Self and Other I

The French theorist and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva writes:

‘Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body […] there is an other. And no one is present, within that simultaneously dual and alien space, to signify what is going on. ‘It happens, but I’m not there’. ‘I cannot realize it, but it goes on’’.[1]

For Kristeva the subject, in the experience of pregnancy, had been positioned as an outsider of its own body. In terms of psychoanalysis, Kristeva explains:

‘Pregnancy seems to be experienced as the radical ordeal of the splitting of the subject: redoubling up of the body, separation and coexistence of the self and of an other, of nature and consciousness, of physiology and speech. This fundamental challenge to identity is then accompanied by a fantasy of totality – narcissistic completeness – a sort of instituted, socialized, natural psychosis.’[2]

If the subject is outside of her own body it is because, in the experience of pregnancy, there seems to be a split between nature and consciousness, physiology and speech, ‘separation and coexistence of the self and of an other’.[3] In other words, there seems to be a challenge to the unity of the subject’s sense as one coherent self.

A different account of pregnancy, by artist Susan Hiller, suggests a position of observer/participant. Referring to her work 10 Month (1977 – 1979) Susan Hiller writes:

‘In the first half, the texts that I chose to use were subsidiary to the physical. I was dwelling on the physical changes, […]. But in the second half of my pregnancy I was quite tormented and perplexed by a number of things, for example, by observing myself, being a participant and an observer, […] and I began theorizing, reading a lot, trying to understand what I was going through.’[4]

This is not a psychoanalytical position per se, however, it is a comment on the artist’s own feelings and psychic state. Hiller’s reflection may be informed by anthropology, her profession prior to becoming an artist. The position of observer/participant, outside and inside spaces put together, inspired me and thus formed an important part of the methodology. The research looks at the situation and dynamic of occupying both spaces, with the aim of developing tools with which to understand and utilize this new position.

One such a tool was writing as a performative act in ima’s 5 minute writing in the stream of consciousness diaries. This technique enables an engagement with ‘material’, which comes from within, such as dreams and fantasies. Descriptive writing has been used in order to document an observed action, as well as to analyse ideas. Writing created a space and a place, in which a meeting between outside and inside spaces occurred. One becomes one’s own observer as one documents one’s self.

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[1] Kristeva, ‘Motherhood According to Giovanni Bellini’ in Desire in Language, 1980, p. 237.

[2] Julia Kristeva, ‘Women’s Time’ in Toril Moi (ed.), The Kristeva Reader, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1986, p. 206.

[3] Ibid, p. 206.

[4] Susan Hiller, ‘Dedicated to The Unknown Artist, an interview with Rozsika Parker, pp. 26 – 30. From: Barbara Einzig (ed.), Thinking About Art, Conversations with Susan Hiller, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000, p. 50.