Thesis Abstract and Dissertation Abstracts
Otherness Contested: A Lacanian Reading of Herman Melville’s Clarel
Abstract Category: Arts
Course / Degree: PhD
Institution / University: King Abdulaziz University, College of Education, Saudi Arabia
Published in: 2010
Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (1876), a nineteenth-century American epic, remarkably anticipates the concerns of post-modernity. Essentially, it accentuates the role of fragmentation in man’s life, and demonstrates the infeasibility of searching for a message, which one might retrieve from the multitude of experiences one encounters. It most certainly communicates a perception of difference and otherness as influential forces that shape the characters’ knowledge of themselves and the world. It is this latter aspect of Melville’s poem, which the present study scrutinizes. What most of the previous studies on the poem seemed to neglect or downgrade is the indeterminacy of its meaning, and its characters’ reaction to otherness; hence the objective of this dissertation is to explore both.
Among the approaches which the researcher considered to vindicate her rationale were the post-colonial, the feminist, and early psychoanalytic findings of object-relation theories. None of these methodologies, nevertheless, guaranteed a satisfactory exposition of the poem’s subtleties, since it does not only regard others as other human beings. Clarel illustrates a post-humanist perspective of alterity, which concerns itself, additionally, with the Subject’s intra-personal relations: with the way the characters, for instance, conceive of place, discourse, social or religious dogmas and laws as embodiments of otherness, which they seek to recognize, understand, connect to, and merge with.
The teachings of the French psychologist Jacques Lacan seemed the most appropriate for an elaborate project, as the one intended by the researcher, for many reasons. Firstly, the psychoanalytic perspective is more of a universal paradigm than a localized point of view—if one considers, for instance, the cultural constraints characterizing the post-colonial or feminist approaches. Secondly, Lacan’s notions about the Other consider both its inter-personal and intra-personal status; i.e. Lacan’s analysis treats the Other as representing both human and non-human entities. Thirdly, Lacan’s views on otherness do not present a developmental schema, and that emulated, to some extent, the chaotic and fragmentary subjectivity, which he described. Lastly, Lacan insists, unlike his predecessors, on the de-centeredness of the other: He was not elucidating the significance of otherness—as products of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real—with the aim of evoking its representations to inhabit the newly evacuated Subject position. Basically, Lacan argues for the meaninglessness of difference in the life of the Subject.
The three chapters of this dissertation are commentaries on the portrayal of otherness in Melville’s poem, which initiate with a consideration of Lacan’s otherness and his three registers.
The first chapter: “Seductive Mirage: The Other as A Gigantic Optical Image” seek to decipher Clarel’s portraits of Imaginary otherness, considering the significance of the gaze and transference in such depictions. An initial reading of the poem insinuates that a knowledge about such others is acquirable and would eventually rescue the Subject from falling a prey to fragmentation. The researcher, nonetheless, noted the poem’s departure from this preliminary message when she considers its thematics and form. Hence, the chapter is divided into four sections.
In the first section, the formal features of the poem, its title, structure and genre, were discussed in the light of the previously set hypothesis: that images of Imaginary otherness in Clarel, in spite of their seductiveness, do not contribute to the reconstruction of a homogenous work of art. The title, for instance, can never be read aright; i.e. it does not “mean” in the ordinary way, for it transcends its textual reference to a consideration of its being an on-going act for readers—as it has been for the characters. This section, as well, discussed the genre conflict at the heart of Clarel. The epic and picaresque elements structure the poetic narrative: i.e. its form and content, but neither of these disparate genres is dominating the work, nor both genres’ traditions collaborate to produce a harmonious whole.
The second section postulates the indeterminacy of the meaning of the Holy Land, for it is more of an Imaginary construct than a real locale. Clarel’s pilgrims journey in the Holy Land driven by a desire to reconnect with a lost object, which would eventually, hopefully secure them the jouissance of being whole once again. The characters project their complex feelings towards their country onto the Holy Land, which turns into a desired other, that desires the presence of the Subject on its ground.
