Facebook: The Central Place of the Lacanian Clinic (original) (raw)

An experiment in " otherness " : Von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013

South African Journal of Art History , 2017

This article addresses the question of extreme sexual otherness, in the form of " perversion " , in Von Trier's film duo, Nymphomaniac, Volumes 1 and 2 (2013). After reconstructing the narrative of the film several theoretical strategies are adopted to make sense of it, given the fact that it is a disconcerting, disturbing film. First Freud is enlisted to grasp the psychoanalytical conception of perversity, not as a newly acquired condition, but as one initially lost by " normal " subjects, in light of the sexually undifferentiated or " perverse " nature of children's sexuality. In the case of the protagonist in the film, Joe, it is not lost; on the contrary, it is pursued and developed. Foucault's work on the history of sexuality casts further light on the film narrative through his painstaking demonstration that, far from having been a time of the unilateral repression of sex and different sexualities, the 18 th and 19 th centuries saw a veritable explosion in sexualities through the discursive examination, documentation and classification of sexual practices, of which the spectrum of diverse " unnatural " pleasures (" perversions " , including nymphomania) deserves attention in the present context. Finally, the work of Žižek on the ideology of multiculturalism, where he distinguishes different kinds of " racism " , enables one to understand Joe's rejection of the therapy she is offered as predicated on her insight into the " racism " by which it is motivated, which is conditional on her " becoming normal ". In the final analysis, Joe exemplifies what Lacan sees as someone who has taken up her desire.