an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112
Psychoanalysis and Film Theory Part 2[1]:
Reflections and Refutations
Introduction
In part one of this article, the development of film theory was
outlined, and the influence of Lacan made apparent. However, the disciplines of psychoanalysis and film theory have
not always as compatible as they may appear.
Part two will address the various criticisms that have been leveled at
film theory for its use and abuse of Lacanian psychoanalysis. These tensions function both to shed light
on various aspects of psychoanalysis, and also highlight possible problematic
areas. In the following sections, these
debates are addressed in relation to notion of the filmic gaze and the
interjections of feminist film theorists.
The Gaze
In
her article, ‘The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of
Lacan’, Joan Copjec harshly criticizes what she sees as film theory’s
misinterpretation of Lacan, and her critique centers around two figures who are
generally regarded as being in the ranks of the founders of film theory, Michel
Foucault and Jean Bachelard. Copjec
claims that film theory has performed what she terms a ‘Foucauldization’ of
Lacan. For Foucault, psychoanalysis is
like any other discourse: it functions as a means through which ‘the modern
subject is apprehended and apprehends itself, rather than…processes of apprehension’ (Copjec 2000, 440). Moreover, the fallback position of the
screen as a mirror, espoused by eminent critics like Baudry, Comolli and Metz
is regarded by Copjec as intrinsically flawed.
This traditional standpoint, as outlined in part one of this article,
positions the subject in a relation of recognition, and thus as master of the
image that he/she sees. This is a
drastic simplification of Lacan’s theory, as the mirror stage experience is
essentially a traumatic one that disrupts the subject’s relationship to the
world. It produces a subject that is
congenitally split or divided, and one that is in contrast to the stable
subject of film theory, who is master of the image. Copjec claims that this difference between the Lacanian subject
and its re-interpretation in film theory rests on the issue of the relationship
between desire and the law. For Lacan,
desire is both encouraged and prohibited by the law. Desire can only emerge through a possibility offered by the law,
because the symbolic structures desire.
Since desire demands to be realized, it can only be prevented from doing
so by an external force. So conversely, the law also functions to prohibit
desire, as is evidenced by the Oedipus and castration complexes, or
Levi-Strauss’s incest prohibition.
Foucault however, conflates these two elements, perceiving desire ‘not
only as an effect, but also as a realization of the law’ (Copjec 2000,
443). The subject of traditional film
theory is therefore based more on Foucault’s panoptic gaze than on the Lacanian
gaze, causing Copjec to state that, ‘[t]he relation between apparatus and gaze
creates only the mirage of psychoanalysis.
There is no psychoanalytic subject in sight’ (Copjec 2000, 444).
Zizek also criticizes film theory’s
misinterpretation of the Lacanian gaze on the same grounds as Copjec and his
theorizations are a significant development of the early theories of Metz and
others. Zizek agrees with Metz that
before the spectator identifies with characters from the diegesis, he/she first
identifies with himself/herself as pure gaze.
He contends however, that ‘the viewer is forced to face the desire at
work in his/her seemingly neutral gaze’ (Zizek 1992, 223). In his later work, The Fright of Real Tears, Zizek explains this idea more fully. Arguing for the antagonistic relationship
between the eye and the Gaze, he states that, ‘the Gaze is on the side of the
object, it stands for the blind spot in the field of the visible from which the
picture itself photo-graphs the spectator’ (Zizek 2001, 34). In other words, ‘when I am looking at an
object, the object is already gazing at me’ (Zizek, 2000, 530). The function of interface occurs when
subjective and objective shots in the film fail to produce a suturing
effect. In the usual process of suture,
the first shot generates a feeling of anxiety in the spectator, which is
alleviated by the second shot which shows the first to be from the point of
view of a particular character. Thus
the second shot attempts to represent the absent subject S. Interface is the point at which this
representation fails. Zizek defines
interface as ‘the internal element that sustains the consistency of the
‘external reality’ itself, the artificial screen that confers the effect of
reality on what we see’ (Zizek 2001, 54).
This internal element, which is necessary for external reality to appear
a consistent whole is the object petit a.
