陰性崇高：以精神分析閱讀安·卡森的《解創造》

Abstract

本文企圖探討安·•卡森在《解創造》中所呈現的崇高概念。透過拉岡式精神分析的閱讀,筆者主張安·卡森在本書中帶領了讀者看見了康德式崇高的幻想(fantasy)、穿越了此幻想而最終建立以自我消亡為方的陰性崇高。本論文分為五章。序論簡短介紹卡森的寫作生涯及《解創造》的內容。第 一章仔細探討崇高概念的歷史及卡森如何在〈泡沫〉一文中結合不同的崇 高概念而組成一主要觀點:自我消亡。第二章試圖以拉岡式的精神分析閱 讀組詩〈崇高們〉。在筆者〈崇高頌〉的閱讀中,莫妮卡·維緹對所有事物的欲望展現了獲得康德式崇高之後的後果:康德式主體受控於超我道德律法。卡森在〈康德對莫妮卡·維緹的問題〉中描繪了在康德觀看下的崇高物。在此詩的結構中,詩行的轉變展現了穿越康德崇高幻想的可能性,最後詩中也指出虛構的康德終於了解到維緹並不是一個他原本所認知的崇 高物。第三章筆者試圖藉著拉岡性分化的公式檢視在〈我的妻子〉中作為 「全無」的陰性主體:她不僅是一個在陽具控制下的康德崇高主體,也是一個大他者快感(the Other jouissance)的主體。在〈解創造〉一文中,筆者 認為書寫神靈經驗中的大他者至爽快感將帶來自我的消解,是一個試圖邁 向真實界界線中由死亡驅力帶來的致命行為。除了潛在的自我滅亡,死亡 驅力也指向了象徵界的重新創造,呼應了《解創造》的核心意義:「解放我們心內的活物」。此章以〈諾斯底主義I〉作結,此詩展現解創造的自我消亡過程是一個自我質疑及掙扎的旅程,而這觀點在陰性崇高論述中從未被提及。結論重申以精神分析閱讀《解創造》可以看見卡森企圖重新詮釋崇高的概念,同時也帶給了陰性崇高另一個新的觀點。This thesis aims to explore Anne Carson’s notion of the Sublime in Decreation. Reading the book through a psychoanalytical lens, I would like to argue that Carson leads us to see the fantasy of Kantain Sublime, to traverse the fantasy and ultimately to establish the feminine Sublime as the annihilation of the self. The thesis consists of five chapters. The introduction provides a brief description of Carson’s publishing career and the content of Decreation. The goal of the first chapter is to explore the history of the Sublime scholarship and to examine how Carson, in the essay “Foam,” combines different notions of the Sublime into one main concept: the self-annihilation. Chapter Two analyzes the suite of poems “Sublimes” on the basis of Lacanian psychoanalysis. In my reading of “Ode to the Sublime,” Monica Vitti’s desire for everything demonstrates the aftermath of acquiring the experience of the Kantian Sublime: the Kantian subject is under the control of superegoic moral law. Carson portrays Vitti as a Sublime object in Kant’s gaze in the poem “Kant’s Question about Monica Vitti.” In the structure of the poem, the shift of lines indicates the possibility of traversing the fantasy of the Kantian Sublime, as the fictional Kant realizes that Vitti as the Sublime object is not what he has been led to believe. In the third chapter, by resorting to Lacan’s formulas of sexuation, I attempt to examine the presence of the feminine subject as “not-all:” she is not only the subject of Kantian Sublime under the category of the phallus but also the subject of the Other jouissance. In the essay “Decreation,” the act of writing the ecstatic experience of the Other jouissance in relation to God brings the dissolution of the self, a fatal destruction of the subject caused by the death drive in an attempt to reach the real. In addition to the potential destruction, the death drive also points to the recreation in the symbolic order, echoing the title of the book “Decreation:” “to undo the creature in us” (167). This chapter ends with the poem “Gnosticism I,” which shows the process of decreation as a journey of self-questioning and self-struggling. This painful experience adds a new perspective to the discourse of the feminine Sublime. The conclusion reiterates that the psychoanalytic reading of Decreation allows us to see how Carson reinterprets the notion of the Sublime and brings a new perspective in discourse of the feminine Sublime.