Abstract

Taking up the critique of Freud's concept of sublimation as presented by Norman O. Brown in Life against Death, this essay endeavours to present an alternative reading of sublimation which follows Brown's intention, but restructures his methodology. Brown wanted to subvert what he read to be the neurotic culture of sublimation by forcing the subject into recognition of the excessive, "Dionysian" aspects of reality, which sublimation specifically denies. He strove to accomplish this by replacing Freud's avowed dualism with a dialectical viewpoint that is based on the Romantic movement from an original natural unity, through differentiation (sublimation), and then a return to the original unity on a higher level. This third movement is, in his opinion, what is lacking from sublimation. Although Brown ends by reverting to the dualism he opposed, his approachpoints the way to the version of sublimation as presented by Jacques Lacan, and to the dialectical theory of sacrifice as found in the works of Georges Bataille. The revised account of sublimation that results from reading Lacan and Bataille together is presented as following the dialectic of sacrifice, with the work of art becoming the sacrificial site of sublimation. By reading sublimation in this way, a path is opened to view sublimation as capable of revealing something essential to the subject, and thus of altering its self-consciousness, something which Freud was never willing to grant to sublimation. Ultimately, this re-evaluation of sublimation is posited as being much more appropriate than the Freudian account for the analysis of contemporary art