Monsters, Perversion, and Enjoyment: Toward a Psychoanalytic Theory of Postmodern Horror

黃涵榆(Han-Yu Huang)

《Concentric： Literary and Cultural Studies》 33卷1期 (2007/01) Pp. 87-110

https://doi.org/10.6240/concentric.lit.200701_33(1).0005

並列摘要

This essay looks at ”horror” both as a narrative (literary and especially cinematic) genre and as a trans-genre, postmodern social and cultural milieu, one in which horror has become entangled with excessive, pathological fantasy and enjoyment. First, the traditional, 19th-century literary-Gothic motifs (excess, monstrosity, transgression, and uncanny doubling) will be explored in the light of such psychoanalytic concepts as the uncanny, extimacy, and the ”subject-beyond-subjectivization.” Then the reworking or transformation of these motifs, especially the monster motif, in contemporary ”postmodern” horror films like Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) will be discussed. This ”new Monster” will be described in terms of the superego, aggression, and perversion in our contemporary ”culture of enjoyment”; a key notion here is the move from Freudian superego as the collective moral voice of society (moral conscience) to Lacanian superego as perverse command to ”enjoy ourselves.” The essay's final section offers some psychoanalytical-ethical reflections on reading contemporary, horror-immersed culture.

並列關鍵字

enjoyment ； extimacy ； fantasy ； Gothic ； horror ； monster ； Father-jouissance ； perversion ； postmodern ； superego ； uncanny

參考文獻

Arata, Stephen D.,Nina Auberach (Ed.),David J. Skal.(1997).Dracula.New York:Norton.

Botting, Fred.(1996).Gothic.London:Routledge.

Braidotti, Rosi.(2002).Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming.Cambridge:Polity.

Brophy, Phililp.(1983).Horrality: The Textuality of Contemporary Horror Films.Screen.27(1),2-13.

Carroll, Noël.(1990).The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart.New York:Routledge.