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| Gustave Courbet, L'origine du monde (oil on canvas, 1866) |
Thanks for yet another excellent class! Your responses to the blood bot's latest tweet have percipiently teased out many of the details, nuances and ambiguities carved into Michelangelo's early sixteenth century marble masterpiece.
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| Moses (marble sculpture by Michelangelo, circa 1513 - 1515) |
Our conversation regarding the (largely forgotten) colonial, religious, ethnographic and philosophical origins of the psychoanalytic concept of fetishism reminded me of something Nietzsche once wrote about "truths".
"Truths", he contended, are "metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins". We'll have a chance to explore more of Nietzsche's thought later in the course!
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| Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son (circa 1819 - 1823) |
In my discussion of Freud's mature model of the human psyche, I suggested that Goya' painting, Saturn Devouring His Son, could be understood as symbolizing the dark, obscure and libidinal passions emanating from the id, whilst Rembrandt's painting, Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law, could be comprehended as representing the moral, censuring and judgmental forces of the super-ego.
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| Rembrandt, Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law (oil on canvas, 1659) |
For this week's blogging assignment, I'd like you to post a picture of and/or describe something --- a person, character, image, institution, object, etc --- from history, religion, mythology, politics, current affairs, film, literature and/or popular culture that you think symbolizes and/or connotes one of the three systems (id, ego, superego) comprising the Freudian conception of the human mind. Make sure to be clear which of the three parts of the mental apparatus your picture or item is meant to symbolize. Please also explain the connection between your symbol and what it symbolizes!
As always, if you prefer, feel free to articulate one question which arose for you in relation to this week's readings, lecture and/or tutorial.
I look forward to learning from your blogs!