On The Representation Of Body And Subjectivity In Susan Sontag’s Fictional Writings

From the1960s Susan Sontag (1933-2004) began to establish herself as both a critic and a public intellectual in American literature by means of her voluminous essays and art reviews. Her criticism covers multiple genres such as movie, photography, play, choregraphy, literature and philosophy. Though her works of criticism invite multi-dimensional interpretations, especially the well-known essays like "Against Interpretation","On Style" and "Illness as Metaphor", Sontag’s unique understanding of subjectivity, body and consciousness have been barely explored, In fact, subjectivity, body and consciousness are not only the recurrent topics for her many essays, but also the major concerns of her fictional works.Sontag’s fictional works include four novels The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover and In America, a short story collection I, Etcetera., two movie scripts Duet for Cannibals and Brother Carl, as well as a play Alice in Bed. This dissertation probes into Sontag’s presentation of "body","consciousness" and "power relation" in her fictional works in light of Foucault’s discourse of subjectivity and power, in the hope of providing a new perspective for the understanding the major themes of these works.According to Foucault’s discourse, subjectivity emerges with consciousness and self-reflection, and is sustained by power relation as soon as the consciousness involves others. In this sense, the power dynamics between subject and the other complicates with the other’s influence on the subject’s self-consciousness. Subjectivity is by no means in a static position but shifting along with the characters’ self-reflection and their constantly changing power interaction. In Sontag’s fictional works, the depiction of characters’body substantiates power relation, which reflects her understanding of body and consciousness that is seldom articulated accurately and comprehensively in her essays. Disagreeing with the body/soul dualism defined by traditional analytic philosophy, Sontag does not view body as a hindrance to the sublimation of consciousness, nor subjugate body as something inferior to mind. Body in her enterprise is not monolithic, and it embodies her hypothesis on the multiple possible relations with consciousness. She takes body as an effect of verbal construction or a site reifying subjectivity, and she sometimes severs body from consciousness yet at other times she treats them as a whole. Based on a close reading of the texts, this dissertation categorizes body and body images in Sontag’s fictional works into three types, namely,"the abjected body""the performative body" and "the absent body" and discusses them in turn in three chapters.Chapter One examines the abjected body. The "abjected" refers to the features recognized by the subject alienated from his or her identification; and it also refers to the features that the subject strives in vain to get rid of, and which induce frustration and horror. This chapter studies Hester’s blindness in Death Kit, the protagonist’s self-exile in "Dummy", the sick bodies constructed by the discourse in "The Way We Live Now" and "Baby", the bed-ridden body in Alice in Bed, and Emma’s obese and eczematous body in The Volcano Lover. In these works, Sontag’s feminist body philosophy is embodied by a fact that woman’s body of ugliness and abjection can win its subject overpowering status in various power relationships. The interaction between the abjected body and subjectivity can be represented into different modalities, namely, abjection sometimes threats the Subject’s self-identification, and sometimes signifies the subjectivity in dire crisis.Chapter Two takes Jean-Jacques in The Benefactor, Arthur Bauer in Duet for Cannibals and Ryszard’s In America as the subjects of "performative" activity. The efficiency of performativenss relies on its effects on the object, among which "misrecognition" is unavoidable. The intended effect of the subject’s performative activity or the unpredictable effects of misrecognition are both outcomes of power operation. In light of conceptions of "Ideal image" and "the Symbolics", this chapter unfolds the symbolic images that have been internalized by Sontag’s characters under the influence of power, and all those images take their footholds in body. Sontag stresses the moments when the subject’s reflections on the power dynamics are triggered by misrecognition either of himself or of the others. Maryna in In America is typically restrained by the misrecognition due to her internalized Ideal image distilled from the others’ misrecognition. Maryna’s efforts of approaching an Ideal image in turn fasten and solidify the others’misrecognition. The conflict between the imposed Ideal image and the desire of self-realization foregrounds the misrecognition, so as to threaten the subjective consciousness and to evoke the subject to seek certitude from the symbolic matrix that engenders and sustains performativity. The symbolic matrix therefore is an accumulation of misrecognitions.Chapter Three focuses on "the absent body" in Sontag’s fictional works."Absence" refers to a negative presence, namely, a situation in which the subject refuses to recognize himself as an existence that is beset with all kinds of objects and, relations in the real world. Absence also designates the images that have no appearance in the happenings but have dominated the progress of narration and exerted a heavy influence on other characters’consciousness. Incardona in Death Kit and Thomas Mann in "Pilgrimage" fall into this category. Meanwhile, Hippolyte in The Benefactor who indulges himself in dreams, Carl of negative presence in Brother Carl and the Cavaliere of self-deception in The Volcano Lover are all subjects retiring into a distressful mental space out of their disappointment with the real life. However, the relation between "absent body" and characters’ subjectivity does not manifest itself in a coherent pattern. The absence of Cavaliere, Hippolyte and Carl verifies their inertia in daily life, but it stands as their own choice thus underscores their subjectivity. On the contrary, Incardona and Thomas Mann are not subjects of absence, in the sense that Incardona is coerced into the absolute absence caused by death, whereas Mann’s presence is but the narrator’s imaginary construction. In other words, Thomas Mann, who has been distortedly forged into an idol by the subject, is but a phantom presence in the story; and his physical presence as an idol turns out to be an effaced presence, namely, a lacking. Nevertheless, such a kind of absence contains the subject’s self-consciousness and maintains a dominant status in the power dynamics.This dissertation holds that body, subjective consciousness and power relation are key themes of Sontag’s fictional writings. The multiple types of body and body images represented in her works, namely, the abjected body, the performative body and the absent body, give an account of Sontag’s body philosophy from different perspectives. For Sontag, the power relation influences the characters’ subjective consciousness, which then determines the practice of subjectivity. In this sense, power relation indirectly works on the characters’ perception of body and body images, which in turn represent and provoke new power relation. Body, subjectivity and power relation contained in Sontag’s fictional writings reflect her meditation on their association. The body-consciousness dualism is not the sole paradigm of human existence, instead, body and consciousness is in a complicated and constantly changing interaction.