Bad Enough Mother

Author(s): Mignon Nixon

Source: October, Vol. 71, feminist issueS (Winter, 1995), pp. 70-92
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/778742
Accessed: 27-05-2015 12:20 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Bad Enough Mother

MIGNON NIXON

Mouths

Wecameto recognize thefather'spenisand a growing feelingof

aggressionagainstit in manyforms, thedesiretoeatand destroy
it
beingspeciallyprominent. Forexample, on oneoccasion,[myfour-
year-oldpatient]Dick lifted
a littletoyman tohis mouth,gnashed
his teethand said "Tea Daddy,"bywhichhe meant"EatDaddy."
He thenaskedfora drinkofwater.
-Melanie Klein

Oncewhenweweresitting at thediningtable,I tookwhite

together
bread,mixedit withspit,and moldeda figureofmyfather.When
thefigurewas done,I started
cuttingoffthelimbswitha knife.
I see
thisas myfirstsculptural
solution.
-Louise Bourgeois

I was interested
in thebitebecauseit'sbothintimate
and destructive;
itsortofsumsup myrelationship toarthistory.
-Janine Antoni

Pondick'screatures
seemto experiencelifethrough theirmouths,
rather
thantheireyes,as ifthey
werebabies.
-Elizabeth Hess

As MaryJacobushas recentlyobserved,"the currentreturnto Klein ... feels

like eating one's words."1Or, to put it another way,maybe it feels like eating

1. MaryJacobus,"'Tea Daddy': Poor Mrs. Klein and the Pencil Shavings,"Women:

A CulturalReview
2
(Summer1990), special issue,"PositioningKlein,"p. 160.

OCTOBER 71, Winter

1995,pp. 71-92. ? 1995 MignonNixon.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 NI,

N-I
x "I
f1wh
IN

k
A

'4

;4
oo

"A

LouiseBourgeois.Cell (Eyesand
Mirrors).1989-93.
(Photo:PeterBellamy.)

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
72 OCTOBER

Lacan. And how betterto enact this cannibalisticdesire to eat-Lacan-by-eating-

his-words than through a return to Klein-the psychoanalystwhose object
relationsschool Lacan himselfdeemed "incapable of even so much as suspect-
ing the existence of the categoryof the signifier"--evenif that returnrisks,as
Jacobussays,"a kindof theoreticalregression"?2
The putative regression of some feministpsychoanalytic theory from
Lacanian to Kleinianmodes of analysisis not so much myconcernhere,however,
as are uses of the body in contemporaryfeministartpracticesthatalso are often
framedin termsof theoreticalregression.This regressionis chartedas moving
froman investigationof the signifiergrounded in poststructuralist theoryand a
Lacanian account of sexual differenceto a literaland essentialistconception of
the body.
It willbe mypurpose here to read thisrecentshiftas it appears in specific
instancesof feminist workin psychoanalytic terms:namely,as a turnto the drives.3
Accordingly, I willbe analyzingit not as a regressionbut as a repositioningand not
as the revengeof the essentializedninetiesbody on the textualeightiesbodybut
as, in part, a critique of psychoanalyticfeministworkof the 1970s and '80s as
privilegingpleasure and desire over hatred and aggression.4For as Jacqueline
Rose observedin 1988, "Ifpsychoanalysis is the intellectualtabloidof our culture
('sex' and 'violence' being its chief objects of concern), then we have recently
privileged-ought indeed to base the politicization of psychoanalysison that
privilege-the firstover the second."5 And as Kobena Mercer noted in 1994,
"There is no shortageof text-centered studiesof pleasure and desire,but where
are the analysesof pain and hatred as everydaystructuresof feelingtoo?"6I will
suggestthat the investigationof aggressionin some recentfeministworkcan be
relatedto thiscritiqueof Lacanian-basedpsychoanalytic studies.And I willpropose
that the shiftin emphasis fromneurosisto psychosisand fromsexualityto the
death drive effectedby Melanie Klein's work in the 1940s and '50s offersa

2. Ibid.Jacobus'sstatementreads in full:"One responseto the currentreturnto Klein: it feelslike

eating one's words.Psychoanalytic feminismhas been so thoroughly immersedin Lacanian theoryfor
the past decade thattakingKlein at her word-reading her literally, as she asks to be read-seems to
riska kindof theoreticalregression."
3. Insofaras I willbe arguingthatthisturnorganizesa fieldthatoperatesoutside the binariesof
gender,myanalysisintendsto open up a thirdoption in the conflictbetweenthe operationsof the
signifierand of biologicalessentialism.In thissense,thistextoffersmyown responseto Question 1 as
posed bySilviaKolbowskiand me as editorsof thisissue.
4. For a discussionof how recentreexaminationsof Klein functionas a critiqueof the Lacanian
psychoanalytic model, see Ann Scott's"Melanie Klein and the Questionsof Feminism"in "Positioning
Klein,"p. 129. As Scottobserves,however,"This movementof thoughtremainsdialectical,to-and-fro;
JulietMitchelland VivienBar have reinstatedthe commentaryon Klein froma Lacanian perspective
and remindus thatall theorisationswithinpsychoanalysis setup theirown counterpoint."
5. Jacqueline Rose, "Sexualityand Vision:Some Questions,"in Visionand Visuality, ed. Hal Foster
(Seattle: Bay Press,1988), p. 121. Quoted in Kobena Mercer,"Fear of a Black Penis,"Artforum vol. 32
(April 1994), p. 122.
6. Mercer,"Fear of a Black Penis,"p. 122.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 73

