Disgust and Fear of the Body. Feminism and Hysteria in Carina Rydberg’s Nattens amnesti. Det somatiska samhället och dess litteratur

Sociological analysis reveals an increasing role of the body in both private and political spheres of contemporary Western society, hereinafter, the somatic society. The phenomenon called ‘skräckellitteratur’ is a result and reaction towards the somatic society. Skräckellitteratur was a characteristic trend in the Swedish literature of the 90’s, where elements of fear and disgust presented the body as a basic medium of violence. In this paper the phenomenon of skräckellitteratur is discussed on the basis of the analysis of the protagonist’s hysterical behavior in Carina Rydberg’s novel, Nattens amnesti (1994). According to Elaine Showalter’s theory, hysterization of a person is the result of cultural violence which degrades the person to the body level and enables relieving the violence only in the somatic manner. This paper reconstructs the hysteria process, its source and the way a hysterical woman endeavors to suppress progressive somatization. The analysis of historical discourse in the novel Nattens amnesti emphasizes its significant relations with the feminist reinterpretation of the hysteria theory. This relation is noticed among others in the source of the hysteria which comes as a result of sexual abuse in early childhood and progressive sexual activity in adulthood. The hysterical woman with her non-culturally formed body becomes a rebellious patriarchal daughter who jeopardizes not only herself but also the whole system which degraded her to the body level. The hysterical symptoms presented in Rydberg’s prose confirm Hélène Cixous’ and Elaine Showalter’s views, who, contrary to psychiatry and psychoanalyses of the death of hysteria, claim hysteria to be a still existing, though modified, phenomenon.
 

Disgust and Fear of the Body. Feminism and Hysteria in Carina Rydberg’s Nattens amnesti. Det somatiska samhället och dess litteratur

Sociological analysis reveals an increasing role of the body in both private and political spheres of contemporary Western society, hereinafter, the somatic society. The phenomenon called ‘skräckellitteratur’ is a result and reaction towards the somatic society. Skräckellitteratur was a characteristic trend in the Swedish literature of the 90’s, where elements of fear and disgust presented the body as a basic medium of violence. In this paper the phenomenon of skräckellitteratur is discussed on the basis of the analysis of the protagonist’s hysterical behavior in Carina Rydberg’s novel, Nattens amnesti (1994). According to Elaine Showalter’s theory, hysterization of a person is the result of cultural violence which degrades the person to the body level and enables relieving the violence only in the somatic manner. This paper reconstructs the hysteria process, its source and the way a hysterical woman endeavors to suppress progressive somatization. The analysis of historical discourse in the novel Nattens amnesti emphasizes its significant relations with the feminist reinterpretation of the hysteria theory. This relation is noticed among others in the source of the hysteria which comes as a result of sexual abuse in early childhood and progressive sexual activity in adulthood. The hysterical woman with her non-culturally formed body becomes a rebellious patriarchal daughter who jeopardizes not only herself but also the whole system which degraded her to the body level. The hysterical symptoms presented in Rydberg’s prose confirm Hélène Cixous’ and Elaine Showalter’s views, who, contrary to psychiatry and psychoanalyses of the death of hysteria, claim hysteria to be a still existing, though modified, phenomenon.