Niall Ferguson and the Biographical Approach | Clarissa's Blog
It's one of the reasons why I don't like psychoanalysis as an ideology. I say clearly, I don't like it as an ideology. If there is a non-dogmatic use it can be put to, I don't mind ite. I think some people take a lot of pleasure in making creativity look like sickness, in making it look like something abnormal and therefore wrong. For some reason, one may feel more free applying the dogmas to minorities rather than to that standard fellow, being the white male who supplies us with the model for medical normalcy.
I must say I've really hated the way psychoanalysis has been used to analyse Marechera's life. I'm sure the literary critics who do this are also quite capable of shrugging and saying, "Hey, it's just my interpretation!" Some interpretations are extreme and racist. For instance, he stuttered because he was a masochist we wanted to be hit by a white, male soldier. Yes, that is a funny joke. Or rather, it's fairly typical of what often happens in psychoanalytical interpretations of characters deemed unsympathetic: the effect is exchanged for the cause. In reality, it's much more likely he stuttered from an early age because he *did not wish to be hit*. But it's funnier to make it into its opposite, to imply that any vulnerability is an invitation to be smashed down again.
And that's what I don't like about psychoanalysis. Injuries are an invitation to be smashed down. The "hysteric" is blamed for having caused patriarchy. If she hadn't caused, it, she would not be hysterical now. The rape victim caused the rape. Dora caused her sexual harassment by desiring sexual intercourse unconsciously.
The world is as it should be, then.
It's one of the reasons why I don't like psychoanalysis as an ideology. I say clearly, I don't like it as an ideology. If there is a non-dogmatic use it can be put to, I don't mind ite. I think some people take a lot of pleasure in making creativity look like sickness, in making it look like something abnormal and therefore wrong. For some reason, one may feel more free applying the dogmas to minorities rather than to that standard fellow, being the white male who supplies us with the model for medical normalcy.
I must say I've really hated the way psychoanalysis has been used to analyse Marechera's life. I'm sure the literary critics who do this are also quite capable of shrugging and saying, "Hey, it's just my interpretation!" Some interpretations are extreme and racist. For instance, he stuttered because he was a masochist we wanted to be hit by a white, male soldier. Yes, that is a funny joke. Or rather, it's fairly typical of what often happens in psychoanalytical interpretations of characters deemed unsympathetic: the effect is exchanged for the cause. In reality, it's much more likely he stuttered from an early age because he *did not wish to be hit*. But it's funnier to make it into its opposite, to imply that any vulnerability is an invitation to be smashed down again.
And that's what I don't like about psychoanalysis. Injuries are an invitation to be smashed down. The "hysteric" is blamed for having caused patriarchy. If she hadn't caused, it, she would not be hysterical now. The rape victim caused the rape. Dora caused her sexual harassment by desiring sexual intercourse unconsciously.
The world is as it should be, then.
When I was still a student I had discovered late that however much I tried to be ‘objective’ in my criticism of such eyesores as Kipling, Faulkner, Melville, Conrad, Shakespeare (in TITUS ANDRONICUS, OTHELLO, THE TEMPEST)–apart from some of the more obvious ‘anthropological’ novels such as Defoe‘s CRUSOE– there was always in the back of my mind a smouldering discontent which one day would erupt. If this is cracking up, then Jesus! let the whole world erupt. The thing that happened to the Jews has never been unleashed against animals. And the things which bloody whites–among them Jews– are doing to my family, to my countrymen, to black people everywhere, have never been done to animals. What is done to the animals is nothing compared to the grisly history of man’s appetite for inflicting misery on other men. And the colourful nature of that grisly appetite is surely horrifying enough for every man and woman to seriously confront the question of just how much are human beings humane? And those victims who survive–what becomes of them? They get psychoanalysed by doctors who say, Well the Nazis did you a favour by solving your Oedipus complex for you and solving your latent capacity for infanticide and kleptomania so that now you are a man without complexes
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