Bayonne Said at the Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference

Bayonne Said, MA student in Philosophy, will present a paper on “The Possibility of Defusing Passion: Kristeva on the Maternal Body” at the Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, April 22-24, 2019.

The abstract is as follows:

Kristeva’s focus on maternity is central to her theory of subjectivity, and yet, is frequently misunderstood. While it provides us with a prototype of human passion, it appears to be paradoxical: only from the mother’s narcissistic desire comes selfless love for the child; the explosions of passion must be defused in order to allow for the explosions of plural representability. By analyzing Kristeva’s chapter on maternal passion (“The Passion According to Motherhood”) with her chapter on passionate timelessness (“The Sobbing Girl; or, On Hysterical Time”), I connect both concepts to further describe the defusing of passion. Then, I refer to Fanny Söderbäck’s “Motherhood According to Kristeva: On Time and Matter in Plato and Kristeva,” to supplement my exegesis and incorporate her description of chora as movement before linear time with the passion’s “movement” or transformation in the imaginary. Then, I reinterpret the defusing of passion as resisting paradox because its movement is an oscillation between linear time and timelessness.

The 2019 Uehiro Graduate Philosophy Conference theme is "Cross Currents: Affects, Sentiments and Emotions."