Jacques Lacan

gender and sexuality and those of Judith Butler, whose thorough deconstruction of structuralist iterations of cisheteronormative literary theory have provided the means for post-structuralists to address the effects of gender and sexuality essentialism on literature and its immense social impact. A central point in Butler’s book, Antigone’s Claim, is its challenge to the notion of socio-symbolically insupportable desire and aberrant gender non-conformity as a drive to certain death. Despite being centered on Antigone, a Greek play far removed from Wilde (except perhaps by overlap in commentary), it’s applications to Dorian Gray are immense – especially in light of the Lacanian reading of the novel by Ragland-Sullivan I shall be addressing. Jacques Lacan’s theories have been broadly and extensively applied as psychoanalytical near-gospel to Antigone, and despite the massive differences between both works, the substance and the manner in which Lacan’s positions of symbolic death are laid over analyses of both is exceptionally similar. As this paper delves into Ellie Ragland-Sullivan’s reading of Dorian Gray, we will see how this fatalism presents itself in structuralism – Wilde’s novel fulfills the structuralist demand for discipline against Symbolic transgressions. Put in Ragland-Sullivan’s own terms: “The novel’s climax is attributable, then, to Dorian’s final realization that it was impossible to sustain his own narcissistic ideal image in light of the harsh judgements…

metaphorically. These societal relations in the context of the poem were the pack of literary allusions, myths, legends and images which the poet incorporated in his poem. He found that every horror of the contemporary century which he brought about in the poem found a voice as well as bore a relation to many literary texts of past and present both. The poet associates a chain of signifiers in a metonymic displacement. In the poem loss of spirituality is associated with ‘a heap of broken…

Jacques Lacan’s theory of development explains how infants mature psychologically. The stages of his concept include the Imaginary, the Mirror, and the Symbolic. The first is where children begin to understand control. Babies learn to manipulate their environment as an extension of their own base needs and desires. There is no separation between the baby and the outside world. Following the discovery of control, infants undergo the Mirror stage, where they learn to recognize their own image…

mother. As soon as the father consciously gets recognized by a child, the Oedipus complex is created. By that stage, a child is possessive of the mother and wants the father out of the picture since he now represents a threat to the mother-child relationship. This leads into the anal and phallic stages. Anal stage revolves around finding pleasure within retaining and expulsing waste and phallic stage focuses the attention to genitals (Ott & Mack, 2014). Within these phases, the love of gazing…

must abstain from sinful acts; Kristeva writes that “abjection persists as exclusion or taboo (dietary or other) in monotheistic religions [...] it finally encounters with Christian sin, a dialectic elaboration, as it becomes integrated in the Christian Word as a threatening otherness––but always nameable, always totalizeable” (Kristeva 17). Kristeva stems most of her understanding of the abject from the close examination of the arguments of Sigmund Freud, one being that the unconscious…

1 Within the first twenty minutes of the film “American Beauty” I knew Freud would have had a hay day with this film. The main characters I will be referring to is Lester, Caroline, Jane, Angele, and Ricky. Luster is married to Caroline. Luster and Caroline’s daughter is Jane. Angele is Jane’s friend. Ricky will later become Jane’s romantic interest. This film is packed full of lustful relationships, blurred lines of morals, and unhealthy relationships. Lester develops lust for Angele. This…

demise. Judy gave all control of her gesture over to Scottie’s “Madeline”. Her ideas about what Scottie would want take over her personality. Scottie’s thoughts and wants cause her to lose herself enough to put on a dead woman’s necklace and expose herself to Scottie as previously referred to. Her lack of thought when putting on Madeline’s necklace symbolizes the complete reversal into Madeline and the lack of her own thought. Judy goes up the tower because Scottie’s wants still control her,…

Casey is a man who lived a very active life prior to a tragic accident in 1995. Although he was autistic, he felt like he lived an average life. According to Casey, he had a very widespread group of friends and was quite the social butterfly. Going through many different girls and going out a lot, he had an active dating life. He was an auto fanatic, with a certain interest in car audio. He was looking into a career in electronics. Emotionally, he was a blunt and outspoken person. Casey’s life…

The Review of the book Alone Together by Sherry Turkle In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle considers the issue of the relationships between people and technologies that has become critical nowadays. According to the author, the new “smart” technologies were perceived as the second intelligence that provided the opportunity to its users to estimate the trait of their minds and determine their “selves” through conversation with machines. However recently this attitude has significantly…

Lacan, From The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience 1.The mirror stage helps an individual form a sense of self. a. This concept originated from looking at human behavior within the comparative psychology field. b. When looking in the mirror, the child notices that image that mimics his or her image in the mirror. c. He or she then must determine the relationship between himself or herself and the image reflected back…