My dissertation critiques Western culture’s vertical command of “growing up” to adult completion (rational, heterosexual, married, wealthy, professionally successful) as a reductionist itinerary of human movement leading to subjective sedimentations. Rather, my project proposes ways of “moving rhizomatically” by which it advances a notion of a machinic identity that moves continuously, contingently, and waywardly along less vertical, less excruciating and more horizontal, life-affirmative trails. To this end, my thesis proposes a “rhizomatic semiosis” as extrapolated from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to put forward a notion of language and, by implication, subjectivity, as dynamic and metamorphic. Rather than trying to figure out who the child is or what it experiences consciously, my project wishes to embrace an elusiveness at the heart of subjectivity to argue for continued identity creation beyond the apparently confining parameters of adulthood. This dissertation, then, is about the need to re-examine our ways of growing beyond the lines of teleological progression. By turning to Deleuze’s child, an intangible one that “makes desperate attempts to carry out a performance that the psychoanalyst totally misconstrues” (A Thousand Plateaus 13), I wish to shift focus away from the hierarchical, binary, and ideal model of “growing up” and toward a notion of movement that makes way for plural identities in their becoming. This endeavour reveals itself in particular in the work of John Wray, Todd Field, Peter Cameron, Sara Prichard, Michael Cunningham, and Cormac McCarthy, whose work has received little or no attention at all—a lacuna in research that exists perhaps due to these artists’ innovative approach to a minor literature that promotes the notion of a machinic self and questions the dominant modes of Western culture’s literature for, around, and of children.

No abstract available / History / M.A.

My dissertation critiques Western culture’s vertical command of “growing up” to adult completion (rational, heterosexual, married, wealthy, professionally successful) as a reductionist itinerary of human movement leading to subjective sedimentations. Rather, my project proposes ways of “moving rhizomatically” by which it advances a notion of a machinic identity that moves continuously, contingently, and waywardly along less vertical, less excruciating and more horizontal, life-affirmative trails. To this end, my thesis proposes a “rhizomatic semiosis” as extrapolated from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to put forward a notion of language and, by implication, subjectivity, as dynamic and metamorphic. Rather than trying to figure out who the child is or what it experiences consciously, my project wishes to embrace an elusiveness at the heart of subjectivity to argue for continued identity creation beyond the apparently confining parameters of adulthood. This dissertation, then, is about the need to re-examine our ways of growing beyond the lines of teleological progression. By turning to Deleuze’s child, an intangible one that “makes desperate attempts to carry out a performance that the psychoanalyst totally misconstrues” (A Thousand Plateaus 13), I wish to shift focus away from the hierarchical, binary, and ideal model of “growing up” and toward a notion of movement that makes way for plural identities in their becoming. This endeavour reveals itself in particular in the work of John Wray, Todd Field, Peter Cameron, Sara Prichard, Michael Cunningham, and Cormac McCarthy, whose work has received little or no attention at all—a lacuna in research that exists perhaps due to these artists’ innovative approach to a minor literature that promotes the notion of a machinic self and questions the dominant modes of Western culture’s literature for, around, and of children.

Les études présentées dans ce thèse, The Violence of Bearing Witness in Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, portent sur les représentations narratives de l’acte de témoigner dans les textes des écrivains américains Flannery O'Connor et Cormac McCarthy. Plus précisement, j'identifie l'acte de témoigner comme étant une fonction essentielle du prophète et situe ensuite la représentation narrative de cet acte dans la tradition de la jérémiade américaine. Je débute alors mon étude de O’Connor en examinant son interprétation du rôle du prophète aussi bien dans ses textes que dans la société en générale et sa culture en particulier. Je place ensuite son corpus dans le contexte du mouvement des droits civiques des 1950s-60s et retrace l’évolution de ses personnages noirs à travers la progression d’un groupe de récits que je term « The Geranium Variations ». Mon analyse herméneutique de Blood Meridian emploie la typologie de la violence de Slavoj Žižek pour affirmer que, bien que le roman soit rempli de représentations vives de la violence, McCarthy démontre que la violence structurelle est à l’origine des flambées individuelles – c’est-à-dire de guerre, d’expansion territoriale agressive et de génocide sanctionné par l’État. De plus, mes études démontre que les descriptions excessives de violence du roman sont juxtaposées à une pénurie de description narrative dans la mesure où les représentations incessantes de violence tout au long du roman aboutissent à la mort non décrite du protagoniste, the kid. Enfin, je conclus que les allusions aux Écritures au tout début du roman prédit que the kid aura un rôle liminal dans le texte en tant que prophèt maudit qui a pour fonction de témoigner les horreurs indescriptibles de la nuit des temps. / This dissertation, The Violence of Bearing Witness in Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy, investigates the narrative expressions of bearing witness in the fiction of two writers of the American South: Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy. I identify the act of bearing witness as an essential function of the prophet and locate the narrative representation of this act within the tradition of the American jeremiad. I begin my study of O’Connor’s works by investigating her understanding of the significance of the role of the prophet in her writing as well as in modern society. I then situate O’Connor’s literary art within the context of the civil rights movement and trace the evolution of her treatment of Black characters through the progress of a group of stories I have termed the “Geranium Variations.” My hermeneutic analysis of Blood Meridian employs Slavoj Žižek’s typology of violence to argue that though the novel is replete with vivid portrayals of violence, the true horror with which McCarthy reckons is the structural violence that fosters the individual outbreaks of brutality, i.e. warfare, aggressive territorial expansion, and state-sanctioned genocide. I demonstrate that the novel’s excessive descriptions of violence are juxtaposed with an absence of description insofar as the relentless representations of gratuitous violence throughout the novel culminate in the unnarrated death of the protagonist, the kid. I conclude that the allusions to scripture in the opening sentences of the novel foretells the kid’s liminal role in the text as a cursed prophet whose function is to witness the unspeakable horrors of history.