possible frameworkfor analyzingthis tension between Lacanian-based feminist

projectsof the 1970s and '80s and recentworkthatI willargue is Kleinian-based.7
The turnin some recentfeministartfroma Lacanian-based semiotic analy-
sis of the body to a Kleinian-based object-relationsanalysis does not enact a
regression,at least in Kleinian terms,preciselybecause regressionis no more
operativein the Kleinian model than is the signifier.
Accordingto Klein, psychic
life is structuredby unconscious fantasies driven by bodily experiences, and
these fantasies,present fromearly infancy,persistnot as states into which the
subject mayregress,but as ever-presentpositionsin which,as JulietMitchellhas
written,"one is sometimeslodged."8In the Kleinian model of subjectivity, then,
regression, like the scarcely
signifier, exists.
As Mitchellhas noted, "forKlein the past and the presentare one . . . what
she is observing,describing,and theorizingis the veryabsence of historyand of
historical time."9For counter to a historical,or developmental, model of the
psyche,Klein theorizes a nonlinear, horizontal play of positions in which the
radicallydecentered subject, defined by its relation to objects, moves between
positions that are never either secured or foreclosed.Thus, the move fromthe
gendered to the infantilebody thatin a Lacanian frameworkwould constitutea
regression,functionsin Kleinian termssimplyas a shiftof position along the
horizontal axis of a model that theorizes, as Mitchell has written,"the very
absence of history."10
Kleinian-based work, structured by object relations, operates in the
atemporalfieldof infantileexperience ratherthan the temporal-linguistic fieldof
the Oedipal subject that is mapped by Lacanian-based work.A Kleinian-based
analysiswould,then,have to be groundedin Klein's theoryof fantasyas produced
by bodily drives,of such fantasyas the primarystructuringprinciple of psychic
experience. Constructingher model of subjectivityaround the infant,and so in
relation to an immediate and fragmentedbodily experience unmediated by
language, Klein places at the center of her model not the unconscious, but
fantasy-fantasy understoodnot as a workof the unconsciousmind,but as a bodily
operation. The Kleinian subjectrelatesto its environmentas a fieldof objects to
be fused or split,possessed or destroyed,by means of fantasiesof introjection,
projection,and splittingthatare produced bybodilydrives.
To return,then, to the epigraphswithwhich I began, eating,forexample,
mightproduce a complexfantasyof incorporatinga good object and of devouring

7. This is not to suggesta fixed temporalor theoreticaldivide between body-centeredfeminist

projectsof the 1970s and '80s and those of the 1990s; in fact,feministartpracticesof both periods are
extremelydiverse.But theredoes appear to be a shiftawayfroma semioticanalysisof the bodyof plea-
sure and desire to an object-relationsanalysisof the body of aggressionand the death drivein some
recentwork,and it is thismove thatI willconsiderhere.
8. JulietMitchell,ed., TheSelected
MelanieKlein(NewYork:The Free Press,1986), Introduction, p. 28.
9. Ibid.,p. 29.
10. Ibid.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
74 OCTOBER

a bad one-of cuttingan object into bits that,once swallowed,mightturninto a

swarmof internalpersecutors.Klein assertsthatit is throughinfantileoral sadism
thatthe subjectexperiencesthe destructive effectsof itsown aggression.In effect,
subjectivity formsaround an experience of loss enacted throughdestructivefan-
tasies;it is, we could say,formedby the mouthin the act of biting.Using Klein's
case historyof her four-year-oldpatientDick to mediatethreeexhibitions-a 1974
installation by Louise Bourgeois entitled TheDestructionof theFather,Janine
Antoni's 1992 Gnaws,and a 1994 exhibitionof Rona Pondick'sLegs,Mouth,and
Milk Milk-I will examine the structuringof these worksthroughoral-sadistic
fantasyand willalso considerhow theypositionthe subjectof aggression.
Bourgeois'soral-sadisticfantasyof dismemberingand devouringher father's
body is the double of another one, the desire to eat his words,for the fantasy
enacted in TheDestruction oftheFather,simplystated,is thatin order to shut the
fatherup it is necessaryto eat himup. This is Bourgeois'snowwell-known descrip-
tion of the work:

familydinnertable headed by
It is basicallya table,the awful,terrifying
the fatherwho sitsand gloats.And the others,the wife,the children,
whatcan theydo? Theysitthere,in silence.The motherof course tries
to satisfythe tyrant,her husband. The childrenare fullof exaspera-
tion. We were threechildren:mybrother,mysister,and myself.There
were also two extra childrenmyparentsadopted because theirfather
had been killedin thewar.So we werefive.Myfatherwouldgetnervous
looking at us, and he would explain to all of us whata greatman he
was. So, in exasperation,we grabbedthe man, threwhim on the table,
dismemberedhim,and proceeded to devourhim."I

In this fantasyof devouring the father,eating takes the place of naming in a

substitutionof oral sadismforspeech thatis at once Kleinianand anti-Lacanian.12
The littlegirl'sdesire to speak and her frustrationat being silencedis transposed
into another desire for oral power and pleasure-the desire to bite, to cut, to
devour the one who oppresses with his speech. The desire to talk back to the
fatheris transformed in fantasyinto the desireto turnthe social ritualof the fam-
ily meal with its sublimated conditionsof cuttingand bitinginto a cannibalistic
ceremony in which the father's power,his words,are consumedand incorporated
by the children in the eating of his flesh.
Thus, Bourgeois turns"a Kleinian account of eating (cannibalism,even),
incorporation, and primaryidentification,"as Jacobus describes the case of

11. Louise Bourgeois,quoted in Jean Fremon,LouiseBourgeois: 1947-1984,exhibition

Retrospective
catalogue (Paris: Galerie MaeghtLelong, 1984).
12. Bourgeois'svigorouscriticismof Lacan is well known.It is worthnotingin thiscontextthather
antagonismforhim is specificallyas a figureof the father.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 The Destructionof
LouiseBourgeois.
the Father.1974. (Photo:PeterMoore.)

1~:VI

Klein'spatientlittleDick, againsta Lacanian account of the entryintosubjectivity

via language.13Performedunder the title The Destruction thiscritique
oftheFather,
of Lacan through Klein, framed as an attack on language throughbiting,on
Oedipal namingthroughpre-Oedipaloral sadism,stagesan assaulton patriarchy
fromthe infantileposition.Draggingthe paternalbody onto the table, and thus
repositioningit on the horizontalaxis of infantileexperiencewhereit functions
as an object of oral-sadisticfantasy,Bourgeois subvertsthe name-of-the-father
logic of Lacanian theorythrougha destruction-of-the-father, part-objectlogic
based in the Kleinianmodel. And,as I willsuggest,it is in partthroughthe recep-
tion of Bourgeois'sworkthatthe Kleinianmodel has recentlybeen takenup and
employedcriticallyby a numberof artistsin relationto 1970s and '80s Lacanian-
based work.
The desire to eat the fatherand to eat his wordsis, as Bourgeois'sstatement
makesexplicit,turnedinto the desireforsculpturalsolutionsor,we could say,for
object solutions-a sculpturalsolutionbeing, in Bourgeois'sterms,one thatper-
formsan aggressiveor desiringoperation on an object. For as she demonstrates
with her dinner table story,the sculpture comes into being as the object of
aggressivefantasy-as somethingto bite or to cut, to incorporateor to destroy.14

13. Jacobus,"Poor Mrs.Klein,"p. 162.

14. Bourgeois'ssculpturaloperationsmayalso be organizedbyfantasiesof reparation,of restoring
the object perceivedto be damaged bydestructive
fantasies.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
76 OCTOBER

