Premium
The emptiness of zero: representations of loss, absence, anxiety and desire in the late twentieth century
Author(s) -
Smith Kathy
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
critical quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1467-8705
pISSN - 0011-1562
DOI - 10.1111/j.0011-1562.2004.00547.x
Subject(s) - subjectivity , emptiness , psychoanalytic theory , subject (documents) , psychoanalysis , phenomenon , aesthetics , anxiety , psychology , sociology , epistemology , philosophy , psychiatry , library science , computer science
As the new millenium approached, the anxiety which this moment generated found resonance in various cultural representations, and the appearance of spectral imagery seemed to indicate an anxiety about subjectivity, and about its fragmentation or complete loss. Unable to comtemplate a state beyond this loss, there came into being a crisis in subjectivity itself, and the existence of the destabilized millenium subject. This subject approached the moment by both fixating on the threshold and by disavowing what lay beyond. These strategies, and the underlying anxiety which brought them into existence, were resonated through many of the cultural representations of the time. This paper argues that it is through nachträglichkeit ‐ a 'making sense' in retrospect of earlier disparate experiences ‐ that we can begin to examine, contextualise and account for the phenomenon of 'millenium frenzy' which came about at the end of 1999. It constructs a reading of this moment, and of two particular filmic representations which resonate the concerns of the time, examining in the process how ‐ from a psychoanalytic perspective ‐ culture might be understood through its representations, and how these representations can be understood through culture.