A Lacanian Interpretation Of The Heroine's Construction Of Subjectivity In I'll Take You There

Joyce Carol Oates(1938-)is one of the most renowned contemporary American female writers whose works involve such fields as fiction,poetry,prose,book review and literary criticism.She is highly acclaimed as the finest American writer since Faulkner.Oates' s works present a great number of culture shifts in various aspects,and can be regarded as a document of American society for nearly half a century.Meanwhile,as a prolific and versatile writer,Oates also pays attention to the living dilemmas of common people and social reality,and she combines the traditional realistic perspective with the writing techniques of modernism and post-modernism,making it possible for her works to contain a strong humanistic concern.Most of researches on Oates focus on her them and Wonderland,but it is undeniable that I'll Take You There is also unique among her numerous works.Compared with other works,the research perspectives both abroad and at home on I'll Take You There are relatively limited.At present,studies on trauma,micro power,sociology,psychology,initiation theme are the mainstream of research on this novel.This thesis analyzes the process of the heroine's construction of subjectivity under Lacan's theory of three orders and his other related theories,trying to find out how a powerless nobody constructs her subjectivity by virtue of her strong spiritual strength under the harsh social background.The thesis is divided into five parts.The first part offers a brief introduction to Oates' s life experiences and her major works,the current research status and trends on I'll Take You There both at home and abroad,and Lacan's theory of three orders as well as his other related theories as the theoretical support for further analysis.The following three chapters,the main body of the thesis,illustrate the process of the heroine's construction of subjectivity after experiencing the real order,the imaginary order and the symbolic order respectively.Chapter One interprets the original cognition of the heroine in the real order from the perspectives of the heroine's incomplete self-consciousness and the fragmentary images of her family members in her childhood.First of all,as a basic symbol,the name is necessary to a social subject while the real name of the heroine is never revealed throughout the novel;in addition,her special identity as a Jew was excluded by American society at that time,which makes the heroine confused by this question—who I am.Then the lack of language competence exacerbates her incomplete selfconsciousness.Meanwhile,her impressions on her mother as well as the memories of her father's hand and grandmother's German accent are fragmentary.The heroine fails not only to identify herself,but also to distinguish herself from the surrounding world,so there is no subjectivity in the real order.Chapter Two explicates the three alienated selves constructed by the heroine based on different others in the imaginary order and the mirror tragedies caused by these alienated selves.The first imaginary self is Mrs.Thayer's daughter,which originates from the desire for maternal love and the indulgence in the mirror image.The second one is the misrecognition of her Kappa self.With the acceptance of Kappa sisters,she identifies with their mirror images infatuatedly.Besides,the subject will identify with different others in the mirror stage many times in his or her life.The heroine in this novel falls in love with a Negro Vernor Matheius after experiencing self-alienation twice;accordingly,she constructs a new identity Negro's lover,as her ideal self.But no matter how perfect the image of the heroine in the mirror is,it is only an illusory existence essentially because the self and the subject are neither identical nor symmetrical.So any of these three selves in the imaginary order cannot be the real subject.Chapter Three enunciates the completion of the heroine's construction of her subjectivity in the symbolic order by analyzing the identification with name-of-thefather and the realization of her subjectivity.The symbolic order is the realm of the law,which is also crucial for the construction of subject.The heroine denies the illusory selves and turns to the identification with name-of-the-father.The “father” here is not a real one,but refers to the legal,institutional and cultural factors which can be called name-of-the-father.The heroine chooses love and hope,including the love for her father as well as her father's fiancée and hope for a better future.Then she has to submit to the existence of language in order to construct her true subjectivity,which is called the speaking subject by Lacan.Regarding writing as the carrier of her language and the tool of communicating with her surrounding world,the heroine returns to the East where her home is and finishes her construction of subjectivity finally.The last part is the conclusion.To delve into the text,this thesis adopts Lacan's theory of three orders and his other related theories to study the heroine's process of constructing subjectivity in the real order,the imaginary order and the symbolic order.This thesis holds that the heroine's spiritual power plays an indelible role in experiencing the chaotic real order without self,the illusory imaginary order full of others and the symbolic order that needs to identify with name-of-the-father.Besides,this thesis also hopes to enlighten modern people who face similar predicament.Only by casting off the obsession with the illusory image,distinguishing and resisting the suppression from the other and accepting the true self,can one finish the construction of his or her subjectivity.