The Eternal Sunshine of the Solar Anus: A Schizoanalytic Perspective on Critical Methodology

Abstract

Using the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as its object, this paper embodies, explores, and performs the connections and disjunctions between the critical perspectives of psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis. In so doing, we reject the perspectives that have heretofore binarized the two modes of thought as well as the applications that have oversimplified and fetishized their critical vocabularies. This paper is therefore a form of performance that endorses both psychoanalysis and schizoanalysis as modes of thought and being, but most importantly sets forth a mode of embodied critique that transcends the simple deployment of critical vocabulary.

Notes

¹The We thank RR reviewers Michelle Ballif and Victor Vitanza for the careful reading of the essay and their comments made in re/action to it.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benjamin R. Bates

Benjamin R. Bates is Assistant Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Ohio University.

Kristopher Stroup

Kristopher Stroup is Assistant Professor in the Division of Language and Literature at Truman State University.