Caressing Radical Alterity

230 Pages·2017·4.59 MB·English

UUnniivveerrssiittyy ooff SSoouutthh CCaarroolliinnaa
SScchhoollaarr CCoommmmoonnss
Theses and Dissertations
5-2017
CCaarreessssiinngg RRaaddiiccaall AAlltteerriittyy:: FFoorr aa QQuueeeerr EEtthhiicc ooff EEmmbbooddiimmeenntt iinn
CCoonntteemmppoorraarryy FFiillmmss aanndd LLiitteerraattuurree
Marc Demont
University of South Carolina
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd
Part of the Comparative Literature Commons
RReeccoommmmeennddeedd CCiittaattiioonn
Demont, M.(2017). Caressing Radical Alterity: For a Queer Ethic of Embodiment in Contemporary Films
and Literature. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/4046
This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please
contact [email protected].
Caressing Radical Alterity: For a Queer Ethic of Embodiment in Contemporary Films
and Literature.
by
Marc Démont
Bachelor of Arts
Clermont-Ferrand, 2008

Master of Arts
University of South Carolina, 2012

______________________________________________

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in
Comparative Literature
College of Arts and Sciences
University of South Carolina
2017
Accepted by:
Jie Guo, Major Professor
David Greven, Major Professor
Yvonne Ivory, Committee Member
Maxime Foerster, Committee Member
Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School
© Copyright by Marc Démont, 2017
All Rights Reserved.

ii
Dedication

To my lovers and their caresses...

iii
Acknowledgements
I want to thank first Dr.Jie Guo and Dr. David Greven for their unflagging support
and enthusiasm. Their academic and teaching excellence as well as their patience, kind-
ness, and availability, inspire me every day as a scholar and as a human being. I also want
to thank Yvonne Ivory and Maxime Foerster for participating in this caressing adventure
without knowing where we were heading. Thanks to my family for their down-to-earth
sense of joy. Thanks to my friends, especially Isis Sadek and Jim Heenehan, for bearing
with me and my theoretical elucubrations. Finally, thanks to my psychoanalyst Nadine
Collin for her contagious attention to what remains unsaid and unseen.

iv
Abstract
This dissertation offers an analysis of the caress through the dual lens of phenom-
enology and psychoanalysis. I argue that the caress reveals the queerness and ambiguities
of perception and that this gesture must be understood as an ethical gesture of opening
toward otherness. I discuss different accounts of the caress (Levinas, Irigaray) and expose
the misogynistic and/or homophobic bias at work in these theories of the caress. I suggest
that Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of touch and other notions that he develops (Flesh, inter-
twinement, intercorporeality, encroachment, etc.) allow a redefinition of the caress that
avoids Levinas and Irigaray’s pitfalls. In a reading of the novel The Silence of the Lambs
and its movie adaptation (1988, 1991), I demonstrate how the body is intertwined with
the environment and how the caress is an important symbol of this aspect. In my reading
of silent movie The Hands of Orlac (1924), I show how the caress can have a negative
aspect when the intertwinement with the Other becomes an intrusive presence or en-
croachment in Merleau-Ponty’s vocabulary. Finally, relying on different horror movies
(May [2002], Mirrors [2013]) and on Herman Melville’s 1851 novel Moby-Dick, I cri-
tique Jacques Lacan’s mirror stage for offering an ocularcentric (privileging the sense of
sight) account of the constitution of the subject. Instead, I suggest that an haptocentric
approach (privileging the sense of touch) of the constitution of the subject offers not only
a better account of the body as it is lived and of certain horror themes (the haunted mirror,
the evil doll) but also an interesting theoretical framework to the concept of the caress.

