Visual Perversity : A Re-articulation of Maternal Instinct

Through her reading of Euripides'Bacchae, Colridge's "Christabel," de Sade'sPhilosophy in the Bedroom, and Hitchcock'sPsycho author Alina M. Luna finds precedent for a destructive impulse lurking beneath the maternal gaze.

Euripides''Bacchae, Colridge''s "Christabel," de Sade''sPhilosophy in the Bedroom, and Hitchcock''sPsycho share a common thread. InVisual Perversity: A Re-Articulation of Maternal Instinct Alina M. Luna links each of these texts through the problematic relationships that play out between mother and child. She locates these disturbing tensions in the visual register; the place where the mother attempts to maintain her primal connection to her child, even at catastrophic costs. In each of the four works under consideration by the author, the logic of perversion masked beneath this gaze unfolds—disturbingly. Luna''s careful exposition takes place in four chapters, over four expertly constructed theoretical vignettes. Scholars working in cultural studies, literary criticism, continental philosophy and especially gender studies will find Luna''s approach novel and inventive.