Page 161 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

O

Oedipus complex The idea of the Oedipus complex was developed by Freud during
the nineteenth century in the context of psychoanalysis and is thus pertinent to
cultural studies in so far as psychoanalysis itself is held to make a contribution. An
Oedipal complex is said to involve a boy’s desire for his mother as the primary love
object. This desire is prohibited by the symbolic order in the form of the incest
taboo. Specifically, the father represents to a boy the threat of castration that such
prohibited desire brings forth. Consequently, boys shift their identification from the
mother to the father, who is identified with the symbolic position of power and
control (the Phallus). For girls, this involves the acceptance that they have already
been castrated. This is said to lead to fury and partial identification with the mother
as a gendered role together with the association of fathers with authority,
domination and mastery.
According to Freud, the resolution of the Oedipus complex achieves the ordering
of an otherwise polymorphously perverse libido into the norm of heterosexual
gendered relationships. That is, while the libidinal drive does not have any pre-
given fixed aim or object it becomes regulated and repressed by the resolution of the
Oedipus complex. For Lacan, the resolution of the Oedipus complex marks the
formation of the unconscious as the realm of the repressed and the very possibility
of gendered subjects is established through entry into the symbolic order.
Kristeva, Chodorow, Mitchell and other writers supportive of psychoanalysis
suggest that the theory of the Oedipus complex marks the formation of particular
styles of masculinity and femininity. It is argued that, in the context of patriarchy,
mothers treat boys as independent and outgoing persons while girls are loved more
narcissistically as being like the mother. Thus boys’ individuation involves
identification with the father and the symbolic Phallus as the domain of social
status, power and independence so that a form of masculinity is produced which
stresses external orientation. In contrast, girls have acquired a greater surety with
the communicative skills of intimacy through introjection of, and identification
with, aspects of their mothers’ own narratives but suffer the traditional cost of a
greater difficulty with autonomy.
Links Gender, identification, identity, mirror phase, psychoanalysis, sex, symbolic order

Orientalism The concept of Orientalism is associated with the work of Edward Said,
who argued that cultural-geographical entities such as the ‘Orient’ are not inert facts
of nature, but rather should be grasped as historically specific discursive
constructions that have a particular history and tradition. Thus, ‘The Orient’ has

138