Zizek’s argument echoes Lacan’s original objections
to the use of suture in film theory outlined in part one. On the surface, suture closes the gap of
representation, hiding the traces of its own production. But in psychoanalysis, nothing can be fully
hidden, or fully repressed. This leads
Zizek to argue that there is no clear opposition between subjective experience
and objective reality: rather there is ‘an excess on both sides’ (Zizek 2001,
59). To illustrate this point, Zizek
uses the example of the empty master signifier ‘Nation’. It is a signified that contains an
ostensible fullness and completeness of meaning, yet which also fails on the
level of the signifier, since it is incapable of definition. The master signifier, of which the phallus
is an example, could perhaps be perceived as threatening this endless
instability of meaning, as it is an anchoring point in the symbolic order. This is not the case however, because the
phallus is a signifier of its own impossibility. Zizek points out that Lacan has likened the phallus to the square
root of -1, a number whose value cannot be calculated, but which nonetheless
exists and functions within the system of mathematics. Although Lacan has often been criticized for
his use of mathematical symbols, it must be borne in mind that he does not
purport to perform a mathematically accurate algebra. He uses mathematics for his own purpose, which is the
illustration of his theories. This
equation is aligned with the phallus because it too represents an impossible
fullness of meaning. The signified is
‘sustained by the void…at the level of the signifier’ (Zizek 2001, 60). The square root of -1 represents a concept
which is theoretically possible but which fails at the level of the signifier,
because it cannot be calculated. It
represents, as Fink suggests, ‘what the subject is that is unthinkable about
him’ (Fink 2004, 125): the real, the overflow of signification into the void
beyond language. In the case of the
phallus, this void is its castrating dimension, and means that its fullness of
meaning is supplemented by its own impossibility. It is the feminist branch of film theory that has interrogated
the phallic aspect of the Lacanian subject most thoroughly.
Feminist Film Theory
In
feminist film theory, issues surrounding the phallus and sexuality play a significant
role, but to a much lesser extent than in conventional psychoanalytic
feminism. This is primarily due to the
fact that all theorizations of selfhood in film theory (not just feminist ones)
are part of its broader function, which is the dual interrogation of self as
spectator and self on screen. Like
mainstream film theory, feminist film theory too is marked by a focus on the
occasion of consumption: the act of watching a film and the identifications that
this act engenders. As well as examining
the psychical experience of the spectator, feminist film theory also studies
the representation of women in filmic discourse. Since this activity is by its nature confined to specific films,
it is the analysis of the spectator that consequently forms the central topic
for this section.
Feminist film theory began as part of the general
social and political feminist movement, but it is useful at the outset to set
out the main objections of feminists to film theory in particular. Most theorizations of the relationship
between spectator and film depicted the gaze as male, evicting the female
spectator from the possibility of identification. As regards films themselves, it was felt that women functioned
primarily as objects of desire for the male gaze. Hence, the basic problem occurs in feminist film theory: whether
woman (as spectator or character) can be conceptualised outside of the dominant
hegemony. This section will examine the
responses of several feminist critics to these issues.
Anne Friedberg is a useful beginning
point for the interrogation of feminist film theory, as her essay ‘A Denial of
Difference: Theories of Cinematic Identification’ outlines patriarchal
identificatory processes and sets out to critique them. Friedberg divides identification into three
stages: pre-cinematic identification, cinematic identification, and
extra-cinematic identification.
According to Friedberg, cinematic identification is prefigured by the
unconscious identification processes that are cultivated in early childhood. In her opening paragraph she states that in
psychoanalysis,
Identification is a
process which commands the subject to be displaced by an other; it is a procedure which refuses and recuperates the
separation between self and other, and in this way replicates the very
structure of patriarchy. Identification
demands sameness, necessitates similarity, disallows difference. (Friedberg 1990, 36)
Here
Friedberg takes the vast, overarching concept of self and other in Lacan and
Freud’s work and reduces it to an example of the mechanisms of patriarchy or
female subordination. Yes,
identification does mirror the structure of patriarchy, but it would seem
apparent that the blurring of boundaries between self and other is an essential
part of any identification, and is
central to every relationship:
colonizers and colonized, lover and beloved, master and slave. Friedberg displays the blinkered nature of
her viewpoint by failing to acknowledge the universality of the identificatory
experience.
