two archetypes that persist within our culture at its most profound level despite world views imposed by Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. Since these figures are impossible to expel from our imaginations, revisiting them in the light of contemporary ideas of identity and gender might prove to be a useful means of understanding their cultural impact. In this article extracts from the work of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva are discussed which feature our two archetypes, framing them through the lens of gender critique. Their work clearly illuminates the status of these figures within our realities, and drawing on their observations, suggestions are made as to how we might re-figure both Eve and Mary as the true subjects of the foundation narratives they inhabit.     

“Throwing Baby out with the Bath water#x201D;: Some Reflections on the Evolution of Reproductive Technology}

This article discusses section 156 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which prohibits the use of eggs from aborted female foetuses for the purposes of reproduction. I argue that the pre-legislative debates focus only on the biological relationship between the aborted foetus and any ensuing child and foreclose the possibility of useful discussion about the potential merits of such technology. Kristeva's theory of abjection has been used in order to elucidate the strength of feeling about the use of eggs from the expelled foetus. I suggest that the ‘yuk’ factor stems from the potential for the blurring of the boundaries between life and death. In addition, I suggest that the stress placed on the biological link means that the foetus is ascribed special properties not given to live donors. Woman's very crucial role in reproductive technologies is therefore erased. The article argues that there are very good reasons why the debate on the subject should remain open. At present women donors have to undergo highly intrusive procedures in order to give eggs and the process is not without its health risks. The use of eggs from aborted foetuses certainly raises important consent issues but these could be addressed by placing women at the centre of the decision making process, starting with the recognition that it is women and not foetuses who have the remit and responsibility for giving consent for the use of their genetic material. Moreover, there should be an acknowledgement that women are perfectly capable of making informed decisions about donation and of considering the potential implications of participating in egg donation. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Finding unconscious phantasy in the session: Recognizing form

The concept of unconscious phantasy has played – and still does play – a central role in psychoanalytic thinking. The author discusses the various forms by which unconscious phantasies manifest themselves in the analytic session as they are lived out and enacted in the transference relationship. This paper also aims at expanding the kleinian theory of symbol formation by exploring the impact that emotional aspects connected to early “raw’, “pre‐symbolic’ phantasies have in the analysis and how their corporeal elements interlock with the signifying process. The author follows the expressive forms of primitive unconscious phantasies as they appear in a psychoanalytic session and proposes that the emotional effect that can be experienced in the communication between patient and analyst depends in great measure on “semiotic’ aspects linked to primitive phantasies that are felt and lived out in embodied ways. Rather than a move from unconscious phantasies that typify symbolic equations to those showing proper symbolization, these can coexist and simultaneously find their way to what is communicated to the analyst. As early phantasies bear an intimate connection to the body and to unprocessed emotions when they are projected into the analyst they can produce a powerful resonance, sometimes also experienced in a physical way and forming an integral part of the analyst's counter‐transference.     

‘Mystic Atheism’: Julia Kristeva's Negative Theology

Abstract

This article examines Julia Kristeva's paradoxical concept of a ‘mystic atheism’. It falls into three parts. First, it briefly surveys Kristeva's psychoanalytic account of Christian theology in Au commencement était l'amour (1985). Secondly, it assesses Kristeva's analysis of the Christian mystical tradition from Teresa of Avila to Angela of Foligno in such works as Le féminin et le sacré (1999) and the three volumes on Le génie féminin (1999-2002). For Kristeva, Christian mysticism represents a key moment in the transition from theology to psychoanalysis: what she locates within the work of the female mystics is a so-called ‘mystic atheism’, that is to say, an affirmation of an other within the subject as opposed to the divine other that supposedly lies outside it. Finally, the article offers some critical comments upon Kristeva's own ‘mystic atheism’: I argue that—like much negative theology—Kristeva's psychoanalysis remains ontotheological in form and that this dimension expresses itself in a problematic tendency to anthropomorphize the other within. In conclusion, I will suggest that Kristeva's ‘mystic atheism’ ultimately remains within the theological tradition it seeks to call into question.     

Introduction

Abstract

The introduction to the special issue situates the five following essays in the context of historical and contemporary theological reflection on maternality. It addresses the fraught connection between sexuality and maternality in the Christian theological imagination and argues that the maternal body has often functioned as a bridge between the opposed arenas of Word and flesh, God and humanity, and eternity and time. The introduction concludes by using the figure of the Virgin Mary as a lens to consider the theological themes of birth, grief, the incarnation, sacrifice, and Eucharist. Mary’s body, site of the incarnation, allows connection, mediation, contiguity, and congress to occur. As such, it also functions as a bridge between theology and sexuality.     

The undesired: on nudniks in Jewish American fiction

This essay discusses the recurring preoccupation in Jewish literature with the character of the nudnik, a popular figure in Jewish culture but a rather neglected one in scholarly studies. Even though the nudnik appears in many stories throughout the years, from Sholem Aleichem’s, through Franz Kafka’s, to Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories and novels – nowhere was he more prominent than in post–World War II Jewish American fiction, more specifically in the short stories and novels of Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud. Both Roth and Malamud depict the nudnik as an embodiment of a generational divide, between the tormented Americanized young and the tormenting “Ostjuden” old. And yet, while Malamud’s nudniks serve as a critique on the fate of Jewish culture and tradition in post-Holocaust America, Roth identifies the character of the nudnik as a contaminating element that will forever haunt the younger individual. By discussing the Yiddish term “nudnik” and its ambivalent and unsettling nature in these writers’ texts, this essay will highlight the cultural impact on modern Jewish identity of the nudnik within each story.     

Bodies against the law: Abu Ghraib and the war on terror

In this essay, I argue that the contemporary notion of law has been reduced to regulations and disciplinary codes that do not and cannot give meaning to our emotional lives and moral sensibilities. As a result, we have increasing numbers of what I call “abysmal individuals” who suffer from a split between law—broadly conceived as that which gives form and structure to social life—and personal embodied sensations of pain and pleasure. My attempt to understand the place of Abu Ghraib within American culture leads to an analysis of our valorization of innocence and ignorance that not only becomes the grounds on which we morally (if not legally) excuse abusive behavior as “fun,” but also becomes part of the justification for condoning some forms of violence while condemning others. In addition, I argue that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence trades on underlying assumptions about the relationship between culture and nature, technology and bodies, wherein bodies are imagined as natural and outside of the realm of law.