The Dead Play - Chapter 3 - contextualizing death drive, desire and the uncanny

Aug 22, 2026

Chapter 3 contextualizes psychoanalytic concepts of the death drive, desire, and the uncanny (unheimlich) to frame imaginative approaches to play and performance making. It explains how performance often operates like a game: creators write rules and conditions that shape how play unfolds, shifting between humorous, mischievous, surreal, and dark tonalities. The chapter then traces key developments, emphasizing Freud’s engagement with trauma and the death drive’s link to repetition, while acknowledging later critical perspectives.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages23

Reading Time58 min

AccessFree to download

Chapter 3. The Dead Play

Death Drive

Hind, Claire (2019) The Dead Play. In: Hind, Claire and Winters, Gary, (eds.) Embodying the dead: writing, playing, performing. McMillan International Downloaded from: [https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/5311/](https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/5311/) The version presented here may differ from the published version or version of record. If you intend to cite from the work you are advised to consult the publisher's version: [https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Embodying-the-Dead/?K=9781137602916](https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Embodying-the-Dead/?K=9781137602916) [Research at York St John](Research at York St John) (RaY) is an institutional repository. It supports the principles of open access by making the research outputs of the University available in digital form. Copyright of the items stored in RaY reside with the authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may access full text items free of charge, and may download a copy for private study or non-commercial research. For further reuse terms, see licence terms governing individual outputs. Institutional Repositories Policy Statement RaY Research at the University of York St John For more information please contact RaY at [ray@yorksj.ac. uk](ray@yorksj.ac. uk) Chapter 3. The Dead Play This chapter contextualizes three concepts, developed within the field of psychoanalysis: the death drive, desire and the uncanny (unheimlich) . Each of these concepts will be discussed to offer imaginative ways to think about them in the context of play and performance making. Performance activity often works as if it is a game, and, significantly, our ‘Gary and Claire’ creative ideas situate themselves as a world within conceptual psyche. A playful approach to making work means we write the rules and conditions of a project , which in turn determines how we play it or play at it. Making performance (for us) comes about from a playful attitude towards an idea, and this attitude shifts in tone according to the material that we respond to, but often that playfulness slips between the humorous, the mischievous, the surreal and the dark. What is about to be explored is not so much a defence of psychoanalytic ideas but rather a way to think through the terms metaphorically, analogously, imaginatively and to situate such psychoanalytic terms in creatively useful transferable ways, as both a conceptual and structural dramaturgy that we name the Death Drift / Drift Drive. While we do not make performance work in this order – read theory to make artistic work – we do, while we make performance, reflect upon the worlds (in film or performance) that situate themselves to the themes of death, desire and the uncanny. Therefore, we think critically and playfully about the worlds we are drawn to. While we recognize that the original positions of the three terms are situated in psychoanalysis, we frame their developed thinking by drawing upon the critical thought of Nicholas Royle, Adam Phillips, Julia Kristeva and others. We begin with an overview of the three terms, starting with the death drive. But we would like to acknowledge that Freud’s thinking on the death drive was inspired by a female psychoanalyst. Death Drive In November 1911 , one of the first female psychoanalysts publishes a paper entitled‘Destruction as the cause of coming into being’. Sabina Spielrein’s paper, as Covington (2015) points out, introduces the concept of the death instinct, further incorporated by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle in (Freud, 1920) . Here Freud marks Spielrein’s idea in a footnote articulating it as a destructive component of the sexual instinct. Freud proposed the idea that ‘the aim of life is death’ (Strachey, 2001 , p.38) . Later, while other psychoanalysts were not so confident of Freud’s concept of the death drive, Jacques Lacan, while supporting Freud’s ideas , asserted that ‘death sustains existence’ (Lacan , 1970 , p.300) . Freud’s thinking on the death

FAQs

What three psychoanalytic concepts does Chapter 3 focus on?

The chapter contextualizes the death drive, desire, and the uncanny (unheimlich) in relation to play and performance making.

How does the chapter describe the relationship between play and performance practice?

Performance is likened to a game where creators set rules and project conditions; this shapes how the work is played at, often shifting tone across humorous, mischievous, surreal, and dark registers.

How is Freud’s death drive developed and connected to repetition?

Freud develops the death drive through his experience with World War I soldiers and trauma dreams, and in Beyond the Pleasure Principle he links it to the drive’s structure and its impossibility of absolute satisfaction, establishing repetition as part of the human subject.

Aug 22, 2026

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