Bracha Ettinger
Marcel Duchamp Chair and Professor of Psychoanalysis and Art at The European Graduate School / EGS.
Biography
Bracha L. Ettinger (b. 1948) is an artist, senior clinical psychologist, practicing psychoanalyst, and theoretician working at the intersection of female sexuality, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics. Her approach significantly extends the work of contemporary philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Jacques Lacan, and challenges the works of Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.
Ettinger received her PhD in Aesthetics of Visual Arts from the University of Paris VIII, a DEA in Psychoanalysis from the University of Paris VII, and an MA in Clinical Psychology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was a Visiting Professor and then a Research Professor in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics at the School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. Since 2001, she has also been a Visiting Professor in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics at the AHRC Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory, and History (now CentreCATH) at the University of Leeds, of which she was a founding member. In addition, she has worked as a lecturer at the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem. A collection of Bracha Ettinger’s essays, interspersed with reproductions of her artwork, was published under the title,The Matrixial Borderspace (French 1999, English 2006).
For the past twenty years, Bracha Ettinger has been forging a new–”matrixial”–theory and language that has major aesthetical, analytic, ethical, and political implications. Theoretically exploring the possibility of shared affect and emergent expression across thresholds of identity and memory, Ettinger moves “through Lacan’s late works, the anti-Oedipal perspectives of Deleuze and Guattari, as well as object-relations theory to critique the phallocentrism of mainstream Lacanian theory and to rethink the masculine-feminine opposition. She replaces the phallic structure with a dimension of emergence, where objects, images, and meanings are glimpsed in their incipiency, before they are differentiated. This is the matrixial realm, a shareable, psychic dimension that underlies the individual unconscious and experience.”
Her ideas have articulated a feminine, maternal, and prematernal dimension of the real (the womb), which is that of a presubject, and hence a trans-subjective coemergence avails through pregnancy (m/Other) in the emerging subject as the primary phase of the psyche. Following, the I and the non I are imminently trans-connected. Questioning the necessity of Kristeva’s sacrificial social contract, Ettinger offers the possibility for identities to be achieved neither sacrificially nor at an other’s expense. She urges one to think the opening of a new ethical horizon via “matrixial” concepts such as trans-subjective com-passion, primary compassion, and fascinance, in which an archaic “aesthetic” mental-psychic apprehension of the other, and of the world as proto-ethical, emerges.
Bracha Ettinger’s artworks, mainly paintings, drawings, artist’s notebooks, and photographs, have been presented in group exhibitions at major museums of contemporary art, including: The Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Gothenburg Museum of Art; Villa Medici, Rome; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Haifa Museum and Theater; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth; Museum for Israeli Art, Ramat-Gan; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. She has held solo exhibitions at numerous institutions, including: Lokaal 01, Antwerp; Gerwood Gallery, Oxford University; La librairie, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse; Maison de France, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; The Drawing Center, New York; Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Pori Art Museum, Finland (with Sergei ‘Africa’ Bugayev); Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Leeds Metropolitan University Gallery, Leeds; Kanaal Art Fondation, Béguinage, Kortrijk (with Nancy Spero); Modern Art Oxford; Galerie d’Art Contemporain du Centre Saint-Vincent, Herblay; the Russian Ethnography Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia; Nouveau Muséem, IAC – Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne; Goethe Institute, Paris (1990); Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle de Calais; Moltkerei Werkstatt, Köln; Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Works
Books
The Matrixial Borderspace, Ettinger, Bracha. The Matrixial Borderspace. Edited by Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, 2006. ISBN: 0816635870
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Eurydice Series, Ettinger, Bracha. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Eurydice Series. The Drawing Center, 2001.
Artworking: 1985-1999, Ettinger, Bracha. Artworking: 1985-1999. Ludion, 2000. ISBN: 9055442836
Regard et Espace-de-Bord Matrixiels: Essais Psychanalytiques sur le Féminin et le Travail de l’Art, Ettinger, Bracha. Regard et Espace-de-Bord Matrixiels: Essais Psychanalytiques sur le Féminin et le Travail de l’Art. Lettre volee, 1999. ISBN: 2873171022
Doctor and Patient, Ettinger, Bracha. Doctor and Patient. Edited by Marketta Seppala. Porin Taidemuseo, 1997. ISBN: 9519355553
Que dirait Eurydice: Emmanuel Levinas in Conversation with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Ettinger, Bracha. Que dirait Eurydice: Emmanuel Levinas in Conversation with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. BLE Atelier, 1997. ISBN: 2910845087
Time is the Breath of Spirit: Emmanuel Levinas in Conversation with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger, Ettinger, Bracha. Time is the Breath of Spirit: Emmanuel Levinas in Conversation with Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. Translated by Joseph Simas and Carolyn Ducker. Museum of Modern Art, 1998. ISBN: 0905836855
Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and From the Feminine, Ettinger, Bracha. Inside the Visible: An Elliptical Traverse of 20th Century Art in, of, and From the Feminine. Edited by Catherine de Zegher. MIT Press, 1996. ISBN: 0262540819
The Matrixial Gaze, Ettinger, Bracha. The Matrixial Gaze. University of Leeds, 1995. ISBN: 0952489902
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Halala – Autistwork, Ettinger, Bracha. Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger: Halala – Autistwork. Arfiac, 1995. ISBN: 2910845060
Matrix Halal(a): Lapsus: Notes on Painting, Ettinger, Bracha. Matrix Halal(a): Lapsus: Notes on Painting. Museum of Modern Art, 1993. ISBN: 0905836812
Matrix et le Voyage a Jerusalem de C.B. Chime?, Ettinger, Bracha. Matrix et le Voyage a Jerusalem de C.B.. Chimeres, 1990.
