Event overview
Goldsmiths Literature Seminar
The L Word’s tackling of the issue of identity formations comes mainly with two characters of the TV series. Max, a transgender man and Jenny, a woman who was molested as a child, both struggle to define their identity as they cope with crises rooted in their bodies. Their bodies thus act as jeopardizing elements for their constitution as individuals. The idea of body as an instance that prevents access is not new in philosophy and is directly connected to Plato’s work Phaedo. Indeed, Plato’s idealism led to a depreciation of the body as an “obstacle to knowledge”, a point, which has been highly criticized by Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The latter holds Plato responsible for introducing a hierarchy between body and soul and for inviting thinkers to free themselves from their bodies. The temptation to follow the Platonic ideal is present in The L Word, as the characters are subject to a feeling of corporal weight. However, the characters move along a Nietzschean line and stop apprehending their bodies as part of the Platonic dichotomy between body and soul. They follow the idea that “body am I entirely, and nothing else; and soul is only a word for something about the body”. A Nietzschean reading of The L Word enables us to relocate the concepts of being and becoming within the body and to think of identity beyond a mere reconciliation of the body/soul binary. To overcome gender dysphoria and childhood trauma, the characters adopt strategies to reinvest their bodies as creative and powerful instances. This can read as an accession to Will to Power, as the philosopher infers: “You shall create a higher body, a first movement, a self-propelled wheel — you shall create a creator”. In the TV show, Jenny’s novel, Thus Spoke Sarah Schuster, thus seems to be an Ariadne’s thread for their journey leading to the Overman; the Overman rendered accessible through the acquisition of a Nietzschean body.
For more information, contact Tanguy Harma
tharm009@gold.ac.uk
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct 2014 | 6:30pm - 8:00pm |
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