Since the late seventies, the violence, speed and spectacle associated with the genres of war films, Westerns and the spectacular melodramas of early cinema have developed into a distinct genre of its own – the action film. With the development of the stylistic language at the core of this generic universe came derogatory generalisations and a tendency to categorise simplistically. To overcome these simplifications, this thesis explores the shifts in generic language to distinguish its subtleties and complexities of logic. Overwhelmingly the genre is considered masculine, but the purpose of this thesis is to explore the logic of this masculinity and analyse the effect of the feminine upon it. Beginning with overviews of the theoretical attempts to grasp the concept of genre that focus primarily on the limitations of the view of their having distinct boundaries, the theory that genre theory has failed is investigated. Leaving this view of boundaries through an exploration of symbolic universes that have translucent boundaries, the filmic movement of genre passes back and forth through the theoretical frameworks. The intention is not to analyse the overall concept of genre, but to focus on the symbolic universe and the language intrinsic to action films. The rules of action cannot be simply transposed onto other generic categories but stand-alone. Genre theory does not fail if approached from a perspective of discourse analysis focusing on the development of symbolic universes. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, and focusing primarily on the oppositions of the Master’s and the Analyst’s discourse, the question moves from the listing of conventions as the markers of the boundaries of genre, to exploring why the combination of certain conventions and signifiers coming together created the genre. Through Lacanian discourse analysis it becomes apparent that the generally acknowledged logic of masculine and feminine are limited. The masculine is the ‘norm’ that appears to need no explanation, but the feminine has transgressed the norm and shown the construction of fantasy inherent in the genre. This has led to post-action films that are ambiguous both in their generic structure and symbolic language.

<p>Walker Percy writes, in the foreword of "A confederacy of dunces", “I hesitate to use the word comedy - though comedy it is - because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that …It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from.” In this essay I have analyzed where the sadness comes from, through the psychoanalytic theories of Jaqcues Lacan, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, mainly. My standpoint is that no text or utterance is ever completed, and therefore it is not absolute. The text itself is the strongest manifestation of power in the novel. When scrutinizing the text itself, I have treated it as one of the analysands, trying to reveal the suppressed information underneath the surface of the implied story.</p>

Walker Percy writes, in the foreword of "A confederacy of dunces", “I hesitate to use the word comedy - though comedy it is - because that implies simply a funny book, and this novel is a great deal more than that …It is also sad. One never quite knows where the sadness comes from.” In this essay I have analyzed where the sadness comes from, through the psychoanalytic theories of Jaqcues Lacan, John Bowlby, Melanie Klein and Erich Fromm, mainly. My standpoint is that no text or utterance is ever completed, and therefore it is not absolute. The text itself is the strongest manifestation of power in the novel. When scrutinizing the text itself, I have treated it as one of the analysands, trying to reveal the suppressed information underneath the surface of the implied story.