The last two sections considered how some scenes in Clarel, as well as encountered objects or landscape elements are perceived as mirrors, on which an image of a mutable Imaginary otherness is engraved. The “Death” and “Palm” scenes, for instance, are supposed to build into a coherent and unified view of Death, or the symbolic significance of the Sacred Palm. Such a reading is disavowed, since nothing takes place except the characters’ further drowning into the chaotic meaninglessness of their world. This is, likewise, intensified through depicting the characters’ response to-- and variously conflicted readings of--written texts, inscriptions, objects, and landscape features because these renderings seem to suggest a meaning of otherness, that is perceived as very much dependant on these metonymic representations. What the characters see, however, is not what is actually there, for all these mirroring acts result in nothing more than reinforcing the sense of fragmentation, which bars the fulfillment of the characters’ desires.
The second chapter: “When I Speak, the Other Speaks: Clarel as Counter-Discourse” is intrinsically a further inquiry into the nature of otherness in Melville’s poem, and essentially a reading, that supplants, and deconstructs the preceding one. Depending on Lacan’s theories--which introduce the Big Other as supposedly non-human in the sense that it is a product of cultural ideologies—this chapter postulates that the characters’ discourse on race, religious faith, time, and death resonate with hard to miss overtones of current ideological discourses. Plus demonstrating the power and dominance of these discourses, Clarel carries other subverting signifiers, which introduce counter meanings, or, to be more precise, these discourses’ willingness to be open to more than one meaning. The four sections of this chapter—on race, faith, time and death respectively—indicate that the characters’ submissive response to the Big Other’s prohibitive discourse is constantly checked by their anxiety over this discourse’s authenticity and adequacy to secure them the jouissance they desire.
The first section explores the representations of the Easterners in Clarel. The researcher’s objective is not to evaluate these portraits’ authenticity, but to prove how the Subject’s psyche, which registers the dominance of a cultural ideology, structures his perception of the natives of other lands. In other words, the Big Other; i.e. the Western culture, claims the ability to come up with enough signifiers to describe and categorize the East and its people. The Subject’s jouissance, in such a case, results from his adherence to these same signifiers to rationalize racial difference-- without actually being able to acquire an absolutely subjective knowledge about this difference. Clarel’s portraits of Arabs, Turks and Greeks vary in depth according to the perspective that the Western characters adopt, or the Big Other, which they prefer to obey. The Orientalists, for example, sacrifice themselves for the Law of the Big Other because they either desire its satisfaction, or for the lack of a better perspective to view difference. Lacan’s perverts, conversely, formulate their own discourse of mastery, which is intended primarily to voice the Big Other’s verdict on racial difference. The anti-orientalists, on the other hand, reject the orientalist’s point of view, and seek fresh encounters and experiences with ethnic otherness. Completely not governed by the Big Other’s ideology is the transgressor, who prefers to quit the world of the Big Other altogether and observe the world anew.
In the second section of this chapter, the researcher grappled with the representations of religious faith and its highly complex structure of signifiers in Calrel. The Otherness of faith, religion, and God, in addition to their hiddenness, motivate the characters to doubt their existence and ascendency. To defend themselves against this feeling of vulnerability in the face of the Big Other and its necessarily lacking scheme, the characters join in an ongoing act of pilgrimage. Accordingly, their responses to the Law of the Big Other vary. The hysterics, who are disillusioned by the faith they adhere to, are the obedient Subjects of the Big Other, whereas the obsessional neurotics question and interrogate the authority of the Big Other, but fail to exit its dominion, even through death. Those can be ranged against the transgressor intellectual, who succeeds in quitting the Big Other’s chain of signification to engender his own system of perception and belief. Lastly, there are the perverts whose religious beliefs are derived from the way the Big Other perceives the world, for they consider themselves as its tools and hands, the executors of its will and the guarantors of its jouissance.
The third section takes note of how Clarel is portraying time as a space which is capable of domesticating every law that has been inscribed within its dominion. The chapter actually stages the reworking of Lacan’s “psychical” time, which is predominantly situated between the two moments of future expectation and the past as it recreates itself in the present moment. The events of the poem are basically an experiment in temporal displacement, since the characters are transferred to another historical realm, the Holy Land, with all associations of antiquity that can play on the Subject’s unconscious. Unfortunately, the future moment, which the poem as well as the characters anticipate, is never realized during the time they spend in the Holy Land, and the past moments of their history or that of mankind do not lend themselves easily to a comprehensive review in the present.
