Two Masquerades and their Spec(tac)ular Effects in Mary Robinson’s Walsingham

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sigler
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Economic Experience ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Gender Trouble

Abstract This article examines Mary Robinson’s novel Walsingham (1797) from a Lacanian perspective. By offering readings of the novel’s two masquerade scenes from its narrator’s perspective within the imaginary order, and then tracing his confusion into the symbolic, this essay will seek to explain how (and why) Walsingham makes a spectacle of himself as he enters the very scene of social spectacle. We will find that Walsingham’s lingering in the imaginary—a product of his having made a series of specular identifications—establishes the conditions of his further humiliation even as it establishes the conditions for his eventual entry into the symbolic order. In attempting to forestall sexuation and even derive a certain enjoyment from its forestallment, Walsingham in effect reinforces the phallus and eventually bows to its demands. I argue that Walsingham dramatizes a transition between incommensurate modes of experience, that much of the novel’s plot stems from Walsingham’s entrapment in the imaginary, and that the novel is more invested in establishing characters within normative sexuated positions than enacting any sort of destabilizing gender trouble. Robinson’s novel reveals the force of the patriarchy (despite its unnaturalness) and suggests that sexual, gendered, and economic experience are interlaced through desire. The novel especially suggests that the subject is formed through the experience of the spectacle, and it deploys the entanglements of spectacle so that subjective experience can be seen to reorganize itself in the face of pressures political and social.

scholarly journals Het gezicht van de oorlog – het gezicht van de Ander: epifanie van het gelaat in Die son struikel van Dolf van Niekerk

Literator ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-82
Author(s):  
J. Koch
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Adaptation ◽  
The Face ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
War Experiences ◽  
The Subject ◽  
To Come ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Interpretative Framework

The face of war – the face of the Other: Epiphany of the visage in Die son struikel by Dolf van Niekerk Traumatic war experiences are crucial in shaping the identity of Diederik Versveld, the main character in Dolf van Niekerk’s Die son struikel (The sun stumbles). In this article I want to explore the war experience that the protagonist has to deal with, its literary adaptation, and the construction of the protagonist’s identity. I indicate that the three stages of Diederik’s development are closely connected to the concrete philosophic contents of the novel. The thought of Emmanuel Lévinas serves as my interpretative framework. Central to Diederik Versveld’s experience of war is the reduction of the subject to merely and impersonally existing, to il y a (“there is”). In my opion Lévinian concepts are useful in outlining the route to a better understanding of the protagonist’s experience of the war. In analysing the processing of the trauma of war Lévinas’ notion of the epiphany of the face of the Other can be helpful. The encounter with the Other in the faces of other people plays a crucial role in Diederik’s attempt to come to terms with his experiences of war and death. In Totalité et Infini (Lévinas, 1961:188) the French philosopher wrote: “The epiphany of the face unlocks humanity”.

scholarly journals BECOMING THE POSTHUMAN: THE DESTABILISATION OF THE SUBJECT IN THOMAS GLAVINIC’S NIGHT WORK

2021 ◽  
pp. 223
Author(s):  
Branka B. Ognjanović
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
The State ◽  
Night Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Organic Life ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Insight Into

The paper provides an insight into the destabilisation of the subject and the emergence of the posthuman condition in the novel Night Work (Die Arbeit der Nacht, 2006) by Austrian writer Thomas Glavinic. The first part briefly discusses previous analyses of the novel and the definitions of posthumanism as an umbrella term for a heterogeneous theory dedicated to the questions of what follows after the re-consideration of the humanist ideals and after decentring the human. The posthuman is interpreted as non-fixed, in the state of constant reconstruction as opposed to the humanist subject’s fixedness and integrity. The analysis examines the ‘uncanny’ setting of the novel and the power of survival in the face of death, which becomes the protagonist’s point of demise and divergence from consciousness and rationality. The urban environment devoid of all organic life replaces the Other applied traditionally to other humans. The Sleeper as the nightly doppelgänger and the filming of the environment further add to the transgression of the boundaries between material and immaterial, the living and the non-living, the real and the dreamlike/artificial, and ultimately determine the protagonist’s posthuman existence in the state of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’.

scholarly journals Theologische Grenzüberschreitungen Annäherungen an einen paradoxen Begriff

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-85
Author(s):  
Isabella Guanzini
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Apostle Paul ◽  
Pauline Epistles ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Law ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper examines the essential yet ambivalent role of the law, i.e. of limits and prohibitions, within the subjective experience of desire. In order to investigate the dialectics between limit and desire, it firstly focuses on the perspective of George Bataille and his analysis of eroticism. Moreover, the contribution takes into account the perspective of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who focus on the relationship of desire to capitalist society, in order to affirm a different revolutionary economy of desire, celebrating immediate libidinal transgressions against any limitations. On the contrary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan shows the absolute need of the law for the experience of desire and the process of subjectivation, since only through the Symbolic order the subject can join a sociolinguistic community. The final part of the contribution aims at enlightening possible correspondences among these perspectives, focusing on the Letters of the Apostle Paul and his profound understanding of the dialectics between law and desire. The Pauline Epistles offer a significant paradigm to understand the necessary but not sufficient role of the law in the experience of the Christian believer as well as of the subject as such.

