Identifying the death gender -- the ghost of masochism in queer subject.
This article re-assesses the theories of death, narcissism and identification from a selection of essays by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan in order to demonstrate that gender is generated out of masochism and the 'death drive' (Todestrieb). In closely reading and amending key sections of Judith Butler's queer theories, the author argues against her Foucaltian claim that the queer subject is constituted in the face of a sadistic Law, which s/he is forced to eroticise and internalise, and therefore conflate with her/his own masochism. It is argued that the subject's masochism is a queer attempt not to be; to bridge the constitutional split enforced by the Lacanian idea of the assumption of subjectivity through misidentification, and to become a living mortuary for the (dead) identifications that found the subject on his/her illusory ground through the (contingent) foreclosure of the Other.
Kennedy
Alexander
A
Department of Art History, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QH, Scotland, UK.
D000818:Animals; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003643:Death; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008398:Masochism / Q000523:psychology*; D009289:Narcissism; D011582:Psychological Theory; D013795:Thanatology