신들린 여성, 히스테리의 하늘을 향한 갈망

Abstract

This paper deals with the memory of wounds on the body and the language of hysteria, which is not communicated. Even in the modern era, hysteria has been interpreted as a possessed figure, an abnormal body revolt, and a streak of distorted desire. Another aspect of hysteria, however, seen through the example of Hildegard von Bingen, is not a phenomenon of unfiltered possession. Rather, hysteria is a figure of relating with and communicating to the other, while placing the impulses of Chora in the symbolic world. For Hildegard, the body was a vessel to communicate with God, the Big Other. In order for the ritual offered by the humble body of the hysterics to communicate with heaven, they should experience the pain of being separated from the maternal land that is mother. In addition, this pain is accompanied by sadness and depression, but the spirituality of sadness and depression is not denied or excluded; as it stands, it places the maternal being in the position of the Big Other (God), overcoming dichotomies such as body and soul, beauty and ugliness, joy and sadness, and men and women. In this sense, “hysterical body” is the most powerful metaphor for challenging the patriarchal figure of God. However, the hysteria's desire itself that longs for the body of hysteria that cannot be communicated needs to be newly interpreted and sympathized with. The hysterical bodies that roll, and shout with a sense that permeates the gap of existence, feel humble and fragmented, focusing on the grammar of the symbolic world, but they reveal their hope for God through their cracked bodies. It could be sadness or hope to be communicated. Thus, the humbleness of language, space, and the body that expresses ‘the hope’ are offerings to the heavens themselves, and the hysterics are the priests of the offerings.