Louise Bourgeois’ obsession with desire, identity, and the body aligns with and guides my current explorations. Viewing the self from various standpoints (as Bourgeois does through lenses of mother, daughter, wife, woman, etc.) is of interest to me, and the project I am currently working on looks at the self as subject and object; separate entities as one being. I explore violence inflicted by mother upon child, motivated by feelings of deep love and the desire for wholeness and connection. Britt-Marie Schiller’s "Fantasies of Cannibalism in the Art of Louise Bourgeois" has made me aware that I have an interest in cathexis and cannibalistic fantasy, which I will be exploring in my immediate research.

“Only devouring gives the assurance that the object will never abandon you. But this fantasy of absolute appropriation requires killing your object of desire, hence the emergence of melancholia, the fantasy of keeping the object alive as a lost object.” [Schiller 365]

Bourgeois, Louise. He Disappeared into Complete Silence. 1947. “Fantasies of Cannibalism in the Art of Louise Bourgeois.” By Britt-Marie Schiller. American imago 77.2 (2020): 365–393. Web.

The abandonment
I want revenge
I want tears for having been born
I want apologies
I want Blood
I want to do to others what has been done to me
To be born is to be ejected
To be abandoned, from there comes the fury.

(Bourgeois diary entry, found in Schiller p. 371]

Schiller, Britt-Marie. “Fantasies of Cannibalism in the Art of Louise Bourgeois.” American imago 77.2 (2020): 365–393. Web.

Michael Vannoy Adams. The Fantasy Principle : Psychoanalysis of the Imagination. Routledge, 2004. EBSCOhost, search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.acsaa.talonline.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=106280&site=ehost-live.

Kilgour, Maggie. "Cannibals: The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus
to Jules Verne." College Literature, vol. 26, no. 1, winter 1999, pp. 209+. Gale Literature Resource
Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A54257653/LitRC?u=albe11355&sid=bookmarkLitRC&xid=f10218ca. Accessed 16 Sept. 2021.

Mooney, Justin. “The Possibility of Resurrection by Reassembly.” International journal for philosophy of religion 84.3 (2018): 273–288. Web.

Lyons, Paul. "From Man-Eaters to Spam-Eaters: Literary Tourism and the Discourse of Cannibalism from Herman Melville to Paul Theroux." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Jeffrey W. Hunter, vol. 204, Gale, 2005. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1100064956/LitRC?u=albe11355&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=752838d0. Accessed 18 Sept. 2021. Originally published in Multiculturalism and Representation: Selected Essays, edited by John Rieder and Larry E. Smith, College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawaii and the East-West Center, 1996, pp. 67-86.