Male Subjectivity at the Margins

458 Pages·2016·9.565 MB·English

by  Kaja Silverman

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Taylor & Francis
LONDON AND NEW YORK
Published in 1992 by
Routledge
An imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
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New York, NY 10017
Published in Great Britain by
Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park,
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First issued in hardback 2016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor and Francis Group,
an informa business
Copyright © 1992 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Silverman, Kaja.
Male subjectivity at the margins I Kaja Silverman.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
1. Masculinity (Psychology)-History. 2. Subjectivity-History.
3. Masculinity (Psychology) in motion pictures. 4. Masculinity
(Psychology) in literature. 5. Psychoanalysis and feminism.
I. Title.
BF175.5.M37S55 1992
155.3'32-dc20 91-44680
CIP
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Silverman, Kaja.
Male subjectivity at the margins.
I. Title
305.31
ISBN 13:978-1-138-14249-7 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-90419-3 (pbk)
In Memory of Craig Owens: Outlaw in Feminism

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Ideology and Masculinity
l The Dominant Fiction 15
2 Historical Trauma and Male Subjectivity 52
The Gaze and the Look
3 Fassbinder and Lacan:
A Reconsideration of Gaze, Look and Image 125
4 Too Early/Too Late:
Male Subjectivity and the Primal Scene 157
Masochism
5 Masochism and Male Subjectivity 185
6 Masochistic Ecstasy and the Ruination of Masculinity
in Fassbinder's Cinema 214
Libidinal Politics
7 White Skins, Brown Masks: The Double Mimesis,
or With Lawrence in Arabia 299
8 A Woman's Soul Enclosed in a Man's Body:
Femininity in Male Homosexuality 339
Afterword 389
Notes 391
Index 441

Acknowledgments
Most of this book was written during the three stimulating years I
spent at the University of Rochester. It was enabled in all kinds of
ways by my colleagues and students in the English Department, the
Film Program, the Comparative Arts Program, and the Susan B. An-
thony Center. Constance Penley, Tom DiPiero, Rosemary Kegl, Nor-
man Bryson, Sharon Willis, and the students who populated my grad-
uate courses all read parts of the book in manuscript, and offered
valuable criticism and advice. Ken Gross, Jim Langenbach, Michael
Holly, Joanna Scott, Keith Moxie, and Janet Woolf not only contrib-
uted intellectually to the book, but helped to sustain me while I was
writing it. Mieke Bal, who was always there when I needed her, did
even more; she read every page of the manuscript in its penultimate
version, at a speed which left me (but not her) breathless, and offered
detailed and insightful suggestions for improving upon it. Finally, I
want to thank Craig Owens, to whom this book is dedicated; he did
not live till its completion, but he played a vital role in its early stages,
and he will always remain in my memory as the very prototype of the
male subject on whose behalf it was written.
I also want to thank a number of other people. Carol Ann Tyler and
Michael Moon were of enormous assistance to me in the planning
stages of Chapters 8 and 4, respectively. Neil Lazarus, Naomi Schor,
Elizabeth Weed, and Homi Bhabha contributed in a variety of ways
to Chapter 7. Jonathan Dollimore, Peter Wollen, David Miller, Alan
Sinfield, Michael Silverman, Janet Bergstrom, Joan Copjec, Richard
Meyer, Griselda Pollack, Deborah Linderman, and Richard Dellamora
read portions of the book, and provided encouragement and intellec-
tual support. Leo Bersani, who was an untiring reader of chapter after
chapter, contributed perhaps more than anyone else to the ideational
matrix within which the book was written, both through our on-going
conversations, and through his own work. Carol Clover not only read