The following essay analyzes the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk from three different perspectives; Marxism/capitalism, masculinity, and the Oedipal complex. The aim is to understand why the protagonist in the novel uses violence as a means of expression. In the end it is concluded that all three perspectives are important factors when trying to understand the character's violent behavior.

While scholars have analyzed the masculinity crisis portrayed in American fiction, few have focused on postmodernist fiction, few have examined masculinity without using feminist theory, and no articles propose an adequate solution for ending normative masculinity’s dominance. I examine the masculinity crisis as it is portrayed in two postmodernist novels, David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest and Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Fight Club. Both novels have male characters that ran the gamut of masculinities, but those that are the most successful at avoiding gender stereotypes (Donald Gately in Infinite Jest, and the narrator in Fight Club) develop a masculinity which incorporates strong, phallic masculinity and nurturing, testicular masculinity, creating a balanced gender. At the same time, both novels examine postmodernist fiction’s future. Post-postmodernist fiction, similar to well-rounded masculinity, seeks to be more emotionally open with the reader while still using irony and innovation for meaningful effects, not just to be clever.

This thesis examines the issues of body, embodiment and indentity in relation to the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The duality between speech and embodiment is explored in depth, both in the story of the novel and in the author's narrative style. Furthermore, the issue of power in relation to the society as well as towards one's own identity is discussed.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:29:46Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ana Carla Silvares Pompeo de Camargo Aros.pdf: 1288339 bytes, checksum: 43b059b659df3392d3e4abb48a3a80ad (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-02-26 / The current investigation approaches clinical phenomena usually referred to as frivolous experience, unreality and existential emptiness, all described by Winnicott as one s impossibility of feeling alive and real. Presented as an affective ground within a wide range of symptomatic manifestations, including either psychoses or borderline conditions, this is a radical way of suffering, which, according to several authors, has gradually become more ordinary in the contemporary society, the outlines of which we try to grasp by taking Bauman's sociological thought as a starting point. This paper is methodologically organized around a psychoanalytical approach concerned with a human happening of fictional character that is made public through a 1999-movie production entitled Fight Club. The story that is portrayed was conceived as a psychoanalytical narrative stemming from the observation of the fundamental standard to be considered thereafter in terms of capturing the fields of affective-emotional sense. Seven diverse fields were created/found, which are set out as integrating parts of a greater field called to-be-or-not-to-be , corresponding to the existential drama regarding the desperate search for a life that can be felt as being personal and true. By establishing a dialogue with Winnicott and Bauman, it was possible to conclude that the clinical issue in question is intimately concerned with the new forms of organizing the liquid-modern society, which paradoxically develop a certain type of individualism while they make it hard to personal growth in a sense of developing one s ability of feeling alive, real and able to provide spontaneous gesture to transform the self and the world. / A presente investiga??o aborda fen?menos cl?nicos, habitualmente referidos como viv?ncias de futilidade, irrealidade e vazio existencial, que t?m sido descritos por Winnicott como impossibilidade de se sentir vivo e real. Apresentando-se como fundamento afetivo de uma ampla gama de manifesta??es sintom?ticas, que incluem tanto as psicoses como as condi??es borderlines, s?o uma forma radical de sofrimento que, segundo v?rios autores, vem-se tornando cada vez mais comum na sociedade contempor?nea, cujos contornos buscamos apreender a partir do pensamento sociol?gico de Bauman. O trabalho organiza-se, metodologicamente, ao redor da abordagem psicanal?tica de um acontecer humano de car?ter ficcional,veiculado por meio de produ??o cinematogr?fica de 1999 intitulada Clube da Luta. A hist?ria encenada foi elaborada como narrativa psicanal?tica a partir da observa??o da regra fundamental para, a seguir, ser considerada em termos da capta??o de campos de sentido afetivo-emocional. Foram criados/encontrados sete campos diversos, que se configuram como integrantes de um campo maior, denominado "ser ou n?o ser", correspondente ao drama existecial da busca desesperada de uma vida que possa ser sentida como pessoal e verdadeira. Estabelecendo interlocu??es com Winnicott e Bauman, foi poss?vel concluir que a problem?tica cl?nica estudada articula-se intimamente ?s novas formas de organiza??o da sociedade l?quido-moderna que, de modo paradoxal, incrementam um certo tipo de individualismo enquanto dificultam o amadurecimento pessoal no sentido do desenvolvimento da capacidade de se sentir vivo, real e capaz de gestualidade espont?nea e transformadora de si e do mundo.