In Klein's case historyof the affectlessfour-year-old

boy named Dick (a case ana-
lyzedin greatdetail byJacques Lacan), the littlepatientarrivesat a similarobject
solution.15
Dick, Klein reported, seldom played or spoke, except to stringsounds
togetherin meaninglesssequences, and seemed completelydetached fromthe
people around him,includinghis parentsand nurse,whomhe tendedto treat,as
Klein observed,like so manypieces of furniture.The analysttheorizedthather
littlepatientwas the victimof an anxietyso intenseit manifesteditselfas an eerie
absence, the absence, precisely,of any trace of anxiety.Employingher model of
infantilefantasy,Klein concluded thatDick had as a babybecome deeplydisturbed
byhis own sadisticimpulsesto attackhis mother'sbody,a bodythatcontained,in
fantasy,the father'spenis (among otherthings).Throughan interplaythatis the
pivotpoint of the Kleinianmodel, Dick feared,accordingto Klein,both his own
sadisticdesires and retaliatoryassaultsfromthe object of those attacks.And in
order to defend himselfagainstthis fantasieddestructionby the father'spenis,
precipitatedbyhis own sadisticfantasy, Dick closed himselfofffromall desire,and
thusall anxiety.
One keysymptomof Dick's inabilityto tolerateanxietywas his refusalto bite
into food. Anotherwas his inabilityto grip knivesor scissors.On one occasion,

15. Melanie Klein,"The Importanceof SymbolFormationin the Developmentof the Ego" (1930),
in The SelectedMelanieKlein.For Lacan's critique of this case study,see "DiscourseAnalysisand Ego
Analysis"and "The Topic of the Imaginary"in The SeminarofJacques Lacan, BookI, Freud'sPaperson
Technique1953-1954), ed. Jacques-AlainMiller,trans.John Forrester(New York: W. W. Norton &
Company,1991). For discussionsof Lacan's readingof Klein,see Shoshana Felman,JacquesLacan and
theAdventure ofInsight:Psychoanalysisin Contemporary Culture(Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress,
1987), chapter5, "BeyondOedipus: The Specimen Studyof Psychoanalysis" and Jacobus,"Poor Mrs.
Klein."
Lacan's complex critique of thiscase study,whichturnson his assessmentthatKlein has con-
fused the registersof the symbolicand the imaginary, cannot be summarizedhere. But it should be
noted thatLacan's analysisshiftsbetweencondemnationofwhathe sees as Klein'sliteralistic approach
and acknowledgment of the breakthroughshe achieveswithher patient.He writes,forexample:
She slams the symbolismon him withcompletebrutality, does Melanie Klein, on little
Dick! Straightawayshe startsoffhittinghim large-scaleinterpretations. She hitshim a
brutalverbalisationof the Oedipal myth,almostas revoltingforus as forany reader-
You are the littletrain,youwantto fuckyourmother.
Quite clearlythiswayof doing thingsleads to theoreticaldiscussionswhichcannot
be dissociatedfroma case-diagnostic.But itis clear thatas a resultof thisinterpretation
somethinghappens.Everything is there.(p. 68)

It is this uneasy tension between Klein's "completebrutality"and the suspicion that "everythingis
there"that,asJacobusnotes,seems to driveLacan's own aggressivereadingof thiscase, a readingthat
seems to open the possibilityof a greaterrole forthe imaginarywithinthe Lacanian model itself:
What is it, then,thatLacan mayfearto discoverin his own ideas? Surely,nothingother than
the crucial role of the imaginary,the domain which Lacan associates loosely with Klein's
account of projectiveidentificationand its allied processes,but whichin his systemis subordi-
nated to the symbolicand to language. (p. 170)

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 77

however,the analystreportedthather patient"lifteda littletoyman to his mouth,

gnashed his teethand said 'Tea Daddy,'bywhichhe meant 'Eat Daddy.' He then
asked fora drinkofwater."16Turningtea intoeat, he had turnedthe tables,turned
the tea table into a scene of cannibalistic incorporation. This is how Jacobus
describesthe challengeto Lacan producedbythe littleboy'splaywithanxiety:
Here little Dick, in Lacanian terms,acts out his foreclosureof 'the
Name of the Father,' the big Dick of language. For little Dick, the
paternal phallus is a penile body-part-a part that he wants to eat
whole. Making a meal of the phallus, instead of naming the father,
little Dick seems to say,in this primitivepsychicgesture: I am both
little Dick and daddy-Dick,Saturn's child and Saturn himself.The
undifferentiatedlittle Dick and daddy-Dick constitutea primitive,
devouringidentity. 1'7
If littleDick became a subject by bitingratherthan by naming,and if he turned
the fathernot into a name but into a part-object-somethingto eat and be eaten
by--if,thatis, he came into playvia the logic of the part-object,then thatis also
whatLouise Bourgeois did in her firstsculpturalsolution and in the multiplicity
of objects-part-objects-that followedin itstrain.
This destruction-of-the-fatherlogic grounded in the drives that Bourgeois
enacts in her 1974 work mightalso be expected to operate in Antoni's Gnaws,
oral-sadisticworksin whichthe artistrepeatedlybit into large blocksof chocolate
and lard,spittingout the mouthfulsand collectingthe expelled fatand chocolate
to produce tubes of lipstick and heart-shaped candy boxes. And the critical
reception of the Gnaws, employing a range of psychoanalyticconcepts that
included regression, oral fixation,and repetition-compulsion,did place the
Gnawsin the registerof infantileexperience. Relatingthe Gnawsto 1970s trans-
gressivebody-centeredworksbyBourgeois,Hannah Wilke,and Eva Hesse, critics
tended to read her attack on Minimalism-her biting into art history-as a
repetitionof seventiesfeministperformative uses of the body.18But whatwas not
discussedwas the structureof the workin whichthe aggressiveacts of bitingand
spittingor swallowingbecame a logic for producing not part-objectslike those
produced by Bourgeois or little Dick, but conventional objects of female
masochisticdesire,lipstickand candyboxes.

16. Klein,"The Importanceof SymbolFormation,"p. 104.

17. Jacobus,"Poor Mrs. Klein and the Pencil Shavings,"pp. 165-66. NotingLacan's analysisof little
Dick that"everything is equally real forhim,equallyindifferent,"
Jacobusobservesthat"littleDick has
grasped the principleof linguisticdifference(to a T) withoutbeing able to applyit to his own condi-
tion" (p. 166). Dick's own condition,of course, is a psychosiswithinwhichdifferenceis not operative.
And as Jacobus remindsus, "The characteristicof Kleinian psychoanalysis is its empathywith-its feel-
ing for-psychosis"(166).
18. See, forexample, Simon Taylor'sreviewof Chocolate Gnawand Lard Gnawin Artin America, vol.
80 (October 1992), p. 149.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 ..........::'

MaxineHayt.Lick#2.1993.
(Photo:AdamReich.)

