Cavarero, Creed (&Freud)

In previous discussions about the myth of Medusa we established that, while Western civilization is founded on conquering the ‘Other’, it simultaneously and necessarily requires its continued presence, since established power needs to posit the threat of the Other for its continuance, as manifested in the myth of Medusa. In the assigned readings for today, Cavarero and Creed situate the horror that Medusa represents on the plane of ontology. 

Cavarero’s thesis is that absolute horror is the (living) experience of total annihilation of individual uniqueness. Medusa constitutes a great example of this horror in that, identification with her severed head, forces one to face the dismemberment of one’s own dead body. Following Arendt and Butler, Cavarero argues vulnerability to be an essential aspect of the unique individual, and the annihilation of this uniqueness is violent as it reduces the vulnerable being to an automaton that is helpless but no longer vulnerable.

Creed argues that the maternal body is related to this same paralyzing horror, as it traverses the boundaries between human and nature, acceptable and abject, clean and filthy; and thereby constitutes a reminder of our shared origins in the meaningless abject, and how one’s subjectivity (and uniqueness) was once traumatically constructed.

It seems like Cavarero is arguing that the infant is born helpless but not vulnerable. If staying alive means entering the realm of vulnerable subjectivity, then the decision to help a baby to life, means making a being vulnerable.

It is inevitable that the mother inflicts pain on the infant; pain is intrinsic to their relation: giving birth, killing an infant or keeping the baby alive are all acts that inflict pain on the body of this new ‘Other’. The difference is, that only through the latter does the infant become vulnerable. In this sense, it becomes understandable that a line must be drawn between Medea’s acts and those of ‘exemplary’ mothers, as the connection between vulnerability and dependency must be negated for the idea of the self-sufficient individual to be possible.

I found Cavarero’s comparison of terror and horror very interesting, since it sets up a relation between the two that is similar to Freud’s ‘will to power’ and ‘death drive’. Perhaps one can say that Cavarero’s notion of terror is connected to Freud’s will to power, whereas horror relates to the death drive. In that case, horror as abject becomes even more understandable from a phallocentric power-regime, as it denies any inherent meaning in life and represents a drive towards inertia, dissimulation, diffusion, death and decay.