Notas sobre nuestra ambivalencia

Abstract

This article presents some notes about my post-doctoral research, which starts from the problematization of the bounds of the self with itself, with others and with the world in relation to the experience of medusic and narcissistic loves. Through the Foucauldian notion of “spirituality” and the Butlerian concepts of “melancholy” and “ambivalence”, the research turns to the short story “Tigrela” by Lygia Fagundes Telles, and to the novel A paixão segundo G.H by Clarice Lispector. Thereby, I try to indicate psychic and social ambivalence of the self with regard to the tension between affections – love and hate –, and to the tension between the processes of identification and dis-identification of the self in relation to the criteria for defining humanity and animality. In other words, based on Telles and Lispector, I seek to point out the ambivalence of affections regarding the animality that crosses and constitutes our humanity. In this essay, I first introduce the nodular concepts of my research; then, I try to show how they are operated in the context of the interpretation of the works by Telles and Lispector.