Mourning loss : the place of the object in narrative fantasy / Kerry L. Moore.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Moore, Kerry L.

Contributor:

Hart, Lynda, 1953- advisor.

Mahaffey, Vicki, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--English.

English--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

viii, 200 pages ; 29 cm

Production:

2000.

Summary:

My dissertation concerns the way in which subjectivity is formulated geographically in the broad sense of "finding place," and in the shaping of subjectivity through memorial objects. I argue that there is not a clear dividing line between the loved object and specific objects that are infused with and/or compose the loved one. Thus, my focus on the "places" in which subjectivity is formulated is intimately bound up with these objects that not only are imbued with memories of places but often become the material place where subjectivity is stored or resides.

In Chapter One I bring texts such as: a dream fragment, a Samuel Delany essay, and the film Silence of the Lambs focusing on shoes to address specifically the ways in which particular objects figure the problem of attachment and detachment. Chapter Two, on Samuel Beckett's Molloy, examines the relationship between subjects and objects, arguing that the question "Who am I" is often a concealed form of resistance to fragmentation and to dependence on the objects of "Where am I," that objects that Molloy/Moran describe figure the formation and dissolution of identity. In Chapter Three I discuss Freud's case study of Dora, Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9, and Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse and Moments of Being, in reference to the circulation of jewels in each of the texts. The chapter concerns the problem of the (m)Other's desire insofar as it remains enigmatic to the daughter who becomes its heir Chapter Four returns to the question of the enigma, focusing on Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" and Sam Shepard's Buried Child. The Chapter challenges the notion of loss as mere disappearance, suggesting instead that loss and the objects of memory provide alternative narratives that intensify the awareness of absence rather than merely covering it over.

What unites my dissertation is a persistent focus on the way in which the material object and the object a are intertwined. My dissertation queries the possibility for movement within this economy, movement beyond psychosis as an outside, to the possibilities of alternate speaking positions.

Notes:

Supervisors: Lynda Hart; VIcki Mahaffey.

Thesis (Ph.D. in English) -- University of Pennsylvania, 2000.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 99-76458.

OCLC:

244972227