A Radically Open Analysis: Writing as Wrapping, Video as Skin

ABSTRACT

As a white cis queer analyst working with queer and trans patients, I’m continually struck by how often the subject of skin — corporeal, psychic and technological — appears in my clinical work. These appearances can be overdetermined or enigmatic, taking the form of verbal and non-verbal, conscious and unconscious communications between patients and myself. But what are we really talking about, these patients and I, when we talk about skin? My preoccupation with this subject, laden with generalities, as well as nuance, began with an affinity for Didier Anzieu’s skin-ego theory and subsequently, led me through the spectacular terrain of numerous fields of study: psychoanalysis, queer theory, critical race theory, cultural studies, philosophy, somatechnics, media studies and film theory, among others. As theory and clinical work are bound together — informing and reforming one another, it has been my relationship with K which has brought this material alive and generated new forms of thinking.

This article is referred to by:

Genre Trouble and the Poetic Risk of Form: A Response to Kathleen Del Mar Miller

A Letter to Kathleen Del Mar Miller: Skin to Skin, Bone to Bone

Acknowledgments

This paper was born out of collaboration with K — I dedicate this to them. I am immensely grateful to Katie Gentile, Patricia Clough, Luc Olivier Charlap, Kelly Merklin, Karen Weiser and Deborah Sherman for thinking-feeling with me. Many thanks to Stephen Hartman for his shepherding.

Notes

¹ K uses the gender neutral pronouns they, them and theirs. I use these pronouns when referring to K’s present, as well as past in an effort to respect their right to “gender self-determination” (Gill-Peterson, 2018).

² I trace the lineage of this term elsewhere, see Miller (2020). I wish to include theorist Karen Barad’s elaboration of “radical openness” in relation to the ontological indeterminacies of matter itself as a part of this lineage. For further reference, see Barad (2015).

³ I use the term “creativity” to refer to one’s openness to primary process, the ability to make links among and between seemingly disparate elements, as well as the capacity for improvisation and spontaneity.

⁴ I make the distinction here between white skin and Whiteness in order to distinguish the concrete from the symbolic. I appreciate Neil Altman’s definition of Whiteness as “an organization of experience around power” (Altman, 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathleen Del Mar Miller

Kathleen Del Mar Miller, MFA, LCSW, is a poet and psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. She is a member of the Training Committee for the 4-year Analytic Training program at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy (ICP), where she also teaches. Her paper, “Working Clinically with the Skin’s Surface: Tattoos, Scars, and Gendered Embodiment,” received the Symonds Prize from Studies in Gender & Sexuality in 2020.