!ii-ii
iili

ow

. .. ... . . .

If,as I would like to suggest,performative practicesgroundedin a Kleinian

model of'infantilefantasyhave the potential to constructrepresentationsof
aggressionthat do not revertto essentialism,in the case of Antoni'sGnaws this
possibility is foreclosed by turning the enactment of aggression into an
essentializingspectacleof femalemasochism.The structureof thiswork,in which
performative practicesenactinginfantileaggression(biting) lead to a compulsive
behaviorin the formof an eatingdisorder(gnawingand spittingout) thatin turn
is recuperatedby the productionof objects of conventionalizedfemininedesire
(lipstick and chocolate displayed in mirroredcases) does, however,point to
anothercrucial problemin Kleinian theory--thestruggleto suppressaggression
or to repairitsperceivedeffects.
In the Gnaws,it is this effortto suppressaggressionthat,like littleDick's
inabilityto grip scissorsor bite into food,arrestswhatKlein calls the capacityfor
symbolformation.In the context of 1990s feministart practice, this capacity
mightbe thoughtof as the possibility of an enactmentof aggressionthatdoes not
fall back into essentialism.Antoni'suse of her own body to produce worksthat
reinforceratherthan destabilize,or de-essentialize,the conventionalconstruction
of femininityhowever raises the question of how a Kleinian-based analysis,
groundedin a theoryof fantasyproducedbybodilydrives,mightoperatecritically
in relationto practicesthat are themselvesenacted throughthe body in perfor-
mativestrategieshostile to the signifier.Would not such an analysisrisk,if not
regression,at leastessentialism?
Klein's emphasison innatedrives,her elisionof language and historyin the

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 ili?4

RonaPondick.Mouth. 1992-93.

a~-
"~7W

foregrounding of pre-Oedipal, nonverbal experience, her indifference to the

effects of social structures-all point to the biological essentialism, "incapable of
even so much as suspecting the existence of the signifier,"for which her work has
so often been criticized. But the implicit biologism and insistent literalism of
Kleinian theory have obscured one of its crucial insights-one that I will argue
bears upon the recent feministwork I will consider here-and that is her analysis
of aggression as deeply structuringunconscious fantasyin both sexes from infancy
through life. For what interests Klein, in contrast to Freud, is not the neurotic
symptom that is an effectof sexuality but the psychoses that arise as effectsof the
death drive. And through this shift of emphasis from sexual development to
aggression and the death drive, the conventional construction of femininityand
masculinityas opposed on axes of agency and passivity,aggression and nurturing-
axes drawn to diagram the negotiation of the castration complex-is radically,if
inadvertently, destabilized. I would, then, suggest that the significance of the
Kleinian model for recent psychoanalytic feministwork is at least in part its analy-
sis of aggression not as a function of sexual difference, but as structural to all
subjectivities. For if the enactment of aggression in body-centered feministwork
depends upon the possibilityof constituting a female subject of aggression (just as
other feministwork has confronted the problem of constituting a female desiring
subject), then one way of producing such a subject is through a turn to the drives.
For Klein, aggression-and especially efforts to suppress it-rather than
sexual development, is the pivotal psychic site of struggle. Thus, her most dramatic
divergence from Freudian theory is her refusal of the primacy of castration. This

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 r.

i:

i?k

i' 9

:1 ' I ? ii::a

Rona Pondick.
Legs and Mouth.
1993.

Below:MilkMilk.1993.
(Photos:].Kotter.)

..... ...

..........................

r~4e

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 81

refusalhas manyimplications,including the possibilityof a less fixed model of

sexuality.But what I would like to emphasize here is Klein's suggestionthat the
infantis plagued fromthe beginningwithfantasiesof destroying byitsownviolent
means the objects of its love and envy,thatis, thatthe infantfearsnot the loss of
the motherto the father,or the loss of the penis, but the loss of all objects to its
own destructiveimpulses. The firstobject of aggression is not, as it is in the
Oedipal-centered Freudian model, the father,and not even the mother,but a
series of part-objects-breast,milk,penis, children,womb-to which the infant
fantasizesthe connection of other part-objects-mouth,teeth,urine, feces-in
frenziedattacksenacting,accordingto Klein,the forceof the death drive.
Stringing,lumping, and stickingtogether,piling and hanging up rubber,
plastic,and wax mouths,feet,legs, teeth,nipples,breasts,penises,vaginas,Rona
Pondick all but speaks the name Melanie Klein. If criticshave not spoken it for
her,theyhave describedits Kleinianoperations,its enactmentsof biting,sucking,
and excretion,its fragmentation of the bodyand conflationsof its parts.19What I
would like to consider here is the way in which these objects are structuredby
aggressivefantasy.
In Pondick's installations,oral-sadisticand anal-sadisticinfantilefantasies
are staged not onlyby the play of objects-as in the conflationof greedytearing
mouth and persecutorydevouringbreastin such worksas Mouth,Charms,Treats,
or LittleBathers-butby theirstructureand arrangement.Hung fromthe ceiling,
spillingacross the floor,piled in a corner,molded into the furniture, these part-
object works resist the integrityand vertical orientation of the adult body,
operatinginsteadat the levelof the infantiledrive.
Pondick's 1993 installation,forexample, included threeworks,Legs,Mouth,
and MilkMilk,whichfunctionedless as discreteobjects than as object systems.In
Legs,double-footedpink-upholsteredtubular cushions conflatingleg and penis
were stuffedinto men's ready-madeshoes, tied by the foot,and suspended from
the ceiling by ribbons that trailed onto the floor.Legs swingingat graduated
heightsfromabove, Mouthwas strewnacross the floor,its hundredsof teethedor
nippled,stickyscratchyblotchybloodyballs randomlyscatteredaround the room.
Placed on the floorin a corner,MilkMilkin turnwas a collectionof whitebulbous
clusters of breasts fittedwith baby-bottlenipples. The three accumulations of
objects functionednot as series or as multiplesbut as interconnectingsystems
defined throughtheir relations to the ceiling, the floor,and the corner,or in
other words by their positions, and through their relations to other object
systems-asin the connectionof bitingand suckingmouthsto the breast/milk.
Organized by the logic of the part-object, this installation enacted the
experience of the bodyrivenbythe drives,an experience thatmuch otherrecent
feministwork has also investigated.One might think of Maxine Hayt's Licks,

