The Satanic self is the autonomous, linguistically constructed subject who cannot support itself but who rebels against any external support. According to Foucault, the autonomous subject should be reconsidered as a function of discourse. This anxiety over the autonomous and autonymous subject is not new, but has antecedents far back in literary history. Chaucer?s The Pardoner?s Tale, The Parson?s Tale, Milton?s Paradise Lost, and Beckett?s The Unnamable recapitulate the historical progress of the development and decline of the self-authoring subject, a progress of dislocation of significance from?in order?objects, language, and finally the subject itself. The first two writers show how to avert what Anthony Low calls the ?disastrous fall into nihilistic subjectivity,? while the third can present no such redemption. The withdrawl of meaning through profane kenosis is inextricably linked to the long, slow disappearance of God from Western European cultural consciousness. The rejection of God is the rejection of the traditional grounds of Western subjectivity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-03112007-194154 |
| Date | 11 April 2007 |
| Creators | Burnett, Jacob |
| Contributors | R. V. Young, Charlotte Gross, M. Thomas Hester |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03112007-194154/ |
| 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, dis sertation, 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 NC State 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. |
Page generated in 0.0018 seconds