Neu im Angebot

Sorian, Adina
Reading the Real

Toward a Reevaluation of Lacanian Theory in the Study of Twenty-First Century Literature and Film.

The study examines two twenty-first century novels and films from a Lacanian perspective to argue that the interest these works have taken in what Lacan termed the 'Real' suggests a new path for the novel and film after the era of poststructuralist postmodernism. For Lacan, the Real refers explicitly not to reality but to something that resists all symbolization and that due to its inaccessibility possesses a traumatic character. Moments of trauma as 'intrusions of the Real', but also modes of potentiality, of excessive enjoyment, which Lacan called 'jouissance', and of posthumousness, paradoxically, allow us to spot this Real in our everyday reality and in a given fictional work, as contemporary Lacanian scholars such as Slavoj Žižek and Todd McGowan have detailed. Based on such new approaches to Lacan, the study argues that the focus the works under examination put on various representations of the Real indicates a shift of perspective in contemporary fiction and film away from the selfreflexive text-centeredness of postmodern art and toward a new interest in ethical questions and the (material) conditions of reality in the twenty-first century. In this light, the study attests to Lacanian theory an ongoing relevance for contemporary literary and film criticism. The novels and films examined in this study are David Mitchell's "number9dream", Tom McCarthy's "Remainder", Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void". 213 Seiten mit 22 Abb., broschiert (text & theorie; Vol. 19/Königshausen & Neumann 2017)