Farewell, Freud: Orphic Trans/formations of Voice

Abstract

In search of a new way out of the bind of Freud's conception of sexual difference, this article turns its ears to a voice, one that echoes along the upward slope from the Underworld, as Orpheus and Eurydice climb toward an escape only one of them will achieve (and only temporarily). As we shall see, this is an echo that resounds across texts, times, literatures, and languages. But what is it trying to tell us? Plunging into ancient and modern versions of the story, we find at its center a primal scene arguably more eloquent than that of Oedipus, one that seems to conjure not just the thinking of Freud, but that of other major thinkers of the last century (Lacan, Derrida). But all the while, this echo continues, unsettling the foundations of analysis, blurring without obliterating difference, including sexual difference, conjuring the possibility of a psyche predicated not on this or that imago, but on vox.