Our Wills and Fates : the Politics of Identity in Contemporary American Fiction and Film

Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2005 Our wills and fates : the politics of identity in contemporary American fiction and film Loren, Scott Abstract: This study analyzes contemporary North American fiction and film in an effort to determine that the legacy of the American Dream has manifest itself in an injunction to adhere to a socially splintered sense of identity. It considers the condition of how, in ’postmodern’ society, we are increasingly confronted with narratives depicting crises in subjectivity as they are determined within symbolic space. Drawing on Althusser, the introductory section on cyborgs addresses questions of identity production, establishing a fallacy of authenticity as one potential impetus for a characteristic panic related to identity. Moving on to conspiracy narratives, I address the significance of agency in relation to subjectivity, and utilize the concept of conspiracy as a framework to talk about the Lacanian orders of the symbolic and the imaginary as they are applicable to subjectivity. A section on aliens outlines reworkings of traditional western religious narratives in contemporary fiction. The notion of reinvention implicit here acts asa bridge to a discussion of the American Dream, arguing that its injunction to reinvent the self takes shape in adherence to imaginary phantasmatic space. I employ the notion of California as ’dream factory’ and quintessential location of the Dream, giving a reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Conclusively, I develop a theory of the shifting desire of the big Other and the essential function of a full traversal of phantasmatic space in defining narratives. Reading Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ against Niki Caro’s Whale Rider we are confronted with what a move toward subjectivity entails within our culturally defining narratives. Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-148357 Dissertation Accepted Version Originally published at: Loren, Scott. Our wills and fates : the politics of identity in contemporary American fiction and film. 2005, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts. Our Wills and Fates The Politics of Identity in Contemporary American Fiction and Film Dissertation presented to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Scott Loren of the United States of America Accepted on the recommendation of Professor Elisabeth Bronfen, Ph. D. Studentendruckerei der Universität Zürich 2005 Contents Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Part I Cyborgia What are the implications of the artificial for the human? 6 The (hu)Man Machine: Complications with Interpellation 8 The Inverse of Interpellation 19 Abject and/or other? 22 The Apex of Abjection 26 Sympathy and Identification: More Humane than Human 35 The Authenticity of Identity 42 Part II Conspiracy, an Introduction An Introduction to the Characteristics of Conspiracy 45 The Psychological Use of Conspiracy Narratives 47 Manipulation: We Are Programmed to Receive 54 Language, Code, Pattern 58 Part III Meaning in Conspiracy: Grand Theory Code for Conspiracy 62 Interpretation and the Proliferation of Meaning: Textual Playfulness 64 Imaginary Fathers or Symbolic mOthers? 72 Jouissance: Where Too Much of a 'Good Thing' Will Get You 80 Wo Es War 86 Contents Lack and Desire 89 Lacan's Vel and Determinism 93 Part IV The Wall of Language Language and the big Other: an Introduction 98 The Symbolic 103 Subject/Other: Who's Who in Conspiracy? 106 The Wall of Language and the Symbolic 116 The Split Subject: 125 Being Chosen 129 Symbolic or Imaginary? 131 Return of the Imaginary! 137 Mourning the Other 140 Conspiracy and the Imaginary 142 The Ego, Narcissism, and the Specular Image 147 'other' Places: Paranoia and Schizophrenia 153 Transformation in the Location of Conspiracy 155 Paranoia, Schizophrenia, and the Imaginary 159 'other' Places II: Missing Symbolic Mandates 164 Part V AlienNation Guises of the Alien: From Friendship and Fear to Faith 171 other Gods: the Savoir-Christ Motif 176 Other Worlds: Tropes for Heaven 180 Faith, Lost and Found 183 Contents Faith, Lost and Found II: Myth à discretion 187 Part VI The American Dream Mysticism, Freedom, and the American Dream: 'America' as Phantasmatic Space 195 Mulholland Drive: Noir as Symptom of the American Dream 204 Plot Synopsis of Mulholland Drive 207 'Desire', Identity, and the Status of Knowledge in Mulholland Drive 210 Denarration, Renarration: The Legacy of the American Dream 217 Generation X: Symbolic Suicide and Ciphers 224 Part VII Conclusions Jesus versus the Whale Rider 233 Toward Subjectivity 242 Bibliography 247 Acknowledgments From the inception of this project onward, several people have contributed to its realization. It is to these people I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks. Daniela Janser and Carl Hayes have been more than generous with their time and patience in their readings and re-reading as well as