The Missing Selfhood In The Assignation

Joyce Carol Oates (1938-) is one of the prolific writers in the field of contemporary America literature. Her writing mainly exposes various minds of human beings and concerns the pains of the weak for social inequalities. The style of her writing is varied. But all her writings are directed to the social problems in modern America, which are mainly about the conflicts and contradictions between individual and society; self and other; material civilization and spiritual crisis. People living in such an environment always feel anxious, desperate, lonely and helpless.The Assignation is classified as a collection of short stories by many critics, including 44 independent narratives. But to Oates, they are not short stories but "miniature narratives." In modern society, people leading a divided and fragmented life feel the pain of missing selfhood and nihility for their pursuit of transcendental selfhood. The Assignation in displaying the pain and obsession of people tells what a true selfhood is.Through a textual analysis of The Assignation from the perspective of postmodern feminism, the thesis leads the problem of self-missing to the questioning of the transcendental selfhood, whose aggressive and exclusive qualities suppress the existence of irrationality and marginalize women's position in the industrial society So the thesis brings forward the study of Freud and Frankfurt school in the analysis of selfhood. The thesis believes that for the instrumental rationality suppresses the irrational part of personality and undermines the use of ego functioning as the mediator of id and superego, selfhood is divided and the harmony in people's personality is brought into a bad condition. And for the marginalization of irrationality, women's selfhood is interpreted in masculine terms. That is why in the view of feminists the deconstruction of subjectivity from masculine perspective does no benefit to the development of women's selfhood. On the construction of subjectivity, Patricia Waugh proposes the alternative model of subjectivity, which as to the author, is useful to overcome the exclusive quality of rationality and develop healthier selfhood.This thesis first analyses the illusive life and divided selfhood to question the authority of rationality. With the victory of rationality in western civilization, the standardization and totalitarianism make people's life become illusive and mould divided selfhood. When the rationality fails in the 20^th century, the authority of rationality is questioned. Then it discusses the selfhood missing in the pursuit of transcendental selfhood. At the first point, as the representation of autonomous subjectivity, transcendental selfhood fails and alienates itself from society for the lack of connection with society. And for the irrationality repressed in selfhood, people are alienated from themselves. Secondly, as the Other, women can never express themselves equally and really. They are suppressed as the opposite of men without subjectivity. Their selfhood is in an ever state of missing and they try to leave the patriarchal society to build their selfhood. Thirdly, for the social relationship has no longer acted upon people in mutual understanding, the family has lost its power to relate the couples together and they are led to emptiness and coldness. At last, this thesis tells about the refusal of rational authority. As to Patricia Waugh, in the industrial society, the refusal of rationality provides people with a chance to recognize themselves in a new way and develop more mature and healthier selfhood, which relies on the recognition of collective subjectivity.Oates's sympathy is with the victims harmed and humiliated. She considers it as artists' responsibility to concern about people's ethical world. And the description in The Assignation is indeed a good endeavor to it.