Oedipus Rex and the Mythology of Psychoanalysis
A Tragedy of Desire and Otherness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3986/fv.44.1.04Keywords:
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles, Freud, Lacan, desire, mythology, OthernessAbstract
This article develops an analysis of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex in relation to the mythological and literary-theatrical place the play holds in the history of psychoanalysis from Freud to Lacan, not to mention Foucault’s counter-psychoanalytic reading. How do we see the constitutive relation between this play and the Freudian complex? Does Lacanian psychoanalysis help illuminate the play as a tragedy of desire in alienation? The paper argues for a tragedy of desire’s Otherness in Sophocles’ play, showing how the parental alterity is configured in the shifting dynamics of paternal and maternal signifiers. Be it in the divine oracle or the chorus, the play accentuates the field of Other to activate the tragedy of desire and chanellizes it through affects like guilt, shame and self-reproach, inscribed on the subject’s body in the form of scopic and invocatory drives. The paper concludes by reflecting on the status of the unconscious as knowledge, complicating Foucault’s interpretation and presenting a tragedy of the desire-to-know that produces existence without desire as an experience of suffering.
Downloads
References
Bloom, Harold. “Introduction.” In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, edited by Harold Bloom, 1–4. New York: Infobase, 2007.
Felman, Shoshana. Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.
Foucault, Michel. Lectures on the Will to Know and Oedipal Knowledge. Edited by Daniel Defert. Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.
Freud, Sigmund. The Complete Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Translated and edited by James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Translated by James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
Lacan, Jacques. Anxiety. Translated by A. R. Price. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, book 10. Cambridge: Polity, 2014.
Lacan, Jacques. Desire and its Interpretation. Translated by Bruce Fink. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, book 6. Cambridge: Polity, 2019.
Lacan, Jacques. The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955. Translated by Sylvana Tomaselli. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, book 2. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Translated by Dennis Porter. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, book 7. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Lacan, Jacques. “Knowledge, Ignorance, Truth and Jouissance.” In Talking to Brick Walls: A Series of Presentations in the Chapel at Sainte-Anne Hospital, translated by A. R. Price, 3–34. Cambridge: Polity, 2017.
Lacan, Jacques. On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge: Encore, 1972–73. Translated by Bruce Fink. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, book 20. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.
Lacan, Jacques. “On Freud’s ‘Trieb.’ ” In Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, translated by Bruce Fink, 722–25. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
Lacan, Jacques. “Position of the Unconscious.” In Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, translated by Bruce Fink, 703–21. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
Pucci, Pietro. “What is a Father?” In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, edited by Harold Bloom, 141–54. New York: Infobase, 2007.
Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus. Translated by Robert Fagles. London: Penguin, 1984.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 ZRC-SAZU
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors guarantee that the work is their own original creation and does not infringe any statutory or common-law copyright or any proprietary right of any third party. In case of claims by third parties, authors commit their self to defend the interests of the publisher, and shall cover any potential costs.
More in: Submission chapter
