Poetic Subjectivation and Desubjectivation

Author, Testimony and Writing in Alda Merini and Sarah Kane

Abstract

In literary texts that present a poetic speaker whose psychic apparatus suffers, writing becomes the site for the oscillation between subjectivity and desubjectivity. This paper poses the question on how to approach texts rooted in the experience of psychic suffering in relation to the concepts of “testimony”, “author” and “writing”. The selected literary texts are: a group of poems written by the Italian poet Alda Merini and 4.48 Psychosis, a play written by the English playwright Sarah Kane. In these texts, the poetic speaker experiences a desubjectivation produced by highly invasive psychiatric procedures. These texts account for this experience (Benjamin) and establish themselves as healthy practices (Deleuze). By doing so, they do not function as instances of resubjectivation; instead, they retain the oscillation between resubjectivation and desubjectivation.