Kristeva and Loewald on Selfhood and the Potential Aptitudes of Parenthood Öffentlichkeit
White, Braden (Spring 2024)
Published
Abstract
As the psychoanalytic story of the infant’s maturation is often told, the only way to become a proper ‘part’ of the world or ‘make it’ as a member of society is to submit to the Oedipal threat of mutilation and contemporaneously relinquish the primordial intimacy of the ‘mother’-infant dyad. My objective is to identify and defend a more hopeful, tender story of the infant’s inevitable movement from the plenitudinous origins of existence toward the discovery of alterity, or of the social-relational world’s remainder. I employ Kristevan and Loewaldian theory to identify the plausibility of pre-Oedipal to Oedipal fluidity wherein both the ‘maternal’ and the ‘paternal’ harmoniously function to prompt the infant’s wish to identify with personhood, a sense of 'self,' and the ‘rest’ of the world. I defend the tripartite argument: first, that the maternal and paternal operations aren’t antithetical but, rather, enjoy a certain continuity; second, that the paternal threat of castration isn’t the sine qua non of the Oedipal configuration; and third, that a uniquely Kristevan-Loewaldian account of maturity is able to pave the way for the infant’s potential to carry the function of the ‘maternal’ forward.
Table of Contents
Introduction — 1
Rhythm of Your Heart — 7
Who’s Your Daddy? — 23
A Tale of Two Functions — 39
Conclusion — 53
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