Kaiak (Aug 2017)

Il custode delle metamorfosi. Per una critica scritturale della sublimazione

  • Eleonora de Conciliis

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4

Abstract

Read online

Using an Elias Canetti quote (“The author is the guardian of the metamorphoses”) as starting point, this essay wishes to focus the link between writing, sublimation and metamorphosis, leaving the classic Freudian concept of ‘sublimation’ in background (that concept regards instincts and their creative transformation, something that is not within reach for everybody). Through suggestions borrowed from Kafka and Canetti’s anthropology, the essay tries to sketch a not-psychoanalytical inquiry (refusing the defense of pulsional anguish and the substitution of sexual target) but an anthropological and literary investigation about metamorphic sublimation given to writing, conceived as ethical transformation of the subject itself.

Keywords