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Literary Doubling in Self-Conscious Fiction: Nin, H.D., Quin, Brophy and Acker".
Siljanoska, Anastasija ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
The thesis explores five twentieth-century female authors, who incorporate the phenomenon of literary doubling in their novels: H.D., Anaïs Nin, Ann Quin, Brigid Brophy and Kathy Acker. They can be divided into three groups. The first group is represented by H.D. and Nin, writing in the first half of the twentieth century. They are modernists whose autobiographic fiction is influenced by the developments of psychoanalysis. While psychoanalysis is a continuous source of inspiration for them, they begin noticing its elements of repression and chauvinism. The second group consists of Quin and Brophy, whose fiction directly reflects the changes that were happening on the feminist front. Their creative writing openly challenges and rejects the patriarchal structures that constrain it. Acker, as a representative of the third generation, sees the oppression of women as an example of social oppression on a larger scale. A socio-political critique, her punk novels focus on centralization of marginal social groups. There is doubling happening on various levels in the novels: doubling of real personages as characters, appearance of the author as a character, doubling among the characters, bipolarity of gender, ambiguity of language and meaning, etc. The purpose is to emphasize and draw attention to certain...
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The American Dream Machine: Anti-Systemic Fictions of Coover, Thompson, Burroughs, and Acker
Novická, Tereza ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Thesis Abstract The thesis examines manifestations of transgression in Robert Coover's The Public Burning (1977), Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (1971), William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch (1959) and The Nova Trilogy (1961-1967), and Kathy Acker's Empire of the Senseless (1988) on a structural and thematic level. Georges Bataille's theory of escalated excess and Michel Foucault's theory of the transgression-limit power dynamics, outlined in Chapter One, provide the theoretical framework through which the texts are analyzed, as through concepts of the spectacle, the carnival, taboo, and the Situationist détournement practice. The nature of the American Dream Machine is explored in regards to its chief components of control; the American war on abstractions, American exceptionalism, and the American Dream, examined through their contradictory connotations and historical relevance. The thesis proposes that despite their anti- systemic drive, the selected texts are complicit with and dependent on the American Dream Machine in perpetuating their power play. In Chapter Two, the hyperbolization of American Cold War propaganda rhetoric is analyzed in Coover's The Public Burning. Chapter Three details Thompson's gonzo writing against the...
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Resonance and Self-resonance: Gilles Deleuze's Involuntary Memory in Marcel Proust and Samuel Beckett
Suchánek, Tomáš ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
The main focus of my thesis will aim at a contrast between two works. On one hand, it will be Marcel Proust's heptalogy A la recherche de temps perdu (1913) as viewed by Gilles Deleuze, on the other, Samuel Beckett's trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951) and L'Innommable (1953). The contrast will be dissected through the prism of Deleuze's notion of involuntary memory which he derives out of his analysis of Proust's narrative. Hence the thesis will investigate the involuntary memory and its signs of reminiscence and resonance in Beckett's hands, which will be compared with their distribution in Proust, for the different aspects of the involuntary, which reveals the schizoid narrator in both Proust and Beckett, may correspond with Deleuze's redefinition of essence of truth that is characterized by its primordial schizophrenic setting. Therefore, it will be indispensable to point out how varied the involuntary memory and signs of reminiscence and resonance in their narratives are. The structure of the thesis will consist of four main parts. In order to introduce the readers with the theory of Gilles Deleuze, the first chapter will include the introduction into Deleuze's redefinition of essence of truth - as a response to that, the second will exemplify its revelation in the work of art. In other words,...
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"All this little affair with 'being' is over:" Metaphysical Crisis in Virginia Woolf's The Waves
Opravil, Vít ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Thesis Abstract The present thesis sets out to follow three different problems in the metaphysics of Virginia Woolf's late novel The Waves and contrast them with the theories of three thinkers - Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Jacques Derrida. First chapter discusses Woolf's approach to subjectivity. It is shown that Deleuze's and Guattari's method establishing subjectivity as a by- product of a machinic assemblage is particularly fruitful in reading the characters in the first four chapters where their bodies and their "subjectivities" form in diverse ways. D&G comment on the waves of the lyrical passages as an abstract machine of which the character-assemblages are actualizations. They do not, however, comment on the territorialising function of sunlight which seems to be equally important and therefore needs to be analysed. This function corresponds with the ever growing oedipalisation of the characters, which finds its summit in the fifth chapter of the novel and transforms a deterritorialised rhizome into a reterritorialized (or oedipalised) signifying system. The second chapter discusses how the functioning of the territorial machine of the sun reduces the rhizome into a centralised system whose centre can be understood through the prism of Derrida's theory of structure as a play of...
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Mythical Method in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"
Straková, Kateřina ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
By the use of mythical method, T. S. Eliot created a pattern of archetypal imagery in his poem The Waste Land (1922). This work focuses on the various interpretations of The Waste Land written from the perspective of archetypal criticism. Eliot's critics frequently interpreted the poem as a modern cultural artefact testifying to the ritual of death and rebirth. Examination of the approaches towards archetypal imagery contained in Eliot's work enables an exploration of the main thematic concepts of this literary composition - namely the lack of vital energy and longing for renewal. The poem incorporates archetype-based images into its symbolic frame, and at the same time exposes the sources of these variations on primal ideas. Vegetation myths and the Arthurian legends are recognized by the archetypal critics as the main references for the thematic structure of Eliot's poem. The archetypal analysis of Eliot's work was prevalent in the 1950-70s. Critics expanded upon the idea of the desired renewal of productive forces expressed in the poem. They identified this concept as anthropological in its origin, and traced the influence which James G. Frazer's theories about primitive ritual had on The Waste Land. Eliot coined the term "mythical method" in his essay on James Joyce "Ulysses, Order, and Myth"...