scholarly journals EXISTENTIALISM IN “FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN”

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (43) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manisha Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Literary Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Anita Desai ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Human Predicament ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Almost All ◽  
In Fire

Existentialism, a quite contemporary dogma apparent in the philosophical and literary work of Sartre, was much in vogue in the European literature dating back from mid-twentieth century. Existentialism dealing greatly with the alienated trepidation, preposterousness, prejudice, escapism, over attraction for liberation, started becoming the subject matter of almost all the writers of the modern age. As an avant-garde novelist, Anita Desai in “Fire on the Mountain” exhibits a strong inclination towards the existentialist interpretation of the human predicament.” Desai’s characters of Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das are studies of women in the utter maze of isolation and ennui. The novel espouses the universal human struggle for survival, especially in the face of a never ending spiral of human failures and misfortunes.

scholarly journals KRITIK ARAFAT NUR TERHADAP TATANAN SIMBOLIK DAN SUBJEK DALAM NOVEL BURUNG TERBANG DI KELAM MALAM

Hasta Wiyata ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-171
Author(s):  
Fitri Tiara Merdika ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Order ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Analytical Methodology ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Real ◽  
Slavoj Žižek ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ideological Fantasy ◽  
Opening Up

In the creation of literary works, either consciously or unconsciously the author will always insert his ideology. The insertion of the ideology can be seen from the criticisms delivered by the author. Literary works are a medium for the author to convey a critique of the reality that occurs, be it religious, social, cultural, political and other criticisms. But that becomes interesting when the author tries to open up an unconscious reality, opening up the decay of a system of power that will eventually become cynicism and submit to an ideological order. In this study, Arafat Nur's novel Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam was chosen to prove this ideological fantasy. The problem contained in this study is (1) What is the symbolic order of acehnese people in the novel Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam? (2) What is Arafat Nur's criticism of the subject (Acehnese) in the novel Burung Terbang di Kelam Malam? To answer that question, the theory used was an authentic subject and ideological fantasy introduced by Slavoj Zizek and analyzed with descriptive analytical methodology. The results of this study prove that, firstly, the symbolic order (Islamic Sharia as the identity of Aceh) failed to form a radical subject. Although the subject has relinquished the symbolic order that shackled him all along, he remains returning to the new symbolic order. The subjects who are still in power of the Big Other will never escape from the order that subjected them. The subject will not be able to reach the Real, because they cannot discuss it so the subject desires to fulfill Che Vuoi's call?, unconsciously the subject commits ideological fantasies. Second, the subject of fantasizing the ideology of Islamism (Islamic sharia) that desires the achievement of spirituality instead leads it to capitalism. Not just the subject (the character in the novel). Arafat Nur as an author was also caught up in capitalism so his attempts to go radical ended in failure.

scholarly journals ANALISIS NILAI PENDIDIKAN KARAKTER PADA NOVEL “SEPATU DAHLAN“ KARYA KHRISNA PABICHARA

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 1375
Author(s):  
Ovi Pratama
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Hard Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Human Engineering ◽  
Note Taking ◽  
Engineering Data ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject

This study aims to describe the value of character education contained in the novel “Sepatu Dahlan” by Khrisna Pabichara. The subject of this research is the novel “Sepatu Dahlan” Karya Khrisna Pabichara published by the publisher Noura Books (Mizan Group) in 2012. This type of research is descriptive qualitative aimed to describe or describe the phenomena that exist, both natural phenomena or human engineering. Data collection techniques in this study used reading, note-taking, and library techniques. The results showed that the character values contained in the novel “Sepatu Dahlan” by Khrisna Pabichara based on the most widely appear character quotations there are 3 characters that are the most dominant, is the value of religious character education, discipline and hard work. The values of character education found in the novel “Sepatu Dahlan” by Khrisna Pabichara are in the form of behaviours performed by a character in the face of events and in various forms of interaction between a character and another character that is told.

scholarly journals Forest and Labyrinth. Toward an Ecology of the Subject

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-248
Keyword(s):  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The One ◽  
Classical Construction

