Mommy, Daddy, and Kiddo
With Lolita, we fully enter the realm of what Foucault called biopower and the ways in which scientia sexualis plays a role in establishing what is deemed normal and what abnormal, or pathological. Here are a few reminders about Foucault with gestures toward Nabokov in anticipation of class tomorrow—which should be terrific, given your posts so far.
Foucault concedes that psychoanalysis provided a partial break from a strict biological explanation for all behaviors—for example, Freud helps us see what is wrong with T. Griswald Comstock’s analysis of hereditary insanity in the Alice Mitchell case.
At the same time, however, psychoanalysis helped create a new domain of scientific discourse, which retains a universalized biological foundation of sexual difference. Eli will discuss the shift from Alliance and sin to Scientia Sexualis and Diagnosis to discover the truth of oneself.
The key focus of all this is the new nuclear family, that is, Mommy, Daddy and Kiddo. Foucault argues that, with Freudian psychology, we have the kinship system of alliance absorbed by scientia sexualis, so that familial desire becomes the operative function—hence incest desire is seen as unavoidable by Freud who naturalizes this claim. For Foucault, the advocacy of this form of the family unit as natural (and for some god-given) works hand in glove with scientia sexualis to regulate normative society and normalize us as individuals. Neo-liberal ideology reinforces the sanctity of the family at the key foundation for a upholding a “normal” society.
Psychoanalysis offers a secular form of confession (to the therapist, or as HH says, “the rapist”) in which individuals are construed as subjects of desire and the truth is to be found in their sexuality. Alannah will discuss “Lolita” as fantasy (in contrast to Delores) and perhaps connect MoSex to the production of fantasies themselves as increasingly regarded as normal.
According to Freud’s new scientific theory of sexuality, when Kiddo is a girl, she will have hostility to her mother for her lack of a penis and her mother will in turn, resent her daughter for not being a boy to make up for her own lack (think of Nabokov’s send up of this with Charlotte and Delores). According to Freud, the daughter’s pathological fantasy involves seducing her father. Her struggle toward “normality” is to learn how to accept her role within the family as a good and proper mother, hopefully with at least one son (part of the hysterization of women’s bodies). Nadia will take up the issue of the relationship between mother and daughter that is depicted by HH according to the script.
When Kiddo is a boy, his struggle is the Oedipus Complex, which directs his desire toward his mother and toward defeat of his father. He too can achieve normality by turning to a replacement for the mother, marry her, and continue the line. If he fails to do this—or finds a wrong object of desire, he is deemed a sick, perverse adult. Ariella will take us through a discussion of HH’s explanation for why he became so enamored of nymphets, based on his memories of childhood and trauma.
A point to keep in mind: Freud regards memory as resulting from certain stimuli that never fully reach the conscious mind, hence they are “memory-traces” that had the greatest impact on us but get stuck in our unconscious and have the strongest impact on us as long as they remain unconscious (the analyst helps us dig them out and make them conscious).
Where do we find instances of resistance to the tenets of psychoanalytic explanation? Enter Nabokov.
As Kalliope notes, Nabokov’s well-known rejection of Freudian principles highlights both these tenets and a literary form of resistance to them (in a brilliantly complex parodic style). She will show us how the “detective” story functions in this regard without telling us about the ending until we get back from Spring Break!
