THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE MEXUAL DIFFERENCE FiLM THEOR DNR○ DOWICK ROUTLEDGE. New York& London
APR15192 For R B and LM Contents Was d Erwirb es, um es zu besitzen st,L, 1 ID-/C pN 215 Published in Great Britain by Roll Chapter 2 The Return of the Exile 1990 Chapter 3 Reading Freud.. Differently Copyright o 1991 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. Printed in the United States of america Chapter 5 The Difference of Reading All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized Chapter 6 Analysis Interminable 117 retrieval system, wi otes Librar Permission in writing from the publishe Index 159 choanalysis, sexual differend references and index Motion Pictures. 2. Psychoanalytic Theory. 3. Sex 9143013-dc20 90-20695 The difficulty of difference psychoanalysis, sexual 1. Cinema fIms, Feminist theories 02午3
i PREFACE apter Wardley, Dudley Andrew, David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Jan Matlock Anne Higonnet, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, M D, Hanna Weg, Kirsten Evans, Lynn Whisnant Reiser, M D, Georges May, Jennifer Wicke, and John from this work--at Dartmouth es Center at Yale University, and the University of California, Riverside- challenged me to hone and refine my arguments. A Morse Fellowship granted by Yale University enabled me to develop this book in its early stages. Iam Binary Machines also grateful for research support from the Whitney Humanities Center at In dialogues, a book cowritten with Gilles Deleuze, Claire Parnet com- Yale and for help from the Yale Department of Audio-Visual Services ments on the function of"the binary machine. "In these interesting pages resumes an argument begun by Deleuze concerning the relation of philos- ophy to the State. Every college educator knows well the official version of this story, defined according to the theory of progress that was the nineteenth Enlightenment philosophy. As philosophy becom more specialized and departmentalized, its role is to contribute in a"de crease image"of thought invoked, along with criteria for its perfectibility, is ssociated with procedures of"language"but of a special sort: that defined by linguistics and related logico-mathematical protocols. Deleuze's position and his ongoing practice of reading philosophy is moti- image of rom thinking. And not only because"thought"is left to specialists, but also because the definitions of thought produced by with the States image of power and its juridical definitions of identity. As critics and educators, the language we use to describe identity"as a difference from or conforming to an image of gender, class, or race-is itely tied to the mechanics of What Parnet calls the binary machine perfectly describes this technology of thought and the notions of identity it fabricates. Its components are easily elucidated: divide into two mutually exclusive terms or categories and thus produce two perfectly sclf- identical"ideas"that brook no contradiction or ivasion from the outside. Hegel's dialectic is the t dividing and reconciling into ever higher unities and hierarchies until binary thought-which has reproduced itself in the d and aesthet. -is content with cellular division and horizontal According Parne
2 THE DIFFICULTY THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE 3 half? There is always a binary machine which 34). Rather it is a matter of reconsidering what"language"is or could be, hat it leaves aside, and of remembering that totality is a ince the questions are aiready worked out o be probable according to the dominant meani pretension that displaces recognition of the multiplicities it covers over. It is such that everything which does not pass through the grille cannot a question above all of reading differently ise these schemata of language and thought? How can one recover the will be established that there will be enough for everyor individuations without'subject'"that fall between the terms of binary division and are de-territorialized by the law of the excluded middle? How measured according to the degree of binary choice: you are neither white can one apprehend the minority languages and the multiple collectivities nor black, Arab then? Or half-breed? You are neither man nor woman, transves- aced and overcome by the universalizing unity of binary tite then?①D1921) thought? For Parnet, the Achilles'heel of this logic is the term that not only onstitutes the middle, but also guarantees the contiguity and multiplication The binary machine always pretends to totality and universality. And a certain extent, Parnet sees the working of language by the binary machine to have been imminently successful. In this context, one could ask if the And even if there are only two terms, le image of thought in the Hegelian dialectic. The smallest possible uni- constitutes the multiplicity. This is why it is always possible to undo phonemic-are integrated into ever higher levels of unity--morphe IC, syntactic, syntagmatic, narratological-that are simultancously equiva sets, the tream which belongs neither to the one nor to the nt to "higher"levels of thought. And when grafted on to structural her, but draws both into a non-parallel