Non-Identity and Parodoxicality in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

Mohammadi, Abolfazl; Momeni, Javad

doi:10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.75.32

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Non-Identity and Parodoxicality in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber

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Abstract:

Angela Carter (1940-92) in her famous short story, The Bloody Chamber, depicts a protagonist whose identity seems to be a predetermined sign in a signifying loop from which she can make no escape. In the first part of our paper, we attempt to show how The protagonist’s ensuing psychological tension is aggravated by the conflict which she feels between her ideal ego (as an innocent girl) and her ego-ideal (a rare talent for corruption) and which leads her to unrelenting introspection and interior dialogue with her existential states. Such interior dialogue provides the protagonist with an existential ground on which she empties all her life events of their presence by signifying (or verbalizing) them through Derridean Differance. Therefore, her interior dialogue results in non-identity in her subjectivization both in the realm of signs and of (social) events. Then, we focus on the protaganist’s paradoxical urges spontaneously outflowed from within which, by resisting symbolization, provide her with the possibility of becoming what she thinks she has never been and allow for her moments of self-determination. Finally, we illustrate how such psychological odyssey takes shape in the Gothic setting which arouses, in Lacanian terminology, pre-symbolic tendencies and which involves the coincidence of Gothic horror with the horrors of social reality.

Info:

Periodical:

International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences (Volume 75)

Pages:

32-40

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ILSHS.75.32

Citation:

A. Mohammadi and J. Momeni, "Non-Identity and Parodoxicality in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber", International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences, Vol. 75, pp. 32-40, 2017

Online since:

January 2017

Authors:

Abolfazl Mohammadi, Javad Momeni

Keywords:

Existential, Gothic, Identity, Interior Dialogue, Paradoxicality, Sign, Subjectivization

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Open Access

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

References:

[1] M. Makinen, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, and the decolonization of feminine sexuality, Feminist Review. 42 (1992) 2-15.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1992.44

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[3] S. Žižek, The Parallax View, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, (2006).

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[5] J. Derrida, Margins of Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, (1982).

[6] A. Carter, The Bloody Chamber, and Other Stories, Penguin, New York, (1993).

[7] S. Žižek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, Verso, London, England, (1989).

[8] J. Momeni, Parody of a life which is elsewhere, International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences. 55 (2015) 35-43.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.55.35

[9] P.V. Zima, Deconstruction and critical theory, Continuum, English Ed., London, England, (2002).

[10] C. Renfroe, Initiation and Disobedience: Liminal Experience in Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, Marvels and Tales. 12(1) (1998) 82-94.

[11] B. Noys, The horror of the real: Zizek's modern gothic, International Journal of Žižek Studies. 4(4) (2010).

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