| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中山大學 === 外國語文學系 === 83 === In this thesis, I have employed Julia Kristeva's psychoanalysis
as my reading strategy. Kristeva considers that one has to
leave the mother in order to form its own subjectivity, and
acquire language, so as to survive in society. Otherwise, the
child will keep mourning for the maternal body, and trap itself
in asymbolia. Besides she argues that a child has to imagine
"a loving father," namely, the maternal desire for the Phallus,
so as to leave its mother. In Chapter I, I have discussed the
absence of a loving father in the protagonists' personal
history. The mother Sethe fails to desire the Phallus. Rather
than encouraging her child to step into society, she calls them
back into her. In Chapter II, I argued that Sethe, the same
with her daughters, feels a painful separation from her mother.
All of them suffer from mourning for the maternal body. To
Kristeva, the one in mourning speaks repetitive, illogical, but
poetic delirium, which seems psychotic to others. The analyst
then has to decode the delirium to explore its infrasignifying
meaning. Therefore, in Chapter III, I try to decode the poetic
delirium in the novel, and further analyze the psychotic
narcissistic identification between mother and child. My
analysis is in fact to duplicate Toni Morrison's own therapy in
the novel. Through writing, she suggests that the black people,
as represented by the characters, should stop mourning for the
absent mother(land). In doing so, they can use language to
speak the unspoken stories, which should be remembered and
passed on.
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