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Postmodernity's Search for Postgender: Brophy, Winterson and Place
Peková, Olga ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
Postmodernity's Search for Postgender: Bropy, Winterson and Place (Abstract) The thesis examines three formally very diverse texts published in 1969, 1993 and 2013 respectively that creatively approach and subvert the gender binary: Brigid Brophy's In Transit, Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Vanessa Place's Boycott. Based on Jean-François Lyotard's conception of postmodernism as modernism in a constantly nascent state, the author advances a hypothesis of "postgender." This however does not mean overcoming gender for good (as it is sometimes understood, for example by Rosi Braidotti), but as a structural momentum, a possibility of subversion at the heart of any gender schema and currently therefore of genderism, i.e. the belief that gender is necessarily binary and that aspects of our gender are inherently linked to our sex assigned at birth. Apart from feminist theory and literary criticism, the thesis also touches on the field of transgender studies, psychoanalysis, philosophy of history and most importantly the work of Jacques Derrida. In so doing it tries to articulate the notion of postgender as part and parcel of the condition of postmodernity and a culmination of the modern split of the subject, leading to a certain cultural gender turn during the 1990s. The work nevertheless remains...
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Authority and Authorship: James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men as a Work of Fictocriticism
Childs, Morgan ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
viii Abstract This thesis uses James Agee's 1941 book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men to examine the role of so-called fictocriticism in emphasizing the immutability of an author from within a text. The thesis argues that the fictocritical text accounts for the impossibility of extricating the author from writing. Although its precursors date back several centuries- perhaps most notably to Michel de Montaigne-the term fictocriticism was coined in the mid- to late twentieth century to describe texts existing at the interstices of ostensibly fictional and factual genres of writing. Agee's text, borne out of a journalistic assignment for Fortune magazine, blends elements of long-form magazine journalism with lyric poetry with the author's famous sprawling, diaryesque prose, calling the reader to question which elements of the text are rooted in fact and which are simply the author's fabrications or, indeed, whether such a distinction can be drawn. The term can be applied only anachronistically to the 1941 book, yet as defined in these pages it is a befitting description of Agee's otherwise unclassifiable text. Fictocriticism lacks a singular definition, so the examination of Agee's Famous Men as a fictocritical work rests on a thorough revision of the term's history and its lexical implications, both of which...
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"The Grand Conspiracy: A Lacanian Reading of Contemporary Conspiracy Theories"
Bohal, Vít ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
The numerous and varied conspiracy theories which circulate in the contemporary discourse are subject to hyperstition, insofar as they are grouped into wider, more elaborate structures. Some of them become hierarchic to such a degree, that they may, in Michael Barkun's typology, be labeled as "superconspiracy" constructs. No author is more prolific and systematic in the crafting of these constructs than the guru of anglophone conspiracy theory belief, David Icke. The work attempts to keep as its object of study the work of David Icke and his "reptoid hypothesis," as it is effectively one of the most elaborate and baroque conspiracy theories which populate contemporary political discourse. It is Icke's oeuvre which this thesis attempts to recontextualize within the confines of critical social theory and Žižekian psychoanalysis. The existence of a "paranoid style" as professed by Richard J. Hofstadter can be noted throughout the history of western culture, from the Homeric gods, scheming behind the scenes, to its modern incarnations culminating in the superconspiracy constructs of David Icke, Alex Jones, and others. The work focuses not on specific conspiracy theories and their claim to facticity, but rather attempts to trace the structural features of Icke's construct and establish their underlying...
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Street Art in Galleries: Aura, Authenticity, and The Postmodern Condition
Chiu, Ewelina ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
This thesis examines contemporary street art and its exhibition in galleries and museums in connection with Walter Benjamin's concepts of aura and authenticity in the postmodern period. Street art is posited as a marginal art evolving out of the tradition of 1970's New York graffiti that can be made to function as a type of anti-spectacle within the spectacle of the mainstream. Situationist theory and concepts within the agenda of Unitary Urbanism (psychogeography, the dérive, and détournement) are used to evaluate contemporary street art as anti-spectacle. Photography, as a primary method of documenting street art, is considered as a mechanically reproduced medium bringing into play discourses of repetition and originality, which are in turn related back to Benjamin's concepts of aura and authenticity. Andy Warhol, his Pop Art iconography, and practice of seriality are also considered as an influence on contemporary street art's imagery and underlying practice. Warhol's promotion of an "art star" persona is also related to such contemporary street art "stars" as Banksy and Mr. Brainwash.
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The New America in Beat Literature:Spontaneous, Far Out, and All That Jazz
Novická, Tereza ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
1 Thesis Abstract This thesis establishes the Beat Generation as part of the American literary canon despite its rejection of the literary establishment and academic criticism of its day. The portrayal of the American postwar zeitgeist in Beat literature is examined through the innovative literary techniques proposed by Jack Kerouac based on jazz characteristics. The revitalization of poetic and narrative form are identified in Allen Ginsberg's earliest published poetry, notably "Howl; for Carl Solomon" (Howl and Other Poems, 1956), Kerouac's novels On the Road and Visions of Cody and his long poem Mexico City Blues, respectively. The emergence and peak of the initially marginal Beat literary movement that gave rise to the affiliated beatnik subculture illustrates the tradition of avant-garde art becoming incorporated into establishment culture. The first chapter outlines the political and cultural hegemony of the conservative fifties in America with focus on cultural and historical aspects relevant and parallel to the surfacing and development of the Beat/beatnik counterculture, i.e. Cold War policies, McCarthyism, poetic movements, the emergence of bebop and its innovations. The second chapter provides an in- depth analysis of Beat writing in reference to jazz as subject-matter and as influence on both...
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