Response: Proximal but Divided

“The whale and the polar bear, it has been said, cannot wage war on each other, for since each is confined to his own element they cannot meet.”1 This metaphor was put on the table by Sigmund Freud in 1914, near the conclusion of his famous case study of the “Wolf Man.” Noting an unfortunate incommensurability when it came to conversations between psychoanalysts and psychologists (resistant to psychoanalytic postulates), Freud described the rift by calling up the image of two formidable beasts occupying proximal yet deeply divided terrain. While it would be unwise to mark too totalizing a resemblance between psychoanalysis and contemporary art history, nonetheless as a critic I find it tempting to borrow this delicious phrase for my own purposes.