The concept of the subject is articulated here as a correlation between two terms — movements and actions. Classical theories of action presupposed the subject as a unique way to correlate movements and actions and to translate the one into the other. The “soul,” i.e., a natural complex of cognitive and volitional abilities, was a reliable tool for that translation. However, the modern period faces the problem of “the failure of the soul,” which brings about the concept of the subject. Different ways of translating movements into actions do not always permit stable subjectification, which indicates that “transport” is a mediating term in the opposition of movements and actions. There is an intermediary region between the “physics” of movement and the “ethics” of action, and that region is the “logic” of transport which is to be understood as an open-ended collection of ways to correlate movements with actions. The problematic function of transport becomes clear when it is impossible to rely on the soul as a black box that is responsible for the stability in the translation of movements into actions. The solution to the problem of the failure of the soul appears particularly in Henry David Thoreau’s “forest,” which is constructed as a way to restore a classical ecology of the subject in the face of a proliferation of different modes of transport that threaten the uniformity of subjective experience. According to Roland Barthes’ seminar, the opposite of Thoreau’s “forest” would be the “labyrinth” as an anti-subject machine. The labyrinth is not merely a place of loss, but the production of loss that turns any movement into action or decision while at the same time cancelling any action and drawing the subject out of its own structure. Labyrinth and forest as alternatives to the classical construction of the subject delineate a general space for subjectification, which has problems that cannot be encompassed by theories of praxis.

scholarly journals Althusserian Reading of The Handmaid’s Tale

2015 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 83-91
Author(s):  
Maryam Moradi ◽  
Fatemeh AzizMohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Order ◽  
False Consciousness ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Louis Althusser ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
Null Result ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

Louis Althusser (1918-1990) builds on the work of Jacques Lacan to understand the way ideology functions in society. He thus moves away from the earlier Marxist understanding of ideology. In the earlier model, ideology was believed to create what was termed ‘false consciousness’, a false understanding of the way the world functioned. Althusser explains that for Marx “Ideology is [...] thought as an imaginary construction whose status is exactly like the theoretical status of the dream among writers before Freud. For those writers, the dream was the purely imaginary, i.e. null, result of the 'day's residues” (1971:108). Althusser, by contrast, approximates ideology to Lacan's understanding of reality, the world we construct around us after our entrance into the symbolic order. For Althusser, as for Lacan, it is impossible to access the real conditions of existence due to our reliance on language. This could be seen throughout the novel by Margaret Atwood who writes The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) based on the concept of ideology. This is about how the heroine of the story and other women in the society are manipulated by the ideology of ruling class through a communist society. In such a world nothing is real and everything is just an illusion that is made by ruling class. The subjects trapped or forced to believe such misconceptions and unreality through different techniques that are employed by the rulers. The dominant forces and ideology are so strong that the subject at the end gets a new identity since she is required unconsciously without her knowing. The other aspect shown by this novel is the failure of revolution and communism in this society and persistence of capitalism that it never disappears.

Diaghilev and British Writing

2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones
Keyword(s):  
Visual Arts ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Responses ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Ballets Russes ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Opening Up

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.

Beckett's Watt and Monastic Tradition

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Kristen Marangoni
Keyword(s):  
Boarding School ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Geometric Shapes ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
The Face ◽  
Choral Arrangements ◽  
Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts

The enigmatic setting of Beckett's novel Watt has been compared to places as diverse as an insane asylum, a boarding school, a womb, and a concentration camp. Watt's experience at Knott's house does seem suggestive of all of these, and yet it may more readily conform to the setting of a monastery. The novel is filled with chants, meditations, choral arrangements, hierarchical classifications, and even silence, all highly evocative of a monastic lifestyle. Some of Watt's dialogue (such as his requests for forgiveness or reflections on the nature of mankind) further echoes various Catholic liturgies. Watt finds little solace in these activities, however. He feels that they are largely rote and purposeless as they are focused on Knott, a figure who in many ways defies linguistic description and physical know-ability. Watt's meditations and rituals become, then, empty catechisms without answers, something that is reflected in the extreme difficulty that Watt has communicating. In the face of linguistic and liturgical instability, the Watt notebooks present a counter reading that can be found in the thousand plus doodles that line its pages. The drawings reinforce as well as subvert their textual counterpart, and they function in many ways as the images in medieval illuminated manuscripts. The doodles in Watt often take the form of decorative letters, elaborate marginal drawings, and depictions of a variety of people and animals, and many of its doodles offer uncanny resemblances in form or theme to those in illuminated manuscripts like The Book of Kells. Doodles of saints, monks, crosses, and scribes even give an occasional pictorial nod to the monastic setting in which illuminated manuscripts were usually produced (and remind us of the monastic conditions in which Beckett found himself writing much of Watt). Beckett's doodles not only channel this medium of illuminated manuscripts, they also modernize its application. Instead of neat geometric shapes extending down the page, his geometric doodle sequences are often abstracted, fragmented, and nonlinear. Beckett also occasionally modernized the content of illuminated manuscripts: instead of the traditional sacramental communion table filled with candles, bread and wine, Beckett doodles a science lab table where Bunsen burners replaces candles and wine glasses function as beakers. It is through these modernized images that Watt attempts to draw contemporary relevance from a classic art form and to restore (at least partial) meaning to rote traditions.

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