evolution, into a heterochronous anthropology, these branching divisions and hierarchies become equivalent ecoming. At least this does not belong to the dialectic. (D 34-35) to the“ meaningful zation of human collectivities of understanding the feminist critique of Levi-Strauss, for le where I have left to one side the principal targets of Parnet and Deieuze's criti the binary division and hierarchy of the sexes informs the intelligibility of ms: structural linguistics, psychoanalysis, and more profoundly, the alli language, labor, and social life. But Parnet's point is that granting linguistics' ance between them represented by the work of Jacques Lacan. There is much cognition and exacting description of the dualities that work language and iety is to leave untouched its own language-its patterns of logic, rheto impelling in the Anti-Oedipus than it is in the pages of Dialogues. The and argumentation-which, tautologically, only produce the legibility and questions that interest me, however, are on one hand how cont telligibility of that which is already structured by binary division. a similar film theory has read and incorporated psychoanalysis, and on the situation is no less evident in the what degree the logic of psychoanalysis, above all the work of Freud, theory has appropriated the logic of structural semiology and psychoanalysis flected by the binary machine? In The Crisis of Political Modernism for the formal analysis of films and the spectatorial relations they imply argued that the most substantial accomplishment of contemporary film the- language and linguistics so perfectly replicate one another, the latter ory was its formulation of new practices of reading that profoundly trans reproducing the "thought"of language as the limit of what language can formed our notions of filmic and literary texts. But blocked by a formal ender "thinkable, "what alternatives can be imagined? Parnet and deleuze warn that it is futile to propose a thought " outside"of language.(How can film theory has been unable to comprehend historically or theoretically many theories of avant-garde literature and art have been wrecked on this the implications of these reading practices. Despite the gains they have utopian island: Nor can it be said that language deforms identities, concepts, abled, neither semiology psychoanalysis, nor feminist theory have entirely or realities that can be returned to their proper states. "We must pass through eluded the logic of the binary machine in their theoretical language and r]dualisms, "writes Parnet, " because they are in language, it's not heir formal concep ion of filr of getting rid of them, but we must fight against language, inven The consequences situation must be addressed. What vocal or written line which will make now been mobilized in film theory se dualisms, and which will define a minority use of language"(D questions of textual analysis, on one hand, and sexual difference in
4 THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE 3 torship on the other. Do Freud's writings implicitly propose a model of of the classic, Hollywood cinema. The great strength of Mulvey's analysis reading that might erode the version of language and power formulated is that it is not a simple condemnation are represented on the binary machine? Does the work of Freud enable a different way the screen. Instead she identifies a powerful n the heart of the tructure of image and narrative in Hollyw and identity, is Freud among the first to understand the possibilities of leine these issues more precisely I have isolated a rather long citation from individuations without'subject'"and a minority language of sexuality?Is there in Freud a theory of reading that renders legible otherwise deterritori- Mulvey's essay. My motive is neither to completely sustain nor subvert alzed languages, identities, and meanings th ze her discussion of sexual difference and mechanisms of visual pleasure in film. In a section entitled"Woman as Pleasure and its Discontents Image, Man as Bearer of the Look, " Mulvey makes the following argument: world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been spl rms, the female figure poses a deeper problem. She between active/male and passive/female. "This phrase from Laura Mulvey's 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"is undoubtedly and deservedly one lack of a penis, implying a of the most well known in contemporary film theory. I begin with Mulvey' say not because I disagree with what it"says, "but to open up tensions Mulvey's own reading of Freud, and, more importantly, in how Mulvey' ential for the organisation of entrance to the symbolic order and the law of ork has been read and appropriated. Without doubt, it is and will remain the father. Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of one of the most important essays in contemporary flm theory."Visual e active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"has indeed been successful in its origin polemical objective: to place questions of sexual difference at the center of with the re-e n, demystifying her mystery), counterbalanced by the the debate concerning film theory's appeal to psychoanalysis. But what was offered as a polemic and a' stepping stone to further analysis has instead too ent or saving of the guilty object(an avenue typified by the concerns of the film noir); or else complete disavowal of castration by the often been treated as axiomatic. What is at stake is how film theory has read substitution of a fetish object or turning the represented figure itself into a fetish d in order to understand the construction of"femininity"by audiovisual edia and to reconceptualize the value of psychoanalysis for a theory of Itof the female star). This second avenue, fetishistic scopophilia, builds up the ysical beauty of the object transforming it into something satisfying in itse Mulveys early argument, which is still the subject of an ongoing debate The first avenue, voyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: plea- reading of Freud produced by Anglo-American film theory in the seventies. s Mulveys project and the many essays inspired by it distic side fits in well with narrative, Sadism demands a story, depe rganized a he question of identification. The first task of this project is to target and amine the codes and mechanisms through which the classical cinema has d. Fetishistic scopophilia, on the other hand, can exist outside linear time as the raditionally exploited sexual difference as a function of its narrative and erotic instinct is focused on the look alone. (VP 13-14) presentational forms. the second task is to ascertain the affects thes Unlike Raymond Bellour, whose work has many affinities with Mulvey's, as well as their role within the more general ideological machinery of patri Mulvey is less concerned with problems of textual analysis than with the chal culture. The analysis of narrative forms, and the forms of spectatorshi definition of structures of identification and the mechanisms of pleasure or implied by them, are thus intimately related. Similarly, the analysis and iticism of patriarchal ideology by film theory has had a historic impact on pleasure that accompany them. I am now using the term identification in its strictly psychoanalytic sense: " Psychological process whereby the subje One of the most striking aspects of Mulvey's argument is the association assimilates an aspect, property or attribute of the other and is transformed of a fundamental negativity with the figuration of femininity characteristic wholly or partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a series of identifications that the personality is constituted and specified
G THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE 7 Mulvey herself does not develop the argument in precisely these terms. tion of looking by, for, and in the text of the narrative film. Again, the me, however, a potentially transformative rela concept of identification is understood as the linch-pin on which the relations between subject and object turn. Identification also organizes, or attempts haracterizing it)and the spectatorial subject such that the libidinal economy of the latter is organized and sustained by the signifying economy of the rawing on terms from Freud's"Instincts and their Vicissitudes"(1915c), former. In fact all theories of the subject invoked by psychoanalytic film Mulvey undertakes a classification of the forms of visual pleasure characteris- criticism cast signifying processes in film as the"other"with the power tic of the narrative cinema. Her primary distinction For Mulvey these subject/object relations are a product of the point of active view mechanisms of Hollywood cinema. This idea is emphasized by the female division of gender and labor in the title of this section: "Woman as Image, characters, the look of the camera, and that of the spectator, an economy rst glance this alanine tihe the reor ns t reusd's argu mtn s conce ing is preserved where set subject-positions are continually reconfirmed and roduced by avoiding avenues of identification leading to unpleasure and by seeking out avenues leading to That the analysis of sexual tallies around this schema. To maintain this polarization of terms, she difference reveals an imbalance in the social system represented in films is tablishes two crucial sets of distinctions. The first involves the following of course important. But of greater significance is the suggestion that visual pairing of terms in section lI C, where Mulvey describes fundamental struc- nd narrative forms produce pleasure, that this pleasure is produced for rictly psycho meone,and that this production sustains an imaginary situation where real sexual instincts ego-libido relations of social imbalance are maintained for a given culture. According to Mulvey, the forms of point of view institutionalized by the cinema as scopophilia of identity of subject manner as the ego forms itself in relation to the objective world: that which and object with object promotes plea introjected and that whic Mulvey is careful to differentiate the first pair, sexual instincts/ego-libid systematically rejected. The various forms defining cinematic imaging and hile maintaining the intimate link between them. The nature of this linking oint of view at a given historical moment are objectively produced and Freud's distinction bet stained