Pre-cinematic identification as described by Freud
and later by Lacan, is problematic for feminists like Friedberg who practice a
feminism of difference, since identification is built upon a denial of
difference from early childhood. For
example, the child in the mirror stage disavows the discrepancy between his
image in the mirror as a unified body, and his experiential chaotic
reality. This characteristic of
identification is repeated in cinematic identification. As one of the first exponents of
psychoanalytic identificatory processes in cinema, it is Christian Metz who
comes under criticism from Friedberg.
In opposition to Metz, Friedberg contends that the ego-ideal offered by
the cinema is ‘not unified or whole, but a synecdochal signifier’ (Friedberg
1990, 41). The actor/actress is not
represented in his/her entirety.
Rather, different parts of the body become part-object commodities: a
voice, a face, a pair of legs, etc.
Secondly, she points out the problems that occur when gendered
identification is considered. The woman
is forced either into identifying with ‘the woman who is punished by the
narrative or treated as a scoptophilic fetish OR…identifying with the man who
is controller of events’ (Friedberg 1990, 42).
Friedberg launches her final attack on Metz by claiming that secondary
identification need not necessarily involve a human form at all, emphasizing
her argument that identification processes are based upon a denial of
difference. Considering the range of animal,
alien and robot characters that it is possible to identify with, Friedberg
concludes that ‘any body offers an
opportunity for identificatory investment, a possible suit for the
substitution/misrecognition of self’ (Friedberg 1990, 42).
This third point would seem to open Friedberg onto a
path of identification that is not founded on gender divides, but she chooses
to utilise it only to further emphasise the denial of difference that she
contends is the mechanism of patriarchy.
Friedberg argues that extra-cinematic identification serves to further
entrench the spectator in the pattern of recognition as other, and subsequent
misrecognition as self. The economic
structures which support the cinema encourage consumers to buy film star
merchandise or products that are endorsed by film stars, enabling them to
purchase and therefore own or consume the star. In this way, Friedberg argues that cinematic identification
produces normative gender figures, which must be critiqued under patriarchy. Friedberg’s account is useful in setting out
the opposition that feminists have to traditional theories of cinematic
identification, but her analysis is considerably hampered by her own political
project, which makes her unable to look beyond the gender divide.
Mary Ann Doane voices similar
objections to apparatus theory. Using
the character of Gaby Doriot as an example, she argues like Friedberg that the
cinema produces stereotyped representations of women. Gaby Doriot as the eponymous La
Signora di tutti of the film’s title is a perfect example of how many
on-screen female characters are indeed ‘everybody’s Lady’. That the same may be said about many
stereotyped male characters does not enter Doane’s argument. Instead she concentrates on illustrating the
sexism of apparatus theory. Unlike
Friedberg however, Doane does propose a solution to this feminist dilemma. Recognizing the often-neglected historical
application of psychoanalysis, Doane sees this as a way to crack open the
deterministic structure of apparatus theory, and allow for ‘the possibility of
change or transformation through attention to the concreteness and specificity
of the socio-historical situation’ (Doane 1990, 48). Doane reservedly suggests that ‘[p]sychoanalysis is, in some
sense, the construction of history, and history in its turn, an act of
remembering’ (Doane 1990, 59). It
hardly seems necessary to point out here that psychoanalysis is in every sense the construction of history,
from its clinical methodology to its own historical development in Lacan’s reconstruction
of Freud. Although Doane sees history
as related to a social past that transcends the subject, she believes that its
co-relative – memory – is firmly anchored to the individual. In this way she envisages feminism escaping
from the deadlock of apparatus theory.
However, Doane does not explicitly state exactly how this is to be achieved, remarking rather vaguely that ‘[t]he
task must be not that of remembering women, remembering real women, immediately
accessible – but of producing remembering women; with memories and hence
histories’ (Doane 1990, 60). Her
concluding analysis of the feminist film The
Gold Diggers would suggest that remembering women are to be produced on the
screen by an alternative feminist cinematography. This does not, however, solve the problem of representations of
women in mainstream cinema or the gender bias in apparatus theory.
The question may fruitfully be
proffered as to why the apparatus is supposed to be male in the first
place. Any answer to this question cannot
fail to make reference to Laura Mulvey’s foundational essay, ‘Visual Pleasure
and Narrative Cinema’ originally published in Screen, which was to become the main reference point for much of
the feminist film theory that was to follow.
