The Art of Analysis: Mary Kelly's "Interim" and the Discourse of the Analyst

Abstract

Mary Kelly makes an exhibition of us. Though who we are I have less and less idea. The New Museum was showing Mary Kelly's Interim,' which I want to try to think about through psychoanalysis and through the question of love and identity-that is, through the category of transference. Now, Mary Kelly's work has always displayed the question of psychoanalysis. There it is, in Post-Partum Document,2 in question and algorithm, making theoretical production and the infant's productions different moments of a representation. In Interim, the psychoanalytic glosses are minimal. But my argument is that the fundamental situation of Interim-that of the series, the spectator, the art work, and the fantasy of whatever goes under the name of Mary Kelly-finds its analogue in the analytic situation. I am suggesting that going to the exhibition is like going to analysis. Of course one is not a substitute for the other; I am not suggesting that you choose between going to analysis and going to see Interim. But I do think that the relation of transference helps to clarify what is going on in Interim, especially where the exhibition confronts that most delicate of issues, that of ways of going on. Let me start with the famous question do women want? As will become clear, I have nothing to add by way of an answer. I am not concerned with the answer, but the question, the question which itself needs to be questioned. Indeed, what is a question? Who questions? Who answers? What kind of answer is demanded by what type of question? What does the question want with us? Who does the question want us to be? How does the question want us