Reading Cronenberg – A Clinical Approach To The Psychoanalysis of Film

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Notes

1 One could still maintain we are still asserting a certain Foucauldian notion of authorship, per What Is An Author? (1969). This in that we are proposing to use the name ‘David Cronenberg’ as a function to group together different speech acts and in order to raise issues which we consider important in current discourse.

2 Though we recognise that danger always exists, and invite the reader to vigilante judge the paper by this premise throughout.

3 It should be noted that as such, the central figure of our approach ought not necessarily be a director. All that is required is lengthy, formal reflection on cinematic work which the subject can be argued had some hand in.

4 Not a single source cited in this paper is exempt from David Cronenberg referencing either a philosopher or literary figure multiple times when discussing his work.

5 This, again, in no way should be taken as a proof for the opposite.

6 However absurd this might appear from a contemporary perspective on sex and gender, it actually illustrates a view somewhat unique to psychoanalysis. Termed the notion/problem of ‘sexuation’ or the ‘sexual difference’, the core of this Lacanian thesis is that a difference in sex or gender can actually only strictly be understood in that way: as a difference and no more. According to Lacan, we hold on to this abstract difference because this means we mediate/contemplate this impasse by way of bodily (sexual) enjoyment. Put simply, a child noticing it has different sexual organs from someone else isn’t inherently sexual, but in trying to understand this difference it will inevitably explore its own sexual organs, because there isn’t anything to understand. So this exploration won’t find an inherent or essential truth, but it will be enjoyable, and therefore repeatable (Lacan 1998, 1–13).

7 This is generally applied to the structure of psychosis, yet the point equally holds (though differently, of course) for perversion.

8 With a distinct capital ‘S’, lest one forget it’s not just any ‘small’ other (‘petit autre’), but in fact the very (Big) Other at hand.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Flemish Research Council (FWO).

Notes on contributors

Kobe Keymeulen

Kobe Keymeulen is a doctoral candidate in Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, Ghent University (Belgium), with a Fellowship for Fundamental Research from the Flemish Research Council (FWO) for his research into historicity and interdisciplinary dynamics in contemporary continental philosophy. He has mainly published on German idealism, psychoanalysis and the philosophy of film.