Sculptural object of desire: eroticism in Michel Leiris’s Aurora

• Authors: Trzeciak Katarzyna
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with sculptural metaphors presented in Leiris’s Aurora in relation to eroticism. Aurora is the name of the the surrealist novel’s central female figure, who appears in the stories of all the different male characters. All of the men ‒ the narrator and subsequent characters ‒ are searching for a point of stabilisation of their own subjectivities, which are losing their integrity and cohesion. The phantasm of Aurora, a Medusa‑like woman, is the only entity that guarantees petrification, and therefore can stabilise subjectivity. Eroticism connected to sculptural forms and Aurora’s ability to be at once a petrifying Medusa and an animating force of nature shows the paradoxical condition of the language and the illusory nature of any male character’s hopes for constructing stable subjectivity.

Keywords

EN

Sculpture; subjectivity; petrification; Medusa; surrealism

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii - Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Estetyka i Krytyka
• Year: 2015
• Issue: 2(37)
• Pages: 105-114

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

Trzeciak Katarzyna

• Jagiellonian University

Identifiers

ISSN

1643-1243