i-xxii Front matter.qxd - Brandeis Institutional Repository

10Shifting Constellations:The Family (Dis)MemberedThe individual portraits in Neel’s gallery are metaphorically the basic buildingblocks of reality, atoms whose energy radiates out from the nucleus to theperimeter of their universe, there to combine with others to form elements, orunits. In bourgeois culture the fundamental unit is the family, the initial convergenceof energies from which identity is constructed. For Americans thefamily has been and continues to be deƒned in terms of the “nuclear” family:the constellation of mother-father-son-daughter that generates “related” identities,such as brother-sister. The sociologists Arlene and Jerome Skolnick havetermed this “the nuclear family ideology,” promulgated through the snapshotand popular illustration, which includes the “half-myth” that the nuclear familyis universal. “In our own society, the nuclear model deƒnes what is normaland natural both for research and ‘therapy’ . . .” 1 The myth that the nuclearfamily is timeless, natural, and stable, while it has endured, has been counteredby a long literary tradition, as well as con„ict theories of the family developedearly in our century by Freud and the sociologist George Simmel, andmore recently by feminist psychologists like Nancy Chodorow. 2Neel followed the well-worn path of modern art and literature in recognizingthe instability of this supposedly supportive unit. From 1927 on, Neel’swork could be characterized as an extended meditation on the family, in162