ABSTRACT
Though this book’s foundation is Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, this chapter turns the analytic gaze back on to psychoanalysis itself, and specifically, the conditions of Freud’s famous question, “What does a woman want?” In doing so, I demonstrate how Freud’s question allows Lacan to conceive of his theory of sexuation, but more importantly for this work, also contributes in creating a new type of feminine monster, specifically the mother-monster of the unconscious.
From here, I go through Lacan’s understanding of subjective structures to demonstrate how the mother in the unconscious, that is, the unconscious experience of the person in the mother function, revolves around the inability to ascertain the desire of the woman. I then turn to films such as It Follows and The Babadook to demonstrate how the Woman as “Not-All” in the Lacanian sense produces another type of feminine monster, specifically one governed by unmediated jouissance, similar to the Greek and Christian myths addressed earlier. This allows for a consideration of two famous cases of filicide in the United States, Susan Smith and Andrea Yates, as a means to discuss how this fascination transcends film and into the lives of actual women. Deleuze and Guattari then allow for a consideration of these cases of filicide for their radical subjective potential, in which they challenge the subjectivizing power of the “Woman as Mother” discourse.