My thesis examines the discourse of Mexico in the works of three twentieth-century American authors-Cormac McCarthy, Jack Kerouac, and Katherine Anne Porter-in order to analyze representations of Otherness in modernism and postmodernism. I seek to destabilize the dividing line between these periods as well as to show how representation in postmodernity has become more problematic due in large part to the proliferation of consumer culture. Though the Mexico that McCarthy employs in Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) escapes many stereotypes, his Mexico is merely a staging ground that he uses to examine postmodern questions of philosophy while deconstructing myths such as the Old West and Manifest Destiny and reflecting on the ramifications of World War II. Therefore, McCarthy elides Mexico by using its Otherness as a mirror that enables reflection on the Self. Kerouac too is interested in using Mexico to solve U.S. problems. In On the Road, Kerouac's fictional counterpart, Sal Paradise, searches for the authenticity missing from middle-class American life by ultimately turning to the "authentic" Mexico. Though he is able to distinguish between simulations and reality in his own cultural context, once south of the border Sal misrecognizes what is a hypperreal Mexico for supreme authenticity. By contrast, when Katherine Anne Porter crosses the border, she is quick to identify corruption and revolutionary failure in Mexico. When pieces such as "Xochimilco" and "María Concepción" are placed alongside that of the work of Diego Rivera, a leader in the Mexican muralist movement, it becomes clear that Porter essentializes her Mexican subjects with the specific political goal in mind of furthering the revolution. Additionally, by crossing the generic lines separating fiction and non-fiction, Porter approximates what could be called a postmodern form of ethnography. Yet all of her representational strategies are tempered, especially in her last Mexican story, Hacienda, by an awareness that representations of Other cannot be other than flawed.

La tesi riguarda il carteggio tra la scrittrice, critica letteraria e attivista politica americana Mary McCarthy e il saggista e critico teatrale italiano Nicola Chiaromonte: uno scambio epistolare, il loro, tuttora rimasto inedito nonostante il crescente numero di pubblicazioni riguardanti i due autori. La corrispondenza mantenuta con gli amici più stretti è da considerarsi un elemento fondamentale per far luce sugli aspetti più intimi della vita e della creazione artistica di Mary McCarthy: in particolare, questo epistolario svela il lato più umano e personale dell’autrice (raramente mostrato in pubblico) e la devozione e il rispetto che provava verso colui che considerava come suo mentore, critico e amico. Gli stessi sentimenti traspaiono dalle parole di Nicola Chiaromonte, tanto austero e misurato nel suo lavoro quanto scherzoso e appassionato con gli amici più cari. La tesi si compone di due parti principali. La breve introduzione generale è seguita da una prima parte di carattere storico-narrativo, in cui le biografie di Mary McCarthy e di Nicola Chiaromonte si alternano fino ad arrivare al momento fondamentale del loro incontro, a partire dal quale le loro esperienze si intrecciano negli eventi che li videro coinvolti. La seconda parte della tesi è invece il carteggio vero e proprio: 115 tra lettere, telegrammi e biglietti, corredati di note critiche al fine di permetterne una maggiore comprensione. / The dissertation deals with the correspondence between the writer, literary critic and American political activist Mary McCarthy and the Italian essayist and theater critic Nicola Chiaromonte: an epistolary exchange, their, still unpublished despite the growing number of publications concerning the two authors. The correspondence maintained with close friends is to be considered a fundamental element to shed light on the most intimate aspects of Mary McCarthy's life and artistic creation: in particular, this correspondence reveals the author's more human and personal side (rarely shown in public) and the devotion and respect he felt towards the one he considered as her mentor, critic and friend. The same feelings are reflected in the words of Nicola Chiaromonte, so austere and measured in his work as playful and passionate with his closest friends. The thesis consists of two main parts. The brief general introduction is followed by a first part of historical-narrative nature, in which the biographies of Mary McCarthy and Nicola Chiaromonte alternate up to the fundamental moment of their meeting, starting from which their experiences are intertwined in the events who saw them involved. The second part of the thesis is instead the actual correspondence: 115 among letters, telegrams and tickets, supplied with critical notes in order to allow a better understanding.