19. See especiallyElizabeth Hess, "Basic Instincts,"the VillageVoice,

June 1, 1993, p. 83, and "Nasty
Girl,"the VillageVoice,
May7, 1991,p. 85.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
82 OCTOBER

gaping slipperylumpymouthsfromwhichfoamytonguesstickout; of the part-

object assemblages of Nancy Bowen and Ava Gerber; of the inside-out
constructionsof the body in worksbyRachel Whiteread;or of the evocationof a
pre-Oedipal maternalvoice in Maureen Connor's ThreeFemaleVoices, to citejust a
fewexamples.The criticalreceptionof thisrecentfeminist workorganizedbythe
Kleinian logic of the part-object,however,places it withina specificlineage of
transgressivebody-centeredpractices of the 1960s and '70s, a lineage that is
oftenframedin termsof returnor regression,but at othertimesas a functionof
mothering.The recent "Bad Girls"showsstaged in New Yorkand Los Angeles,
for example, constructeda genealogy of "bad girl" mothers of the 1960s and
'70s and "bad girl" daughters of the 1990s. I would like now to consider this
constructionof feministmotheringwithinthe contextof the Kleinian model in
which,as I am suggesting,much recentworkis based as a model thatboth fore-
groundsand insistently problematizesthe mother-infant relation.

Mothers

The artistsin Bad Girls and Bad Girls West have takenthe
examples toheart.Somemakeworkthat'spar-
oftheirforemothers
odic and satirical,"humoring" maletropes;somemischievously
rewriteorrevisethe"master"'scripts pointofview.
froma different
Othersinventnewnarratives, images,and metaphors, newmodes
ofrepresenting theirownspecifically
and projecting femaleexperi-
ence-formally,stylistically, technically,conceptually-that
circumvent paternalconstructs
altogether.
-Marcia Tanner

Somefeministcriticshave expressedworryovertheidea of the

femalesubject,mother
or not,playingwiththeboundariesofthe
the women
self,given difficulties in ourculture
havein attaining
a sense of selfhood to begin with .... I believe that women-
womenartistsin particular-mustbe strongenoughto allow
isfor
thiskindofplay;onewaytoachievesuchstrength
themselves
to
girls imagine(orsee) mothers
their playing.
-Susan Suleiman

In the widely discussed recent "Bad Girls" shows, the mother-daughter

relationof feministartistswas framedprimarilythroughthe desireon the partof
youngerartistsforbad enough mothersamong older ones. In her catalogue essay
forthe exhibition,MarciaTannerconstructeda matrilineageof bad-girlmothers
beginning with Artemisia Gentileschi and proceeding to Meret Oppenheim,
Yoko Ono, Louise Bourgeois,Faith Ringgold,Linda Benglis,and CindySherman

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad Enough Mother 83

::

~:??
?.:

Robert Louise
Mapplethorpe.
Bourgeois. 1982.

to argue that through their identificationwith irreverent,transgressiveartist

mothersthe youngergenerationof bad-girlartistsis able to subvertpatriarchal
law, to "ignore the entire mythof male hegemony,of paternal lawgiversin art
and everywhereelse."20The suggestion that through their relation to strong
individuatedmothersthese daughtersare able to workoutside the framework of
patriarchy,to evade the termsof the Oedipus and castrationcomplexes, is of
course a claim grounded in feminist psychoanalytic work on the mother-
daughterrelationthatis anti-Lacanianboth in its positingof an extrapatriarchal
relation and in its emphasis on pre-Oedipal experience. And this model of an
empoweringmother-daughterrelation structuredthe "Bad Girls"shows as the
profoundlyliberatorydisplayof mother-taught subversion,as the comingof age
of a new generation of feministartists who, unlike their predecessors, are
positioned not only to produce critiques of the patriarchal construction of
gender but also to produce worksthat,as Tanner puts it, "circumventpaternal
constructsaltogether."21
If, then, Lacan is the bad fatherof this new generationof feministartists,
the bad enough motheris a seventiesfeminist,herselfa bad girl,withwhomthe
daughter can identifyand in relation to whom she can position herselfin a
genealogy.The Lacanian-basedfeministworkof the 1970s and '80s, a repressed

20. in Bad Girlsexhibitioncata-

Marcia Tanner,"MotherLaughed: The Bad Girls' Avant-Garde,"
logue (NewYorkand Cambridge:The New Museumof Contemporary Artand MIT Press,1994), p. 77.
21. Ibid.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
84 OCTOBER

termin the maternalgenealogyconstructedby the "Bad Girls"shows,meanwhile

seems to functionas a kind of parentalfoilto the transgressive tacticsof the bad-
girlgenerations.That is, the "Bad Girls"showswere organizednot onlythrough
identificationwithbad enough mothersbut also throughrejectionofbad feminist
mothers.
But in the Kleinian model in which much recent body-centeredworkon
aggression is grounded, the mother-infantrelation is not one of positive
identification but of radical alienation. Aggression toward the mother and
depressiveanxietyabout the destructiveeffectsof this aggression,ratherthan
identification,structurethe Kleinian mother-infant relation.In the "Bad Girls"
shows,the girl is positioned in identificationwith a transgressivemother,but
this identificationis achieved only by rigidlyseparatingtransgressive and non-
transgressivemothers. And this splittingof the "mother"into good and bad
objectsreproducesa centralfantasyof the Kleiniansubject.
In the "Bad Girls"shows,the divisionof good and bad motherswas portrayed
verydifferently-asa disruptionof stereotypes.And this use of a thematicof
invertedstereotypesof good and bad girlsas the principalcuratorialstrategyof
the "Bad Girls"exhibitions-pervadingnot only the selection of worksbut also
the extensivewall texts and the shows' catalogue essays-was strikingin the
contextof exhibitionsthatexplicitlyrejectedhierarchyand dichotomy, takingas
theircentraltheoreticalmodel the Bakhtiniancarnivalesque.For the strictoppo-
sitionalitythroughwhichthe showswerestructured seemed markedlyat odds with
the stated purpose of overturninghierarchiesof gender,race, and class and of
high and low culturalforms,and especiallyof displacingfeminineand masculine
stereotypes.So the question I would like to pose is whetherthisdeterminationto
separate the bad girlsfromthe good can be seen as manifesting an anxietyof or
about feministpractice.And ifso, mightthe stagingof thisanxietyin exhibitions
devoted to the displayof aggressionbe seen as enacting what for Klein is the
pivotalpsychoanalytic problem-anxietyabout one's ownaggression?
The "Bad Girls"showsconstructeda mother-daughter relationgroundedin
aggressionin partby takingup Susan Suleiman'squestionabout whathappens to
the avant-garde whenthe motherlaughs.In answerto her own question,Suleiman
imagines what she calls the displacementfromthe patriarchalmother to the
playfulmotheras both subvertingpatriarchyand bringinginto (psychoanalytic)
existencethe motheras a subjectthroughthe aggressivebehaviorsof laughterand
play.22But whilethe "Bad Girls"showsseemed to wantto make the motherlaugh,
she didn'tlaugh afterall. For despiteabundantreferencesto the subversivepower
of humor,and the displayof comicformslike cartoonsand gag propslikewhoopie
cushions,the compulsivesplittingof bad and good objects-and bad and good

