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142 pages

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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.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Queering Omniscience

1. The Death Drive and the Life Drive Revisited
I. “To Push” the Drives: Sigmund Freud’s Productive Speculations
II. Economic Binding as the Death Drive: The Critique of Totalitarianism
III. Dynamic Binding as the Life Drive: Reparative Formations

2. “A Tempest in a Test Tube”: The Paranoid Imperative of Scientia Sexualis and Psychoanalysis in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
I. Introduction
II. The Weaves of Scientia Sexualis
III. Parody and Psychoanalysis as a Practice of Reading
IV. The Loss of Lolita, the Unbinding of Enlightenment
V. Conclusion

3. “An Ethics of Failure”: Visual Literalization as a Queer Vanishing Point in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves
I. Introduction
II. What is Queer about Failure?
III. Visual Literalization
IV. Failure and the Reparative
V. Conclusion

4. “Kill Your Children”: Queer Temporalities and Failed Identification in Timothy Findley’s The Wars
I. Introduction
II. The Life Drive in War
III. Narrative Remediation
IV. Queer Temporalities and Failed Identification
V. Conclusion

5. Reading the Queer Reparative in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
I. Introduction
II. Mourning Totality
III. Childhood: Objects and Phantasy
IV. Adolescence: Phantasy Theories
V. Childhood Redux: Art and the Thinking Subject
VI. Conclusion

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

Literary theory

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	30 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438463100
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1648€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Oscillations of Literary Theory
SUNY SERIES , T RANSFORMING S UBJECTS : P SYCHOANALYSIS , C ULTURE , AND S TUDIES IN E DUCATION

