拉康式解讀莫里森的三部小說

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In Jacques Lacan's concept, the human being goes through three different psychological stages: Androgyny, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. The first stage of androgyny is demonstrated in the primordial cell in which there coex- ist two different sexes. After the first lack at the very moment of birth, the infant, at the age of six to eighteen months, comes to develop its blurring con- cept of self from the mirror image. Because,of the uneven maturation of its body parts, the infant experiences itself in "bits-and-pieces" and regards itself as a part of the powerful phallic mother in its primordial fantasy. After the acquisition of language, the child enters the Symbolic, where he/she learns to play the socially expected gender roles. The Symbolic, in fact, is very similar to our patriarchal society. Like language, our patriarchal society is centered around the Name of the Father and organized by binary oppositions in which woman is defined opposite to man. The present study, based on the Lacanian model in reverse, aims to examine the gender roles in Toni Morrison's three novels: Sula, Song of Solomon, and Tar Baby. At the Symbolic stage, many characters in Morrison's novels live up to their "appropriate" gender roles assigned by patriarchal culture, but they often feel unsatisfied. At the Imaginary stage, some characters have transgressed the boundaries of socially accepted gender behaviors, also resulting in dissatisfaction. A solution to this gender dilemma of either/or logic (either male or female), it seems to Toni Morrison, is the both/and logic of androgyny: in order to be a full and complete human being, one must learn both male and female values.

拉康式解讀莫里森的三部小說

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