ABSTRACT
This study examines the extent the conflicts in Report on Bruno, A Man of the People, and
Beloved can be related to Lacan’s theory of desire. It
affirms that desire is fundamentally rootedin the conflicts between the
characters and the Other (mother, other subjects, the law and culture or
the symbolic order) because it is in the relation between the
characters and the Other that desire emerges. This relation with the
Other is what enables the characters to attain self-definition because
it is from the Other, from the outside, that the characters gain their
sense of self. Desire is crucial in Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory
especially as found in his Seminar VII. For this reason, this
inquiry focuses on this psychoanalytic model. However, Lacan’s theory is
a re-reading of Freud. He re-conceptualizes Freudianism using the
principles of linguistics and structuralism. His orders of the
Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are crucial in his theory of the
subject. The symbolic order (the domain of language, law and culture) is
where the subject is constituted and where desire emerges unlike the
imaginary order where the ego, which is marked by error –
identification, alienation and aggressiv ity, is found. Lacan’s notion
of the real does not refer to ordinary reality but denotes something
unknowable, ungraspable, an impossible encounter that ruptures the
subject’s symbolic world. This is where this study derives its notion of
the Real as the unknown. The unknown acts as a factor in the
transformation of the characters. It is also understood as fate. A
comparative criticism of these texts is carried out using desire and the
unknown as conceptual tools of analysis to show that desire and the
unknown contribute significantly in the conflicts between the characters
and the Other thus moving this inquiry away from the psychoanalytic
criticism that is commonly based on the Oedipus complex. Although these
texts belong to different cultural backgrounds, this study shows that
desire is universal and cuts across class, gender or race. From the
analysis of these texts, the study finds that the conflicts between the
characters and the Other are based on the characters refusal to cede
their desire. The effect of the desire is noticed to a higher degree in Beloved and Report on Bruno.
What is considered as the ultimate ethical ground, for Lacan, is the
subject’s refusal to cede her/his desire. The subject constitutes
her/himself as a desiring subject by this very refusal. An act that is
considered by the Other as transgressive. To institute her own law as
just Sethe transgresses the existing law based on moral grounds unlike
Bruno whose law can be said to contravene justice and to disregard moral
laws. Odili’s law is also based on a moral ground. In his view, Nanga
has treated him as a man has no right to treat another even if he is
master and the other slave. The characters have to divert their
destructive impulse to objects that are approved by the social dictates
or follow the path of self-destruction through their acts of
transgression. Thus what enables the characters to conform to the law
without giving up their desire is sublimation. A comparative study of
these texts is supported by this inquiry because these texts are
literary texts and belong to the same genre. The characters found in
these texts can be said to be archetypal characters because they can be
compared with other characters in literature.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
In literary studies, desire is understood mainly as sexual desire or
as a passion for something, for instance, a noble cause or something
done for personal gain or pleasure. Desire in psychoanalytic literary
criticism has been influenced by Lacan’s theory. Although Lacan’s theory
is basically a re-reading of Freud, he radically re-conceptualizes
Freudianism using principles of linguistics and structuralism. His
notion of the unconscious as structured like a language has equally had
great influence on psychoanalytic literary criticism. For him, also, the
human subject is a product of language because it is preceded by
language. Language is a fundamental element in the imaginary and the
symbolic orders as both involve relations with the Other. It is what
enables the subject to articulate her or his desire and to emerge as a
desiring subject. A child’s inability to renounce her or his forbidden
desire prevents the child from having a normal life. Thus desire, in
Lacan’s theory of the subject, can be said to be a factor in the making
and the unmaking of the subject. It has consequences and can also be
affected by the unknown. In literature, the unknown functions as fate
and destiny, as that which is beyond human comprehension, that which
cannot be grasped, something unspeakable and unknowable. Lacan’s concept
of the ‘real’ answers to all these. According to Donna Brody in
“Levinas and Lacan: Facing the Real,” the real, for Lacan, is ‘u
nknowable, ungraspable’ (57) and, as Alenka Zupančič points out in Ethics of the Real,
it is ‘impossible’ (235). This is what the death drive aims at. Lacan
postulates that the drive is both sexual and deadly and, whereas the
sexual drive aims at the object a – the cause of desire, the death drive aims at jouissance, which can be destructive and harmful to the subject because it tends towards the real.