only to the extent that they maintain a pleasurable relation with the and object libido. Although he was not strictly consistent, Freud often used If these mechanist terchangeably However, in the perform their social and ideological function efficiently, the production of pleasure will sustain and reinforce the place of the subject in a given structur which the libido is channeled; that is, whether ie primarily to the direction ing directed toward of representation. An imaginary place is created for this subject in and by he film text that he or she may choose to inhabit. As in Marx's suggesti epigram from the Grundrisse, "production not only creates an object for the of ego-libido is indissolubly linked to narcissism which Mulvey e concept also a subject for the obj ith cinematic perception. Mulvey understands the economy of the ego sum, processes of identification in the cinema and the various forms of libido as attached fundamentally to the phenomenon of primary n ganize their functioning in film. narratives regulate an econ- characterizing Lacan's scenario for the mirror stage. In this scenario the my of exchange where the production of pleasure guarantees the place of formation of the ego, the potential "I"of the speakin the subject both in and for the text. What constitutes this place and the as a splitting-first in a division between the sexual inabject, is understood imaginary from which it is derived, as well as how it is placed and for whor ugh the organization of re the central questions and the greatest difficulties of Mulvey's on abo formation of an image to which this libido is attached. The formation of this The terms and the evoked by mulvey in the image constitutes an economic relationship with the ego that is imaginary should now be sorted out. Mulvey is primarily concerned with the o in the full sense that Lacan gives to the term. The joy of recognition that the
8 THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE 9 child receives through identifying itself in this exterior is located in fundamental misperception where the distance between subject and object For Mulvey, the imaging of the woman's body evokes a fundamental negativ- ity that always places the pleasure and security of cinematic looking at risk imultaneously formed and canceled. The terms for perceiving, knowing, The fundamental mechanisms of pleasurable looking are meant to displace the castration anxiety suggested to the male spectator by the representation aginary other who both is and is not the child. The ego is formed throu of the woman's body, and the male spectator obsessively requires this repre simultaneous externalization and internalization of an object constituted sentation to alleviate his anxiety. Yet each repetition simultancously renews y a visual and maginary structure that governs the child's perception of of Hollywo A first caution is in order here. This scenario of the formative moments This leads to a second point that Mulvey is careful to emphasize: the of the ego is not yet a scenario of sexual difference. And Mulvey, with gre drives may only be apprehended through their investment in representations. are, has not yet introduced the distinction between active: male/passive f acanian accounts this scen or, aing. In the puts it, they "are formative structures, mechanisms not to an idealisation"(VP 10). Indeed in the citation above Mulvey characterizes eriod of development sets the stage for the complicated and fragile set of the formation of the ego as a kind of"phantasmization"of the subject ns of instinctual vicissitudes rely on he analysis of representations or phantasy scenarios. This is the fundamental tion and Oedipus complexes. But in this preoedipal phase of psychological ink between the "instinctual "theory and Freud's analytic method concern- development there is no evidence that masculinity or femininity will follow g manifestations of phantasy life, including dreams, parapraxes, jokes, redetermined routes. In fact, Freud himself is adamant that gender differ nd the scattered comments on painting and literature. And any concrete nce is a product of a retroactive "understanding"of Oedipal relations discussion of the construction and dissemination of subject-positions must during puberty. For Freud, up until this point any child's relation to sexual presuppose that there are historically and socially determined mechanism indamentally undetermined, unformed, and unsure; after pu both formal and technological, that organize the desire of the subject and erty sexual identifications remain fragile. Moreover, the anxiet account for the structuring of that desire But it is not Freud, but rather by the residue of preoedipal relations characterizes all questions s accoun he relation between the imaginary and the symbolic that Mulvey follows Oedipal identifications is only the first attempt to address questi The implications of this choice must be addressed at the risk of oversimpli fying Lacan's thought Lacan s account of the processes of ide Unquestionably, the problem of the persistence of this anxiety i to Mulvey's argument. For the structures of desire and pleasurable subject formation are often more deterministic than Freud's, Each