| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 外國語文學系研究所 === 87 === The purpose of the present study is to combine Lacanian psychoanalysis with Joyce's studies, especially about the Lacanian notion of the lack, hoping that this special combination would shed new light on the postmodern discussion of gender/sexual politics and the ethics of the subject.
The theoretical outline of the present thesis follows the two dimensions of the lack. In the first chapter, the lack is discussed as the center of the Master Signifier, the Phallus, and the author argues that what the Phallus signifies is never the penis or any concrete objects but the very disappearance of those objects, and it is exactly this lack within the Phallus (which is viewed as the governing Signifier of the symbolic order) which provides us a deconstructionist strategy to subvert the dominant patriarchal symbolic order. This argument is further vindicated in James Joyce's treatment of the Phallus/penis equation in "Circe," in which Joyce suggests a strategy to dismantle the patriarchal symbolic order not by dislocating the penis from the Phallus but by equating the penis with the Phallus. The author argues here that the crumbling of the Bloomusalem (the patriarchal symbolic order in "Circe") results from the fact that the Phallus/penis equation is already problematic from its beginning, for what the Phallus signifies can never be the penis but the lack, and what Joyce and Lacan suggest here is an alternative way for us to deconstruct the patriarchal symbolic order besides calling for a politics of opposition.
In the second chapter the focus of discussion is shifted to another dimension of the lack, namely the Lacanian real. Viewing "Circe" as the site of the traumatic kernel in Ulysses, the author points out that "Circe" is actually tinged with traumatic repetitions, and these repetitions are manifested on Leopold Bloom's and Stephen Dedalus' masochism. As Freud shows, primary masochism is situated at the level of the "beyond the pleasure principle" which leads Freud to formulate his concept of the death instinct. Within Lacanian theoretical trajectory, primary masochism is located at the level of the real in which the death drives and jouissance reign. The author uses Lacan's notion of the second death to argue that what the death drives aim at is never the destruction of the organic body but the dissolution of the symbolic order, and it is this Real dimension of the lack we should pay attention to, for if this dimension of the lack is neglected, the result can be the annihilation of the whole symbolic order. In "Circe," Stephen's traumatic kernel returns as the Mother-ghost who tortures him incessantly and finally makes him lose his consciousness (the second death), and for Bloom, his masochistic repetition culminates in the scene where Bloom witnesses sexual intercourse between Molly and Boylan. As the two examples demonstrate, "Circe" is indeed the matrix of sorrow and traumata, rather than the dream world which fulfills Bloom's and Stephen's wishes.
In the final chapter, the author tries to solve the dilemma caused by the two dimensions of the lack as noted above. On the one hand, the lack can be applied as a forceful strategy to dismantle the patriarchal symbolic order; on the other hand, it also threatens to deteriorate the symbolic order as a structure. The author here uses Slavoj Zizek's and Mladen Dolar's retheorization of cogito to argue that cogito actually falls outside the subject of enunciated and functions as a monster forever haunting the illusory self-identity which the Ego believes to be his/her all. By comparing and contrasting Bloom's and Stephen's subject structures, the author proposes two types of subject structures (the Cartesian one and the humanist one, represented by Bloom and Stephen respectively) and argues that Bloom's subject structure of "the new womanly man" coincides with what Lacan terms the ethics of the subject in which the subject identifies with her/his own symptom and faces her/his lack not by covering it up with concrete objects and destroying them subsequently but via recognizing her/his own lack within. And it is with this very recognition that the Cartesian subject can enjoys her/his own symptom and organizes her/his jouissance around the lack. As the author suggests in his reading of "Circe," this unique subject structure is exactly that thin leaf which separates Bloom (and Joyce as well) from being triggered into a psychosis, and Bloom himself is thus viewed as the exemplification of what Lacan terms the saint-homme, a Cartesian subject who enjoys his own lack.
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