Cursed and horrible. The witch who is born and ars before the dead woman

Abstract

Several objectives come together here: to engage in a conversation about the implications of the figures of The Mother and The Woman in a contemporary context, described, if not closely observed, by a woman who experiments with everyday forms of perception of such functions and structures, using an artistic methodology, including psychoanalysis, which is invoked in an encounter of ideas, displacements, and daring. Supporting the above, the cinematic imagery of Damien Leone's film Terrifier 3 (2024) is taken up again as an anonymous but persistent member, indirectly alluding to its female character, to revisit concepts such as the ominous, the negative, and the sinister, attempting to update them in their different facets regarding speech, words, the mirror stage, and listening. Third, but no less important, is a modest tribute to the psychoanalyst Anne Dufourmentelle. All of the above has been attempted, under the auspices of the call for submissions, which allows us to consider the essay in its broadest aspects of formal, conceptual, and theoretical shifts, as well as in relation to a performative of artistic subjectivity. We attempt to answer enduring questions about what a woman is today and address some of her most controversial qualities, such as sacrifice and care, by examining authors such as Massimo Recalcati, Georges Bataille, Alenka Zupanic, and Boris Groys.