The Ball-Joint and the Anagram: Perversion and Jouissance in Hans Bellmer

Abstract

If perversion is a structure between neurosis and psychosis, does the conference title ‘Perversion Now’ imply that the structure, while remaining constant, manifests itself differently at different historical periods, or that the structure itself is transformed or at least contains different possibilities? The perversion I am going to be discussing here—through an approach to the work of the German artist Hans Bellmer—may stand in contrast to perversion ‘now’ or in our modernity, but I hope will nonetheless suggest the irreducibility of a moment of perversion in the genesis of the work of art, and its relevance for thinking the paradoxical nature of human singularity in relation to law. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)