
Subject to Delusions
Narcissism, Modernism, Gender
Caroline Rupprecht(Author)
Northwestern University Press
Will be published approx. on 30. May 2006
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-0-8101-2235-2 (ISBN)
Description
A figure of reflexivity, narcissism describes a relation between self and other mediated through the mirror or reflection. As such, the concept might help us to consider how what we come to know as the other, or the object, is always the result of a process of image-making. It is in this suggestive sense that narcissism interests Caroline Rupprecht in ""Subject to Delusions"". Because ""the other,"" or the object, is constructed, Rupprecht finds in narcissism the possibility of rewriting notions of identity. She then pursues this possibility through modern literary texts in which narcissism acts as a structuring principle - works by the expressionist poet Henriette Hardenberg, the American avant-garde novelist Djuna Barnes, and the surrealist writer Unica Zurn - reading each within the critical framework of the evolution of the idea of narcissism in psychoanalytic theory. All written by women, these works also raise questions of gender and sexuality. Moreover, because each of these authors belonged to or was influenced by a particular literary movement, Rupprecht's analysis advances our understanding of the poetics of these movements and of the movement of modernism itself. Underlying all is a deep engagement with psychoanalytic theory. Drawing on Freud, his contemporaries and rivals Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and many other theorists, Rupprecht interrogates preconceived notions of identity and subjectivity through her readings of the ""transgressive potential"" of narcissism as it is enacted in the texts under study. Bringing the works of literary modernism and psychoanalysis together in an innovative and provocative way, her book succeeds in enhancing our sense of both, and in clarifying the complex role of narcissism in our cultural narrative.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Evanston
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 230 mm
Width: 154 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
313 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8101-2235-2 (9780810122352)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Caroline Rupprecht teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature at Queens College. She is the translator of Dark Spring by Unica Zurn (Exact Change, 2000).
Content
Part One: Paradigms of Narcissism; 1. Introduction: Narcissus' Paradox; 2. Reading Freud's ""On Narcissism""; Part Two: Avant-Garde Women; 3. A ""Body"" of Writing: The Voice of Henriette Hardenberg; 4. Between Birth and Death: The Image of the Other in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood; 5. The Violence of Merging: Unica Zurn's Writing (on) the Body; Epilogue; 6. Reconsidering ""Subjectivity"".