Abstract

I turn to Julia Kristeva, particularly the catalogue that accompanied the Louvre exhibit that she curated entitled Visions Capitales in order to further explore connections between art, violence, and mothers and girls. Taking up questions of the role of art in counterbalancing our violent urges by giving form to fantasies rather than acting on them, I explore Kristeva's account of the transformative power of art. To this end, I engage Kristeva on the relationship between sadomasochistic subjectivity and art to attempt to begin to distinguish between art that enables us to sublimate violence and art that actually incites violence. Can we tell the difference? And if so, how? In this chapter I ask: What distinguishes art as spectacle from art as transformation? As in Derrida's The Beast, Medusa makes a central appearance in Kristeva's The Severed Heads. In the end, I bring together Kristeva's, Derrida's, and Louis Marin's analyses of the figure of Medusa to complicate connections between art, girls, and sovereignty.

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