Global Journal of Human-Social Science, A: Arts and Humanities, Volume 21 Issue 12

whose perfect type would be represented by Augustin e 5 We must insist on the word visibility. Let us note that the physical conversion of affects often arises as a response to an insufficiency of language. Through paralysis, anesthesia, convulsions, that is, through the symptoms, the affect that does not find expression in words becomes seeable in the body. Hysteria points, in a way, to a flaw in language as well as an insufficiency of scientific discourse, which mutes in the face of hysterical phenomena. No one can deny that before Charcot, modern science did not have much to say about hysteria. We may say that it is a type of Sphinx, of an object that raises questions – as the ready-made was to modern art. “Who am I?” – asks the hysteric to the wise, like the bicycle wheel to critics and art lovers. This question baffled the 20 th century, as Gérard Wajcman points out in L'Objet du Siècle ( The Object of the Century ): “to say of this bicycle wheel that it is the Sphinx of art may encourage us to say that it is to the art of the century what hysteria was to Freud and psychoanalysis, the original and inexhaustible mystery, from which both drew the secret and splendor of their practice. The Bicycle Wheel, Anna O. or Dora of Modern Ar t . Inspired by the Freudian discovery, the surrealists celebrate hysteria as a means of artistic expression – expression of pain and ecstasy that, gaining form and visibility, fascinates and frightens the viewer. Such horrible beauty is what seduces the surrealists. 6 ” . Let us call demonic the femininity around which we recognize, for example, the myth of Lilith, Satan's accursed wife – according to Jewish tradition, a somber and nocturnal creature who, seducing men in 5 Didi-Huberman, in Invention de l'hysterie. Charcot et l'iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, Paris, Macula, 1982, p. 147. 6 Wajcman, L'objet du siècle, Lagrasse, Éditions Verdier, 1998, p. 89. 7 Eighteen-year-old French young woman who, on the night of August 21, 1933, poisons her parents. 8 Aimée is the pseudonym under which Jacques Lacan presents, in his doctoral thesis, the case of Marguerite Anzieu, a paranoid woman who, on April 18, 1931, unsuccessfully tries to stab actress Huguette Duflosse. their sleep, conceived with them devilish children, and then devoured them. Almost absent from Christian texts, Lilith appears in Jewish texts and exegesis as the first wife of Adam, created, according to the Alphabet of Ben Sirah (11 th century), from the same material as the latter and equally in the image and likeness of God 9 From ancient times, it is to this diabolic or possessed woman that the image of the hysteric is identified. The term hysteria comes from the Greek word hystera (matrix). According to Plato, the matrix or uterus is an animal whose aptitude is to make children; when it remains for a long period without bearing fruit, this animal becomes impatient and withstands this state badly; it then proceeds to wander erratically all over the body, obstructing the air passages, restricting breathing, and causing extreme anguish and diseases of all sort s . Lilith refused to submit to the usual sexual position, that is, underneath the man. Or, in other words, she refused male supremacy. Without giving in to Adam, she fled the Garden of Eden. Lilith would be cursed by the Father and all her offspring would die at birth. Her fate should be to wander endlessly, devouring other women's newborns. In some versions, Lilith is represented by the serpent that tempts Eve. 10 In the Middle Ages, the convulsions, the spasms, the screams, the paralysis, in short, all expressions and postures immortalized by the famous Salpetrière iconography were construed as an expression of sexual pleasure and, thus, of a sin. These manifestations were attributed to the intervention of the manipulative devil, able to deceive, simulate illnesses and enter women's bodies to possess the m . 11 9 Laraia, R. de B. (1997). Jardim do Éden revisitado. Revista De Antropologia , 40 (1), 149-164. Avaiable at . And the woman possessed would become the witch, cast out by the Church in the 15 th and 16 th centuries. These images, however laden with beliefs and superstitions, clearly signals the plasticity expressed in the hysterical phenomena and the sexual fantasy that resides at the origin of the illness. In a way, we may say that the hysterical symptom is the substitutive expression of orgasm. However, this pleasure proves to be infantile and incomplete, since the sexuality of the hysterical subject is always paradoxical: a wholly eroticized body that contrasts with an anesthetized erogenous zone, in the same way as a tendency to eroticize any social relationship opposes an aversion to the sexual intercourse itself. https://doi.org/10.1590/S00 34-77011997000100005. 10 Nasio, L'hystérie ou l'enfant magnifique de la psychanalyse, Paris, Éditions Payot et Rivages, 1995, p.85. 11 Roudinesco et Plon, Dictionaire de la psychanalyse, Paris, Fayard, 2006, p. 487. Volume XXI Issue XII Version I 18 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2021 A © 2021 Global Journals Hysteria as an Aesthetic Expression The surrealists inaugurate a new representation of the feminine: the woman who rebels, the criminal, paranoid, homosexual woman who is no longer the miserable and slave of her symptoms to become the heroine of a new modernity. Paying homage to Violette Nozière 7 , prostitute, mythomaniac and parricide, the surrealists celebrate death, suicide, sex, the murderous drive and the passionate madness. The young Lacan feeds on this new look at femininity for his narrative of the case “Aimée”, alias Marguerite Anzieu 8 . A failed criminal, Aimée joins Augustine of the Salpetrière, Violette, Nadja and all these passionate, disturbed and demonic women from mythology.