Introduction -- The Death Drive and the Life Drive Revisited -- A Tempest in a Test Tube: The Paranoid Imperative of Scientia Sexualis and Psychoanalysis in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita -- An Ethics of Failure: Visual Literalization as a Queer Vanishing Point in Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves -- Your Children: Queer Temporalities and Failed Identification in Timothy Findley's The Wars -- Reading the Queer Reparative in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go -- Conclusion.
Summary:
Oscillations of Literary Theory" offers a new psychoanalytic approach to reading literature queerly, one that implicates queer theory without depending on explicit representations of sex or queer identities. By focusing on desire and identifications, A. C. Facundo argues that readers can enjoy the text through a variety of rhythms between two (eroticized) positions: the paranoid imperative and queer reparative. Facundo examines the metaphor of rupture as central to the logic of critique, particularly the project to undo conventional formations of identity and power. To show how readers can rebuild their relational worlds after the rupture, Facundo looks to the themes of the desire for omniscience, the queer pleasure of the text, loss and letting go, and the vanishing points that structure thinking. Analyses of Nabokov?s Lolita, Danielewski?s House of Leaves, Findley?s The Wars, and Ishiguro?s Never Let Me Go are included, which model this new approach to reading.
Series:
Suny series, transforming subjects: psychoanalysis, culture, and studies in education
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.