Suppressing the Mental Fright of Castration and a Creative Language of Dreams in Temma F. Berg's "Suppressing the Language of Wo(Man): The Dream as a Common Language"

This paper analyses Temma F. Berg's "Suppressing the Language of Wo(Man): The Dream as a Common Language."1 As the title suggests, Berg argues that a common language, which does not exclude either man or woman, is possible. She rereads Sigmund Freud's conception of dreams from a Kristevan perspective and removes sexual differences in reconceptualizing the literary language. She maintains that dreams can be useful to understand the nature of such a common language that will be "fluid, nonteleological, crammed, condensed, subversive and erupting with the power of the repressed" (p.15). According to Berg, Jacques Lacan excludes the (m)other/the feminine from his 'Symbolic Order' and considers language as a necessarily male realm. Luce Irigaray, on the other hand, in her This Sex Which Is Not One, is fascinated with her femininity and the imaginary and is particularly concerned with feminine writing/language.2 As for Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, they are involved in women's own subversive language including new words to express women's experience.3 However, Berg explores the idea of a common language that does not exclude either sex since she believes that woman's voice has never been completely suppressed within texts. For this reason, Berg reads Freud from a Kristevan perspective dealing with poetic language that does not work on sexual differences but, like Mikhail Bakhtin, attempts to demonstrate that no voice (voice of the other) can be completely suppressed and the feminine can never be totally excluded from language. Therefore, Berg refers to Julia Kristeva's terms 'semiotic' and the 'chora,' and to Bakhtin's idea of 'dialogicism.'4 Accordingly, Berg revises Freud's concept of the pre-oedipal and claims that it is in fact a sexless realm related with both man and woman; and, she conceives of dreaming as a common process to all that is repressed or outlawed, which can apparently be compared to the common language she suggests. Berg discusses Lacan's influential attitude towards women in terms of the 'Symbolic Order'/language. It is crucial because Lacan takes a view of language that is essentially a male realm, in which woman is excluded or inferiorized because 'the imaginary' is repressed/suppressed by the name of the Father or Phallus. Therefore, entrance into the realm of the 'Symbolic Order'/language means for a woman to be trapped in it. According to Lacan—who is obsessed with the story of woman's lack of phallus—the child, through language, detaches himself/herself from his/her mother, that is, from the feminine. S/he regulates his/her sexual desire, acknowledges social rules and internalises male culture. Thus, the feminine will be inevitably suppressed through this symbolic process and language denies woman's libidinal economy. For this reason, Lacan notes that woman is excluded by the very nature of words, and states that "they don't know what they are saying, which is all the difference between them and me."5 From a feminist point of view, the Lacanian attitude towards women and language works on differentiation and exclusion, on inferiority and male privilege. Therefore, such a view of language is questionable, and accepted rules and conventions based upon the law of the Father need to be violated through a new language that excludes none.