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For the readers of White Noise, the first issue he or she has to deal with is the relationship between the society and the individual. But DeLillo was never straightforward in Jack¡¦s narrative. From time to time, the reader is asked to judge by themselves about the authorial intention and the narrator¡¦s attitude toward the characters¡¦ suffering. As both the narrator and a character, Jack Gladney typifies the tension of locating the hope of resistance in a seemingly hopeless situation. As the narrator, Jack¡¦s attitude toward the corrupting force of the society would seem to vacillate among indifference and affirmation. Yet, his indifference would appear to be sarcastic or even accusatory if one remembers that he or she is reading one of DeLillo¡¦s novels. The interpretive deadlock, then, can be summarized into the following question: if DeLillo intended to posit the possibility of resistance through the process of writing and reading, how can it be realized in the protagonist with whom the reader is invited to identify? Numerous approaches are adopted by the critics, and yet the enigmatic ending of the novel continues to challenge the results of their efforts. With ease, Jack Gladney returns to his normal routine after he nearly kills a man, but it is indicated that he is never the same person as exhibited in the previous chapters. To determine the nature of transformation and its implication for the existence of hope, this thesis sets out to dissect the important elements in the last chapter. As the novel ends in Jack¡¦s shopping, the chapter two of this thesis traces the influence of capitalism on the characters. It is found that the characters¡¦ enjoyment of the consumerism is correlative with a fundamental imperfection in their sense of self. In narrating the stories about him, Jack Gladney cannot hide his anxiety for failing to be a good professor, husband and father. From a Lacanian perspective, the disjointedness reveals the failure of the system to provide all his needs. Still, Jack and others are spurred to immerse harder in the ever-revolutionizing mode of enjoyment, endlessly deferring from confronting the void inherent in all their pursuits. Before Jack returns to shop for the last time in the novel, however, he is infected by toxic substance that causes him to eye the capitalist system with suspicion. During the outbreak of the disaster, the New Age belief system, painful enjoyment and environmental crisis are associated with the oppressive force of capitalist development. They all reappear in the end of the novel, yet they are no longer threats for Jack; instead, he finds them enjoyable. In the chapter three of this thesis, my analysis recounts how the characters¡¦ reluctance to depart from their routine of enjoyment contributes to their intentional disavowals of the injuries the system brings to them. In Jack¡¦s case, the biopolitical control that results in the elevation of the status of medical science and enjoyment causes him to resubmit himself more violently to the system. He becomes a killer and enjoys seeing himself as such who seems to contribute to all the subjects in the capitalist society. It is after such sad transformation that the final chapter begins, suddenly deflating the emotional turbulences accumulated throughout the previous chapters. The enigmatic vacuum is still accompanied by signs of Jack¡¦s transformation. However, the omnipresence of death in the chapter seems to weaken the certainty for a pessimistic future of suffering in the capitalist system. Waiting before the checking out point, Jack is in fact facing to the end of vicious circle symbolically. The unfathomable death corresponds with the impossibility the reader encounters when interpreting the text. As the readers cannot determine what will happen after the terminal, they are actually freed from chopping the text for constructing hopes that will be contradicted by the remaining paragraphs at one point or another, while they have to put down the novel and go on living with the similar situations the novel portrays. Herein resides the hope: externalizing the deadlock of life for the reader, the end of White Noise testifies the ongoing procession of human history that cannot be anticipated beforehand.

Thèse de doctorat : Philosophie : Paris 12 : 2005. / Thèse électronique uniquement consultable au sein de l'Université Paris 12 (Intranet). Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr. f. 314-322.

Project (M.F.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Project (School for the Contemporary Arts) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [183]-203).

La formación del homo sacer peruano: violencia sistémica en cuatro relatos sobre el Perú contemporáneo (The Formation of the Peruvian Homo Sacer: Systemic Violence in Four Narrative Texts About Contemporary Peru) applies the theory of Jacques Lacan about the orders of the Symbolic, the Imaginary, and the Real to analyze the phenomenon of violence as portrayed in: Candela quema luceros (1989), De amor y de guerra (2004), Chungui: violencia y trazos de memoria (2005), and La niña de nuestros ojos (2010). Through a Lacanian analysis of these four texts my investigation reveals the mechanisms of how imaginary violence is sustained by real violence and, principally, by symbolic violence in the context of Peru of the 1980s and 1990s. Of crucial importance is the incorporation of Lacan's theory of the superego and lamella to argue that these narrators shed light upon the processes of the formation of the Peruvian homo sacer, a life deprived of any value. I argue that it is only with the consolidation of the homo sacer was possible to kill with total impunity 70,000 Peruvians.

Trente ans après la mort de Lacan, les conséquences concernant la cure tirées de son enseignement sur les psychoses méritent une révision pour la période 1981-2011. Aujourd'hui, de nombreux analystes lacaniens traitent des patients psychotiques et essayent de rendre compte des effets. Pourquoi la psychanalyse s'avère-t-elle opérante dans l'abord des psychotiques? Bien que les effets de l'abord analytique soient reconnus par les analystes, leur théorisation entraîne des paradoxes comme celui qui soutient qu'il n'y a pas de désir dans les psychoses. Dans la mesure où Lacan a promu une éthique analytique fondée sur la fonction du désir de l'analyste comme ressort du transfert, l'exil du désir psychotique de la théorisation est contradictoire avec l'idée d'une cure possible. Celle-ci risque de se transformer en une thérapeutique. Cette recherche propose de réintroduire le concept de désir dans la théorisation de la cure analytique des psychoses. Tout d'abord, cette thèse s'est révélée nécessaire pour élucider les modifications de la position subjective repérées dans des cas de patients mélancoliques dont la présentation mortifiée initiale a connu une réversion vers la persécution. Le passage d'un désir aboli à un essai d'instituer le désir dans l'Autre exige de considérer que la psychose aussi est une affaire de désir. La question ne serait pas celle de l'absence du désir, sinon celle des modalités de support du désir que chaque patient psychotique pourrait mettre en place. L'abord analytique démontre à ce niveau son efficacité, qui n'est pas toujours garantie car dépendante d'une rencontre entre le psychotique et le désir de l'analyste.