Resistance and Persistence

The clinical disappearance of hysteria as a medical category in diagnostic manuals has facilitated a reappearance of the hysteric in culture as a figure of resistance. In placing her here, I question the classic idea that passivity is a key characteristic of the hysteric. She is not passive, but caught in a conflict, in an impasse. In the nineteenth century, doctors persisted in inventing ways of recording hysteria so that it was seen through their medical eyes, rather than as a form of agency on the part of the subject – the hysteric’s resistance was, quite literally, choking her.

A photograph is also a surface of resistance, in that a figure blocks light and shows up as an absence of light, an absence that is indexically linked to the figure – not copy but analogue re-presentation. Here again, one thinks of a passive subject but, conversely, we can think of the photographed hysteric as an agent of signification as she performs for the camera. The figure signs what she cannot say.

In this paper, I explore the symptom of the hysteric in the photographs of the Iconographie Photographique de la Salpêtrière and the echoes of these women in the contemporary works of art of Francesca Woodman, Pina Bausch and Paula Rego. I look at how the image of the arching-back attitude becomes a symbol of resistance against the impossible demands placed on her. I contrast this to resistance (to cure amongst other things) as a psychoanalytic concept.