Chapters
Diotima and the Matrixial Transference: Psychoanalytical Encounter-Event as Pregnancy in Beauty
Ettinger, Bracha. “Diotima and the Matrixial Transference: Psychoanalytical Encounter-Event as Pregnancy in Beauty.” In Beyond the Threshold: Explorations of Liminality in Literature..., edited by Chris N. van der Merwe and Hein Viljoen, 105-32. Peter Lang, 2007. ISBN: 1433100029
A conversation with Craigie Horsfield
Ettinger, Bracha. “A conversation with Craigie Horsfield.” In Graigie Horsfield: Relation, edited by Catherine de Zegher. Museum Jeu de Paume, 2007. ISBN: 9076979332
Fascinance and the Girl-to-m/Other Matrixial Feminine Difference
Ettinger, Bracha. “Fascinance and the Girl-to-m/Other Matrixial Feminine Difference.” In Pyshcoanalysis and the Image, Blackwell, 2006. ISBN: 1405134615
Gaze-and-touching the Not Enough Mother
Ettinger, Bracha. “Gaze-and-touching the Not Enough Mother.” In Eva Hesse Drawing, edited by Catherine de Zegher. Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN: 0300116187
The Art-and-Healing Oeuvre
Ettinger, Bracha. “The Art-and-Healing Oeuvre.” In 3x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin, edited by Catherine de Zegher and Hendel Teicher. Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN: 0300108265
From transference to the aesthetic paradigm: a conversation with Félix Guattari
Ettinger, Bracha. “From transference to the aesthetic paradigm: a conversation with Félix Guattari.” In A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari, edited by Brian Massumi. Routledge, 2002. ISBN: 0415238048
Trans-subjective transferential borderspace
Ettinger, Bracha. “Trans-subjective transferential borderspace.” In A Shock to Thought: Expression after Deleuze and Guattari, edited by Brian Massumi. Routledge, 2002. ISBN: 0415238048
Transcryptum
Ettinger, Bracha. “Transcryptum.” In Topologies of Trauma: Essays on the Limit of Knowledge and Memory, edited by Linda Belau and Petar Ramadanovic. Other Press, 2002. ISBN: 1892746972
Weaving a Trans-Subjective Tress or the Matrixial sinthome
Ettinger, Bracha. “Weaving a Trans-Subjective Tress or the Matrixial sinthome.” In Re-inventing the Symptom: Essays on the final Lacan, edited by Luke Thurston. Other Press, 2003. ISBN: 1590510135
Interventions
Ettinger, Bracha. “Interventions.” In Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network, edited by Amy Scholder and Jordan Crandall. D.A.P./EYEBEAM ATELIER, 2001. ISBN: 1891024248
Matrixial Gaze and Screen: Other than Phallic and the Late Lacan
Ettinger, Bracha. “Matrixial Gaze and Screen: Other than Phallic and the Late Lacan.” In Political Phenomenologies of Agency and Culture, edited by Laura Doyle. Northwestern University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0810118467
The Red Cow Effect
Ettinger, Bracha. “The Red Cow Effect.” In He Said, She Says: An Rsvp to the Male Text, edited by Mica Howe and Sarah Appleton Aguiar. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001. ISBN: 0838639151
Transgressing with-in-to the feminine
Ettinger, Bracha. “Transgressing with-in-to the feminine.” In Differential Aesthetics : Art Practices, Philosophy and Feminist Understandings, edited by Penny Florence and Nicola Foster. Ashgate, 2001. ISBN: 075461493X
Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace
Ettinger, Bracha. “Metramorphic Borderlinks and Matrixial Borderspace.” In Rethinking Borders, edited by John Welchman. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. ISBN: 0816628696
The With-in-Visible Screen
Ettinger, Bracha. “The With-in-Visible Screen.” In Inside the Visible, edited by Catherine de Zegher. The MIT Press, 1996. ISBN: 0262540819
The Becoming Threshold of Matrixial Borderlines
Ettinger, Bracha. “The Becoming Threshold of Matrixial Borderlines.” In Travellers’ Tales: Narratives of Home and Displacement, edited by Georg Robertson. Routledge, 1994. ISBN: 0415070163