Mulvey begins her article by stating that ‘the unconscious of
patriarchal society has structured film form’ (Mulvey 2000, 483). This is a view shared by many feminist film
theorists. Cowie goes as far back as
Levi-Strauss to argue that ‘[k]inship is …part of a system which produces woman
as object of exchange’ (Cowie 2000, 60).
Mulvey explains this state of affairs by way of psychoanalytic theory
that in her account allocates woman two main functions: symbolizing the threat
of castration by her absence of a penis, and bringing the child into the
symbolic. Doane cites this as the
reason that the male spectator is destined to be fetishistic: in his sexual
indoctrination there is a distance between his look (at the female genitals)
and the boy’s understanding of his look as sexual difference, which comes about
retrospectively with the advent of the castration complex. For this reason, Doane states that, ‘the
male spectator is destined to be a fetishist, balancing knowledge and belief’
(Doane 2000, 501). Mulvey argues, as
many feminist do, that it is woman’s lack, set down during this formative
period of the infant’s life, which ensures the symbolic presence of the
phallus.
The phallus is certainly a symbolic presence, but is
as pointed out in the earlier discussion in this article on Zizek, an empty signifier. It is necessary in order to hold together
the structure of sexual development; it is a privileged term, which both sexes
must relate to, but it means little in itself.
In fact, it is the pre-Oedipal castrations that prove to be the most
definitive in both male and female subjectivity, castrations that are realized
only retroactively, après coup, when
the child enters the symbolic. The
castrations ‘produce a subject who is structured by lack long before the “discovery”
of sexual difference’ (Silverman 1988, 16).
Mulvey goes on to say that once woman has successfully ushered her child
into the symbolic, ‘her meaning in the process is at an end, it does not last
into the world of law and language except as a memory of maternal plenitude’
(Mulvey 2000, 483). A statement of this
sort not only steers her down a path of inevitable despair, it is also
blatantly untrue. Her position is based
upon the unspoken belief that the symbolic order is masculine.
Although this may have been true in the past, it is
surely now an outdated standpoint in contemporary society where women
contribute to all aspects of society and culture.
The other main issue arising from this article that
was to become highly influential is Mulvey’s assertion that the cinema plays on
both the scopophilic instinct and ego libido.
Moreover,
[t]he
image of woman as (passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man takes the
argument a step further into the structure of representation, adding a further
layer demanded by the ideology of the patriarchal order as it is worked out in
its favorite cinematic form – illusionistic narrative film. (Mulvey 2000, 493)
In
Mulvey’s article, the cinema represents and exaggerates the very worst aspects
of society from a female point of view.
Although the premises that her argument is based on are themselves
dubious and subjective, and sometimes grossly outdated, Mulvey further adds to
the negativity of her account by failing to offer any way forward. Following the widespread critical interest
that this article generated, she did however produce a follow up article where
she addresses some of these flaws.
Having been criticized for only dealing with the male
gaze and ignoring the female spectator, her second article sets out to examine
‘how the text and its attendant identifications are affected by a female
character occupying the center of the narrative arena’ (Mulvey 2000a, 24). Mulvey quotes at length from Freud and the
famous passage in which he proclaims that there is only one libido, which is
masculine. Once again, she criticizes
psychoanalysis by criticizing Freud. It
is not difficult or even particularly illuminating to point out that a
Victorian psychoanalyst appears sexist a century later, and Mulvey appears to
deliberately ignore any advances made by Lacan. In ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ she attacks Freud for
providing an explanation of female sexuality that is based on anatomy, without
recognizing that this is not the case for Lacan.
In light of her criticisms of Freud, it is ironic
that Mulvey comes full circle to agree with him. In an attempt to answer the question of how the female spectator
identifies in cinema, she concludes that Hollywood genre films, structured
around masculine pleasure allow woman to identify with active male sexuality:
‘that lost aspect of her sexual identity, the never fully repressed bedrock of
feminine neurosis’ (Mulvey 2000a, 26).
This trans-sex identification is examined in relation to King Vidor’s
western, Duel in the Sun, which
dramatizes the situation of a woman caught between two conflicting desires:
passive femininity and regressive masculinity, which are offered to her by her
two male counterparts in the film. One
allows her to be a tomboy in the ‘male’ world of rivalry and violence; the
other, a man of culture and learning shows her the ‘correct’ path to becoming a
lady. Mulvey argues that the position
of the female spectator is similar to that of Pearl in Duel in the Sun, as she ‘temporarily accepts “masculinisation” in
memory of her “active” phase’ (Mulvey 2000a, 35). Although she recognizes that this position is not ideal, Mulvey
nevertheless shows a certain amount of solidarity with Freud, which proves to
be the thread that unravels her entire argument. In spite of her obvious objections to Freudian psychoanalysis,
her own theory of female cinematic identification is constructed within its
confines.
