Hysteria has had a recent resurgence in cultural production. Often, this has stayed in Dr. Charcot’s Salpêtrière hospital while, medically, hysteria has migrated to the more manageable dissociation, conversion or post-traumatic stress disorders. My performative paper on hysteria asks the question, after Jacques Lacan’s Che Vuoi?, what does it want from me?

Hysteria is not a condition; it is a state of being, a sign of an impossible demand. It is a way of knowing, as Georges Didi-Huberman and Lacan argued. By exploring Augustine, Dora, Emmy von N and more modern hysterics such as Sam Taylor Wood’s woman, Winnie Seebohm or real life patients with a hysterical gait, I hope to circle that which is elusive in hysteria, but which also makes it inherently human, ambivalent and conflicted. As the outcome of this struggle is visual, I will draw on artistic examples—from my own production, and that of others.