Deborah P. Britzman, editor
Oscillations of Literary Theory
The Paranoid Imperative and Queer Reparative
A. C. Facundo
Cover art: Vanishing Point by A. C. Facundo, oil on canvas, 16” × 20”, 2015
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact
State University of New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Facundo, A. C., 1985– author.
Title: Oscillations of literary theory : the paranoid imperative and queer reparative / A. C. Facundo.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2016. | Series: SUNY series, transforming subjects: psychoanalysis, culture, and studies in education | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007707 (print) | LCCN 2016029030 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463094 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463087 (pbk. : alk paper) | ISBN 9781438463100 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Literature, Modern—Psychological aspects. | Psychoanalysis and literature. | Literature, Modern—20th century—History and criticism. | Paranoia in literature. | Homosexuality in literature.
Classification: LCC PN56.P92 F35 2016 (print) | LCC PN56.P92 (ebook) | DDC 809/.04—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007707
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Margo
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Queering Omniscience
C HAPTER O NE The Death Drive and the Life Drive Revisited
I. “To Push” the Drives: Sigmund Freud’s Productive Speculations
II. Economic Binding as the Death Drive: The Critique of Totalitarianism
III. Dynamic Binding as the Life Drive: Reparative Formations
C HAPTER T WO “A Tempest in a Test Tube”: The Paranoid Imperative of Scientia Sexualis and Psychoanalysis in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
I. Introduction
II. The Weaves of Scientia Sexualis
III. Parody and Psychoanalysis as a Practice of Reading
IV. The Loss of Lolita, the Unbinding of Enlightenment
V. Conclusion
C HAPTER T HREE “An Ethics of Failure”: Visual Literalization as a Queer Vanishing Point in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves
I. Introduction
II. What is Queer about Failure?
III. Visual Literalization
IV. Failure and the Reparative
V. Conclusion
C HAPTER F OUR “Kill Your Children”: Queer Temporalities and Failed Identification in Timothy Findley’s The Wars
I. Introduction
II. The Life Drive in War
III. Narrative Remediation
IV. Queer Temporalities and Failed Identification
V. Conclusion
C HAPTER F IVE Reading the Queer Reparative in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go
I. Introduction
II. Mourning Totality
III. Childhood: Objects and Phantasy
IV. Adolescence: Phantasy Theories
V. Childhood Redux: Art and the Thinking Subject
VI. Conclusion
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
A constellation of individual and institutional support has made it possible for me to complete this project. I thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for investing in my research throughout the several stages of its development, of which this book is a product. Because institutional intelligibility is so vital to a project of this magnitude, I am grateful to the English Departments at York University and University at Buffalo (SUNY), as well as UB’s Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture, for providing me with library and technology resources, as well as vibrant academic communities that allowed my ideas to flourish. I thank members of ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English) for providing a collegial venue to present my ideas annually and receive feedback as this project took shape.
I feel privileged to work with several scholars whose conceptual and practical insights were integral both to the development of my thinking and to the publication of my writing. I thank Tim Dean in his capacity as postdoctoral mentor for his incisive perception, attentive guidance, and detailed feedback, as well as for giving me the opportunity to work with him. I am indebted to Deborah Britzman, who has helped me create new paths of inquiry and reinvigorated my capacity to ask new questions. As the series editor, Deborah has been the driving force behind the publication of this book, and I thank her sincerely for believing in my work. I thank my editor, Beth Bouloukos, for showing interest in my writing, for taking the time and effort to see this project through, and for working with me so generously. I give thanks to Laurie Searl, Anne Valentine, and the marketing and production department at SUNY Press for the collaborative support. I also thank the anonymous reviewers who communicated to me through SUNY Press to provide feedback that was necessary to the book’s completion. As a doctoral supervisor and dear friend, Terry Goldie has been a consistent source of clear thinking and grounded perspective in his editorial and conceptual feedback. The rigor with which Thomas Loebel treated my writing was indispensable to my thinking, and I am grateful to him. I suspect that I have not let on to either Terry or Thomas how much I’ve appreciated (and relied on) their constant support. I am grateful for my conversations with Adam Phillips, who inspired the final stages of the manuscript and the rewriting of the Introduction.
I thank my colleagues and peer readers who devoted a significant amount of time and energy providing feedback on early drafts of the manuscript. Bernice Neal has read multiple versions since its inception and saw its evolution with staggering enthusiasm. Jared Morrow and Thom Bryce-McQuinn enriched the dialogical aspects of the book with their generous readings. I offer my thanks to Steven Bruhm, who provided thorough and extensive conceptual and editorial feedback for the purposes of publication.
Many members of the larger academic community enlivened my thinking, ultimately to the benefit of this book. These thinkers include Hannele Kivinen, Robin Morden, Kristen Ames, Duncan Clegg, Kate Siklosi, Richard Welch, Dani Spinosa, Navneet Alang, Denise Handlarski, Jonathan Vandor, Aparna Tarc, Lisa Farley, Daena Crosby, Natalie Samson, Sorouja Moll, Karen MacFarlane, Craig Patterson, Smaro Kamboureli, Clive Thomson, and Lynn Weinlos. I also thank John Englar and the staff at Jet Fuel Coffee Shop, for providing a neighborhood office space, for caffeinating this project, and for the familial consistency that added structure to my work day.
I thank my parents, Lucille and Ramon Facundo, whose abundant and unconditional support allowed me to thrive. Thanks to my brother, Mark Facundo, whose sense of humor provided a kind of support that no one else could replicate. I thank the rest of my large family for teaching me how familial consistency enables me to work and think.
Margo Gouley was a most generous and exacting reader. I trust Margo for incisive observations and reliable suggestions, and I owe the clarity of my thought to her. As my companion in difficult thinking, Margo has shared with me a joy that I had not previously known. With love, I thank her.
Introduction
Queering Omniscience
Myths of decline are myths of progress inverted.
—Adam Phillips, Missing Out , 113
An attachment to catastrophe offers an unexpected degree of comfort. At best, catastrophe provides an alibi for letting go of desire and of the wish. At worst, catastrophe allows an escape from the difficult vulnerability that can accompany the pleasure of surprise and the surprises of pleasure. Such attachment, in other words, offers a life structured by anticipation and certainty. Catastrophe allows an insistence on no future; but the certainty of that insistence mirrors the certainty in any mythical future that it would deny.
A variety of postwar fiction (1945 onward), however, invites readers to entertain inescapable catastrophes. This book illustrates how such catastrophes provoke a desire for omniscience, either in the characters or the reader. Indeed, one way to cope with implacable catastrophe is to gain omniscience over it: to read it thoroughly and repeatedly in order to gain, at the very least, interpretive mastery. While a relationship to omniscience varies among subjects, omniscience is consistently an elusive object of desire; in critical practice, however, omniscience is vital in its promise to “see” what others cannot. As a perennial question for literary studies, omniscience functions in narrative to motivate characters and propel the action. The desire for omniscience—that is, for certainty—can serve as a point of, not arrival, but entry into thinking. Omniscience changes from an aim to part of a technique to which one submits only provisionally. Because of the aesthetic distance omniscience affords, it is irreconcilable with intimacy, yet both omniscience and intimacy are necessary to the process of creative thinking. In the literature that I address here, I exp