CFP: African Oedipus (Netherlands) (12/20/06; AEGIS, 7/11/07-7/14/07)
Addressing the question of how psychoanalytic theories might speak
about "race," Hortense Spillers gives the term "African Oedipus" to a
model of cultural self-formation which recognizes the status of the
"father" as a social function rather than a biological genitor ("'All
the Things You Could Be by Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your
Mother': Psychoanalysis and Race"). For Spillers, the term "African
Oedipus" mediates a sociosymbolic order characterized by shifting
specular relations rather than by the fixed hierarchical positions and
meanings attributed to the father, the mother and the child within the
traditional Freudian model. The term "African Oedipus" is also linked