This paper considers a minor if not fleeting detail from Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu which easily escapes noticeability though it is a signifier that reverberates with and, in fact, repeats the extremely well known epiphany of the Madeleine, though by way of an extremely muted parody that I doubt a reader would notice if he or she had not stopped to examine it. This detail concerns a lobster dismantled on Marcel's plate during lunch at the home (...) of the Swanns. My argument is that the figure of the lobster is what psychologists call a "somatic projection," which in this case has a surreal effect, given that the lobster suddenly becomes a substitute for, say, a woman's body. Moreover, by way of a culinary issue concerning the preparation of lobsters in France and the types of lobstersthat are being prepared, the lobster improbably becomes an object that symbolically traverses sexual orientations, which is also a somatic projection of sorts. That the lobster is a fantasized sexual object whose monstrosity is constitutive of a sexual field divided by different orientations is a matter that this paper takes up. The paper ends with a few remarks about Salvador Dali's surrealist use of imagining the lobster as a fetish object for woman's sex. In various degrees, this paper is relevant to gay studies, object relations theory, the study of fantasy, surrealism in fiction, literature and the culinary, psychology and epistemology, visual art, and, of course, Proust studies. (shrink)
The purpose of the essay is to contextualize and explain the philosophical project that is under way in Jacques Derrida's Khōraof 1993. Upon a cursory reading, the book will appear to be merely the unpacking of yet another undecidable term that Derrida has located within the history of metaphysics. But, in fact, the stakes of this text are much higher in that Derrida's aim is to continue developing a project that was announced in the late 1960s, namely, to deregionalize ontology. (...) Precisely what Derrida meant by that phrase and the various texts one would have to revisit in order to properly understand how Khōra instrumentalizes deregionalization is what this essay attempts to survey. Lastly, as Husserlian phenomenology is quite central to the concerns of this essay, researchers may consider it as a contribution to the study of Derrida's relation to Husserl's philosophy. Major texts by Derrida that are discussed include The Problem of Genesis in Husserlian Phenomenology, ‘La difference’, Voice and Phenomena, Of Grammatology, ‘Plato's Pharmacy’, ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials’, and Khora. Major topics include: the transcendental ego, regional phenomenology, voice and writing, differance, origin, genesis, woman, negative theology, khora, and Plato. (shrink)
'Is There Truth in Art?' includes chapters on atonal music, environmental art, modern German and French poetry, contemporary French fiction, experimental French ...
