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Precarious Subjectivity in the Works of John Banville: a Lacanian Reading

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Precarious Subjectivity in the Works of John Banville: a Lacanian Reading Precarious subjectivity in the works of John Banville : a lacanian reading Mehdi Ghassemi To cite this version: Mehdi Ghassemi. Precarious subjectivity in the works of John Banville : a lacanian reading. Lit- erature. Université Charles de Gaulle - Lille III; Katholieke universiteit te Leuven. Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid – Bibliotheek, 2015. English. NNT : 2015LIL30038. tel-01302914 HAL Id: tel-01302914 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01302914 Submitted on 23 May 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. UNIVERSITÉ LILLE III – CHARLES DE GAULLE, VILLENEUVE D’ASCQ, FRANCE AND KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT, LEUVEN, BELGIQUE École Doctorale Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société THÈSE DE DOCTORAT Spécialité : Langues et Littératures Anglaises et Anglo-saxonnes Présentée par Mehdi GHASSEMI Precarious Subjectivity in the Work of John Banville : A Lacanian Reading Thèse en vue de l'obtention du grade de docteur réalisée sous la direction de Thèse soutenue à l'Université de Lille 3, le 7 décembre 2015, devant le jury composé de : Madame Alexandra POULAIN, Professeur à l’université de Lille 3, directrice de thèse Madame Hedwig SCHWALL, Associate Professor à KU Leuven, Belgique, directrice de thèse (cotutelle) Monsieur Thomas DUTOIT, Professeur à l’université de Lille 3 Madame Pascale TOLLANCE, Professeur à l’université Lumière de Lyon 2 M. Stijn VANHEULE, Professeur à l’université de Gand, Belgique Madame Elke D’HOKER, Associate Professor à KU Leuven, Belgique 2 Acknowledgements My sincere gratitude goes to my two supervisors and teachers Prof. Alexandra Poulain and Prof. Hedwig Schwall whose unlimited support and immense knowledge accompanied me throughout my time as a doctoral student. Prof. Poulain’s guidance, among many other things, taught me the value of close reading. In a word, she taught me how to be a student of literature. Prof. Schwall’s generous insights made it possible for me to use Lacanian theory to read Banville, insights without which this thesis would have never seen the light of day. Besides my supervisors, I would like to thank Prof. Elke D’hoker for her comments during my visits to Leuven and Prof. Stijn Vanheule for his generosity in explaining to me the more obscure aspects of Lacan’s thought. I would also like to thank the University of Lille III and The Catholic University of Leuven for accepting me as a doctoral student and giving me the opportunity to conduct my research. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my friends and family for supporting me throughout writing this thesis. Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 1. John Banville’s subject of narration ............................................................................................. 5 2. The Lacanian subject .................................................................................................................. 13 3. Aim and scope of the thesis ........................................................................................................ 23 I. Psychotic Certainty, Hysteric Play .............................................................. 27 Chapter One: Psychotic Perceptions in Mefisto ............................................................................ 28 1. Mefisto or the struggle for being ................................................................................................ 30 2. The narrator’s exposure to the Real ............................................................................................ 35 3. The neurotic subject of narration in Birchwood ......................................................................... 42 4. From epistemological quest to paranoid perceptions, from signifiers to signs .......................... 53 5. Postmodern subject of narration? ............................................................................................... 57 Chapter Two: Hysteric Structures in The Book of Evidence ........................................................ 61 1. The hysteric subject .................................................................................................................... 63 2. Discomfort in Symbolic identity ................................................................................................ 66 3. Impossible sexuality ................................................................................................................... 71 4. Hysteric speech ........................................................................................................................... 78 5. Preponderance of the Imaginary: play ........................................................................................ 83 6. The reconstruction of the Symbolic: the hammer ...................................................................... 88 II. Uncertainty, Undecidability ........................................................................ 98 Chapter Three: The (Post)modern Gothic in Eclipse ................................................................... 99 1. From the uncanny to the Gothic ................................................................................................. 99 2. Haunting, stillness, silence ....................................................................................................... 102 3. Spectrality, virtuality, duality ................................................................................................... 107 4. Gothic sublimity, extimity as Gothic ........................................................................................ 116 5. Extimate encounters ................................................................................................................. 119 6. Spectrality and duality revisited: doppelgängers ...................................................................... 124 Chapter Four: Excess, Extension, and the Partial Object (Eclipse, Shroud, Ancient Light) ... 133 1. Uncanny reflections .................................................................................................................. 134 2. The uncanny eye: the gaze as object a ..................................................................................... 147 4 3. Partial bodies ............................................................................................................................ 153 4. The uncanny voice .................................................................................................................... 160 III. Frames, Surfaces, and Aesthetic Selves .................................................. 168 Chapter Five: Framing the Elusive Self in Shroud ...................................................................... 169 1. Autobiography, defacement, effacement .................................................................................. 170 2. Surrogacy, theatricality, performativity ................................................................................... 177 3. Surrogacy, textuality, materiality ............................................................................................. 185 4. From de Man to Nietzsche: the self at the edge ....................................................................... 190 Chapter Six: Framing the Other, the Other as a Frame for the Self (Eclipse, Shroud, Ancient Light) ................................................................................................................................................ 204 1. Framing “the woman” .............................................................................................................. 205 2. From the woman to the medium: framing vision ..................................................................... 213 3. From the medium back to the woman: materiality and de Man revisited ................................ 224 4. From the woman to the self: Nietzsche revisited ..................................................................... 232 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 238 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................... 243 1. Primary sources ........................................................................................................................ 243 2. Secondary sources .................................................................................................................... 244 3. Other sources ............................................................................................................................ 247 Index ................................................................................................................................................ 256 Introduction 1. John Banville’s subject of narration A defining
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