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Archetypes of Self in Suzanne.
A feminist critique may wish to level an accusation towards my investigation thus far, for its “objectification” and “misogynistic” etc…of the feminine subject, that all my frameworks and theories so far, have been perpetuated from male-only perspectives.
Therefore, I will address some of these important issues and questions by introducing some of the frameworks established by Simone De Beauvoir and Judith Butler.
In Le Deixieme Sexe (1949) Simone De Beauvoir posited the perpetuation of what she considered to be a literary myth projected upon woman, predominantly by men, to which she contrasts to the actual, the ‘real’ lived experienced of a woman. De Beauvoir explains: ‘…of all these myths, none is more firmly anchored in masculine hearts than that of the feminine mystery’ (DE BEAUVOIR 2001: 1409).
One of these male perpetuated literary myths, according to De Beauvoir, was the dualistic categorisation of women into moral oppositional symbols, as the ‘division (of) bad women (and) guardian angels’ through the archetypes of ‘Aspasia, or Mme de Pompadour, the Praying Mantis, the Mandrake, the Demon (and) cruel stepmother’ against ‘the Muse, the Goddess Mother, Beatrice’, with ‘angelic young girl’ (DE BEAUVOIR 2001: 1408).
If I apply this criticism to my previous case, does it objectify the “real” lived experience of women, and perpetuate the problematic ambivalent literary myth of the “Eternal Feminine”?
If De Beauvoir’s critique was levelled as such, she would search for the actual, ‘concrete reality of women’ to demystify the myth of the feminine mystique in light of the intrinsic facts, as her biological nature, including menstruation (DE BEAUVOIR 2001: 1408).
I would however argue that this analytical reading of Suzanne has sought to reflect what I regard to be the contrary: quite the opposite of objectifying Suzanne to his male-gaze and feminine mystique, Cohen has rather made her an equal subject, which itself pertains to Be Beauvoir’s desire to see woman as ‘a full human being’ liberated from her ‘infinite bondage’ that ‘she will live in and for herself’ (DE BEAUVOIR 2001: 1414).
Suzanne, as the feminine subject of the song, evidently contains a mythical nature and may by this measure be regarded as possessing an objectified “Eternal feminine” myth. However, Suzanne is simultaneously a real subject; empowered by psychic, corporeal and celestial potency, as her feminine nature, or womanliness, performs the subject of the song.
De Beauvoir herself even permitted the mystery surrounding the feminine subject:
‘Surely woman is, in a sense, mysterious (…) Each subject is only for himself; each can grasp an immanence only himself, alone: from this point of view the other is always a mystery’ (DE BEAUVOIR 2001: 1409).
Therefore, Suzanne possess both “mythic” and “real” dimensions, unified and embodied within the song, to form an analogous impression of Self: a unified personality of both conscious and unconscious properties. However, as an Analytical and archetypal reading, Suzanne may also reflect the feminine dimensions within Cohen himself, psychoanalytically.
Through Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble (1990) we may question the accuracy and meaning of De Beauvoir’s “real” woman, as a ‘problematic’ concept itself partaking in a objectifying myth. The notion of ‘cultural fictions’, which, according to Butler perpetuates ‘the tacit collective agreement to perform and sustain discrete and polar genders as cultural fictions (…) the construction compels our belief in its necessity and naturalness (…) produce(ing) a set of corporeal styles which, in a reified form, appear as the natural configuration of bodies into sexes existing in a binary relation to one another” (BUTLER 1990: 2500)
It may become evident that by De Beauvoir’s criticism applied to Suzanne- the objectification of “real” women, by the myth of feminine mystique”- may in itself risk overlooking what Butler would argue as the ‘fluidity of identities’ and the body as a ‘variable boundary’ with gender as a ‘corporeal enactment (…) a corporeal style, an “act”’ (BUTLER 1990: 2498-9).
Under this perspective, we may regard Cohen’s Suzanne as an “imitation” of the “original”-the original in this sense, as the “real” autobiographic Suzanne and what Cohen regards as the phenomena of her nature- which by imitation produces or enacts a performance of the "original" through ‘resignification and recontextualisation’ by which the ‘gender experience might be re framed’ (BUTLER 1990: 2498).
In other words, Suzanne may be re-framed, or recontextualised as an embodied performance of the feminine dimension within Cohen; the anima, as Cohen’s unconscious “content”, stylistically performed through the words and the art of the singer.
By Butler’s notion, we may consider Suzanne as a ‘production’, which ‘postures as an imitation’, and ‘invert(s) the inner/outer distinction’ (BUTLER 2001: 2498-9).
Through characteristics, gestures and enactments, which are on the one hand open, expressive and autonomous, as a feminine subject, are yet, ultimately concealed and derive from the ‘internal core’ of the male singer, and therefore remains discrete. This reaffirming the notion of the unconscious anima, as the innate feminine aspect contained within the Self, as Cohen.
Cohen toured the world as a performing singer from 1967 to 2013, with Suzanne, being one of his most popular songs, featuring in his set-list on each tour. As such, throughout this almost half-a-century of performing Suzanne, Cohen can be regarded as creating, or performing, what Butler determined, a ‘gender reality created through sustained social performances’ (BUTER 1990: 2501).
In other-words, we experience the feminine subject as reality in Suzanne through Cohen’s creation and performance: even though, materially, a creative fabrication- or fashioning of fantasy, in part derived from “real” experience- the song itself, as an autonomous, independent body, or entity contains in its very form and structure, it’s very “content”, an equality of masculine and feminine subjects (animus and anima) that move fluidly when performed through the singer, reflecting an imitation of an ideal, unified Self.
By this sense, Suzanne performs what Plato outlines- through Aristophanes- in Symposium as the ‘primeval wholeness’ of ‘male begetting upon the female (…) to make two into one (…) an utter oneness with the beloved’ (PLATO: 1969 554-545) symbolised by the figure of the Hermaphrodite.
‘In the beginning (…) the race was divided into three; that is to say, beside the two sexes, male and female, which we have at present, there was a third, which partook of the nature of both (…) a being which was half-male and half-female’ (PLATO 1969: 542)
This initial, or primary state, of being, according to Plato, arose from the celestial Sun and Moon on Earth (PLATO 1969: 543). So likewise, Suzanne performs an archetypal conjuncito of the Hermaphrodite; the symbol of self-containing the psychic, corporeal and celestial bodies of man and woman unified in one body.
Conclusion
In 1997, when Cohen described the “power of man and woman” as contained within “your own heart”, he, through Suzanne, whether consciously or unconsciously, had already awakened to this possibility- the process of conjunction. For Suanne performs this exact textual unity of psychic, corporeal and celestial bodies in union, comprising a poetic model of Self.
Through the gradual awakening of love and “trust” that enacts this union of one “perfect body”, interpreted analytically, Suzanne exhibits the Jungian model of Individuation as the integration of conscious and unconscious dimensions of the psyche, through dynamic, personified archetypal themes of the water and celestial bodies, whose mytho-poetic patterns we may trace through the Bible and the Alchemical corpus .
When considered in light of modern feminist and queer critique, Suzanne may also be seen to empower feminine subjectivity through the notion of a performative anima, arising from the “internal core”, or the analytical unconscious, of Cohen, as through Suzanne, we experience the equal powers and potentials of man and woman, as subjects: and I conclude this song performs an ideal symbol of Self; the engendered union of psychic, corporeal and cosmic opposites contained in one body; a perfect symbolic body of the mind.
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Video Links
Leonard Cohen and Andre De Bruyn at the Cirque Royal, Brussels 1976 (Allan
Showalter): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF8SAq1W0zE:
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