The advent of the popular culture phenomenon allowed the definition and therefore the confinement and treatment of madmen, in the literary sense, to change, evolving into a complicated interaction within the cultural structures introduced by Foucault in Madness and Civilization. In his work, Foucault promotes the triptych of society at large, a mediator, and the madman, wherein society creates the mediator, usually the doctor or asylum, in order to come to terms with madness. At the end of the 20th century, however, postmodernisms interaction with popular culture blurred this triptych. This suggests that in the latter half of the twentieth century the recognition of the culture industry as an important cultural phenomenon also changed the way in which society reacts to, defines, and deals with madness and the madman. In the postmodern age, the madman retains many of the stigmas he received during the Enlightenment. Yet, he is also a product of the culture industry, an entity who defines his world by mass-market strictures and standards. Like the rest of the postmodern world, the postmodern madman lives and dies by his relationship to popular culture illusions. I therefore argue that postmodern madness is the confusion created when the euphoria of living in a mass-produced fantasy world clashes with the need to retain ones individual nature within such a realm. In this environment, the postmodern madman becomes the source of any mediators that may be placed between society and madness. The mediator, in this case, is a result of the individuals need to conform, not to societys rules, but to societys illusions. The novels analyzed in this dissertation, Carlos Fuentess Zona sagrada [Holy Place], Walker Percys The Moviegoer, Manuel Puigs El beso de la mujer araña [Kiss of the Spider Woman], Kurt Vonneguts Breakfast of Champions, Caio Fernando Abreus Onde andará Dulce Veiga? [Whatever Happened to Dulce Veiga?], and Bret Easton Elliss American Psycho present nuanced readings of the postmodern condition and its propensity toward madness, suggesting an evolutionary progression of Foucaults structures which continuously alters the form of the mediator.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07162009-155422 |
| Date | 21 July 2009 |
| Creators | Krause, Jennifer A |
| Contributors | Michael Kreyling, Earl Fitz, William Luis, Jason Borge |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07162009-155422/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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