throughout our many discussions. They have provided valuable critical insight, have continuously been on the lookout for cultural artifacts that might contribute to this study, are in no small part to thank for its readability, and, moreover, have been constant and reliable friends, ready with a seemingly endless reserve of support. I am grateful to Elisabeth Bronfen for her encouragement and her critical influence. Her own work as well as her seminars and colloquia have incontrovertibly guided many of the directions I have taken, concerning both subject matter and the application of theory. I would like to thank Deborah Madsen for taking the time to co-examine this dissertation with Elisabeth and for her helpful comments. I would also like to thank Alan Robinson for his input on the sections I submitted to him for review. Finally, I should like to thank my family and my wife for their continuing unchecked and tireless support. A shortened preliminary version of "Part I. Cyborgia" appeared in "What are the implications of the virtual for the human? An analytical ethics of identity in pop culture narratives," European Journal of American Culture Volume 23 Number 3 (Intellect Ltd. 2004). A preliminary version of "Jesus versus the Whale Rider" appeared in "The Shifting Desire of the Socio-cultural Big Other: Rorty, Lacan, and the Whale Rider versus Jesus," Carbon 1.1 (Spring 2005): http://www.csufresno.edu/StudentOrgs/SESAConference/Loren1.htm. Introduction God has created nights well populated with dreams, crowded with mirror images, so that man may feel that he is nothing more than vain reflection. That's what frightens us. - Jorge Luis Borges, "Mirrors" As concerned with concepts of identity as contemporary western cultures are, it is no surprise how prolifically we produce fictional depictions of what identity means to us. Questions arise as to how we define it, how it is constructed or springs forth, how we defend it, and how our contemporary experiences constantly demand shifts in our perspective on identity. In the current volume, we will consider framings of identity through a variety of fictional narratives that are in some capacity representative of contemporary popular American culture.1 In reading contemporary film and literature, I make the assumption that the narratives we tell are of a reflexive nature: they tell us about ourselves, reflecting our desires and fears, which are always part of our desires, though in their telling, also fortify and/or otherwise manipulate our desires and lives - the telling of narratives as a symbolic, 'constitutive' act. To put it another way, this analysis makes the a priori assumption that we consist of the narratives we tell and, further, that when we reread them, they will always tell us something 'more' about our selves, our social climate, and about identity. The supposition accompanying my choice of narratives is that in considering a variety of popular narratives concerned with identity, patterns will emerge that will provide a reflection of where we are collectively most concerned with questions of identity; that is, of what troubles us most in contemporary notions of identity and subject formation.2 1 Although I will often refer to 'American' culture, the term is employed in specific reference to the United States and its cultural exportation. My reason for doing this is that the term is more representative of a vast set of ideas and ideals than it is of a specific topographical location and, in so being, already implies a fantasmatic space, a condition that will play a key role in my argument. 2 As this will primarily be a psychoanalytical reading of identity and subjectivity in popular culture, I should point out that the use of certain (mostly Lacanian) psychoanalytic terms, such as 'symbolic' (with which I always intend the Lacanian order of the symbolic), may not consistently mean one thing, but have a variety of related applications (symbolic: the way language functions, the nature of social interaction, the law, the location of subjectivity, and so forth) which should become discernable though their context, and decreasingly ambiguous (to the extent that this is desirable) through the repetition of use, though I will also try to clarify some of the more problematic terminology to be employed as it occurs. 1 Against the backdrop of Lacanian psychoanalysis, specifically the orders of the symbolic and the imaginary, we will address the central concerns of authenticity and agency as they are related to identity. The trajectory of my argument aims at the place where the contemporary subject should find itself; or, where the individual should properly find his and her way into subjectivity. The starting point and bulk of this trajectory lay with the individual as depicted with overwhelming regularity in crisis; a crisis which often manifests as a concern for authenticity, and which will be read with regard to the 'relationship' between the individual or subject and the Lacanian big Other.

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