‘Mothers Reign Supreme’? Weiblichkeit, Mutterschaft und die Wiederkehr des Abjekts in der elisabethanisch-jakobäischen Tragödie: John Webster
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Drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and media philosopher Jean Baudrillard, this article concentrates on John Webster’s tragedies and – after a short discussion of Shakespearean tragedies as well as of The White Devil – argues that The Duchess of Malfi is a unique English Renaissance tragedy insofar as it presents an unprecedented conception of feminine identity, which is linked to an affirmative understanding of female sexuality, to a non-traditional understanding of motherhood and to the notion of the abject. As a consequence of this, the supposed irregularities or ‘flaws’ of the play can be explained as the semiotic pulsation of drives interfering with the symbolic order, while the play in its totality demonstrates that it is the negated “peculiar organisation of abjection which actually founds the signifying economy of our culture” (A. Smith).
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Drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and media philosopher Jean Baudrillard, this article concentrates on John Webster’s tragedies and – after a short discussion of Shakespearean tragedies as well as of The White Devil – argues that The Duchess of Malfi is a unique English Renaissance tragedy insofar as it presents an unprecedented conception of feminine identity, which is linked to an affirmative understanding of female sexuality, to a non-traditional understanding of motherhood and to the notion of the abject. As a consequence of this, the supposed irregularities or ‘flaws’ of the play can be explained as the semiotic pulsation of drives interfering with the symbolic order, while the play in its totality demonstrates that it is the negated “peculiar organisation of abjection which actually founds the signifying economy of our culture” (A. Smith).
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