{"id":23342,"date":"2012-05-24T01:37:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-24T01:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23342"},"modified":"2012-05-24T01:37:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-24T01:37:41","slug":"%e2%80%9cstill-seeking-for-something%e2%80%9d-the-unspeakable-loss-in-%e2%80%9cpassing%e2%80%9d-by-nella-larsen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23342","title":{"rendered":"\u201cStill Seeking for Something\u201d: The Unspeakable (Loss) in \u201cPassing\u201d by Nella Larsen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cStill Seeking for Something\u201d: The Unspeakable (Loss) in \u201cPassing\u201d by Nella Larsen<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wagadu<\/a>
\nVolume 6, 2008<\/a>, Special Issue: Women’s Activism for Gender Equality in Africa
\n16 pages<\/p>\n

Agnieszka Mrozik<\/strong><\/p>\n

The paper analyzes Nella Larsen\u2019s Passing (1929) through the lens of the theory of melancholy from Freud to Butler. Examining the dynamic relationship between Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two protagonists of Larsen\u2019s novella, I attempt to demonstrate that under the surface of clearly expressed racial tensions, focused upon the dilemma of passing, there is a more deeply hidden problem\u2014the one of gender identity and sexual desire.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

I am saturnine\u2014bereft\u2014disconsolate,
\nThe Prince of Aquitaine whose tower has crumbled;
\nMy lone star is dead\u2014and my bespangled lute
\nBears the Black Sun of Melancholia.<\/p>\n

G\u00e9rard de Nerval, El Desdichado<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Melancholic Souls<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his famous essay \u201cMourning and Melancholia\u201d (1917), Sigmund Freud<\/a> writes that the loss of an object normally provokes a reaction known as mourning. The mourner knows whom or what he\/she lost and is aware that suffering is part of a normal process at the end of which a new life begins. Yet, Freud adds that in some people the same event produces melancholia instead of mourning. In many cases one cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost. This situtation is common in psychoanalysis, even when the patient is aware of the loss which has given rise to his\/her melancholia, but only in the sense that he\/she knows whom he\/she has lost, but not what he\/she has lost in him\/her. Freud suggests therefore that melancholia is in some way related to an object lost which is withdrawn from consciousness.<\/p>\n

The most striking characteristic of the melancholic personality is extreme diminution in self-regard: somehow the loss of an object has triggered an impoverishment of the self. As Freud puts it: \u201cIn mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself\u201d (Freud, 1989: 585). In other words, while it would seem as though the loss suffered is that of an object, what the melancholic has actually experienced is a loss of self.<\/p>\n

According to Julia Kristeva<\/a>, the author of Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia<\/em>, the melancholic suffers not from the Object but the Thing (French Chose<\/em>) lost, which is \u201can unnamable, supreme good, something unrepresentable, that […] no word could signify. […] The Thing is inscribed within us without memory, the buried accomplice of our unspeakable anguishes\u201d (1989: 13-14). Kristeva identifies the Thing with the Mother, by which she understands the pre-Oedipal Mother\u2014the one strongly bonded to the child and then prohibited in the Name of the Father. The mother is the child\u2019s first love which has to be abandoned in order to enable him or her to become the subject, which in Lacanian<\/a> terms means to enter the language…<\/p>\n

…Nella Larsen\u2019s<\/a> Passing<\/a> <\/em>(1929), read through the lens of the theory of melancholy from Freud to Butler, confirms this observation. Analyzing the dynamic relationship between Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, two protagonists of Larsen\u2019s novella, one may figure out that under the surface of clearly expressed racial tensions, focused upon the dilemma of passing, there is a more deeply hidden problem \u2013 the one of gender identity and sexual desire. Or, putting it in other words, in Larsen\u2019s text, there is a great accumulation of racial, gender and sexual tensions which remain unrelieved as long as the characters obey the rules of white, patriarchal and heteronormative society that represses any exception to these rules, and especially Black lesbian desire.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Claiming that Larsen\u2019s female characters are \u201cstill seeking for something,\u201d I am going to demonstrate that what they are really looking for is another woman: the object of desire and the link to the first lost object which is the Mother herself. The loss of the Mother combined with denial of desire for the same-sex object leads to melancholic self-destruction. As a result of women\u2019s appearing in relations with men only and their supporting the traditional system of values, they are doomed to loneliness and experience the loss for which they cannot even find words. Broken maternal genealogy and locked access to language, in which the female desire might be expressed, doom women to silence and squander their chances of building an alternative world to the existing one…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article in HTML<\/a> or PDF<\/a> format.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cStill Seeking for Something\u201d: The Unspeakable (Loss) in \u201cPassing\u201d by Nella Larsen Wagadu Volume 6, 2008, Special Issue: Women’s Activism for Gender Equality in Africa 16 pages Agnieszka Mrozik The paper analyzes Nella Larsen\u2019s Passing (1929) through the lens of the theory of melancholy from Freud to Butler. Examining the dynamic relationship between Irene Redfield […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,666,1196,8],"tags":[10874,87,10875],"class_list":["post-23342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-gaylesbian","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-agnieszka-mrozik","tag-nella-larsen","tag-wagadu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}