Green, Jonas (2020) Losing oneself: the enigmatic other and the will to know in François Ozon's cinema. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
The formation of the self and the relationship between the psychosexual subject and normative power-relations have long been a contested field in both feminist and queer theory. Losing Oneself argues for a transitory model of the gendered psychosexual self; a model of the self as the effect of incorporating a separation and as a porous and negotiated entity. Traditional psychoanalysis, from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Lacan, has focused on loss and separation in the formation of the self. The self is subjugated to a law that both restricts and delimits that self as an imagined, complete figure. In two influential readings of this loss or incorporation of lack, Luce Irigaray and Judith Butler have both formulated melancholic models of the formation of the self. Driven by very different questions, these formulations attempt to explain the effects on the self by restrictive norms as well as explaining how the self enters the world as already a part and effect of that world. This thesis argues for a masochistic rather than melancholic incorporation of norms, emphasising the erotics and the pleasure as well as the pain and restriction at the centre of incorporation. At the core of this argumentation are challenges of the dualism of active/passive engagements with the world and the possibility to know oneself. Ozon’s cinema offers a unique challenge to the distinction between active and passive spectatorship. The films read in this thesis acts as active participants in the development of masochism as a model for affective response to an enigmatic world and its obfuscated demands on the self. Through readings of these films, the present thesis develops a model of the self that is simultaneously founded on lack, exclusion and subjugation but that also offers a pleasurable escape from subjugation and exclusion.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 17 Sep 2021 09:34 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2023 14:45 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/46043 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00046043 |
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