以色列裔法國藝術家、精神分析理論家艾婷爵曾說:「在今日的藝術,我們已經從幻象移轉至創傷。當代美學正從陽具崇拜結構轉變為母體界。」本文分析艾婷爵這一席話的意義,試圖結合女性主義及後殖民文化理論的發展成果,來討論當今國際社會所關注的創傷、記憶與美學等議題。要理解二十世紀作為一個災難的世紀,需要在理論上關切創傷等概念,正如深負倫理責任感的藝術家,以創傷產生的影響之議題,喚起文化上的覺醒,並且經由藝術作品傳遞的美,潛在地提供尋找創傷痕跡的路徑。本文將介紹、闡釋、並分析艾婷爵作為一個創傷、美學與性別差異理論家的貢獻。此外,文章也深入探討她所同時發展的母體界美學實踐的概念,透過後觀念繪畫,重新改變監控、記錄和存檔等技術的結果,作為通往一個願意接受、分擔、處理並轉化創傷的未來的管道。從我們試圖去瞭解、承認,並走出那導致我們處於後創傷時代的災難所要面對的主要挑戰,本文論證艾婷爵母體界理論具有對陽具中心主義的想像層和象徵層增補之雙重功能。
Israeli/French artist and psychoanalytical theorist, Bracha Ettinger has declared: “In art today we are moving from phantasm to trauma. Contemporary aesthetics is moving from phallic structure to matrixial sphere.” In analysing the significance of this claim, this article will bring together the legacies of feminist, post-colonial cultural theories in relation to the current focus on trauma, memory and aesthetics in an international context. The understanding of the twentieth century as a century of catastrophe demands theoretical attention be given to concepts such as trauma, as artists with deep ethical commitments bring issues of traumatic legacies to the surface of cultural awareness and potentially provide through the aesthetic encounter a passage from the traces of trauma. This article introduces, explains and analyses the contribution of Bracha Ettinger as a major theoretician of trauma, aesthetics and above all sexual difference. In addition, it elaborates on her parallel concept of a matrixial aesthetic practice, enacted through a post-conceptual painting, that retunes the legacies of technologies of surveillance and documentation/archiving, as a means to effect the passage to a future that accepts the burden of sharing the trauma while processing and transforming it. The article demonstrates the dual functions of Ettingerian theories of a matrixial supplement to the phallocentric Imginary and Symbolic in relation to the major challenges we face as we seek to understand, acknowledge and move on from the catastrophes that render our age post-traumatic.