proustitute

A remarkable examination of culture's fascination with severed heads. Kristeva begins with pre-Homo sapiens skull cults, and makes a very convincing argument that Freud failed to see the feminine in the totemic meal. If, for Freud, the eating of the father's brains signified the sons' desire to assimilate his power, for Kristeva it signifies both this as well as the primal infant's orality in coming to terms with the disappearance of the mother, prior to language and acculturation. So the head is both masculine and feminine, and Kristeva sweeps this much needed feminist and aesthetic intervention along with an examination of the decapitation of Medusa; art works ranging from Caravaggio to Artemisia Gentilischi—all the while considering how the head, the corporal seat of reason and power, comes to approximate our infantile fears of abandonment, our anxieties about ourselves, and our masochistic drive to destroy all reminders of our weaknesses and vulnerabilities.