Theorist Constance Penley offers an
account of the problems with and possible solutions to apparatus theory for
feminists that is more influenced by Lacan than Freud. Penley borrows the term ‘bachelor machine’
to describe the cinematic apparatus; an appropriate metaphor in light of her
stance that the cinematic apparatus cannot properly accommodate or represent
the woman. In her article ‘Feminism,
Film Theory and the Bachelor Machines’, Penley takes on several eminent film
theorists, disputing their theorizations of the cinematic apparatus. The first theorist she discusses is
Jean-Louis Baudry. Baudry believes the
cinema to be the most accurate representation of the unconscious in history,
claiming that ‘all the other art forms…are simply rehearsals of a primordially
unconscious effort to recreate the scene of the unconscious, while cinema is
its most successful achievement’ (Penley 2000, 458). Both Baudry and Metz describe the cinematic scene (the darkness,
the projection from behind) as a duplication of unconscious phenomena,
producing hallucinatory satisfaction in the case of the former, and ideal subjective
unity and visual mastery in the case of the latter.[1] Penley
criticizes both theorists however, for failing to acknowledge the ‘economic,
social, or political determinations of cinema’ (Penley 2000, 459). In short, their analyses overlook the position
of the cinema within the symbolic order.
This is the point at which Penley returns to a specific attack on Metz,
whom she criticizes for claiming that the cinema is primarily imaginary, which
subsequently becomes the crux of her argument.
Metz’s justifications for this claim have already
been outlined, based on the fact that the cinema experience centers around the
scopic drive and the cinema is presence in absence, but Penley argues that
Metz’s conception of the imaginary is over-simplified, pointing out that in
Lacan’s later work he emphasizes that ‘the imaginary is always permeated by the
desire of the Other, and that it is a triangular rather than a dual relation’
(Penley 2000, 460). Penley’s argument is
well-founded. The imaginary is always
subordinate to the symbolic, even if the subject himself is unaware of this
fact. This is why Lacan found in
Jean-Paul Sartre such a valuable model for the theorization of vision: Sartre
too believed that the look is subject to the look of the Other, and
consequently to the symbolic order.
Penley uses this argument to attack feminists like Kristeva, Michele
Montelray and Irigaray, who are overly focused on the body. Their objections to the construction of
female sexuality in relation to a third term, the phallus, and their solutions
to this problem which paradoxically return to the body, ignore the prevailing
influence of the symbolic order in the development of both female and male sexuality:
“The risk of essence”
unabashedly taken by these alternative theories of the feminine typically
involves…ignoring the important psychoanalytic emphasis on the way that sexual
identity is imposed from the “outside”.
By deriving gendered sexuality from the body, no matter how indirectly,
what is in danger of disappearing is the sense of sexuality as an arbitrary
identity that is imposed on the subject, as a law. (Penley 2000, 469)
This
is a view that is shared by Doane who similarly criticizes French feminists for
their engagement in ‘a kind of ‘ghetto politics’’ (Doane 1993, 175). As a counter to the maleness of the
cinematic apparatus, Penley suggests that the way forward is not be found in a
return to the body, but in the analysis of fantasy, which ‘provides a way of
accounting for sexual difference but which in no way seeks to dictate or
predetermine the subsequent distribution of that difference’ (Penley 2000,
470).
Fantasy does closely resemble cinema in many of its
aspects: it is a staging of the subject’s desire, as identification in fantasy
is shifting and not fixed and the subject enters into the same contract of
temporary belief in its reality.
Elizabeth Cowie’s Fantasia is
a full-length study on the dynamics of fantasy and their relation to
cinema. Like Penley, she too posits
fantasy as the staging of desire or ‘the mise-en-scene
of desire’ (Cowie 1993, 147). The
importance of fantasy for feminist theory lies in what Cowie describes as
de-subjectivisation. She borrows this
term for Lacan who refers to it in Seminar XI.[2] In fantasy,
the subject does not occupy a fixed position, but is fluid, becoming part of
the syntax of the sequence itself.