22. in
Susan Suleiman, "Playingand Motherhood;or, How to Get the Most of the Avant-Garde,"
ofMotherhood,
Representations ed. Donna Bassin, MargaretHoney, and MeryleMahrer Kaplan (New
Haven: Yale University
Press,1994).

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 85

mothers-enacted in the showsblocked the doublingand crossingup of meaning

throughwhichhumoris constructed.
The effectof a kind of structuralelasticityor ambivalence,humor is itself
produced by a splitsubject,humor being, according to Freud, a strategicuse of
denial, a comedythatdeflectssuffering byturningtraumaintopleasure.23So with
humor,play,or the movementbetween positions, displaces anxiety.Projective
splitting, on the other hand, has the reverse effectof intensifyinganxiety.
Incapable of toleratingthe ambivalencethatis structuralto humor,such splitting
produces good and bad objects thatare held veryfarapart. And it is thiskind of
splitting,set up byopposition,thatI would suggeststructuredthe presentationof
the "Bad Girls"shows.
In constructingher matrilineageof a bad-girlsavant-garde,for example,
Marcia Tanner cites,almost,an emblematicpairing of icons fromthe historyof
feministart: Linda Benglis's 1974 ad for Artforum, in which the nude Benglis,
masked by dark glasses, deploys a double dildo between her legs, and a 1982
portraitof Louise BourgeoisbyRobertMapplethorpein whichBourgeois,dressed
in a fuzzycoat, clutchesunder her arm an outsized latex phallus-doll,her 1968
sculptureFillette.WhatTanner actuallyreproduces,however,is the Benglisad and
a photographof Fillette alone, hangingon a hook as it is displayedin exhibition,
rather than the Mapplethorpe photograph.And this omission of the grinning,
phallus-totingBourgeois allowed Tanner to claim thatBenglis'swork"displayeda
theatricalflair,a degree of bold insouciance,mischief,and daringthatmighthave
made the shyBourgeoisrecoil."24It facilitated,in otherwords,a repressionof the
playful,aggressivemotherat the verysitethatwas to be chargedwithher laughter.
Positioningherselfas the motherof the phallus-dollshe gripsfirmly under
her elbow,Bourgeois,as we rememberso well,laughed; and her laugh did effecta
displacement from the patriarchal mother to the playful,aggressivemother.
Performing a fantasy of aggression toward the phallus and the infant, she
demonstratedhow the artist/mother mightbe constitutedas a subject through
aggression. In Mapplethorpe's photograph, Bourgeois made herself the very
image of the bad enough mother: the mother who grins at the patriarchal
overvaluationof the phallus,who parodies the metonymy of infantand penis,and
in whose hands the phallus becomes penis, or in otherwordsslipsfromits status
as privilegedsignifierto become one more object of aggressionand desire.
This is not a Kleinian fantasyperse, but rathera fantasyof turningpsycho-
analysisagainst itself.For if in Kleinian theorythe mother does not exist as a
subject, but only as the object of the infant'saggressiveprojections,Bourgeois
produces a maternalsubjectconstituted,like the infantsubject,througha playof
introjectionsand projections. So by turningthe motheragainst the infant,the

23. Sigmund Freud, "Humor,"in TheStandardEditionoftheComplete Works

Psychological ofSigmund
Freud,ed. JamesStrachey(London: HogarthPress,1953-64), vol. 21, pp. 160-66.
24. Tanner,"MotherLaughed," p. 73.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Fillette.1968.
LouiseBourgeois.

-::,'4W4

part-objectagainstthe phallus,and humoragainstthe fetish-thatis,byexploiting

the tensionbetween Kleinian,Lacanian, and Freudian psychoanalytic models-
Bourgeoisproduces the playful,aggressivemother. And psychoanalysis, borrow
to
Lacan's phraseonce again,is incapableofso muchas suspectingherexistence.
Nor does she existin the "Bad Girls"catalogue,whereshe is displacedbyan
image of Fillettethat stands fetish-likein place of the Mapplethorpe picture,a
repressionin reverseof the one performeda decade beforein anothermuseum
catalogue. For thissubstitutionof the object forthe portraitis the reverseof the
omissionperformedby the Museum of Modern Artin its catalogue forthe 1982
Bourgeoisretrospective: wascroppedout of the photograph,
in thatinstance,Fillette
cutting off the grin from its gag to produce a more enigmatic smile for the
catalogue's frontispiece.25 Both of these deletions elide the playfulmotherby
the
disrupting object relation through which she is constructed,bydividingobject
and subject into discreteframes.And in both cases, one mightsuppose, it is an
anxietyabout the aggressionregisteredin the figureof the playfulmotherthatis
defendedbythisinsistentsplittingof the image.
In the "Bad Girls"catalogue, the figureof the playfulmotherenacted by
Bourgeois in the Mapplethorpe picture is displaced by the Benglis ad. There,
aggressionis enacted througha morestraightforward appropriationof the phallus,
which fullyretains its conventionalvalences of power,virility,and aggression,

25. For a discussionof MOMA's croppingof the photograph,see my"Prettyas a Picture:Louise

27 (March 1991), pp. 48-57.
Parkett
Bourgeois'sFillette,"

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 87

albeit parodicallyexaggerated.In takingon the phallus (ratherthan takingit up,

as Bourgeois does), Benglis'sbody itselfbecomes both phallic and aggressive,and
thisassumptionof aggressionthroughthe phallus is indeed, as Tanner suggests,a
centraltropein the stagingof the "Bad Girls"shows.
problematicof aggressionthatI
But I would like to turnnow to the different
believe structuresmuch recentfeministwork,and thatis anxietyabout aggression
and its destructive effects.For it will be my argument that recent work by
Bourgeois and others points not in the direction of the thematicof liberatory
aggressionthatwas presentedin the "Bad Girls"shows,but towarda more complex
structuralanalysisof aggression.In that analysis,which is Kleinian-basedin its
organizationthroughobject relations,loss is a functionof fantasieddestructive
actions performedby the subject, a subject that is also capable, in fantasy,of
repairingitsdamaged objects.

