Theory of Literature (The Open Yale Courses Series) by Fry Paul H

Theory of Literature (The Open Yale Courses Series) by Fry Paul H

Author:Fry, Paul H. [Fry, Paul H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2012-04-23T22:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 15

The Postmodern Psyche

Readings:

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “Introduction: Rhizome.” In A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Žižek, Slavoj. “Courtly Love.” In The Critical Tradition, pp. 1181–1197.

In this lecture, we’re still focused on individual consciousness, even though the authors you read are known for their political engagements. We shall still be considering the psychological genesis of the text or film as the site, or model, for the symbolic patterning of a text, undoubtedly in the case of Žižek, to some extent also in that of Deleuze. This is actually our farewell to the psychological emphasis, and it is so arranged—with the consequence of separating Žižek from Lacan—because today’s authors make sure we understand that there are political stakes in art and interpretation.

In his brilliant reading of The Crying Game, for example, Žižek argues that the final twist of plot isn’t just an individual’s abdication from responsibility for the Irish Republican cause. The soldier has not merely walked away from his role in revolutionary activity; he has discovered in his private life—in the erotic dimension of his consciousness—the need for revolution from within. He has necessarily disrupted his own thinking in ways equally radical to and closely parallel to the disruption of thinking that’s required to support the Republican movement in Ireland. Thus the ultimately tragic encounter with the Big Other is inseparable from the political implications of the protagonist’s behavior.

Perhaps one should be given pause, at least momentarily, by this claim. As your editor points out in his italicized preface, there are temptations entailed for the individual in this fascination with an obscure or even perhaps transcendent object of desire, but there are temptations also for the social psyche. It would be discouraging, arguably, though perhaps not unrealistic, if a political ideal were considered precisely what one cannot have. There is also in Žižek’s work a rather surprising friendliness toward religion. After all, faith, or the struggle for faith, certainly counts as an effort to enter into a meaningful relationship with what one desires yet cannot meet face to face. But what remains problematic is Žižek’s recognition that in both religion and politics there is excitement but also potential danger in becoming fascinated by a big idea. There are moments when he confesses to a measure of instability in his own political thinking, even though he is by and large on the left and heavily influenced by Marx. He sees clearly, however, that any form of progressive collectivity, including fascism, brings with it the charisma of a forbidden wish. Žižek is aware, in short, that the train of thought he borrows from Lacan brings with it a vertigo of dangerous possibilities in the political arena. (I’ll be coming back to Hitchcock’s Vertigo eventually.)

There is also an emphatic political dimension in Deleuze. (For the most part, I shall be saying “Deleuze” rather than “Deleuze and Guattari”—Félix Guattari was his frequent collaborator—just as I said “Wimsatt” rather than “Wimsatt and Beardsley.”) You are reading the first chapter



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