v
Table of Contents
Dedication ....................................................................................................................... iii
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv
Abstract ........................................................................................................................ v
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii
List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... xi
Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter I: Recasting the Caress .......................................................................................... 9
1.1. The Consistent Inconsistences of the Foucauldian Body .......................... 9
1.2. Queer, Queerness and Phenomenology ................................................... 18
1.3. Phenomenology of the Caress: Levinas & Irigaray ................................. 27
1.4. Toward a Queer ethics of the Touch: Literature as Betrayal .................. 39
Chapter II: The Possibility of a Caress ............................................................................. 44
2.1. Reversibility and Intercorporeality in Merleau-Ponty ............................. 44
2.2. Touches, Caresses and Initiation in Embodiment in The Silence of the
Lambs ...................................................................................................... 55
Chapter III: The Otherness of The Body ........................................................................... 80
3.1. Sex, Desire and Perception in Merleau-Ponty ......................................... 85
3.2. Merleau-Ponty and The Mirror Stage ..................................................... 89
3.3. Intertwinement of Desires in The Hands of Orlac ................................ 101
vi
Chapter IV: The Haunted Mirror and the Evil Doll: For an Haptic Critique of The Mirror
Stage ........................................................................................................... 117
4.1. A short history of the mirror .................................................................. 117
4.2. Dolto’s Critique of the Mirror Stage ..................................................... 123
4.3. Reversibility and Negativity in Psychoanalysis .................................... 129
4.4. The Haunted Mirror and the Evil Doll .................................................. 135
Chapter V: The Promise of a Caress ............................................................................... 150
5.1. “All I want is you to see me”: May and the foreclosure of the Caress .. 152
5.2. The Skin and the Phallus in the Melville’s Moby-Dick ......................... 186
5.3. “A Squeeze of The Hand” and “The Blanket” ...................................... 200
Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 205
Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 211
Filmography .................................................................................................................... 217

vii
List of Figures
Figure 2.1 Clarice's and Dr. Lecter's caress ...................................................................... 74
Figure 3.1 Waterfall. M.C. Escher, 1961 .......................................................................... 84
Figure 3.2 Orlac's haptic death drive .............................................................................. 106
Figure 3.3 Different handwritings from the same hand .................................................. 106
Figure 3.4 Yvonne Orlac witnesses her husband criminal drive .................................... 107
Figure 3.5 The caress as erotic object ............................................................................. 108
Figure 3.6 The ambiguity of the caress ........................................................................... 110
Figure 3.7 Orlac, a famous pianist .................................................................................. 111
Figure 3.8 The piano as object of the caress ................................................................... 111
Figure 3.9 Symbolic association between Vasseur’s knife and the piano ...................... 113
Figure 3.10 Orlac's claw-like fingers .............................................................................. 114
Figure 4.1 Self-Portrait. Albrecht Dürer, 1500............................................................... 120
Figure 4.2 The therapy room in the store basement........................................................ 137
Figure 4.3 A hand from the other side of the mirror ....................................................... 139
Figure 4.4 The surface of the mirror as skin ................................................................... 140
Figure 4.5 Demon escaping from the surface of the mirror in Constantine (2005) ........ 141
Figure 4.6 Mirror and touch in Orpheus (1950) ............................................................. 142
Figure 4.7 Mirroring touch in Abyss (1989) ................................................................... 142
Figure 4.8 From the other side of the skin-mirror .......................................................... 142
Figure 4.9 Cole hear sounds behind the mirror............................................................... 147
viii
Figure 4.10 The doll boy hidden behind the walls coming out of a mirror .................... 148
Figure 5.1 May's opening image ..................................................................................... 154
Figure 5.2 Tactality vs. vision ......................................................................................... 155
Figure 5.3 The mirror as a symbol of splitting personality............................................. 156
Figure 5.4 Suzie as mirror ............................................................................................... 157
Figure 5.5 The bars as symbol of tactile distance ........................................................... 159
Figure 5.6 May's loneliness ............................................................................................ 160
Figure 5.7 Adam's hands typified as caressing hands ..................................................... 160
Figure 5.8 May's barred table ......................................................................................... 162
Figure 5.9 May eavesdrops through the bars of Adam's window ................................... 162
Figure 5.10 Adam object of a crossed-gaze .................................................................... 163
Figure 5.11 The bars and Adam's hand ........................................................................... 163
Figure 5.12 First contact with Adam's visually severed hand ........................................ 164
Figure 5.13 The doors frame highlighting Adam's whole body ..................................... 165
Figure 5.14 The door frame highlighting Ambrosia's legs I ........................................... 166
Figure 5.15 The door frame highlithing Ambrosia's legs II ........................................... 167
Figure 5.16 the door frame as visual symbol of May's obsession with body parts ........ 167
Figure 5.17 May acting the caress with dolls ................................................................. 169
Figure 5.18 May severing the doll's hand ....................................................................... 169
Figure 5.19 May's tactile awkwardness .......................................................................... 170
Figure 5.20 May's hunger for blood ................................................................................ 171
Figure 5.21 Suzie's jealousy ............................................................................................ 171
Figure 5.22 Cutting glass/cutting flesh ........................................................................... 172
ix