stage of castration and Oedipus complexes, is driven by a process of dialectical nsistent patriarchal bias of cinematic representations and the pe incorporation. As Miriam Hansen points out, eroding that bias ctatorship scopic desire is eptually inseparable from voyeurs tishism and, thus, the regime of castration, Not that these are unrelated or During its history, the cinema seems to have evolved a free of determinism in Freud. The Freudian speculation, however, docs not earlier stages of psychic development as always already negated by phantasy world. In reality the phantasy ones, in a Hegelian sense of Aufhebung'which Lacan assimilated sychoanalysis. Alternatively, as I hope to demonstrate in greater depth in Chapters Three and Four, Freud understands the relation between the h language, allows the possibility of transcending the instinctual and the eir representatives as causally and temporally more complex storically mobile. In sum, terms that Freud develops on the able in form, ca polarities"[Polaritat] are simultaneously divided and Can tes this paradox (VP 11) pecific reasons for preferring Lacans scenario of negation even if she thereby
10 THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE OF DIFFER fixes Freud's polarities in a system of binary division: to preser Her emphasis considers the structure of the look not only in terms of the of the female body as a site of negativity that can erode rather pleasure it allow he security of the male look. and through narrative form. This claim, as powerful as it is provocative Returning to Mulvey's argument, some of the assumptions characterizing deserves greater theoretical elaboration. Within Mulvey's thesis, though, the the long citation above can now be ucture of the look is based on two giv with the following pairs of oppositions trol or mastery and as a asculine. The concept of masochism is deferred by the political nature of male ner argument. She wishes, justly I believe, neither to underestimate the active less of a "masculinization oint of view in the cinema, nor narcissism does she want Ihave already suggested two cautions in my discussion of primary narcissism No one will have missed the reference to Freud in naming this section First the strict distinction between what is"male"and what is "female"in processes of identification is undoubtedly the trickiest problem in readi be explicitly addressed In Civilization n in der Kultur(1930a)) Freud himself uses the word Unbehagen, more Freud and should be approached with great caution. And where film theory Lacan's mirror stage and the"primary ptly translated as discomfort, uneasiness, or restlessness. The idea of plea the analogy be t then, is inseparable from this ur [Unlust] as Mul identification"organized by the cinematographic apparatus, additional care elf implies in her discussion of castration anxiety. Nonetheless, Mulvey's is called for. There is no doubt that sexual difference plays an important role account, and in fact most contemporary film theory follows her in this, is in Lacan's account, both explicitly and symptomatically. But the a priori alignment of scopophilia and narcissism with active and passive aims on on latively unwelcoming to Freud's own complex remarks in the case histories on the restlessness of identification and the contradictoriness of desire that hand, and maleness and femaleness on the other, is not clear. None of Freud texts on sexual difference suggests an unequivocal distinctiveness between d problematizes any stric nes”y“ femaleness'” and activity/passivity..2 My own view is that the most maleness and femaleness in this relation as I will make more clear in a moment. Second, if primary narcissism formulates an identification whose productive area for a turn to Freud in film theory is to derive a theory of gnification from the Freudian theory of phantasy. This theory would first visual structure supports pleasure in looking, this structure implicitly con- have to account for permutations in the signification of the look in relation tains both active and to the variations and shiftings of the subject and object of enunciation as act of the look, but also in the return of the look from the imaginary in the who verifies the apparent corporeal and psychical integrity of the "I"of the this theory could describe possibilities of cinematic identification eon transactIons xual difference. Secondly I would caution that bject Pleasure in looking contains both passive and active forms. Mulvey implies as much in the passage cited above, especially in the reference to for the positions adopted by any spectator would be purely sp as undoubtedly fetishistic scopophilia"which in her schema would have both"active ut her own considerations are deficient on several points. For scopophilic and"passive"fetishistic components milarly, for Mulvey the avoidance of castration anxiety(unpleasure), is Mulvey discusses the male star as an object of the look but denies him the unction of an erotic object for either the female or male spectator. " Because ble by two d g Mulvey considers the look to be essentially active in its aims, identification active with the male protagonist is only considered from a point of view