This thesis examines the fragile perimeter that separates an illusory reality from the supposedly more authentic Real it conceals, which forms a key focus of Slavoj Žižek’s work, and in this thesis I offer a study of the relations between this aspect of Žižek’s work and film theory. In particular, this thesis is an elaboration on and interrogation of Žižek’s employment of the Lacanian notion of the Real in critiques of the inadequacy of 1970s and 1980s film theory and its widespread adoption of a Lacanian model of film-spectator relations. By way of illustration, I consider the microgenre of films released between the years 1998 to 2000 that includes the Matrix trilogy, David Fincher’s Fight Club, Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, and Alex Proyas’ Dark City, which are all similarly fascinated by the border between a fake reality and an ostensibly more genuine real. However, I also argue that this cycle of films does more than illustrate a fascination with that which is in excess of signification: this cycle of films equally participates in the reappraisal of this important phase of film theory. This thesis proceeds from a consideration of Žižek’s assertion that Lacanian psychoanalysis is missing from the dominant field of film theory. To assess this claim, I re-examine the era of political modernism. From this it becomes clear that what Žižek is noting is not the total absence of Lacanian psychoanalysis, but, rather, an absence of the version of Lacan to which he is drawn. This thesis considers aspects of the Real that contaminate the form and matter of these films, in addition to the thematic exploration of the shadowy world beyond reality. In pursuing this investigation, this thesis utilises the insights of the deconstructive work of Jacques Derrida, to consider the terms ‘form’, ‘content’ and ‘matter’. These words are ubiquitous in film studies, and I aim to explicate not their final meaning, but the way in which the Real interrupts the very stability of vocabulary used in film studies. I interrogate the concepts of gaze and voice as privileged instances of the way in which the Real can rupture the symbolic in narrative film. Without seeking to reject these aesthetic figures, through critical readings of key theories of embodiment, the grotesque and the abject (such as those of Marks, Shaviro, Sobchack, Bakhtin and Kristeva), I suggest how the body and its representation provides a more sustained motif where the Real leaves its trace in these films. This thesis proposes that it is above all through such representations that these films offer a response to the themes with which politically modernist film theory has been historically concerned. The Edge of the Construct films achieve this in their evocation of an intolerable namelessness at the centre of the human subject and the social world it inhabits. / Thesis(Ph.D.) -- School of Humanities, 2008

På papiret virker Fight Club [1999] som et sikkert stikk. En litterær adapsjon utført av en kjent regissør (David Fincher) med solide stjernenavn på plakaten(Brad Pitt, Edward Norton). Men Chuck Palahniuks debutroman fra 1996 er et vanskelig verk, preget av mørk satire, flere lag med ironi og radikal subjektivitet. For å oversette en slik fortelling til film trengs ikke bare dristigheten til å fortelle om kontroversielle tema, men også oppfinnsomheten til å oversette en utpreget psykologisk roman til et audiovisuelt språk. Det er nettopp oversettelsen jeg skal undersøke i denne oppgaven, hvordan romanens kildemateriale har blitt gjenskapt i filmmediet. For å gjøre dette så konkret som mulig, snevrer jeg først inn undersøkelsen til filmens voice-over, som er basert på romanens tekst. Hvordan har bokas fortellerstemme blitt adaptert til en fortellende voice-over i filmen? Jeg skal ta for meg denne prosessen i tre deler, basert på tre stadier i adapsjonsprosessen hvor filmskaperne har hatt anledning til å kreativt bearbeide romanens tekst. Første del er voice-overen sett som skriftlig tekst, manusstadiet. Hva er kuttet, forandret og lagt til romanens tekst? Andre del er voice-overen som stemme, innspillingsstadiet. Hvordan forandres skriften i manus, og dermed også romanens tekst, idet en den blir til uttalte ord? Hvilke virkemidler har filmskaperne her benyttet seg av? Tredje del er fortellerstemmen i møte med resten av filmspråket, klippestadiet. Hvordan påvirker bildene og den øvrige lyddesignen vår opplevelse av fortellerstemmen, og hvordan er påvirkningen den andre veien? Deretter skal jeg utvide perspektivet igjen, og undersøke hvilke implikasjoner bruken av voice-over har for filmen som helhet. Hva kan en film kommuniserer Fight Club på denne måten? Tema blir ironi, upålitelighet, subjektivitet, karakterengasjement og kronologi. Anvendte teoretikere inkluderer Linda Hutcheon, Sarah Kozloff, Thomas Elsaesser, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman, André Bazin, Murray Smith og Lars Thomas Braaten.

Tesis

Marie Eugenie delle Grazies Drama Der Schatten wurde am 28. September 1901 im Wiener Hofburgtheater, einer der bedeutendsten Bühnen Europas, uraufgeführt, jedoch nach nur vier Vorstellungen abgesetzt. Das mit dem Bauernfeld-Preis ausgezeichnete Stück bildet den Zenit von delle Grazies literarischem Schaffen und beinhaltet Diskurse von hohem damaligem Stellenwert, die uns einen tieferen Einblick, vom Standpunkt der modernen Frau, ins Fin-de-Siècle Wien geben können. Das Drama und seine Dichterin wurden im Wien der Jahrhundertwende sowohl gefeiert als auch gerügt. Delle Grazie hatte mit Vorurteilen gegen sie als Frau und Dichterin, sowie mit der Kritik an ihrer unkonventionellen Dramaturgie zu kämpfen. Betrachtet man Der Schatten jedoch im Kontext der Zeit, wird schnell erkennbar, dass die Wiener Dichterin sich vorzüglich darauf verstand die Diskurse ihrer Zeit aufzugreifen und künstlerisch und unikal zu verarbeiten. Inhaltlich ist ihr Protagonist, der Dichter Ernst Werner, die moderne Antwort auf Goethes Faust. Werner ist der faustische Künstler, der sich in freudscher Fasson mit seiner dunklen Seite, seinem Schatten, auseinandersetzt. Dabei werden immer wieder Nietzsches philosophische Ideen thematisiert, insbesondere die des Übermenschen, der sich seine Welt neu erschafft. Darüberhinaus weist das Drama in seiner Darstellung ritualistische Charakteristen auf und erschöpft in seiner Thematik postmodernes Gedankengut, wie es im Film der Jahrtausendwende problematisiert wird.

Thesis (MA (Afrikaans and Dutch))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In fulfilment of the degree of Magister in Creative Writing: Afrikaans, a novel titled Kielhaal (Keelhaul) is presented in which the main character figures as an abject hero. It is accompanied by a formal essay titled “Die abjekte held in Steppenwolf, Fight Club en A Whistling Woman” (“The abject hero in Steppenwolf, Fight Club and A Whistling Woman”). The essay researches the application of the abject hero in literary texts.