This dissertation examines dog and idiot tropes—and, specifically, the conflation thereof—in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929), John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (1937), and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Or The Evening Redness in the West (1985). In addition to illustrating the key roles the idiot/dog figure plays in canonical works of twentieth-century U.S. fiction, it argues that this conflation is too often presumed to signify denigration (i.e. a social, political, and ethical exclusion) and degeneration (i.e. a biological threat). Around the turn of the century, the idiot/dog emerges as an aesthetic figure in conjunction with contemporaneous practices of dog breeding and eugenics, as well as co-extensive discourses of national progress and racial purity. In this context, literary idiot/dogs can be read as enciphering a violent historical subtext. Yet, rather than simply condemn this figure as a dehumanizing stereotype, this dissertation challenges such a reductive approach on the grounds that it risks reproducing a hermeneutic that is both ableist and speciesist. A new approach is proposed: reading for the tropological confusion of idiocy and caninity and the destabilizing affective and epistemological effects this poses for liberal subjectivity. Reading for tropological confusion in the fictions of Faulkner, Steinbeck, and McCarthy not only develops new interpretations of three canonical works; it unlocks the idiot/dog figure as a site of textual excess. In so doing, this dissertation makes original contributions to twentieth-century U.S. fiction scholarship, Disability Studies, Animal Studies, and biopolitical theory. The idiot/dog figure’s in/determination—a paradoxical embodiment of humanized canine animality and animalized human mental disability—catalyzes hermeneutic and affective uncertainties. Ultimately, both impinge upon questions of readers’ own abilities to: (i) fully parse the fictions idiot/dogs appear in, and (ii) self-reflexively understand themselves as autonomous, human(e) subjects. Each chapter carefully elaborates this figure’s centrality to the textual operations of, respectively, The Sound and the Fury, Of Mice and Men, and Blood Meridian in terms of their narrative and meta-narrative dimensions; this reveals under-examined continuities. By arguing for idiot/dogs’ disruptive potentials (i.e. affective, epistemological, and ethical), this dissertation bridges and extends previous Disability Studies and Animal Studies interventions that link literary representations to social and material contexts. Also, it further intervenes in these subfields by elaborating the biopolitical reasons for and ramifications of the idiot/dog figure’s emergence in twentieth-century Anglo-American fiction. Each chapter outlines how and why idiot/dog figures constitute a means for harmonizing readers’ experiences, thoughts, desires, and feelings with the normative U.S. social and symbolic order—a national order that hinges on recognitions and denials of human subjectivity, as well as on the production of subjectivity in which fiction is implicated. Ultimately, by closely analyzing literary idiot/dog figures, this dissertation contributes a biopolitical critique of the ontological production and governability of readerly subjects themselves. / Graduate / 2021-09-05

The moral and aesthetic complexity of Cormac McCarthy's fiction demands sophisticated theoretical reading paradigms. Intertextuality informed by poststructuralism is a theoretical approach that enables one to read the moral and aesthetic elements of McCarthy's work in productive ways. McCarthy's work is augmented by its connection to the works of other great artists and writers. As a result, McCarthy's work forces us to read his precedents from a different framework. An examination of the conversation between Martin Heidegger, Meyer Schapiro, Jacques Derrida, and Frederic Jameson about Van Gogh's A Pair of Boots creates an intertextual framework for examining the connection between Cormac McCarthy's Outer Dark and William Faulkner's Light in August. This examination demonstrates that Cormac McCarthy provides a sophisticated aesthetic and moral critique of Faulkner. This application of intertextual theory can also be applied to better understand the intertextual connections that exist within McCarthy's own canon of work. The same discussion of Van Gogh's painting can be used to understand the significance of a pair of boots in McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. This analysis demonstrates that McCarthy has moved from a privilege of postmodern aesthetics in Outer Dark to a privilege of more modern cinematic aesthetics in No Country for Old Men. This shift in aesthetics also informs the moral universe in each novel. Understanding this shift in aesthetics also provides a useful framework for understanding the connection between All the Pretty Horses and its film adapation directed by Billy Bob Thornton. The adapted film of McCarthy's novel enables a productive reading of the tensions between modernism and postmodernism in McCarthy's work.

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