that voyeurism tishistic scopophilia a sense of omnipotence and of assuming control in the sadism where active sexual aims may be directed towards the male figure nor does an implicit blind spot here. For example, Mulvey defines he consider the signification of authority in the male figure from the poi evaluation of the object, a point Freud would support. Br cw of an economy of masochism. On the other hand, her discussion of d that this phenomenon is one of the fundament the female figure is restricted only to its function as a male object-choice defined as passive submission to the object: in sum, masochi this manner the place of maleness is discussed as both the subject and the relation of masochism to"fetishistic scop " elided in Mulvey's essay? object of the gaze(though only in a restricted fashion)and femaleness is
12 THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE CHE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE 13 discussed only as an object structuring the male look according to its active reflection on femininity and female sexuality led him to profoundly question (voyeuristic)and passive (fetishistic)forms. In"Visual Pleasure and Narra a of a biological or instinctual determination of sexual difference tive cl the vicissitudes of identification-whether in its pleasurable This is indeed where the theory of"instincts"and the theory of the drives or anxious forms, or whether it involves taking the other as an object(scopo diverge. Especially in the casc histories, questions of sexual difference, femi hilia)or identifying with attributes of a more perfect other(narcissismh-is ninity and masculinity, and homosexualities, are understood as highly com rved for the male alone, despite the suggestion of distinctive male and plex yet not the least determined by inherent biological factors. This is after female forms. Where is the place of the female subject in this scenario? all the same Freud who was hooted by the Vienna society of physicians in In order to unravel this problem, or at least clarify its contours, here again 1886 for suggesting the possibility of"male"hysteria is Mulvey's schema as I have reconsidered it Freud was always uncomfortable with the concept of biological determin- ism in speaking about sexual difference and cautioned against it in several says. For example, in a footnote to Civilization and its Discontents, Freud object-libido We are accustomed to say that every human being displays both male and object-choice identification] fetishistic scopophilia sadism [masochism as to whether or not"anatomy is destiny. "In her schema psychological ubjects and the libidinal economies that characterize them are typed ac cording to a bodily definition of sexual difference. In other words, when and that they interfere with each other unless they can be kepr apart and each describing the organization and the economy of the scopic drive, impulse guided into a parricular channel that is suited to ppositions defining psychological characteristics are implicitly derived from iological difference. However, it would be too easy and undoubtedly unfair Above and beyond the inherent complexities of his arguments, the contradic to Mulvey's sensitive and powerful reading of Freud to write off her argu tory responses to Freud's views on sexual difference are explained by the ariety of the situations referred to in his use of the terms mannlichkeit ng to define the specificity of the female body as the locus of a repressed yet and Weiblichkeit. Freud understood at least three different senses of the distinction between"maleness"and"femaleness"biological, psycholog it, would thus enable both the recognition of a subjectivity so far elided cal and cultural-and accepted that their interrelation was by no mea under patriarchy and the overthrow of the discursive and social practices roblematic. Moreover, these three senses are only profitably that his 14 In short, Mulvey discovers in the patriarchal cy are construction of an image of the female body the materials for negation and tions that serve patriarchal ideolog itique that allow new possibilities of subjectivity and desire There is a passage in "Instincts and their Vicissitudes"that illuminates Hysteria(1895d)to The Ne Mulvey's reading of Freud in this respect. Towards the end of the essay Introductory lee Freud asserts that the fundamental polarities of mental life are subject ( mbivalence in this respect to which the comment about anatomy and bject(external world), pleasure-unpleasure, and active-passive. When de destiny will always bear witness. Similarly, Freuds anthropological and scribing the interaction between these polarities-which pre phylogenetic arguments, with their suggestion of a primitive memory of the economy of identification--Freud warns that relations of xual difference and the universality of a patriarchal social life, must must no ded with the relation of the regarded with a high degree of suspicion. Alternatively, Freud,s lifelong and the object(external world). For the psychical life of the ego is always
E DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE THE DIFFICULTY OF DIFFERENCE IS characterized by a complex of active and passive relations motivated by its The organization of looking around the female body thus pt reception of and reaction to perceptual information. Moreover, the drive anti-realist space and the potential for a e, political modernism. are inherently always active in their aims. To the extent that psychological significations are attached to the meaning of masculinity and femininity Moreover, Sternberg and Hitchcock are not sympt吧a vity, they do not define mutually exclusive sets of ppositions and are always the product of a historical and social variability inting Similarly, there could never be a unilateral response between object and 比 de image ites derg sflus s strsses the rates ofn he scarcer, stage subject when identification takes place. non-linear plots, and, most importantly, refuses to mediate the look through The rigor of Mulvey's binary schema for describing the relation of the agency of the male protagonist: "for him the pictorial space enclosed by drives to the representation of sexual difference therefore belies the e frame is paramount rather than narrative or identification processes ity of Freuds thought. The density of contradiction in which the VP 14). Alternatively, the interest of Hitchcock for Mulvey is that he tions of feminine and masculine are circulated in our culture making it central to the plot. He portrays the onfused in Mulveys analysis with the related but nevertheless separate rocesses of identification associated with the look in a way that reveals problem of identification in Freud. Similarly, Mulvey's schema collapses eir perverse origins. In Hitchcock,'s films, " erotic involvement with the n any one of the three senses of sexual distinction in Freud are systemati look is disorientating: the spectator's fascination is turned against him as cally applied. Why would this be so? The contradictions of Mulvey's argu ne narrative carries him through and entwines him with the processes that ent derive from an implied ontological definition of feminine identity and e is himself exercising"(VP 16). In sum, for Mulvey the look of the camera the feminine body as the requirement for her theory of political modernism. and of the spectator are subordinated in Hollywood cinema to the narrative If the possibility of a"female unconscious"is a question mark in her essay and because the potential for a feminine subjectivity and desire wi militude. On one hand. "the look fined by a feminist counter-cinema that will arise through the negation of of the audience is denied as an intrinsic force, "but on the other, " the female Holly wood codes of looking and visual pleasure. In her essay, that possibility mage as a castration threat constantly endangers the unity of the diegesis and fetish"(VP 18). Thus the binary schema of Mulvey,'s analysis really begins with the structured oppo examine her division of film form into narrative and spectacle. The former them back onto Freud to build a theory of identification and distanciation is aligned with the vicissitude of sadism and the latter with fetishism as that will"free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space exemplified in the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Joseph von Sternberg. and the look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment"(VP Following the counter-cinema argu if Hollywood narrative relies on 18). The entire essay is organized according to the question of the specificit onventions of linearity, continuity, and depth illusion no less than pleasur- of the female body-image, rather than the specificity of the female look able looking, then for Mulvey the imaging of the female body "tends to feminine identification. In turn, questions of signification and identificatie york against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in in film are structured by a system of binary division and exclusion devolving ts of erotic contemp ohesion with the narrative"(VP 11). The conventions of Holly r the relation of the body to the drives nema are understood as an agonistic relation between coherence and governed by such a straightforward binary logic. Instead, Freud draws contradiction, movement and stasis, containment and erosion. The imaging complex picture of the relations that attach the aims of the drives to systems of the female body always threatens to disrupt the linearity, continuity, and of representation. In"Instincts and their Vicissitudes, "for example, Freud ohesion of the narrative. Mulvey refers to it as a momentary"no-man's suggests a classification of drive-componcnts that defines their aims and land"outside of the temporal and spatial coherence of the narrative. Simi objects according to both active and passive forms. Here masculinity and larly, the effort to eroticize and fetishize the female star by fragmenting her mininity are defined solely as psychological and cultural distinctions In ody in close-up "destroys the Renaissance space, the illusion of depth Dition, the distribution of terms in Freud's instinctual theory is neither demanded by the narrative, it gives flatness, the quality of a cut-out or icon rather than verisimilitude to the screen"(VP 12). exchange places and functions within the structure of their division. Thus