Lacan’s theorization of fantasy opens the way for the analysis of
cinematic identification that is not dominated by the ‘male’ apparatus. Cowie argues that in the fiction film as in
fantasy, the subject’s identification is likewise not fixed: ‘[b]oth the
daydream ‘thoughtlessly’ composed and the more complex fictional narrative join
with the ‘original’ fantasies in visualizing the subject in the scene, and in
presenting a varying of subject positions so that the subject takes up more
than one position’ (Cowie 1993, 149).
Theorists like Cowie and Penley are
attempting to show the way forward for feminist film theory. Their intellectual engagement with the
concepts of psychoanalysis and their obvious desire for a theory of cinematic
identification that is not a war waged across gender lines shows a positive
turnabout in itself. Nevertheless,
while the politics of gender continue to play the primary role in the theorization of film identification for
feminists, it is difficult to overcome the entrenchment of that position, which
perhaps precludes a broader, more inclusive analysis. As an example of the possible effects of such a politics, I would
like to conclude this section by making reference to Doane’s article, ‘Heads in
Hieroglyphic Bonnets’. She begins by
extracting a quote used by Freud to describe female otherness: ‘[h]eads in
hieroglyphic bonnets,/ Heads in turbans and black birettas, /Heads in wigs and
thousand other/ Wretched sweating heads of humans’ (Heine, qtd. in Doane 2000,
495). By removing the quotation from
its context however, Freud omits the intended purpose of these lines for Heine,
for whom they serve to ponder not ‘”What is Woman”, but instead, “what
signifies Man?” (Doane 2000, 495).
Thus, Freud’s claim that he is investigating the otherness of woman is
revealed to be ‘a pretense, haunted by the mirror effect by means of which the
question of the woman reflects only the man’s own ontological doubts’ (Doane
2000, 496). However, it escapes Doane’s
notice that Heine’s use of ‘Man’ (he was writing in the nineteenth century,
after all) refers not to the male, but is a linguistic convention used to
signify mankind or humankind. Thus,
Doane commits a misreading based on gender prejudice that mirrors Freud’s
own. This error in Doane’s article is
symptomatic of the dangers of a feminist discourse that is overzealous and
which consequently runs the risk of either repeating the gender bias that has
been suffered by women, or what is perhaps worse, blinding itself to situations
of equality when everything is seen through the lens of a feminist politics.
Examining psychoanalytic issues from
a specifically cinematic point of view has significantly added to the critical
debate on psychoanalysis itself. It has
isolated problems, clarified issues and forwarded the theory in a way that
would not otherwise have been possible.
From film theory’s idealistic beginnings with Eisenstein, it became
apparent that a conception of film that accounted for the mechanisms of power
and ideology was necessary. For a time,
Althusserian Marxism played this role until objections began to be raised
against the passive Althusserian subject.
This engendered a renewed interest in Lacanian psychoanalysis, for whom
the subject is constructed through ideology via the symbolic order, but who is
also a producer of meaning, après coup,
in the workings of signification.
The influence of semiotics on film criticism as
outlined in relation to Metz’s grande
syntagmatique, also bore the influence of Lacan from a different direction:
that of linguistics, in his radical re-reading of Saussure. From the dual influences of structuralism
and Althusserian Marxism that characterized British film theory, came a shift
to a mode of theory that could incorporate the psychological experience of the
spectator in the cinema. This challenge
was taken up by Heath and also by Metz, whose founding essay ‘The Imaginary
Signifier’ showed the possibilities that Lacanian psychoanalysis could offer
film theory. In spite of the criticisms
of theorists like Copjec and Zizek; that film theory has performed an over-simplification
of the Lacanian subject, their interjections into the theory have raised fresh
issues, steering film theory in a new direction, confirming the importance of
Lacan in the theorization of post-millennial subjectivity. It is a subjectivity that is unendingly
complex and fragmented, which is at the mercy of multiple opposing forces, but
which contains a underlying bedrock of unity, perhaps coming closer than any
theory before it to explaining the multifarious, labyrinthine nature of the
human psyche.
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an international and interdisciplinary journal of postmodern cultural sound, text and image
Volume 2, April 2005, ISSN 1552-5112