Informed by a provocative exhibition at the Louvre curated by
the author, "The Severed Head" unpacks artistic representations of
severed heads from the Paleolithic period to the present. Surveying
paintings, sculptures, and drawings, Julia Kristeva turns her famed
critical eye to a study of the head as symbol and metaphor, as
religious object and physical fact, further developing a critical
theme in her work-- "the power of horror"--and the potential for
the face to provide an experience of the sacred.
Kristeva considers the head as icon, artifact, and locus of
thought, seeking a keener understanding of the violence and desire
that drives us to sever, and in some cases keep, such a potent
object. Her study stretches all the way back to 6,000 B.C.E., with
humans' early decoration and worship of skulls, and follows with
the Medusa myth; the mandylion of Laon (a holy relic in which the
face of a saint appears on a piece of cloth); the biblical story of
John the Baptist and his counterpart, Salome; tales of the
guillotine; modern murder mysteries; and even the rhetoric
surrounding the fight for and against capital punishment. Kristeva
interprets these "capital visions" through the lens of
psychoanalysis, drawing infinite connections between their
manifestation and sacred experience and very much affirming the
possibility of the sacred, even in an era of "faceless"
interaction.
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