A01=Diane Jonte-Pace
anti semitism
Author_Diane Jonte-Pace
castration anxiety
Category=JBSF
Category=JMAF
Category=QRAB
circumcision
counterthesis
cultural history
cultural studies
death
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
feminist
freud
freudian
gentile
grief
immorality
intellectual
judaism
life and death
loss
maternity
melancholia
misogyny
morality
morals
mourning
oedipal
oedipus complex
philosophy
psychology
racism
religion
religious studies
uncanny
Product details
- ISBN 9780520230767
- Weight: 318g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Dec 2001
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In this bold rereading of Freud's cultural texts, Diane Jonte-Pace uncovers an undeveloped "counterthesis," one that repeatedly interrupts or subverts his well-known Oedipal masterplot. The counterthesis is evident in three clusters of themes within Freud's work: maternity, mortality, and immortality; Judaism and anti-Semitism; and mourning and melancholia. Each of these clusters is associated with "the uncanny" and with death and loss. Appearing most frequently in Freud's images, metaphors, and illustrations, the counterthesis is no less present for being unspoken--it is, indeed, "unspeakable." The "uncanny mother" is a primary theme found in Freud's texts involving fantasies of immortality and mothers as instructors in death. In other texts, Jonte-Pace finds a story of Jews for whom the dangers of assimilation to a dominant Gentile culture are associated unconsciously with death and the uncanny mother. The counterthesis appears in the story of anti-Semites for whom the "uncanny impression of circumcision" gives rise not only to castration anxiety but also to matriphobia.
It also surfaces in Freud's ability to mourn the social and religious losses accompanying modernity, and his inability to mourn the loss of his own mother. The unfolding of Freud's counterthesis points toward a theory of the cultural and unconscious sources of misogyny and anti-Semitism in "the unspeakable." Jonte-Pace's work opens exciting new vistas for the feminist analysis of Freud's intellectual legacy.
Diane Jonte-Pace is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Development at Santa Clara University. She is coeditor of Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain (with William B. Parsons, 2001).
