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Violating the Mütter : Staging the Semiotics of Desire, or, Aspects of the Eternal‐Feminine in “Faust”
Author(s) -
Niazi M. Nadeem
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1034/j.1600-0730.2000.d01-7.x
Subject(s) - faust , semiotics , representation (politics) , subject (documents) , mythology , philosophy , psychology , epistemology , linguistics , literature , art , computer science , politics , library science , political science , law
The following study seeks to isolate and define the violence of Faust's encounter with the Mütter through a nuanced investigation of the signifying practices governing Faust's first encounters with the other maternal figures prominent in the play, Helen and Gretchen. By problematizing the dichotomy between acting subject and impersonal linguistic processes during the sequence of Faust's ‘infatuations’ with the maternal‐feminine, it is possible to discern the cause of violence against the Mütter and, subsequently, locate its textual manifestation in a mythological pre‐figure in the ‘Walpurgisnacht’. What takes place between Faust and the Mütter may well exceed the phenomenal modes of dramatic representation involving intersubjective interaction on‐stage, but is accessible to discursive elaboration sensitive to the limits and modes of representation. Interrogating the complexities of Faust's encounters alerts us to the semantic depth of the enigmatic designation the ‘Eternal‐Feminine’.