Beds

Thematerial takingall thatroomand bothering

was there me,both-
eringmebyits aggressive presence.And somehow theidea ofthe
mother cametome.Thisis thewaymymother me,as very
impressed
powerful,verysilent,veryjudging,and controlling thewholestu-
dio. And naturallythispiecebecamemymother. At thatpoint,I
had mysubject.I was goingto express whatI felttowardher....
Firstofall I cutherhead,and I slitherthroat.
... And afterweeks
and weeksofwork,I thought, if thisis thewayI saw mymother,
thenshedidnotlikeme.How couldshepossibly likemeifI treather
thatway?At thatpointsomething turnedaround.I could not
standtheidea thatshewouldn'tlikeme.I couldn'tliveifI thought
thatshedidn'tlikeme.ThefactthatI hadpushedheraround,cut
offherhead,had nothing todo withit. Whatyoudo toa personhas
nothing todo withwhatyouexpect thepersontofeeltowardyou....
Now at theend I becamevery,verydepressed, terribly,
terribly
depressed.
-Louise Bourgeois

Theego'sgrowingcapacity
forintegrationand synthesis leadsmore
and more,evenduringthese
firstfew months,tostatesin whichlove
and hatred,and correspondingly thegood and bad aspectsof
arebeingsynthesized;
objects, and thisgivesriseto thesecondform
ofanxiety-depressive
anxiety-for theinfant'saggressiveimpulses
and desires
towardthebad breast(mother)
arenowfelttobea dan-
gertothegoodbreast
(mother)as well.
-Melanie Klein

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
88 OCTOBER

Having begun, then, with the fatherdragged onto the dinner table and
eaten, I would like to end byreturningto the table,the bed, the floor,whichis to
say to the horizontal field of the infant,to what Mitchell has called infancy's
"perpetualpresent... [a] horizontal,punctuateddurationratherthana historical,
vertical temporal perspective."26For if Kleinian fantasyis a structuralspace,
vectoredbythe axis of the horizontal,thisis a verydifferent model offantasythan
that which formsaround the gendered body. Enacted through processes of
conflation,splitting,and multiplyingperformedon part-objects,the fantasies
of the Kleinian subject are fantasies of the body riven by the drives and
undifferentiated bygender.
To returnto one of myearlier examples,Rona Pondick's installationsare
structuredby a part-objectlogic in whichthe decenteringof the body takes the
formof a conflationand splittingof objects thatfunctionas part-objectsystems-
hanging, scattered,or clustered in relation to the floor,the ceiling, and the
corners of the room. Workslike DoubleBed (1989), an impossiblylong twinned
mattress tied up with a gridded network of cord to which baby bottles are
attached, and Loveseat(1992), constructedof two facing breasted chairs with
baby-bottlenipples,a raised pink plastic hole sunk between the seats,enact the
projection of infantile drives onto external objects, or in other words the
conflation through fantasyof the body and the structuresthat support and
contain it. In the insistentliteralnessof theiruse of objects,and in the interaction
of processesof introjectionand projectionthroughwhichthe part-objectlogic of
the infantilebodystructures object relations-so that,forexample,the impulseto
suck or to bite produces an entiresucking/biting system-theseworksconstruct
the pre-Oedipalsubjectalong the lines of what Klein called the paranoid-schizoid
position.
Through this position,the subject produces the bad object, projectingits
own aggressiononto a destructiveexternalobject. These aggressivefantasiesin
turnset up the so-called depressiveposition,in which the subject is consumed
withanxietyabout the effectsof thesedestructive fantasiesand mournsthe loss of
the good object through its own aggression. Shiftingbetween the aggressive
paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position, the subject produces
fantasiesof destroyingits own good objects (as wellas bad ones) and of restoring
them in turn. And through the interplayof these two positions, and of the
destructiveand reparativefantasiesin whichtheyare articulated,Klein constructs
subjectivitythroughloss-loss sufferedthroughone's own aggression,but also
potentiallyrecoverablethroughone's own reparativework.
The paranoid-schizoidposition,then,is acted out in a frenzyof aggression
and the depressiveposition throughinertiaand despair,feelingsthat are over-
come, temporarily, in fantasiesof destructionand reparation.Pondick'sworkcan

26. Mitchell,Selected
Klein,Introduction,p. 26.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 89

be seen as enacting the destructivefantasiesof the infantin the grips of para-

noid anxiety. Rachel Whiteread's casts of bathtubs, beds, rooms, and other
abandoned objects bearing the impressionsof bodilyuse-stains, cracks,dents,
and punctures-evoke, on the other hand, depressiveanxiety'svacatingof desire.
Through a literalprocessof evacuation,the object is lost,leavingthe plaster
or rubbermold of itsspatialcontaineror core to functionas the work,a workthat
constitutesthe loss of the object. In casts of the underside of a bathtubor a bed,
or the inside of a closet, drawer, room, or house-spaces that contain or
metonymicallyrepeat the body-Whiteread materializes this loss literallyas a
negative,an inertregistrationof the space the bodyonce occupied.
These casts of space occupied and then vacated by the body also manifest
the collapse throughwhichobject and desire,like selfand other,are enfoldedby
infantilefantasy.The distinctionsof inside and outside or bodyand environment
thatare foundationalforthe gendered bodyare not observedbyinfantilefantasy.
So these worksproduced throughconflationand splitting-the collapse of body
and environment,the peeling awayof inside fromoutside-materialize a world
structuredbythe part-object.
In Whiteread'scase, thislogic is articulatedless bythe playof objects thanby
the constructionof a space thatis the condition of infantilefantasy.For it is not
the part-objectbody itselfthatconfrontsus in Whiteread'swork,but thatelision
of bodyand environment,insideand outside,throughwhichthe infantileworldis
made. Working,then,at the limitsof the body,at the interfaceof the bodyand its
supports,Whitereadexamines interstitialstructureswithevidentparallels to the
in-betweenness of infantileexperience.
The inside-outconstruction,in which,forexample, a cast of the underside
of the bathtubthatcontains the body formsanother tub,or the space beneath a
mattressmakesa bed, in reversingthe functionsof object and container,of inside
and outside,performsa decenteringof the body.In otherpieces, such as a recent
seriesof beds in whichthe worksometimesis a cast of the object itselfratherthan
of its interioror surroundingspace, the limitof the body is defined,or eroded,
not byits surroundingspace but bythe supportit impressesand to whichit molds
itself.The beds are foam,rubber,and plastercasts of mattressesand box springs
stacked or folded over,propped or slung againstthe wall,the traceryof springs
pushing up vein-likefromunder the stained surfacesof the amber,yellow,and
whiteskins.Dense and inert,these beds bear the hardened imprintof the body
stretchedout in the horizontalfieldof infantileexperience,the fieldstructured,
accordingto Klein,bythe death drive.
I have suggestedthatworksby Pondick and Whitereadmaterializeinfantile
fantasythroughthe interactionof the positions Klein called paranoid-schizoid
and depressive,both of whichare functionsof aggression(or the struggleto sup-
press it), and of loss. These are only two examples of recentfeministworkthatis
structuredin these terms,and I have offeredthemtogetherto evoke somethingof
the structuraldimensionof thismodel, a model thatexceeds the thematicsof the