The fourth part discusses how death is portrayed in Clarel as the ultimate Big Other, since it influences the characters’ conception of life and fate. Death in the Symbolic is different from the Nirvana-like pre-ontological return to synthesis and unity which the Imaginary pictures as feasible. This “Second death” manifests in Clarel in two ways: firstly, as a characteristic feature of the law of the Big Other, which is grounded in repetition and return; and secondly as a compulsion which drives the character to experience being in and out of the Other’s system at the same time. Death is a vicious structure that allows the characters in Clarel numerous but incomplete and incomprehensible encounters with its Otherness. It is depicted as an exterior force that presses against the Subject driving him to commit a suicidal plunge into its undefined realm.
The third chapter: “The “Desert of the Real” in Clarel” emphasizes the unrealizability of the Real, for its otherness and no-thingness cannot be visualized, or symbolically represented, in the absence of signifiers. This chapter is divided into two sections. In the first section, the researcher explores the emptiness that is characteristic of the Real other, as contrasted with the highly codified “reality”, which the Subject encounters. The poem introduces otherness as empty sites that await to be filled; as empty signs, which need further clarification when employed in human discourse; as empty physical places, which demand charting, so they might be safely crossed; and as empty consciousnesses of females, who strike us only as ideals devoid of life. The Fundamental Phantasm, which the characters in Clarel construct as a representation of the Holy Land and its sites, allows them a glimpse into that forbidden dimension. Tragically for the characters, such constructions collapse quickly, leaving them to suffer the frustrations of miss-communication and the emptiness of physical and metaphysical landscapes and sites—its Real otherness, so to speak. Hence, these formulations surface out as meaningless constructions, which resist any eventual communication of truth.
The second section of this chapter presents silence as an obstacle that hinders the characters’ pursuit of the Real other. Basically, silence is assumed to communicate a “saving” message which it never conveys, hence the characters’ unyielding attempts to break that silence, and terminate its frustrating meaninglessness. The linguistic signifiers of silence, however, do not go beyond highlighting its physical attribute, as a time interval given to un-communication. This section explores as well the performative quality of silence, which can act upon the characters’ imagination and responses to whatever they encounter.
Clarel—because it imparts no explicitly meaningful message, and because it is very much preoccupied with (Imaginary, Symbolic or Real) otherness, which could not, or sometimes would not lead the Subject to jouissance—is actually engaged in the project of exploring otherness to eventually propose its meaninglessness in a world, where fragmentation necessarily rules. This dissertation as well, for its abandonment of a developmental perspective, attempts to prove what Lacan postulates as a theoretical possibility, but never goes into investigating its consequences: that it is possible to sever the ties between the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real registers to encounter finally their heterogeneity. Each chapter of this dissertation is an independent critique of Clarel, each featuring a preoccupation with one form of otherness as discussed by Lacan. Each chapter is a return to the site of the poem in the hope of excavating something out of its wrecked existence, and each attempt produced plenty of signifiers to bring the poem’s essence out for, hopefully, a fruitful survey.
This dissertation toys with the idea that literary works emerge in the gap, which results from severing the connection between the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real orders in the mind of their creators. Current literary research should concentrate on how works of art do not reflect the cohesion of perspective, which their authors believe they are communicating, but actually the fragmentation and indecidability that mark their codified reality. A realist novelist and poet like Melville, for example, might be treated as representing a Subject who is entrapped in the Fundamental Phantasm, seeking to capture the essence of the Real world, which he could not represent, but this would the focus of another dissertation that applies Lacan’s theories to the author himself.
Dissertation Keywords/Search Tags:
Norah AL-Malki, Poetry, PhD
This Dissertation Abstract may be cited as follows:
AL-Malki, Norah A. "Otherness Contested: A Lacanian Reading of Herman Melville’s Clarel." King Abdulaziz University, College of Education. Jeddah. 2010.
Submission Details: Dissertation Abstract submitted by Noora Malki from Saudi Arabia on 12-Jul-2010 22:23.
Abstract has been viewed 4218 times (since 7 Mar 2010).
Noora Malki Contact Details: Email: naalmalki1@kau.edu.sa
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