The Mutability of Identity and Trans-Subjectivation in Jeanette Winterson’s Art and Lies

Abstract

The present paper intends to closely analyze the character of Handel as a trans-subject who evolves in the process of the novel of Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies. His oscillation between a priest and a physician would be lime lighted through Catherine Malabou’s perspective of plasticity and trans-subjectivation. Hence, the character’s mutable stance in regarding his body as a cleric and a doctor would be spotlighted. Significantly, his encounter with a feminine body would be expounded as a path in which he faces the gap within the doctor character and the ecclesiastic one. The procedure of his treating a female body would serve as the rupture inside where he fluctuates between treating the womanly body as a man of God and a medical doctor. Moreover, the transition from destructive plasticity (trauma) to constructive self-realization would be illustrated as trans-subjectivityin Picasso. Demonstrating art as the catalyst which brings about the evolution of traumatic identity, the plasticity of art would be argued. Body as the realm in which I and the other encounter would be spotlighted and the role of other as the path to trans-subjectivation could be analyzed.