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 RachelWhiteread.
Untitled(Double
AmberBed). 1991.

Left:Untitled.1991.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Bad EnoughMother 91

infantileand the part-objectthroughwhichit is oftenread. I have also attemptedto

demonstratehow the Kleinianmodel,withitsemphasison aggressionas the pivotal
psychoanalytic problem,has been employedcritically by theseartistsand othersin
relation to Lacanian-basedfeministworkof the 1970s and '80s thatcenteredon
investigations of pleasureand desire.Organizedstructurally bypositionratherthan
temporallyby stage, the Kleinian model displaces concepts of essentialismand
to
regression open spacea in which fantasiesof aggressioncan be examined as
structuralto the subjectof eithersex and of any gender,in which the subjectof
aggressionis constitutednot in essentialbut in relationalterms.
The fieldof infantilefantasyas a space in whichto investigateaggressionin a
feministcontexthas been articulatedmostfullyin the workof Louise Bourgeois,
and the practicesI have discussedhere mustbe read in relationto that body of
workand as part of its delayed reception.The part-objectlogic of Pondick'swork
in particular closely follows Bourgeois's complex development of that logic,
repeatingmanyof its moves almostverbatim.Those moves include: strategiesof
inside-outconstructionand of multiplication, and conflationthatsubvert
splitting,
the phallic logic of gender and disarticulatethe Oedipal body; techniques of
pouring, cutting,scratching,and fragmentationthat enact the ferocityof the
drives-or alternatively of stitching,wrapping,and polishingthateffectthe repair
of damage inflictedthroughaggression;and the stagingof objects in installations
or setups structuredas part-object fantasyspaces. All of these are processes
throughwhichBourgeois has enacted the subjectof the drivesand bodilyfantasy
and throughwhich the currentgeneration of feministartistshas received and
reexaminedthe investigationof the drivesas a projectoffeministart.
For while Bourgeois's workreceived increasingcriticalattentionfollowing
her retrospectiveat MOMA in 1982, it has been in the early1990s in the context
of critiquesof Lacanian psychoanalysis and semiotics,and of intensiveconcentra-
tion focused on the body as subject to aggressionand pain, that her work has
assumed a pivotal position in mediating feministpractices. Bourgeois's recent
exhibitionof worksfromthe past decade at the BrooklynMuseum,and especially
the series of workscalled Cells (1989-94), staged the part-objectlogic of infantile
fantasyas a play of position. In domestic spaces encaged by screens,doors, and
broken and soot-covered windows occupied by part-objects-a giant pair of
marble eyes,a pair of folded hands, glass globes, an ear-Bourgeois materialized
the Kleinian notion of position as "a place in which one is sometimeslodged."
With great insistenceon the concretenessof the objects, the corporealityof the
viewer,and the six sides of the cube as the markersof real space, she deployed
objects to which pastness seemed to cling-weathered architecturalremnants,
broken mirrors,schoolroom chairs, and narrowbeds-in the constructionof
memoryitselfas a "perpetualpresent."
As a numberof feministtheoristshave pointed out, Klein's object relations
model, focusingas it does on the internalexperience of the infantand fantasiesof
the mother,who alwaysfunctionsas an originaryobjectand neveras a real subject,

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
92 OCTOBER

failsto open an intersubjective space.27This is also the case withBourgeois'swork,

whichconcernsitselfwitha problemdefinedin the titleofan earlyworkas thatof
"figureswho talk to each other withoutseeing each other."In the Cells, the
fantasyscreens occluding intersubjectivity are literalizedin the meshed wire or
gloss of dirt through which we viewers glimpseone anotherpartially.When the
space of the Cell is articulatedbyhingedmirrorsangled to disruptand cut up the
field of vision,we inhabit a play of projections,staringback at our own faces
reflectedbehind the emprisoningtraceryof the screen. The experience of the
Cells is of an interplayof introjectionand projectionin which it is structurally
impossibleto "see each other."
And thisis the veryconditionof aggression,as Klein describesit. Loss, the
loss of the otherthatis destroyedin fantasy, is embedded in the structure of one's
own aggression.Thus, when Kobena Mercercomplainedrecentlyof "a stubborn
resistanceto the recognitionof unconsciousfantasyas a structuring principleof
our social, emotional,and politicallife,"and called foranalysisof "the oppressive
and unhappyphantasiesof love and hate thatconditionour mutualenmeshment,"
it was not surprisingthat he pointed toward Melanie Klein. For Klein, as he
observed,"definedphantasyas merelythewaywe organize,perceive,and giveform
to our feelings,whichare alwaysconflictedbythe coexistenceofloveand hate."28
Klein's model of unconsciousfantasyas a structuralspace articulatedby the
infantilebody offersonly one possible approach to the problem of developing
psychoanalytic feministreadingsof aggressionthatare not groundedin concepts
of essentialismor regression.But, as I have attemptedto demonstratehere, a
significant bodyof recentfeminist workcallsforreadingsof aggressionas complex
as the analysesof pleasure and desire offeredin Lacanian-basedfeministart and
criticaltheoryof the 1970sand '80s.

27. See, forexample,JaniceDoane and Devon Hodges, FromKleintoKristeva: Feminism

Psychoanalytic
forthe"GoodEnough" Mother
and theSearch ofMichiganPress,1992).
(AnnArbor:University
28. Mercer,"Fear of a Black Penis,"p. 122.

This content downloaded from 132.174.254.159 on Wed, 27 May 2015 12:20:30 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions