Dissociation and the Thrill of Touch in Emerson

Theo Davis takes up Emerson’s overwhelming assertions of the abstracted individual’s capacity to remake the world in its own image, which have been read as paradigmatic of the violence of the subject-position of the... [ view full abstract ]

Theo Davis takes up Emerson’s overwhelming assertions of the abstracted individual’s capacity to remake the world in its own image, which have been read as paradigmatic of the violence of the subject-position of the American individual. She argues that the abstraction and demands to control the world evident in Emerson are legible as marks of a profound dissociation—a psychological inability to feel fully organized, psychologically and physically—with origins in early childhood trauma. Emerson's  frequent images of disappointing authority figures and frozen, furious children carry an undertone of confusion, anger, and despair regarding dependency, which bespeaks the legacy of the psychological violence suffered when a child is unable to be fully or safely dependent on its caregivers. Out of this formative experience of private violence comes the power of Emerson’s work as a creative, demanding process of seeking to emerge into full sensory presence, contact with a felt reality, and a feeling of being embedded in the world. Rather than read Emerson as a figure of the violence of the abstract subject, the paper argues that Emerson’s work finds its lasting interest in its demand to emerge out of dissociation and into a sense of connected physical and psychological presence.