DE WEIB À FRAU – UNE RÉFLEXION SUR LA TRAJECTOIRE DE MÉDÉE VERS SA FÉMINITÉ (original) (raw)

The objective of this essay is to present an interpretation of the character and the myth of Medea with special regard to her position towards her own femininity. I concentrate my reflection mostly on the fact that Medea fell in love with Jason by "artificial means", that is, through the influence of Eros' arrows. If we understand that love is only possible, in the psychoanalytical sense, if there is a lacking that makes it possible for one to desire-what we could also call "castration"-, Medea "loves" without lacking anything, that is, without acknowledging her own castration. This, as myths go, leads to catastrophic consequences: I argue that the infanticide for which Medea became famous is nothing more than a "self-castration" of her part, a self-inflicted removal of a "piece of her", as she herself describes it. With the assassination of her children, she can finally accept her lacking and, consequently, her femininity and her place as a subject of her own desire.