Abstract:
This volume is dedicated to readings of the borderline informed by Psychoanalysis. My essay is
the exception. In it, I analyze Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) with an eye to the dangers of
a one-way conversation. Interestingly, Persona dramatizes an inversion of a typical
psychoanalytic session, for here the patient says nothing and her nurse confesses. The
aftermath of this inversion and its consequences are explored with the help of the Italian
feminist, Adrianna Cavarero, the Danish Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, and the Serbian
performance artist, Marina Abramović. Enjoining a debate within psychoanalysis from the
border regions of existential and feminist philosophy, I argue that the silence of an interlocutor
creates a mask screening the speaker from the mutual recognition needed for a healthy sense
of identity. This essay argues the case for conversation.