Dolls, Photography and the Late Lacan: Doubles Beyond the Uncanny

190 Pages·2020·3.049 MB·English

by  Rosalinda Quintieri

“Rosalinda Quintieri’s exciting and timely book promises to revitalize critical
analysis in visual culture through her discussion of contemporary modes of
techno-scopophilia. Deploying neglected theoretical resources from the ‘late
Lacan’ in which objects of extimacy become essential parts of our being, Quintieri’s
book engages with and develops the logic of recent photographic work deploying
dolls, mannikins and marionettes that break with the Freudian paradigm of the
‘uncanny’. In Quintieri’s analysis the ‘double’ no longer simply provokes a crisis of
identity and meaning but opens the way to perverse pleasures of human posterity
in which the post-human follows the (an)aesthetic trajectory of the doll.”
– Scott Wilson, author of Scott Walker and the Song of
the One-All-Alone. (Bloomsbury, 2020)

DOLLS, PHOTOGRAPHY
AND THE LATE LACAN
In this fascinating new book, Rosalinda Quintieri addresses some of the key questions
of visual theory concerning our unending fascination with simulacra by evaluating
the recent return of the life-size doll in European and American visual culture.
Through a focus on the contemporary photographic and cinematic forms of this
fgure and a critical mobilisation of its anthropological complexity, this book ofers
a new critical understanding of this classical aesthetic motif as a way to explore the
relevance that doubling, fantasy and simulation hold in our contemporary culture.
Quintieri explores the fgure of the inanimate human double as an “inhuman
partner”, refecting on contemporary visuality as the feld of a hypermodern, post-
Oedipal aesthetic. Through a series of case studies that blur traditional boundaries
between practices (photography, performance, sculpture, painting, documentary)
and between genres (comedy, drama, fairy tale), Quintieri puts in contrast the
new function of the double and its plays of simulations on the background of the
capitalist injunction to enjoy.
Engaging with new theories on post-Oedipal forms of subjectivity developed
within the Lacanian orientation of psychoanalysis, Quintieri ofers exciting analyses
of still and moving photographic work, giving body to an original aesthetic model
that promises to revitalise our understanding of contemporary photography and
visual culture. It will appeal to psychoanalysts and researchers from Lacanian
psychoanalysis, visual studies and cultural theory, as well as readers with an academic
interest in the cultural history of dolls and the theory of the uncanny.
Rosalinda Quintieri is a post-doctoral researcher based at the University of
Manchester, UK. In her research and writing, photography and visual culture converge
with aesthetics, psychoanalysis and an anthropology of technology. Her previous work
on the poetics of the object in outsider and contemporary art has appeared in PsicoArt
and Prospero’s. She was awarded a President’s Doctoral Scholar Award (2013–2016) to
complete her PhD in Art History and Visual Studies, from which this book was born.
The Lines of the Symbolic in Psychoanalysis Series
Series Editor: Ian Parker
Manchester Psychoanalytic Matrix
Psychoanalytic clinical and theoretical work is always embedded in specifc linguistic
and cultural contexts and carries their traces, traces which this series attends to in
its focus on multiple contradictory and antagonistic ‘lines of the Symbolic’. This
series takes its cue from Lacan’s psychoanalytic work on three registers of human
experience, the Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real, and employs this distinctive
understanding of cultural, communication and embodiment to link with other
traditions of cultural, clinical and theoretical practice beyond the Lacanian symbolic
universe. The Lines of the Symbolic in Psychoanalysis Series provides a refexive
reworking of theoretical and practical issues, translating psychoanalytic writing
from diferent contexts, grounding that work in the specifc histories and politics
that provide the conditions of possibility for its descriptions and interventions to
function. The series makes connections between diferent cultural and disciplinary
sites in which psychoanalysis operates, questioning the idea that there could be one
single correct reading and application of Lacan. Its authors trace their own path,
their own line through the Symbolic, situating psychoanalysis in relation to debates
which intersect with Lacanian work, explicating it, extending it and challenging it.
From the Conscious Interior to an Exterior Unconscious
Lacan, Discourse Analysis, and Social Psychology
David Pavón Cuéllar
The Constitution of the Psychoanalytic Clinic
A History of its Structure and Power
Christian Dunker
Pink Herrings
Fantasy, Object Choice, and Sexuation
Damien W. Riggs
Sexual Diference, Abjection and Liminal Spaces
A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Abhorrence of the Feminine
Bethany Morris
Dolls, Photography and the Late Lacan
Doubles Beyond the Uncanny
Rosalinda Quintieri
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com
DOLLS, PHOTOGRAPHY
AND THE LATE LACAN
Doubles Beyond the Uncanny
Rosalinda Quintieri
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Rosalinda Quintieri
The right of Rosalinda Quintieri to be identifed as author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-68200-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-44502-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13465-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
CONTENTS
List of fgures ix
Preface x
Introduction: “Quasi-subjects”: the hypermodern double
between fatness and afective excess 1
1 The modern doppelgänger: enjoyment as subversion 15
Dolls, mimicry and “subjective detumescence” 16
Pūpa as puppa: the doll as a maternal Thing 24
2 Enjoy (you must)! Olivier Rebufa and Barbie’s dreamlife 39
The fatness of the capitalist fantasia 40
That has never been: dea(p)th-less photography 48
Narcissus and the echo of capital 53
Simulacrum interruptus: capitalist metonymy “running empty” 61
3 Silicone Love: photography as de-Realisation 69
Documentary as “purposeful” pictorialism 71
Diet Pink Lemonade: the illusion of an other without Other 80
The double as Ego supplement 87
4 Laurie Simmons: pictures beyond the gaze 97
From “picture envy” to “the magic of the Hollywood style at its best” 98
Kawaii: the cuteness of the commodity 106
Beyond the Lacanian gaze: the image-substance 110
viii Contents
5 Lars and the Real Girl: a tale of the New Father 127
The hypermodern kolossós: from symptom to sinthome 128
Propped-up fathers and the Other of care 142
Conclusions: doubles beyond the uncanny 151
Selected bibliography 160
Index 170
FIGURES
Front Cover: Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll/Day 32 (Blue Geisha Close-up), 2011.
Fuji matte print, 119.4 × 177.8 cm.
1.1 Lacan’s diagram of the gaze, adapted from Seminar XI, “What is a
Picture?” (1964). 20
2.1 Olivier Rebufa, Amour à Marseille, Bimbeloterie series, 1990.
Gelatin silver print, 60 × 80 cm. 50
2.2 Lacan’s formula of the capitalist’s discourse, adapted from Discours à
l’Université de Milan (1972). 54
2.3 Olivier Rebufa, X-Rays, Bimbeloterie series, 1996. Gelatin silver
print, 60 × 80 cm. 60
3.1 Stéphan Gladieu, [A naked doll lying on a bed], Silicone Love, 2009. 76
3.2 Stéphan Gladieu, [A man sitting on a sofa with two dolls],
Silicone Love, 2009. 79
3.3 Elena Dorfman, Slade, Still Lovers series, 2005. 82
3.4 Elena Dorfman, Galatea, Still Lovers series, 2005. 84
4.1 Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll/Day 32 (Blue Geisha, Close-up),
from The Love Doll series, 2011. Fuji matte print, 119.4 × 177.8 cm. 104
4.2 Laurie Simmons, The Love Doll/Day 34 (Blue Geisha,
Dressing Room), from The Love Doll series, 2011. Fuji matte
print, 119.4 × 177.8 cm. 105