Maternal, Erotic and Playful: Review

Ms. [Susan Rubin Suleiman] explains Mr. [Alain Robbe-Grillet]'s ''fury toward women'' as ''hatred of mothers,'' a reflection in turn of a ''desire to dominate -be it one's language or the body of one's mother.'' Ms. Suleiman...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New York times 1990
Main Authors: Modern.'', PERRY MEISEL, Perry Meisel, a professor of English at New York University, is the author of ''The Myth of the
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Bataille, Georges (1897-1962)
Meisel, Perry
Robbe-Grillet, Alain (1922-2008)
Suleiman, Susan Rubin
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Ms. [Susan Rubin Suleiman] explains Mr. [Alain Robbe-Grillet]'s ''fury toward women'' as ''hatred of mothers,'' a reflection in turn of a ''desire to dominate -be it one's language or the body of one's mother.'' Ms. Suleiman takes this to be a ''fantasy of self-engenderment'' that corresponds to the art of the male avant-garde as a whole, which pretends to have no precursors. The figure of woman as both maternal and autonomous organizes Ms. Suleiman's entire book; it is best symbolized, she tells us, by ''the figure of the playful mother.'' Drawing on ''the maternal metaphor'' advanced by French feminism to offset the notion of ''the patriarchal mother,'' Ms. Suleiman concludes that ''a woman can be politically radical, artistically innovative, and yet a mother.'' The union of mother and play is also a solution to the Oedipus complex, whose importance Ms. Suleiman likes to underplay. While she wonders aloud whether ''the 'real' logic of Oedipus'' is ''the elimination of the mother, and a fortiori of female subjectivity,'' its logic is actually the one represented in her own positive image of the mother playing. Woman as both maternal and erotic, as Ms. Suleiman imagines her, is precisely the double image of women that the concept of the Oedipus complex requires of boys and girls alike. This is a deep and moving insight, and one that Ms. Suleiman's ecumenical approach validates despite itself. Indeed, the extent of her liberalism should not be underestimated. ''For the sake of some literal-minded readers,'' she writes in a footnote, ''I want to emphasize that I do not consider castration or sex-change operations as solutions, political or other!''
ISSN:0362-4331