2. We could debate the usefulness and specificity of the concept of identification in film theory. My own identificatory position while watching "Hard Candy" (2005) kept shifting: when Jeff is suffering, I feel for him; and whenever Jeff gets loose and picks up the knife in pursuit of Hayley, I fear/feel for her: I identify with whomever is down, like a spectator at a sports event who roots for whichever team is losing at the moment.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
questions from presentation, 9/26
1. Riviere's definition of masquerade as the excessive production of femininity to conceal the possession of masculinity troubles Doane because it subordinates, at the level of theory, (causally and ontologically), femininity to masculinity. (Cf. Freud's idea that there is only one, primary, libido, and it is masculine.) Might a move to unyoke femininity/masculinity from female/male provide conceptual relief here? Masculinity need then not be viewed as an exclusively male property: rather, one might speak of female masculinity, female femininity, male masculinity, male femininity.... The transferability or 'floatingness' of masculinity would point up its status as just as much of a masquerade as femininity.
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Hi David-- I think this is a great question... I would maybe even append that we could totally ask what 'identification' even means perhaps across theoretical and historical contexts. That is, for the second wavers, identification happens within a nexus of social interactions and a supposed universal recognition of oppressive patriarchal systems (i.e. 'sisterhood is powerful,' though we know how troubled the universality of their concept of identification is). On the other hand, this past week's readings speak almost strictly about identification as a psychic process (though, as we established, there are some metonymic and rhetorical slippages in Doane's theorizations). These then become the tools for unpacking the (female) 'spectator.' Of course, you also refer here to cinematic identifications, and how you experience different modes of identification within a single scene. And I think this is a really important to bring up because it only further suggests how limited psychoanalytic definitions (rather than say social and cultural explanations) for 'identification' can be. It's like we can't ever explain away psychoanalytic processes, we can't explain our conscious identifications, because identification happens unconsciously -- the Id knows better than we do.
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