| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 外國語文學系 === 96 === This thesis aims to study Marie Cardinal’s The Words to Say It from the perspective of prosthesis and goes further to interpret how the narrator uses the prosthetic characteristics of the Thing to construct her bodily self of integrity in the symbolic order. Chapter one starts with Julia Kristeva’s statement of the loss of signifier to emphasize the psychological deficiency caused by the rupture from mother and the necessary complement of prosthesis. The female narrator’s changing attitude toward the Thing is the key point for her to recognize her deficient situation and the need for prosthesis. Chapter two juxtaposes the narrator’s description of the eye and the superego to show the compulsive and boundary-blurring power of the Thing. When the narrator is used to examining herself with the external rules, the internalization of the eye has already occurred. Chapter three adopts David Wills’ notion of complicity between body and word to discuss how the narrator uses words, i.e. the symbolic prosthesis, to retell the history of her body. She also constructs a textual womb from which she is reborn as a new self. In conclusion, when she finally reenters the symbolic order, the unnamable Thing within her body also challenges the authority of the symbolic.
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